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LOYOYLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

Centennial History Project Interview: Joseph Callinan, 1957

June 17, 2010

Ubiqus/Nation-Wide Reporting & Convention Coverage 2222 Martin Street, Suite 212 – Irvine, CA 92612

Phone: 949-477-4972 w Fax: 949-553-1302

LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

Centennial History Project Interview: Joe Callinan 1

Joseph Callinan Interview

[START MZ000045]

MR. JOE CALLINAN: You’re welcome. What is your major?

MR. MICHAEL PETERSEN: I’m a history major.

MR. CALLINAN: In what year?

MR. PETERSEN: I’m going to be a Junior next year. Yeah, that’s how I got into this project here. So let’s start with just asking about your background. So you came of age during World War II, and you entered Loyola in 1952. Why did you choose Loyola?

MR. CALLINAN: My dad told me I was going to go to Loyola. Simple as that.

MR. PETERSEN: Right. Why was he so strong about it?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, I think that he wanted me to go to a Catholic college, and this is the only Catholic men’s college around.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay.

MR. CALLINAN: Also, he probably couldn’t afford to send me someplace else.

MR. PETERSEN: So your family’s a Catholic family, and it was important that you went to a Catholic school?

MR. CALLINAN: It was certainly important to them. In retrospect, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay, great. So since Loyola is known for its commitment to social justice, and academic excellence, and the education of the whole person, so had you thought much about those principles before coming or was it more just since it was already a done deal?

MR. CALLINAN: No. I actually didn’t, as a graduating high school senior, I didn’t think much about anything long term. And I didn’t know what to expect at Loyola. My brother came here when I was a junior in high school. So he came here in 1950, and the first time I stepped on campus was in the fall of 1950 when he was a student here. But he was only here for one year, and then he left. He wasn’t ready for school yet. So I had no expectations. You know, I was just doing what I was supposed to do. I’m supposed to go to college now since



I finished high school.

MR. PETERSEN: Right. Okay. And then regarding the historical context of the 1950s, World War II had just ended and the U.S. was in the early stage of the Cold War. Do you have any recollections of the Cold War on campus? Were there any air raid siren drills, or any education on nuclear weaponry, or anything regarding that that you remember?

MR. CALLINAN: No, I don’t recall anything. When you’re speaking of the Cold War, are you speaking of the situation between the United States and Russia?

MR. PETERSEN: Yes. Correct.

MR. CALLINAN: I don’t remember too much about that being an issue on campus at all.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay. And during your years at Loyola, I believe that the Air Force ROTC was required of students?

MR. CALLINAN: Yes.

MR. PETERSEN: Do you have any recollections of your experience in ROTC?

MR. CALLINAN: Yes, I do. All students were required to be in the ROTC for their first two years. And then, at the end of two years, you could choose to go into the advanced program. I choose to do that. I was sent to March Air Force Base out in Riverside. Took a physical exam to go on into Advanced ROTC. I failed an eye test in the physical, so I wasn’t eligible to go on into Advanced ROTC. So I dropped out after two years.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. So were you conscious of the general political climate around the world at the time you were here? Like regarding the Cold War?

MR. CALLINAN: Yes, the Cold War.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay.

MR. CALLINAN: Yes, the situation between United States and Russia.

MR. PETERSEN: Right.

MR. CALLINAN: I was cognizant of what was going on.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. And then the years you were an undergrad were also very important in the early stages of the Civil



Rights Movement, like it was the beginning time with the Brown vs. Board of Education and the Supreme Court ordered desegregation of public schools. Do you remember any of that, like any of that coming in on you? Was there any impact or discussion of that at Loyola at the time?

MR. CALLINAN: I don’t recall it when I was a student here.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay. And how integrated in terms of race was Loyola during the ‘50s?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, I know that we had Hispanic students. In our engineering class, we had at least one. In addition, at the University we had several African-American students. The university enrollment was not very large in those days. But it was predominantly caucasian.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Do you remember any experiences regarding racial injustices or racial toleration here at Loyola?

