Dean E. McHenry; First UC Santa Cruz Chancellor

Dean E. McHenry, the founding chancellor of that unique example of higher education known as UC Santa Cruz, died Tuesday.

McHenry, 87, had presided over the sprawling cluster of residential colleges where students ate, slept, studied and called professors by their first names from the university’s conceptual year of 1961 until he retired in 1974.

During McHenry’s 13-year tenure, he oversaw development of $63 million in construction projects and the hiring of more than 1,000 employees.

His position put him at the forefront of the controversy that surrounded what was then considered a radical departure from academic traditions at the new campus, modeled after Oxford and Cambridge. There professors had free time programmed into their schedules for conversations with students in a relaxed atmosphere some found too permissive.

Today the approach is considered commonplace, but not in the early 1960s, when students were expected to be seen only behind a book and heard only in connection with their studies.

At one time there were no grades issued on completion of classes and the general atmosphere was so laid-back that a standing gag was that UCSC stood for “Uncle Charlie’s Summer Camp.”

McHenry was an ideal choice for a radical campus as he had taught government at such traditional universities as Williams College in Massachusetts and political science at Pennsylvania State College before becoming a political science professor at UCLA in 1939, where he taught for nearly two decades.

He wrote several books on government and became political science department chairman at UCLA while being honored as a Carnegie fellow and Fulbright lecturer, traveling to Australia and New Zealand.

UC President Clark Kerr, McHenry’s onetime roommate at Stanford University, made him his academic assistant with responsibility for planning. As such he was on the survey team that set forth a master plan that included new UC campuses in San Diego, Irvine and Santa Cruz. He then became Kerr’s selection to lead Santa Cruz through its formative years.

McHenry recruited a faculty that was to include botanist Kenneth Thimann, and famed humorist Tom Lehrer to teach mathematics.

The first of UC Santa Cruz’s “cluster colleges,” Cowell College, opened in 1965 but permanent buildings had not been completed and students lived in trailers that they called “UC Mobile Home Estates.”

After retirement, McHenry concentrated on the family-owned vineyards at Bonny Doon ranch in Santa Cruz County. He also continued to serve the UC Santa Cruz Foundation and was an active supporter of the school’s arboretum and marine laboratory.

McHenry is survived by his wife, Jane, four children, nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Memorial donations may be made to the UC Santa Cruz Foundation.