History of Berkeley Optometry—Part II

1924-1948
Curriculum/Research Development and Independence

"The student should devote more time to an extensive study of human physiology, to physiological optics, and have more extended clinical acquaintance with the pathological conditions of the eye." 1 —Ralph Minor, 1940

 A complete history of Berkeley Optometry is available --- see History Book.

Faculty and Students in 1920s–1940s

Professor of Physics Ralph S. Minor, newly appointed head of the optometry curriculum in 1923, faced formidable challenges before the program could achieve widespread recognition and success. Among his goals were the enrollment of students, recruitment of faculty, and development of a comprehensive clinical training program.

The first full-time clinical faculty member was Frederick L. Mason (1886-1954), a graduate of the optometry program at Columbia University in New York under the tutelage of two celebrated professors—Frederick A. Woll (1874-1955) and James P. Southall (1871-1962).

Hired in 1924, Mason became an outstanding but controversial figure in the history of Berkeley Optometry. His particular strength was geometrical optics, and he was especially influential in establishing high standards of scholarship and advancing professional training. Mason's texts on optometry were model treatises of the period, especially his Principles of Optometry (1936). Unfortunately, he was also a difficult personality, respected but sometimes disliked and feared. Most students endured his discourtesies, for which he was notorious. They understood that he expected no less of himself than he did of them. No other faculty member in the early period made such an impression or had as much influence on an entire generation of students, and most graduates were thankful that they had Mason as their instructor.

Other key faculty included Jack T. Hobson (Class of '30; 1899-1993), who taught at Berkeley part-time while practicing optometry in Sacramento, California. With a background in electrical engineering, he applied a meticulous style of teaching to the subject of vision and optics. Hobson was second only to Mason as a memorable clinical influence. Additional early faculty included the German-born, San Francisco optometrist Theodore A. Brombach (1884–1961), appointed lecturer in optometry and instructor in perimetry in the late 1920s. Several alumni also joined the faculty, including Everett A. Coe (Class of '30; 1896–1974), Harry Kamp [Kamphoefner] (Class of '28; 1905–1967), and Albert Reinke (Class of '26, 1898–1957).

Ralph Minor established Berkeley Optometry’s first instructional alliance with medicine when he appointed Milton Shutes, MD (1883–1967), as a lecturer in Ocular Pathology in 1924. In 1929, William H. Barnes, MD, took over the lectures given by Dr. Shutes, followed in 1934 by alumnus Dr. Avery Morley Hicks (Class of '26; MD Stanford '31, 1900– 1978), an ophthalmologist in San Francisco.

Class sizes were very small during the first years of the program. There were only two graduates in 1925, five in 1926, one in 1927 (who completed the optometry courses and became licensed, but did not graduate from the University), three in 1928, two in 1929, and three in 1930. Finally, the numbers began to rise in the 1930s, ranging from seven in 1931 to fifty-six in 1939. Enlistments during the Second World War took its toll, however, with the number of graduates falling from forty-one students each in 1940 and 1941 to thirty-four in 1942, eighteen in 1943 and eight in 1944 (three of them women). Class sizes began to recover in 1945 (twelve graduates), and there were twenty-two each in 1946 and 1947. A post-war boom was evident in 1948, when the number jumped to 48 graduates.

There were three degrees awarded during the span 1925-1948. From 1925-28 Berkeley Optometry graduates received a BS in Physics plus a Certificate in Optometry (COpt, entitling them to take the California State boards for licensing to practice optometry). In 1929 the degree was changed to BS Physics-Optometry (plus the COpt), remaining as such until 1942, when students were awarded a BS in Optometry + COpt.

The Clinical Program in the 1920s–1940s

In 1923 there was no precedent on the Berkeley campus for arranging outpatient optometric care. The obvious response was to find effective ways by which to announce and schedule eye examinations from within the University community. In 1926, for example, advertising in local news media helped spread the word that the "University public" could take advantage of free weekly eye care clinics. Optometry students (only seniors at that time) performed eye examinations under the supervision of faculty.