MR. CALLINAN: No. My recollection is that everyone got along just fine.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay. And then how conscious were you of the Civil Rights Movement? Was there any involvement of it—any talks or any kind of rallies here on campus or anything like that?

MR. CALLINAN: Not that I can recall when I was a student.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay. And then you also attended Loyola before the merger with Marymount. So...

[END MZ000045]

[START MZ000046]

MR. PETERSEN: ...what was life like on an all-male campus?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, there were opportunities. There were three Catholic women’s colleges, Immaculate Heart, Mount St. Mary’s, and Marymount, and at St. Vincent’s Nursing School. There are actually four. And we would have social events involving those schools. So there weren’t any women undergraduate students on campus.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. And then regarding the students, were the majority of them Catholic at the time?

MR. CALLINAN: I assume so. I have no way of knowing for certain.



MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Was Catholicism a really important part of student life, like they had masses frequently and...?

MR. CALLINAN: The way it was in those days... Now, you’re probably aware that I came back as a faculty member in 1958, and I spent my entire career here.

MR. PETERSEN: Right.

MR. CALLINAN: In my student days, in the classroom, we were required to take eight theology courses, which were called religion courses in those days. Outside of the classroom, every Thursday they had a chapel talk. And every day at noon time, they said the Angelus Prayer. There was a PA system on campus. The campus was a lot smaller in those days, the original 100 acres. There was a PA system on campus. At noon time every day, everything stopped and you said the Angelus Prayer at noon time, and then went on about your business. I don’t recall going to mass on campus a lot in those days. Those are the two main extracurricular activities—regular chapel talks and the daily Angelus Prayer.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. So obviously since the ‘50s the campus has changed a whole lot, and so not only the student body, but also just the physical campus or the buildings and the property. Is there anything particular that you remember about your years at Loyola about like dorm life? Did you live on campus?

MR. CALLINAN: No, I didn’t. I was a commuter student.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay. Do you remember anything about the campus dining, or the classrooms, or anything specific about that?

MR. CALLINAN: Each classroom had a cross on the wall. And each class started out with a prayer in those days. We’d start each class, if it was a Catholic professor or a Jesuit priest, they led the prayer. If it wasn’t, a student would lead a prayer.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. And then you mentioned your first time on Loyola’s campus was 1950. And I think it was because you were at a football game. Is that right or...?

MR. CALLINAN: No. For my first trips to this campus, I would come and pick up my brother. My brother was a resident student.



MR. PETERSEN: Okay.

MR. CALLINAN: So I’d come and pick him up on occasion.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay.

MR. CALLINAN: Now, I did attend two sporting events that year. One was a pivotal football game between Loyola and Santa Clara. Loyola had an undefeated team; Santa Clara’s team was so-so. And a Loyola victory would have, I think, guaranteed them an invitation to the Orange Bowl. And my brother took me to that game. It was Gilmore Stadium, which it was up in Hollywood. That’s where they played their home games. And the Santa Clara won in a high-scoring game, something like 28 to 26. You know, that was the end of Loyola’s big-time football. They cancelled the program after the next season. The last year they had intercollegiate football was the following year, the 1951-52 year. And I did see one game—they played their home games at the Rose Bowl that year. I did see them play USF at the Rose Bowl that year. And then the other event during the 1950-51 year was a basketball game. My brother took me to a basketball game.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay. So the football team was gone by the time you actually got to school.

MR. CALLINAN: Yes, yes.

MR. PETERSEN: And then I’ve also heard that you enjoyed intramural sports while on campus?

MR. CALLINAN: As a student, I wasn’t too involved in...

