Looking Back
Roots and traditions: How our campus built a bright future
A century's worth of UC Davis students, faculty and staff has figured out what matters in life and done something about it, each making a mark on this campus.
An incomplete history of The California Aggie: The student newspaper has been a constant of campus life since 1915
Ever since a handful of agricultural students founded the paper in 1915, the Aggie has been run by a revolving staff of students who report news from campus and beyond with little or no formal training or faculty guidance.
Corps curriculum: Some students still find it the best way to be all they can be
ROTC, which dates back to the 1920s at UC Davis, has its with roots in two prior wars — World War I, with the 1916 National Defense Act, and the Civil War, with an 1862 federal act that established land-grant colleges for instruction in agriculture, “mechanic arts” and military tactics.
Honoring the fallen: Remembering those who did not return from war
In 2006, the Memorial Union’s 50th birthday was a time for celebration and commemoration, the latter a tribute to the Aggie soldiers to whom the building is dedicated. A memorial to Aggies lost in war has been part of the MU since its beginning.
Bawdy, witty ‘60s artists become UC Davis icons
In the ‘60s they joined UC Davis as lecturers and junior faculty. And then, with UC Davis as their base, these five iconoclastic men became some of the most important artists of their time — and put Northern California, and the UC Davis Art Department, on the art-world map.
Crocker Nuclear Lab at 40: Adapting to history and funding challenges, the lab celebrates its many applications
One day during the mid ‘60s, two flat-bed trucks pulled off a country road by a hog barn, carrying two huge and slightly radioactive electromagnets. The magnets were key parts of a particle accelerator called a cyclotron, which was coming to a new home.
The Summer of Love lives on: Forty years after San Francisco’s summer of love, the legacy of the era still keeps on truckin’ at UC Davis
Gone are the Quad teach-ins, the love-ins, the be-ins, draft resisters and the draft. The sounds of Jefferson Airplane, Simon and Garfunkel, The Animals and the Grateful Dead faded an eon ago from Freeborn Hall. But the 1960s, in many ways, still rock UC Davis.
Setting the stage: With Mondavi Center’s opening, a decades-long dream comes true
If truth be told, opening the doors of the $57 million performing art center at UC Davis was a long time coming. In fact, it was a campus aspiration for decades. Finally in 2002, thanks to a regional community of supporters, the world-class facility opened at UC Davis.
Ags stun Stanford: In just 8 seconds, UC Davis upsets college football’s establishment
When UC Davis was offered the chance to play Stanford in 2005, we hadn’t played the Cardinal for a while. In fact, the last time our football team officially played Stanford, Herbert Hoover was visiting his namesake hydroelectric dam in Arizona as one of the last public tours of his lame-duck administration.