Free clinic services were extended to University staff in 1929 (when there were seven refracting rooms in Le Conte Hall, where Optometry had its offices and clinics under the auspices of the Department of Physics), and students became eligible for vision care in 1930. By that time the strategy was working well and the clinics were very busy places. As the scope of clinic services continued to expand, seniors also provided eye care on a charitable basis for patients in need. By the early 1930s, the clinic was operating both semesters, and the number of hours devoted to clinical practice had more than doubled.

Optometry expanded for several more years, despite overcrowding in Le Conte Hall, much to the displeasure of its host, the Department of Physics, and especially its chair, Professor Raymond Birge (1887-1980). By 1939 there were twelve clinical examination rooms. It was not until October 1943, however, that the clinics were opened to the "general public." By that time concerns had eased over the University exercising unfair competition over local private practitioners, while demands had increased substantially for a greater range of clinical cases by which to adequately train optometry students (the "University Public" was, overwhelmingly, a healthy and young population). Ralph Minor, with the written support of the Alameda Contra Costa Counties Association of Optometrists, the California Optometric Association, the California State Board of Examiners in Optometry, and a number of prominent alumni, petitioned University President Robert G. Sproul (1891-1975), who granted permission to "open the Optometry Clinic to the general public." Students were thereby given access to a wider range of ages, greater numbers of speciality cases, and more pathology from which to learn their craft.

During his entire tenure, Ralph Minor worked continually on curriculum development, gradually reducing the earlier emphasis on mathematics and physics, once again against the wishes of the Department of Physics and its chair Raymond Birge, who expected optometry students to complete all the lower division courses required of physics majors. Instead, Minor introduced more instruction and training in the physiological and pathological aspects of vision. He also oversaw the re-equipping of refracting rooms and the optics laboratory.

Research in the 1920s–1940s

Physiological optics was a primary focus of research in the early optometry program. Instrument design and the development of new testing devices by faculty and instructors were also important research components. In 1928, Frederick Mason designed one of the first haploscopes in the United States for the study of binocular vision, and it was the first to be used at Berkeley Optometry. Meredith W. Morgan, Jr. (Class of '34; dean 1960–73) used Mason's instrument for his early research and clinical work in the 1930s. Albert Reinke worked with an experimental perimeter to measure visual fields. Other areas of research by Berkeley faculty included investigations into convergence and accommodation, phorias, refraction (myopia), aniseikonia, ametropia, binocular vision, low vision, color vision, and orthoptics. Vision surveys were also useful in determining the visual health and safety of workers in the industrial setting and children in schools.

The scope and depth of research expanded after the formation of the Graduate Program in Physiological Optics (today called the Vision Science Graduate Program) in 1946 and subsequent clinical and basic science studies in the 1950s. Ralph Minor was a tireless promoter of research as a means through which the profession of optometry could advance, but as retirement approached, he relied increasingly on his hand-picked successor, Kenneth B. Stoddard (1904-1970; PhD Stanford University 1931; OD Berkeley Optometry, 1936), who by June 1938 had left private optometry practice to join the Berkeley Optometry faculty. Minor admired the energetic direction provided by Stoddard, who was appointed dean in 1946. It was Stoddard, more than anyone else, who convinced Minor that while optometry had a foundation in optics and physics, it should be considered a biological science, that the basic science of optometry was physiological optics and not just optics. So it was Stoddard who implemented and expanded upon Minor's ideas for graduate studies and research at Berkeley Optometry.

Milestones of the Second Period

Berkeley Optometry's first graduating class (1925) consisted of only two members, Angus M. McLeod (1891–1972) and Hartle Tallman (1902–1966). The first female graduate, Jennie Chai Louie (Class of '31; 1911–2002; Mrs. Harry Mew), graduated just two days after turning twenty years of age, having been granted an exemption by the State of California to practice optometry before the age of twenty-one. The first Hispanic graduate was Julieta Arias [Burda] in 1936, and the first African-American graduate was Marvin Poston (1914–2002) in 1939.