[END MZ000046]

[START MZ000047]

MR. CALLINAN: ...campus activities for two reasons. One is I was a commuter student. And secondly, there was an organization called the Catholic Youth Organization. And they had a network of Young People’s Clubs throughout Los Angeles. And so most of my social life was centered around that organization. The Young People’s Clubs, as they called them, they had four goals. They were religious, community service, athletics and social. So most of my efforts, my social life, athletic life and religious life centered around that organization. And while at LMU, I was involved in the Student Engineering Organization, which was the American Society for Automotive Engineers. The SAE was the only



engineering student organization. All the engineers belonged to that. They cared to be involved. And I was President of that organization for one year. Also, I was a member of Alpha Sigma Nu, the National Jesuit Honor Society. One of the things Alpha Sigma Nu did in those years was prepare a white paper on, their assessment of what was going on that particular year on campus. And that was presented to the University President.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. So it was like a—not like a newspaper. But it was like a once-a-year compilation.

MR. CALLINAN: Yeah. It was our assessment of how well things were going, what’s wrong, what’s right, what’s working well, things like that.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. That’s really cool. And so can you tell me about the sports culture that was on campus while you were here? Like was basketball big, or what was the...?

MR. CALLINAN: Basketball was the big sport. In terms of going to sporting events, basketball was the main thing that I went to. I didn’t go to baseball games and whatever other teams that they had. I brought along a couple of yearbooks here. This is 1955. Go to the Sport Section. I think they had a golf team. They had basketball. They had a tennis team. They had a golf team. And that was it in terms of intercollegiate sports.

MR. PETERSEN: And where did the basketball team play that you guys could go watch?

MR. CALLINAN: In the alumni gym, which stood where the recreation center is now. It was a wooden gym built in the late 1940s, I believe.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. So you could watch them play there. You were interested in math. Right? And they didn’t have a Math major, so you became a mechanical engineer? Was that much of a transition or a...?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, I had to do something. My main interest was math. It’s interesting how, in life, things happen and you hit crossroads or a place where the path splits and goes one way and another way; and for some reason or other, you go in one direction; and how that really affects your life. Because they didn’t have a Math major here at the time, I ended up picking Mechanical Engineering. I didn’t pick



Electrical Engineering, because I couldn’t understand the physics, the magnetic stuff, you know, and all that. So I picked Mechanical Engineering, and that set the course of my life.

MR. PETERSEN: And then after you graduated, you worked as a research engineer for North American Aviation.

MR. CALLINAN: Yeah. Their Rocketdyne Division at Canoga Park, which was an excellent job. I really was very fortunate. Those guys got me going to graduate school right away. I was in the Advanced Design section. And they were very high powered, working on new stuff, actually working on the Mars Rover at that time and things like that. Way out. And it was a great, exciting place to be.

MR. PETERSEN: So then why did you decide to return to Loyola to teach in 1958?

MR. CALLINAN: First of all, I’d given a lecture at Loyola as part of an alumni program. And the dean, Dan Whelan, knew me from my undergraduate days and also from that lecture. [END MZ000047]

[START MZ000048]

MR. CALLINAN: After about a year of working in industry, I thought, maybe—it was a feeling inside of me, that maybe I would like to teach, and get greater satisfaction out of that than the work I was doing, even though I was really very fortunate to be in a very exciting job. And so I called the Dean and I told him, I think I might be interested in teaching. What should I be doing? He said, Go to graduate school. I told him that I was already going to graduate school. And then maybe half a year later, he gave me a call and said, We’ve suddenly had a faculty member in Mechanical Engineering quit. He resigned. He had a spat with somebody, and he just resigned. And it was in my field. He said, Would you be interested in teaching? I said, Yes. He said, You’re hired. No national search, no nothing. In those days, things were done quite differently from how they’re done today. So the opportunity appeared. I was offered the job. I accepted the job. And I taught here for 44 years. It was the best thing that happened to me. The path started out when my dad said go to ever Loyola. And it just continued on, you know. And I really enjoyed my job here. I looked forward to coming to work every day. It was a great job. Working with students particularly. And the faculty



and staff were wonderful people.

