Thurgood Marshall College

Infobox_ucsdcolleges
icon=Marshall logo.gif|240px|TMC Logo (Trademark of UC Regents)
Motto=A UCSD Community Developing the Scholar and the Citizen
Year=1970
Order=Third
Provost=Allan Havis
Dean of Students=Mentha Hynes-Wilson
Asst. Dean of Students=Vicki Kerba Miller
Dean of Academics=Anne Porter
Resident Dean=Yolanda Trevino
Students=3,813
UCSD Percentage=19%
Status=undergraduate, liberal arts
Core Course=Dimensions of Culture (DOC)
Festival=Marshallpalooza

Thurgood Marshall College (or TMC) is one of the six undergraduate colleges at the University of California, San Diego. The college, named after Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice and lawyer for the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, emphasizes "scholarship, social responsibility and the belief that a liberal arts education must include an understanding of [one's] role in society." Marshall College's general education requirements emphasize this culture of community involvement and multiculturalism; accordingly Marshall houses the minors in community service and African-American studies for the campus. Founded as Third College 1970 amid the student activism of the period, TMC's original aim was to help students understand their own community and the greater context of that community in the United States. Marshall College's required writing program is called Dimensions of Culture (DOC), and is a 3 quarter (1 year) sequence that explores race, identity, imagination, tradition, and the law in the United States.

Early history

In November, 1965, the College III Preliminary Planning Committee released the first substantial report on what form UCSD's third college would take. The committee, comprising faculty members George Backus, Henry Booker, Gabriel Jackson, C.D. Keeling, and committee chair Andrew Wright, suggested that College III should focus itself on history and theory.

The Wright Committee report suggested that the college have a muse -- namely Clio, the Greek muse of history. History was chosen by the committee because it mixed humanism with science -- College III would be a sort of "common ground" between the science of Revelle and the humanities of Muir.

In a quiet act of rebelliousness (or perhaps it was just individuality), the committee planned that College III students would only have to take three courses per quarter to graduate in four years, as opposed to the four it took at the other UCSD colleges. Citing the three-course "full load" at UC Santa Cruz, the committee suggested that taking four courses in one quarter would "make the students ride off in all directions," and that three-in depth courses would be preferable.

The final note of the Wright Committee report described what the committee felt was needed in a College III Provost: "a paragon of intellectual vitality, scholarly accomplishment, and administrative talent... sympathetic with the aims of College III, but independent enough... to be able to shape the College in important ways." They asked that a provost be appointed as soon as possible.

By 1967, College III had found its first provost: Armin Rappaport, a history professor at U.C. Berkeley. It was appropriate that the provost of a college with Clio as its muse would be a historian, and Rappaport was that. By the time May rolled around, College III was now "Third College."

However, with the swirling political changes of the late 1960s, the college of Clio and Rappaport was never to be. Once the controversy and battles among students, faculty, and administration commenced -- featuring lively figures such as Herbert Schiller, Herbert Marcuse, and Angela Davis -- the future of Third College would be in a turmoil that didn't fully clear until it finally received its official name, Thurgood Marshall College, in 1993.

Naming controversies

At its inception, students pushed for the new college to be named "Lumumba-Zapata College" in honor of Patrice Lumumba and Emiliano Zapata in an attempt to honor these famous twentieth century revolutionaries. Unable to get approval for this name from UC Administration, the college remained unnamed and was referred to as Third College for more than two decades.

In the early 1990s, an attempt was made to name the college after Martin Luther King, but failed when King's family announced that they would rather see a full-fledged King College built in the South. In 1993 UCSD's third college finally received its official name after the death of Justice Marshall.

Currently, there is a new controversy, as students of TMC began protesting against the administrators of the college in the spring of 2007. The Lumumba-Zapata Coalition (which has since been re-established) along with other students claimed the Dimensions of Culture Program had lost some of its original messages, protesting against what they termed a "new and diluted" core writing requirement with a decreased focus on race and the ethnic significance of the individual within society. The protests, including picketing, began with the controversial non-hiring of two D.O.C. Teaching Assistants. Others believed that the coalition was pushing an agenda of political indoctrination that conflicted with the academic goals of the Dimensions of Culture Program. The protests had mixed effects. In response to the complaints in regards to the curriculum a committee has been set up to review and change the curriculum accordingly. Student positions have been included on the committee so an equitable curriculum will be created. The two teaching assistants however, remained unhired.

Founding of the Preuss School

Then Thurgood Marshall College Provost Cecil Lytle was instrumental in founding the Preuss School at UCSD, which opened in 1999. Providing the impetus for the founding of The Preuss School was considered to be in line with the social justice oriented mission of the College. The College maintains strong links to The Preuss School by providing the charter school with undergraduate tutors and mentors.

Residence halls and apartments

Thurgood Marshall freshmen are housed in suite-style residential halls. These buildings are not named and are designated by letters N through V. The second year housing is split into dual-story apartments called the "Lowers" which resemble townhouses. These are designated letters A through F, and the "Uppers" which are double story and are designated G through M (with I building excluded).

External links

* [http://marshall.ucsd.edu/ Official Website]
* [http://colleges.ucsd.edu/ Overview of UCSD's College System]