Subscribe to our newsletter by emailMemories of UCI's Bright Past Captured at Founders Day Celebration
The Libraries participated in UCI Founders Day via the UCI Stories project. The oral and video history project pairs campus leaders, innovators, alumni and other difference makers. We record the pair as they have a conversation about their experience at UCI.
The UCI Stories compilation video (3 minutes) officially made its debut at the Founders Celebration welcoming program held in the Student Center Pacific Ballroom. Thomas Parham, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, offered a glowing introduction to the video and the UCI Libraries' efforts to collect, preserve, and make available the memories and reflections of UCI's community. Dr. Parham shared his own experience as a UCI Stories participant, and encouraged the room full of UCI alums, retirees, and emeriti to visit the UCI Stories booths set up in the Libraries' Orange County and Southeast Asian Archive (OC&SEAA) Center.
During the celebration UCI Stories booths captured oral and video histories of 20 UCI community members including founding faculty, members of the charter class, and former staff and administrators. Individuals interviewed included Masa Fujitani who shared memories of evaluating early student applications and completing paperwork via typewriter; Dr. Clifford Woolfolk recalled the early days in the School of Biological Sciences, Greta Gillman Bhodpat ('69) shared reflections on being among the first UCI medical students; and Robert Currier ('69) commented on sex, drugs, and rocking roll in the late '60s, and his path to Shakespeare theater.
The UCI Stories project filming will concluded in February 2016. To date nearly thirty of the fifty pairings have been completed. The full length pairs will be available on the Online Archive of UCI History, and a special online portal, with shorter segments and additional interactive information, is in development. An exhibit will also open in Spring 2016 featuring the stories.
For more information the UCI Stories project, contact Krystal Tribbett Ph.D., 50th Anniversary Project Historian at ktribbet@uci.edu or 949-824-9027.