MR. PETERSEN: What was it about Loyola that made coming here and then teaching here like the best thing that ever happened to you?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, teaching here, I thought I would like it. So that’s when I came here. And, in fact, I did like it. And I enjoyed working with students. I enjoyed trying to help students. And then the collegiality was very, very strong in those days amongst the faculty. All of the faculty knew all the rest of the faculty. The place has of grown since, and the expectations of faculty members have changed over the years. But it was very student oriented. The faculty responsibility was very student oriented in those days.

MR. PETERSEN: So then you experienced the ‘50s as a student at Loyola, and then the ‘60s as a teacher. How did the campus change during those two decades?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, in terms of student involvement, I was much more aware of it during the Vietnam War era. Students were very actively involved. And I marched in a march that went down Manchester Boulevard to downtown Westchester at least one time, you know, along with the students, and protested some issue during the Vietnam War. The Woodstock rock concert occurred in the late‘60s. This had an impact on student life at Loyola, celebrations and protests on campus, more drinking, maybe marijuana, and other things were coming into the student scene. The student scene was starting to change. And the students had big celebrations here from time to time. It was very interesting and kind of enjoyable to be involved in. The students were very active, very involved and had very definite views about what’s going on in the world.

MR. PETERSEN: So it was more subdued during the ‘50s?

MR. CALLINAN: Yes.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. And then you taught here during the merger with Marymount in the ‘70s.

MR. CALLINAN: Yes.

MR. PETERSEN: Can you tell me about that transition?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, in Engineering, maybe five or six years before the merger, we started accepting female students. And



the rationale was that if a female Catholic high school student was interested in engineering, none of the local girls’ colleges had engineering as a major. So the local bishop kind of controlling all this, said, well, they could go to Loyola. So the first women undergraduate students and the first woman graduate were in Engineering. And the very first graduate, her name was Christine Berterro, was a mechanical engineer, and she happened to marry another mechanical engineer, Dwight Landis, and they’re still married.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. So that was before the merger that...?

MR. CALLINAN: Yes.

MR. PETERSEN: What year did she graduate?

MR. CALLINAN: Christine graduated in 1968.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay. The transition was gradual, right? They had classes together first and then they started living on campus, or...?

MR. CALLINAN: I do not recall when female students started to live in the dorms.

[END MZ000048]

[START MZ000049]

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. What was the change like going from all male to all of a sudden have a co-ed school?

MR. CALLINAN: Let see. You know, for me personally, it didn’t seem to be a big deal. It seemed to be a natural transition. I think it was well handled. And it was nice to have women on campus.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. So clearly, you’ve maintained an active affiliation with Loyola ever since you went to school here. It’s been over fifty years as a student, teacher, and then a dean. Can you explain why you’ve maintained such a continuous relationship with Loyola?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, because I’ve enjoyed it. It’s plain and simple. It’s been a great relationship, great job. I enjoyed my undergraduate education here, and my work as a teacher and as an administrator here. Like I said, I looked forward to coming to work every day. I couldn’t have asked for a better job. Things happen. It work out very well for



me.

MR. PETERSEN: Is there anything specific about Loyola that made it so enjoyable for you?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, one thing is that’s where I was, you know. And the people were great. The engineering students and faculty were pretty close. Another engineering faculty member who was hired in 1958, was Jim Foxworthy. He was dean during the roughly decade before I was dean. But he was more experienced than me. He was older than me. He was a Korean War veteran. He did his graduate work at USC. I did mine at UCLA. And he really had strong ideas about student/faculty rapport as part of the educational process. The engineering students and the engineering faculty were very close. We had regular beer busts behind Pareira Hall in those days. Now you can’t do things like that. You know, these were unofficial, or if an Engineering Society was having something, they would throw a keg of beer out there. So the students and the faculty spent a lot of time, and perhaps every other week, there’d be something going on of a social nature. A lot of times socializing, and talking, and bullshitting, and getting together, and, you know, enjoying each others’ company.

MR. PETERSEN: You’ve seen Loyola change so much over the past years. What do you think were the biggest and most important changes to Loyola?

