* Thomas Henry McGrath; Longtime Leader in Cal State University System

Thomas Henry McGrath, 82, former university president who helped create California’s Master Plan for Higher Education. Long a presence in the California State University system, McGrath capped his career from 1971 to 1974 as the second permanent president of Cal State Sonoma. He faced the challenge of stabilizing the campus after a student-faculty strike and several other incidents fueled by controversy over the Vietnam War. The student government had been dissolved because of the turmoil, and community-campus relations were at a low point. A Sonoma colleague, Carl Campbell, said McGrath will be remembered for “taking over at a real difficult time, and for bringing a lot of different groups together, holding the place together and still keeping the focus on liberal arts.” Born in Seattle, McGrath moved to Santa Barbara with his family as a child. He earned his undergraduate degree from UC Santa Barbara and a master’s at Claremont Graduate School. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, then taught psychology briefly at Cal Poly Pomona and Mt. San Antonio College. During the 1950s, McGrath worked as a research psychologist with the Navy Electronics Laboratory at Point Loma in San Diego. In 1957, he returned to education as assistant to the president and then dean of Cal Poly Pomona. A fixture in the state’s higher educational institutions, he helped fashion the Master Plan designated by the late Gov. Pat Brown. In 1964, McGrath was named dean of students for all campuses in the Cal State system, and three years later was elevated to executive vice chancellor of the system. On May 26 in Long Beach of lymphoma.