Loyola Marymount University
FACULTY HANDBOOK
Revised Edition 1999
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Loyola Marymount University acknowledges the many contributions of the American Association of University Professors toward betterment of higher education in this nation. Partial use has been made in this handbook of textual material from the AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, 1990 (“the Red Book”).
PREAMBLE
This Handbook is meant to reflect, rather than develop, University policy. It is presumed to be accurate in its statement of that policy as it existed at Loyola Marymount University on the establishing date printed on the title page. Additions, deletions and amendments to parts of this book will be published to the University community from time to time. Procedures for amendment appear in Section VII.
The members of the faculty will find this book useful as publication of codified statements that will define the overall policies and procedures of the institution with which they have entered into contractual agreement. Substantive policy changes are made only after consultation with the appropriate faculty body. These statements relate to the external, formal operation of Loyola Marymount University. The inner spirit of the institution, which, to many of the Loyola Marymount Community is far more real than the formulated regulations, is not written down here. It must be experienced.
But part of that spirit is an outgrowth of the institution's history and an outline of that history would need to begin with the foundation of Loyola Marymount University's predecessor institutions: (1) St. Vincent's College, whose name and whose work were taken over from the Priests of the Congregation of the Mission, the Vincentians, by the Jesuits in September of 1911, and (2) Marymount College, which, after a distinguished history, first associated itself with Loyola University on the Loyola Del Rey campus in 1968 and then merged with Loyola to form Loyola Marymount University in 1973.
THE HISTORY OF LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY
Higher education in the southern portion of the state of California dates to the establishment in Los Angeles in 1865 of St. Vincent's College, under the direction of the members of the Congregation of the Mission, the Vincentians. When these priests withdrew from teaching in 1911, Thomas J. Conaty, bishop of the diocese of Monterey-Los Angeles, approached the Jesuits of the newly formed California Province of the Society of Jesus to assume the direction of the school. The Jesuits found the college deeply in debt and proposed to the bishop that they establish a new school under a different name at another site. With Conaty's permission, Los Angeles College opened in the Highland Park section of the city on 11 September 1911, with an enrollment of approximately ninety high school boys.
Father Richard A. Gleeson, S.J., served as president, assisted by Father Joseph Tomkin, S.J., and four Jesuit scholastics (seminarians). The campus originally consisted of three converted bungalows located at 215 West Avenue 52, off the present Pasadena Freeway. (One of these buildings still stands). Beginning in 1914, the curriculum expanded annually to offer successive years of collegiate instruction so that the first men to complete the full four- year program graduated in June 1919. With collegiate instruction, the school also assumed the old name of St. Vincent's in 1914.
Growing enrollment and the desire for easier access prompted the Jesuits to secure property and to build at 1801 West 16th Street (now 1901 Venice Boulevard). School catalogues boasted that the college was conveniently reached on three Pacific Electric "Red Car" lines and two yellow City Transit System streetcar lines. With the move in 1918, the school adopted another name, Loyola College of Los Angeles, and i1: was under this last designation that the school received its charter from the state of California on 25 February 1918. Two years later, however, the college opened a law school under the name of St. Vincent's, with classes meeting from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. four nights a week. The title was later changed to Loyola Law School.
A little over a mile to the south, on 24 September 1923, Mother Cecilia Rafter, R.S.H.M., and six companions opened Marymount School in the Brockman home at 841 West 28th Street. The Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary had accepted Bishop John J. Cantwell's invitation of the previous year to teach young women in Los Angeles. Six students who arrived the first day ranged from a first grader to a junior in high school. Growth in enrollment and an expanded secondary education curriculum led the Sisters to move the school in 1931 to a seven and one-half acre site on Sunset Boulevard across from U.C.L.A. in Westwood. Two years later, they incorporated Marymount Junior College under the leadership of Mother Gertrude Cain, R.S.H.M., president of the school.
The Jesuits experienced similar expansion in enrollment, and in 1926 divided the high school and college under separate administrations. The new president, Father Joseph Sullivan, S.J., also added a School of Commerce and Finance to the original Arts and Sciences division. In the following year he opened a School of Engineering with courses in civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering. Sullivan quickly concluded that the growing college needed to relocate to a more spacious campus and he launched a capital fund drive in 1927 with the aid of a newly constituted Board of Regents.
During the drive, Mr. Harry Culver, founder of Culver City, offered the school one hundred acres in the del Rey Hills where he was developing “University City, on the model of Westwood Village adjoining U.C.L.A. With far more pledges than cash, Sullivan broke ground on the new campus on the afternoon of 20 May 1928 in the presence of over 10,000 spectators. Two buildings were erected and remain in service: St. Robert's Hall (originally the Administration Building); and Xavier Hall, long known as the "Big House," the residence for students and faculty. Classes commenced on the Del Rey campus in September 1929, and the following year the school assumed the title of Loyola University of Los Angeles.
Sullivan's fund-raising skills were severely tested when the Great Depression crippled the nation's economy and forced many benefactors, particularly those in the motion picture industry, to default on their pledges. With the school deep in debt and enrollment at only 250 students, the Jesuit provincial removed an ailing Sullivan from the presidency in 1930. Sullivan returned briefly the following year to renew contacts with benefactors, but he died in July 1932, at age fifty. While Sullivan's successors worried about finances, the Jesuits worked without salaries. Student enrollment had increased to 500 by 1941 when the demands of World War II emptied the campus of all but one hundred men within two years. Only one student graduated in 1944 in a ceremony in which all who attended could fit comfortably in the Xavier Hall chapel. The new president, Father Edward Whelan, S.J., fortunately secured an Army contract for training military officers, and these funds enabled the school to survive.