MR. CALLINAN: I think the biggest change, in my mind, is how the students have become so service oriented. That’s a change that started growing, and I think people in campus ministry and Sister Peg Dolan got it going. If you go back to the 1950s when I was a student, we did very little in the area of community service. In the Young People’s Club that I belonged to, we were doing some service things. But at Loyola, I don’t recall anything going on like that.

But now students are taking the initiative doing so many things. The engineering students have an Engineers Without Borders and they are going over to Africa, Malawi [phonetic], for a water project. There’s a couple of other engineering students that are going to India for a project this summer. Amazing, you know, that they would give up their whole summer to go out and help people in some other part of the world. And I know within the university people are going everywhere within the community to do service projects. The girls’



basketball team does service projects as part of their regular routine. So that’s the biggest change I’ve seen.

It’s gone from a Catholic university to truly Christian university, doing what Christ would do or would want us to do. That’s the biggest change I’ve seen in the positive...

[END MZ000049]

[START MZ000050]

MR. CALLINAN: ...sense. And I think the biggest change in the negative sense I’ve seen is it’s become more bureaucratic, more corporate in nature. There are more layers of administration up there now.

I went to one of the sessions held by the Search Committee for the new president. I session for was a faculty. And there weren’t very many people there to start with. But in preparing for that, I looked at the bulletin for this current year, and I looked at the bulletin for 20 years ago. The bulletin lists administrators. The number of vice presidents jumped from five to 21 in 20 years. And so the top administration is insulated from people down below them.

And going back to the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, you were good friends with all the administrators. You knew them all. You knew the president well. It was a much closer organization than it is now. It’s more corporate now. And prior to my retiring in like 2001, 2002, I just started referring to the place as LMU, Inc. because it’s more corporate in nature, and less collegial.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. So about the change of the students going to more service oriented, when did you start seeing that trend develop? Is there really a kind of time you can kind of or a series of years that kind of started? Or did it start with the ‘60s and the getting active with Vietnam or...?

MR. CALLINAN: It just happened. It slowly happened, but I think it accelerated within the last couple of decades during the ‘90s and the 2000s is when it really picked up and there’s a lot going on.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Going back a bit. When you mentioned that students are very active with the Vietnam protests and things like that, is there anything specific besides that march you can think of that just...? Were there like talks on campus or...?



MR. CALLINAN: Well, there were controversial speakers brought on campus on all kinds of issues.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. And then were students being drafted at that time? Do you remember anything about that or...?

MR. CALLINAN: I think that student deferments were available. I don’t think too many students got drafted out of college.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay. And then jumping back to where we just were... Back to the changes discussion, what changes would you like to see in the future at LMU? Or what kind of concerns do you have for the...?

MR. CALLINAN: I would like to see several layers of administration be eliminated. That’s what I would like to see.

MR. PETERSEN: All right. Bring the campus back to that close-knit feel you were talking about.

MR. CALLINAN: I don’t know if it can ever go back for two reasons. One is that the faculty is large now. The student body is large. So it’s just not as small a school as it once was.

And then the other thing, the expectations of the faculty have changed. Before, in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, the expectation was that you would basically teach. You taught four classes each semester. And then during the time when I was dean, they changed the requirement that you—this was in the 1980s—that each faculty member teaches three classes a semester and is responsible for publications. And that, I think, the emphasis on research and publications, has grown. But at least in my area, I involved students in work that I was doing, and projects, and so on. And I had some publications. My first publications was in the second year that I was here. My first presentations was at the end of my first year of teaching, where I presented at a national meeting. And my first publication in a referee journal was...

[END MZ000050]

[START MZ000051]

MR. CALLINAN: ...within a year of that. So on my own, I like to publish work or present work at meetings primarily so I could get to go to the meetings. My primary motivation in going



through the effort of preparing and submitting a publication was because then the university at least paid part of my cost of going to a national meeting.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. And then as dean, were you dean of the whole College of Science Engineering?

MR. CALLINAN: Yes.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Did you guide any changes for the School or...?