The Optometry Alumni Association of the University of California was founded in 1926 (formalized with its first constitution and bylaws in 1931). Current students also organized the inaugural optometry student association in April 1933 when they established a local chapter of the Omega Delta National Fraternity of Optometrists. Less than a decade later, however, Berkeley's students disaffiliated from Omega Delta because of prejudicial language in the fraternity's national charter that imposed restrictions on certain religious and racial membership. On April 23, 1941, Berkeley Optometry students drafted the first constitution of the Associated Optometry Students of the University of California, promoting membership regardless of race, creed, or gender.

In 1939, while still housed in Le Conte Hall (Physics), Optometry was designated a separate department within the College of Letters and Science; Ralph Minor was named department chair. Finally, on July 1, 1941, the Regents approved an independent "School of Optometry" (although it was still housed in the physics building). Minor was named the School's first Director (he would become the first Dean in 1945, one year before his retirement).

Disruptions caused by the Second World War hindered student recruitment and retention. The School began an accelerated war-time program to offset nationwide shortages of optometrists. As cited earlier, clinic eye and vision care services were opened to the general public in 1943.

In 1939, the California State Association of Optometrists began a campaign, led by Thomas H. Peters, OD, (1886–1956) to raise funds for the first optometry building on the Berkeley campus. (Peters was not an alumnus, but his sons Henry '38 and Richard '40 were graduates, and he saw the Optometry Building as a symbol for enhancing the reputation of the profession nationally.). Despite the war, fundraising was successful, reaching its goal by 1945. Meanwhile, the school had narrowly escaped relocation when, in 1942, some University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) alumni, aided by faculty at the private Los Angeles School of Optometry (later the Southern California College of Optometry), attempted to persuade UC president Robert G. Sproul to construct the proposed building on the UCLA campus. Sproul was willing to accept either Berkeley or UCLA as the home campus for the new School of Optometry (he seemed to prefer UCLA), but he would not decide without hearing from the California State Association of Optometrists, which had been raising funds under the assumption that the building would be located at Berkeley. Berkeley alumni and other sympathetic optometrists rallied to protect the original site. In September 1943, the state association voted unanimously in favor of Berkeley. The program's twenty-fifth anniversary year (1948) coincided with the historic dedication on June 22 of the Optometry Building (formerly Durant Hall) on the Berkeley campus.

Berkeley Optometry's Second Dean

Kenneth B. Stoddard succeeded Ralph Minor as dean of Berkeley Optometry on July 1, 1946. Stoddard had earned his PhD in physics from Stanford University in 1931. He was appointed assistant professor of physics at Arizona State College (1931–1932) and then at Stanford University (1932–April 23, 1935). With advanced placement due to his achievements in physics, he was able to complete his BS in physics-optometry at Berkeley in 1936. He then worked briefly in private practice in Hanford, California before his appointment as assistant professor of optometry and physiological optics at Berkeley in June 1938. During World War II, Stoddard worked part time at the University's Radiation Laboratory while retaining his faculty position at Berkeley Optometry. He was promoted to associate professor in 1943 and full professor in 1948.

In his first year as dean, Stoddard acted upon the plans he had developed while assisting Ralph Minor by establishing the Graduate Program in Physiological Optics (cited above). Stoddard also began to develop a greater emphasis on physiological science within the optometry program. He wanted to establish a more significant scientific presence, and to do that he needed faculty with a record of achievement and the ability to advance the research program. His first notable step in that direction was the appointment of Gordon L. Walls (1905-1962) in January 1947 as the first vision scientist (non-optometrist) on the full-time Berkeley Optometry faculty. Walls was an biologist/anatomist and color vision scientist of international repute, and author of the classic treatise, The Vertebrate Eye and Its Adaptive Radiation (1942).

By mid-1948, with a building of its own and a rejuvenated physiological optics program, Berkeley Optometry stood poised to enter a modern era of expanded clinical training and research.

References

1. John Fiorillo has exerpted and adapted the text and images used for this web history from his book Berkeley Optometry: A History (Berkeley: School of Optometry and UC Regents, 2010), which provides significantly more information, including extensive quotations from original correspondence and published materials.