Veterans returning to school on the G.I. Bill after the war boosted enrollment to fifteen hundred students by 1948, and required the construction of Huesman and Sullivan residence Halls, the Alumni Memorial Gymnasium, and the addition of a student dining hall (the Sky Room) at Xavier Hall. Temporary structures (Butler buildings and Quonset huts) also housed classrooms and faculty offices. Expansion by 1948 included the establishment of the Department of Education, the Air Force R.O.T.C., and the Department of Industrial Relations with its Labor Management classes. Father Charles Casassa, S.J., assumed the presidency in February 1949 and held that position for the next twenty years. The first occupant of that office with an earned doctorate, Casassa expanded the faculty, improved academics, conducted two major capital fund drives, improved faculty salaries, initiated a faculty sabbatical program, and enhanced University contacts with the broader civic community.
Other developments during the Casassa years included the establishment of the Graduate Division (1950); termination of intercollegiate football (1951); opening of the Institute of Human Relations to promote improved racial relations in business and in government (1953), the expansion of KXLU's broadcasting beyond the campus (1957); commencement of the Honors Program (1958); and the founding of the United Mexican American Students organization, the prototype for M.E.Ch.A. chapters throughout the state: of California (1967). Construction projects included Sacred Heart Chapel (1953), Pereira Hall of Engineering (1955), Malone Student Center (1958), Charles Von der Ahe Library (1959), Foley Building (1961), Seaver Hall of Science (1963), a new campus for the La,,' School (1964), and three dormitories.
The Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary had also expanded their collegiate program after World War II, and in 1948 Marymount College had received its charter as a four-year college and granted its first bachelor's degrees. The campus in Westwood eventually proved too small for both high school and college, so long-time president Mother Gertrude Cain, R.S.H.M., moved the college in 1960 to a site on the Palos Verdes peninsula overlooking the ocean. Her successor, Mother du Sacré Coeur Smith, R.S.H.M., oversaw initial construction of the campus until her untimely death in 1964. Sister Raymunde McKay, R.S.H.M., from Marymount Manhattan College, assumed leadership and exercised a decisive role in the school's development.
In the mid-1960's, Casassa had initiated conversations with the archbishop of Los Angeles for permission for Loyola University to admit women to the undergraduate student body. When James Francis Cardinal McIntyre refused, McKay proposed to Casassa an alternative plan to which the cardinal eventually agreed: "co-instruction," instead of coeducation. Marymount College relocated to the Loyola University campus in 1968, with both schools sharing one another's facilities and faculties. The two presidents agreed to maintain the two schools as independent and distinct entities. At this time, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange joined as partners with the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary in sponsoring Marymount College. Marymount College erected the Leavey Faculty Center and a women's dormitory (McKay Hall) in 1968, and the Tenderich Apartments in 1970.
The 1970's witnessed momentous changes on campus, beginning with the decision of the Jesuits in 1970 to separate the University from their religious community. By forming two independent legal corporations, they vested title to the school in the hands of a newly constituted Board of Trustees, of which one-third the membership was comprised of Jesuits. Three years later, administrators and trustees completed extensive negotiations for the merger of Marymount College and Loyola University to form Loyola Marymount University.
Father Donald P. Merrifield, S.J., president of Loyola since 1969, assumed the presidency of the newly created Loyola Marymount. Merrifield's tenure of office spanned the years of continued expansion in campus facilities and programs, and the rise in student enrollment to 3,500 undergraduates, 1,200 graduate and 1,200 law school students. By the time Merrifield stepped down from office, the University had acquired with the assistance of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation an additional 28.5 acres on the west side of the campus. He had overseen the steady racial diversification of the undergraduate student body and the establishment of the first offices for minority student supportive services (1973).
Merrifield's successor, Father James N. Loughran, S.J., from Fordham University, expanded these endeavors, reduced the faculty teaching load, and increased University support for faculty research and scholarship. Loughran's efforts received significant assistance through the bequest to the University of $45 million from the estate of Mrs. Liliore G. Rains in 1987. Two years later the school attained recognition of another sort when the student basketball team advanced to the NCAA Final Eight playoffs and defeated the University of Michigan. In academic affairs, the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary established the Marymount Institute for Faith, Culture and the Arts in 1990 to address significant issues associated with their educational charism.
Upon Loughran's resignation in 1992, the Trustees selected Father Thomas P. O'Malley, S.J., former president of John Carroll University in Cleveland, as the third president of Loyola Mar)'mount University. O'Malley soon completed plans for expansion onto the Leavey campus, secured the requisite permissions to build, and commenced construction of a parking facility, road, and western entrance to campus. In 1994 he also launched an ambitious capital fund drive and broke ground for the Conrad N. Hilton Center for Business, and followed in 1995 with a major addition to the Malone Student Center. Plans for the future include the establishment of further endowed faculty chairs in the four colleges of the University, as well as completion of the Leavey campus.