MR. CALLINAN: When the position opened, I wasn’t really interested in the job. But then faculty colleagues encouraged me to apply for the job. Since I’m going to apply for the job, I need an agenda. So I came up with an agenda that I felt we should be doing. And part of that agenda was that we should have a better relationship with local industry. That was at the top of the list. The second thing was that in an Engineering Accreditation Review, we were criticized for some of our labs—not the equipment, but the facility. A third major goal was to get the faculty the equipment they needed to do their jobs.

So when I became dean, the first thing I did was establish a Board of Industrial Advisors, people from industry. I think I was the first dean to have such a board. So we met regularly. And at the very first meeting, I took them out to this lab. Now, this lab, our labs in those days were in metal buildings. They’re the buildings behind Parerra Hall now. And they have been redone since then. But in those days, they were the original U.S. Navy surplus buildings. A lot of the buildings that we had were the Quonset huts and things that you’re familiar with and the stories about them. A lot of the buildings were U.S. surplus buildings, Second World War buildings that somebody in the university went out and got. Probably got them for little or nothing and got them on here. So, some of the engineering labs were in these two metal buildings.

At my very first meeting of my Advisory Board, I took them out there. And at the meeting, I told them about the criticism that the accreditation agency gave us about not the equipment, but the facility. And one of the guys on the board pledged $100,000 right then and there, right on the spot. And this guy happened to be a trustee of the university, too. While we did not have a plan to do anything when I started my job as dean, quickly put together a



development plan. So initially, I envisaged where Dolan Hall is now, a one-story building back there that would house certain laboratories.

And then one of the guys on the Advisory Board says, Well, build that building so that you can add a second floor later on if necessary. So then I said, You know, our Math Department really has rotten facilities. So I said, Let’s just build a second floor right away, and we’ll put the Math Department up there. So the building concept went from one story to two stories.

And then we designed the building ourselves involving the people who were going to be living in that building. we kind of got together and designed what the floor plan should be. We fought it out with the architects to get what we wanted. That wasn’t easy. Finally had to tell the vice president in charge of facilities, tell him this is what we want. And finally he said, Give them what they want. And they did it the way we wanted it. And that’s Dolan Hall today.

And the other thing I did was—this is during the ‘80s. That’s when personal computers were coming in. And all the faculty wanted their own computer and stuff like that. So I said, Okay, you’re going to have to raise money for this. And each department can submit a wish list. So the cost of the building was $1.5 million. And then everything the departments put in on their wish list added up to another $1.5 million. So it was $3 million fund raising campaign. So we launched this campaign. University Relations (it was called the Development Office in those days) had just hired a woman to work with the deans. And, at the time, none of the other deans were...

[END MZ000051]

[START MZ000052]

MR. CALLINAN: ...doing very much in the area of fundraising. So I pretty much had their attention most of the time. So this woman and I worked together. We raised the $3 million. We built the building, and got faculty all the equipment they needed and the computers and so on during my stint as dean.

I established the Advisory Board to get the close relationship with industry. And we had programs on campus where big-time people from industry came in. Like once a year, we’d have a big program where top people from industry



come in and spoke to us.

And the third thing was I wanted openness. I was pretty open. That got me in trouble a couple times, because the more information people know, the they can find more things to get at you with. But it worked pretty good. So that was the third thing that I wanted was openness at the administrative level.

MR. PETERSEN: And so you were talking about computers. How did computers coming on campus change the field of engineering and how you taught it to...? How did it change like the college level? Like how you taught engineering or...? Did it change much or...?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, yeah. First of all, it facilitated computation. This is early on. Okay? Computers were sophisticated. In the early days, the engineers did most of the computations on a slide rule. And then stuff that had to be done more precisely were on mechanical computing machines, mechanical adding machines. You’re talking now about the late 1950s. And then we got our first digital computer about 1960. And it occupied a room bigger than this. It was one that could hardly do anything. But anyway, we were keeping up with what was going on.

