Retiring Occidental President’s Legacy: Prestige, Moderation

On Aug. 1, Richard C. Gilman will step down as president of Occidental College, a job he has held for 23 years--longer than any of the nation’s current college presidents.

As head of the small liberal arts college in Eagle Rock, Gilman has pursued an exhaustive schedule of travel and fund-raising aimed at bringing a measure of Ivy League status to a school once considered a place where good local students could find a homier alternative to USC.

When Gilman came to Occidental in 1965, most of its graduates went into teaching and settled in Northeast Los Angeles. Today, college counselors across the country know its name. More than half the students are from out of state. The most popular majors now include biology and economics. Its annual cost of about $16,000 puts it in the upper bracket of private schools, yet applications have risen 45% over the last two years.

Endowment Has Grown

Occidental has also flourished financially. Its endowment of $126 million is 10 times the amount Gilman inherited.

Gilman’s formula for success has been to push an intimate, quality undergraduate education. But despite his achievements, Gilman is not without critics. Some point out that while the college has gained academic prestige, life on the quiet, stately campus has failed to adapt to changes in the surrounding community.

Eagle Rock, once a mainly white suburb, has been transformed by Latino and Asian-Pacific immigrants. Despite recent efforts to recruit minority students, the college’s minority enrollment today is only 20%.

More than 70% of the students at Occidental live on campus, and there is little incentive to explore the cultural diversity of Los Angeles.

Faculty members say they hope that John B. Slaughter, chancellor of the University of Maryland’s largest campus, who will assume Occidental’s presidency this summer, will bring a more urban flavor to the college. Gilman is best known for his relentless pursuit of money for the school.

He has brought major construction projects to the 120-acre campus, including a library, a theater, a biological sciences building, a center for the liberal arts, a three-story parking structure and the restoration of many older classrooms and dormitories.

Gilman’s efforts have not stopped at new facilities. In 1968, the college faculty received $100,000 in research funds. This year the total reached $1.8 million.

A broad-shouldered man with silver hair and an aloof, genteel manner, Gilman has never lost his Maine accent. He graduated from Dartmouth, studied at the University of London and received a doctorate in philosophy from Boston University. After service as a naval officer in World War II, Gilman began an academic career that led to the position of dean of Carleton College in Minnesota before he became president of Occidental.

Some say his distant manner has prevented Gilman from getting to know the students and the faculty.

“Nobody knows anything about him,” junior Shawn Berman said. “He never took the time to really talk to students and tell us what he was about.’

Resolute in the personal reserve for which he is both admired and belittled, Gilman declined in a recent interview to comment on criticism of his administration.

While Gilman is rarely seen on campus, his imprint is felt in the campus’ family-like closeness. He has trimmed enrollment, done away with doctoral programs and discouraged graduate programs. Ten years ago, the college had 75 graduate students. Today it has eight.

And, at a time when students at many universities attend massive classes taught by teaching assistants, the student-faculty ratio at Occidental is a low 12 to 1.

The average tenure of a U.S. college president is seven years. Gilman has lasted three times as long, partly by holding to the maxim that the role of a college is to educate, not to take ideological positions. He responded to student protests against the Vietnam War by canceling classes for a day in favor of a “teach-in.” When students accused the college of racial bias in 1975, Gilman stepped up recruitment of minority students and faculty.

When students erected a shantytown last year to protest the school’s investments in South Africa, he mediated between students, faculty and the board of trustees. But the issue remains unresolved, and students and faculty say they hope it will be among the first things addressed by the new president.

Gilman’s moderate style has sometimes angered professors and students.

“Vanilla and vanilla and vanilla, that’s just the Oxy way,” student Berman said while holding a cup of the only flavor of ice cream offered at a recent celebration in Gilman’s honor.

Gilman said he will miss the house where he and his first wife, who died in 1978, raised four children. He married his former secretary, Sarah Gale, in 1984. Gale died two years later.

But he plans to remain a Southern Californian. “I am an Easterner, yes,” he said, “but this is where my professional life lies. I’ve lived here for 23 years. This is where my work and friends have been.”