Andrew Todd Newberry, Professor of Biology: Reflections on UCSC, 1965-1994

For the complete text [PDF] of Andrew Todd Newberry, Professor of Biology (E-Scholarship). Includes complete audio (streaming or download) for the oral history. Note: Due to editing by the narrator and the Project, there may be minor differences between the audio recording and the transcript. Please quote from the transcript as the record and not the audio. Audio will be found under "Supporting Material."

2006, 52 pages

This interview with [Andrew] Todd Newberry was conducted by Randall Jarrell, the former director of the Regional History Project, on July 18, 1994 in Newberry's office at UCSC. Todd Newberry arrived at UCSC as a founding faculty member in biology when the campus opened in 1965. He had earned a B.A. in biology from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in biology from Stanford University, where his doctoral research focused on ascidian tunicates ("sea squirts"). Other research interests included invertebrate development and reproduction and biosystematics. Professor Newberry speaks of teaching "as a form of persuasion, of launching, of getting people interested in things." Some of the other courses Newberry taught over the years included Invertebrate Zoology, The Organism in Its Environment (Biology 1A), Invertebrate Anatomy Laboratory, Morphogenesis, and California Marine Invertebrates.

In this narration Newberry provides his recollections of the early years at UCSC, particularly of Cowell College. He characterizes those years as "exhilarating," and as an "improbable adventure." He also discusses the development of the biology board [now department], and his colleagues such as William Doyle, Charles Daniel, and Peter Ray.