When I was an engineer at Rocketdyne, we also had a big mainframe computer. It took up a huge room there and the same thing. So within a couple years after industry got a big computer, we got a big computer here. So initially it function was computation. Then things became more and more sophisticated. And everything you’re familiar with now, you’ve got spreadsheets that facilitate all kinds of computation. You’ve got word processing, which facilitates writing documents of one sort or another. Now there are design programs, programs with all the design stuff built in so you can design a structure using the computer or some other thing, electronic circuits and so on. So a lot of the work of an engineer has been codified in programs. And now engineers, understanding what it’s all about, are able to use those tools to do design work. Now you can do sophisticated design optimization and things like that very quickly. Whereas before, it would be very painstaking to go through all these iterations of looking at different designs and comparing them. Now the computations occur so quickly.

MR. PETERSEN: That big computer, was that the first computer on



campus? You guys were the first department to have a computer?

MR. CALLINAN: Yes.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Did students ever work with the computers, the early ones or was it awhile before students actually got...?

MR. CALLINAN: I think students worked with that. It was an ALWAC, computer. And it’s a digital computer. Transistors weren’t around in those days, or at least not very prevalent. So they had vacuum tubes. So anyway, it was quite primitive. But it was a start. You start at the beginning and work your way up.

And the next generation we had here was a much smaller computer that serviced teletype terminals. So, one computer would service maybe eight terminals. Eight students could be working at one time on teletype terminals. And early on, the initial language was the machine language. So you had to tell it to do every step. Add this, then store this, then subtract this from that, and so on. But within a year, Fortran computer language was created. You communicated with

[END MZ000052]

[START MZ000053]

MR. CALLINAN: ...the computer using formulas to do your computations. Now you use spreadsheets. You don’t have to worry about anything hardly. Just know how to use it and it does everything for you. So that was kind of the evolution of that.

MR. PETERSEN: Do you remember what year it was that you got the first big computer?

MR. CALLINAN: I’m guessing about 1959.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay.

MR. CALLINAN: And it was donated to us.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Okay, great. Do you remember who donated it?

MR. CALLINAN: No.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. It was a donation. Okay. Oh, just a more personal question. Did you have any interaction with Chuck



Brockmeyer [phonetic]? Did you know him?

MR. CALLINAN: Yes.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. That’s my uncle.

MR. CALLINAN: Oh, it is?

MR. PETERSEN: Yeah.

MR. CALLINAN: Yes, I know him. I had him in class. He was a Civil Engineering major. All students had to take Thermodynamics in those days. It is a course that I taught. I knew Chuck but I can’t guarantee that he was in my class. Some civil engineers would take that class at another school during the summer. But most civil engineers did take Thermodynamics from me. But we certainly knew each other from the beer busts and things like that that went on when he was a student here.

MR. PETERSEN: Yeah. I just wondered, ‘cause you were talking...

MR. CALLINAN: How is he? I heard he was ill.

MR. PETERSEN: Yeah. He did have a brain tumor. It’s been removed. He’s doing better. He’s doing pretty well. He can...

MR. CALLINAN: Does he still have his business?

MR. PETERSEN: They’re in the process of shutting it down. He can’t do much. I mean, he can talk and move around his apartment and stuff. So he’s doing okay.

MR. CALLINAN: Is his prognosis good for the recovery?

MR. PETERSEN: I’m not sure. I think the cancer’s gone, but I’m not actually sure. I don’t know.

MR. CALLINAN: That’s a tough blow.

MR. PETERSEN: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it reminded me because when you were talking about you had close ties with industry. Because I know he would hire a bunch of LMU graduates for his company.

MR. CALLINAN: Yes. The Civil Engineering Department was very close knit. And the graduates of that department went into certain industries and consulting. They would go into a Department of Water and Power, L.A. County Sanitation Districts, and then a lot of them would start consulting



companies like Chuck did. And they were very close knit. So they would hire people from Loyola. They liked the education they got here. And they would rather have a Loyola civil engineer work for them than somebody else.

MR. PETERSEN: Right, exactly. Yeah. So when you think over the past years, what are the memories you treasure most? First of all, as an undergraduate, what’s the memories you treasure the most about your time as an undergraduate?

MR. CALLINAN: Let’s see. That’s a good question. I think the closeness of the students. The students got along very well together, worked together. And the faculty. But particularly the closeness of the students.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. And then what about as a professor? Was it similar?

MR. CALLINAN: The people, students, faculty and administrators alike. That was one of the, I think, to me, one of the wonderful things that existed here during most of the years.

MR. PETERSEN: So undergraduate, professor, and dean, so it’s always been the people that were the best part?

MR. CALLINAN: Yes. It’s the people that make everything. You’re teaching people, you’re managing people you’re interacting. It’s better to be friends and be able to talk to people. Just much better just to be good friends working together, rather than sort of hierarchical like I think it is today.

MR. PETERSEN: Right, right. Yeah. LMU trying to make that part of its mission is the importance of the people and just the people that it attracts to come here. Is there anything else that we’ve left out that you want to discuss? Any other significant things you remember, historical events, or anything?

MR. CALLINAN: No. We had good parties.

MR. PETERSEN: Yeah.

[END MZ000053]

[START MZ000054]

MR. PETERSEN: [laughter]

MR. CALLINAN: One indication of the decline of the socialization amongst the faculty is that there was a Faculty Club and that



prospered. Back in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, practically every member of the faculty would go to the parties that the Faculty Club put on. And then as the years progressed through the ‘60s and ‘70s pretty much it was the same way. Then probably in the ‘90s, ‘80s and ‘90s, late ‘80s and ‘90s, this sort of declined partly because the university was getting larger probably. And partly because of the pressures on the faculty to do research and publish as a way of getting their promotion and raise. It’s easy to quantify X number of publications. It’s not easy to quantify how well they’re doing in the classroom.

One thing I did as dean during the nine years I was dean, is that I took the student course evaluation seriously. I would read every course evaluation on every class of every faculty member every semester. So I took that very seriously what the students were thinking about their faculty.

And so the Faculty Club’s dead now. The Faculty Club—it got to the point in the last five or six or seven years, all they did was have one party. That was the end-of-the-year barbecue. And last year they didn’t even have that. So that’s, as far as I know, the Faculty Club is gone.

MR. PETERSEN: I guess that’s one of the consequences of having the campus so spread out now is that the faculty is not in a...

MR. CALLINAN: You know, we’re not spread out that much. It’s a consequence of other demands on and priorities of the faculty. And one of the things is it isn’t easy for a faculty member to live close to campus, in Los Angeles. Because, on the west side, housing prices are so high. So faculty members live further away. I don’t know where the faculty members live now. But that makes it more difficult to attend extracurricular activities.

MR. PETERSEN: So faculty members used to live around campus or even on campus or...?

MR. CALLINAN: Well, of course and the Jesuits lived on campus.

MR. PETERSEN: Right, yeah.

MR. CALLINAN: In 1959 when we bought a house in Westchester, it was $18,000. That was over in what’s called the Emerson Manor area. The airport took that. And so in 1972, we bought another house. We paid $49,000 for that house.



That’s less than 40 years ago. Now the price of housing has probably gone up by a factor of 20 since then. Now housing is very unaffordable here in Westchester, and on the west side, too. It was much more affordable relative to faculty salaries in those days. So faculty members could buy a house here. A lot of faculty members lived in Westchester and then other places like Torrance.

And in those days, L.A. wasn’t such a nightmare as far as traffic goes either. So it was easier to get back and forth.

MR. PETERSEN: Okay. Those are all the questions I have. So, yeah, thank you so much for everything.

MR. CALLINAN: You’re welcome, Michael. Say hello to your uncle.

MR. PETERSEN: Yeah, I will.

MR. CALLINAN: When you see him, tell him you interviewed me.

MR. PETERSEN: Will do. Will do.

MR. CALLINAN: Tell him I wish him the very best.

MR. PETERSEN: Will do. Good to see you.

MR. CALLINAN: Good to meet you. Take care.

[END MZ000054]

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