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A hint of indignation creeps into Mary Walshok's voice as she talks about the days when UCSD's respected immigration experts looked past San Diego in their intellectual quests. "We have all these professors who can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about global immigration," notes UCSD's associate vice chancellor for extended studies and public programs. "But if you would have asked a professor at UCSD 10 years ago anything about the Tijuana-San Diego border, he or she couldn’t answer.
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"Who crosses the border? What are the characteristics of the people who live in Tijuana? How much do they spend? Do they get their health care here?"
Walshok — a sociology Ph.D. — found a way to get the questions answered. Under the aegis of the extension school, she started San Diego Dialogue, a UCSD-based organization that examines San Diego and Tijuana as a single region, gathering research on the community and local immigration issues.
Dialogue is one of several of Walshok's special projects designed to make the university more relevant and useful to San Diegans. The efforts go beyond the traditional menu of extension courses, as Walshok, through her various programs, pulls professor after professor into the affairs of the larger community.
She finds no fault with the quality of the university. On the contrary, she believes that because the university is so good, UCSD can ill afford to rest on its Nobel Laureates. UCSD's academics, she says, should come down from Torrey Pines Mesa and share their expertise with its hometown.
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Mary Walshok encourages UCSD academics to share their knowledge with those not on campus.
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"Universities are very, very good at developing new knowledge," says Walshok. "They are not as good at disseminating that knowledge and helping to integrate that knowledge in society. And I feel that’s my life's work."
In its relatively brief 39-year history, the University of California at San Diego has earned a reputation as one of the top research universities in the country. A 1998 U.S. News and World Report survey ranked it sixth best in the nation among state-supported colleges and universities, and the National Research Council listed its oceanography (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) and neurosciences programs as the best in the country.
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The student body is no less stellar. Among the 12,828 freshmen entering UCSD last fall, the average high school grade point average was 4.05 — better than straight As — and average SAT scores were 1,303 out of a maximum 1,600 points.
Despite its achievements, especially in science, medicine and technology, it is a university that, at times, comes across as aloof and isolated. For example, the university's administrators recently reiterated their long-standing opposition to extending the San Diego Trolley to the center of the campus.
Even professors who have tried to function as community leaders haven't always received unqualified university support. One notable example was Adele Naude Santos, dean of UCSD's short-lived School of Architecture. Santos worked with San Diego Mayor Susan Golding to come up with grand plans for rebuilding the city, from a concept that would link San Diego and Mission bays to a redevelopment scheme for Centre City East. But the university, financially pressed during the recession of the early 1990s, cut the fledgling architecture school, and Santos left San Diego.
Walshok, nevertheless, has continued her mission and finds reasons to feel encouraged. UCSD has raised $13 million to build a charter school on its campus, and she praises current UCSD Chancellor Robert Dynes for "really encouraging us to partner with school districts and to talk much more directly to elementary, high school and community colleges."
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Robert Dynes, UCSD chancellor
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UC Board Chairman John Davies
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Meanwhile, Walshok nurtures the extension activities that have helped expand UCSD's influence on the community. John Davies, who chairs the University of California Board of Regents, says Walshok has done an excellent job of reaching out to the community and raising funds. "She's recognized throughout the university as being outstanding," says Davies, a San Diego attorney and 10 percent owner of San Diego Metropolitan.
Chancellor Dynes describes her as "an enterprising leader and creative thinker. Throughout her career, Mary has woven UCSD into the fabric of the San Diego community in high impact and innovative ways."
The UCSD extension school operates from a low, redwood-stained office complex sunk into the manicured campus, a down-to-earth architectural statement that contrasts sharply with the university's starkly modern concrete mid-rises. With a $23 million annual budget for its self-supporting programs, the extension program offers, among other things, traditional post-baccalaureate fare, including 2,000 continuing education courses. Given the rapid advances in science and technology, Walshok sees an increasing need for a solid, up-to-date extension curriculum. "I sort of joke that the university has people for four to eight years," says Walshok. "We have them for the next 50."
But she has found other ways to build bridges between the university and San Diego. For instance, UCSD TV, a cable channel, broadcasts lectures, performances and discussions.
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She also is a driving force behind UCSD Connect. Created in 1985, the organization — another of Walshok's extension programs — forged an alliance between UCSD and San Diego’s emerging high-tech and biotech businesses. "Mary Walshok is at the forefront nationally in linking the university and business to improve regional economic development," says University of California President Richard Atkinson, who as chancellor at the UCSD campus supported the creation of UCSD Connect. "San Diego has benefited enormously from her vision and energy.
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And she is co-director — along with UCSD professor Michael Schudson — of the Civic Collaborative, a three-year program of local studies and community round tables funded last fall with an $863,000 grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. During the first stage, UCSD professors will study a variety of San Diego issues, from veterans groups to political activism in the gay community and New Age religion. Among the initial round of grant offers was a $2,000 award to Keith Pezzoli, an urban studies professor who will work on a regional topographical map that includes features of Baja California across the border. The physical model, he says, should offer a new tool for students.
"The requirement of getting these small grants is your willingness to present them in a format to the media, decision makers and the communities you study," explains Walshok, adding that the goal is to engage 50 to 100 professors in local studies for the first time in their careers. "There's a long history of researchers going into a community, doing research, publishing it in a journal and disappearing. We believe that this is going to be enriching for the academics. They're going to like it. And they're going to want to do more about this."
Her colleagues say she has a strong management style that has helped bring success to her extension programs. "She sifts through the crazy ideas and finds the pearls," says Chuck Nathanson, executive director of San Diego Dialogue.
Bill Otterson, who heads UCSD Connect, describes her as a "wonderful boss" who listens to problems brought to her and makes him feel as though he's the one who comes up with the solution. "An hour later, you walk out (of her office) and you think this great idea is your idea," he says, "and therefore you happily go along to execute it."
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She's 'a wonderful boss,' says Bill Otterson.
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Besides her work with the campus programs, Walshok is a visible presence around the community, a role model for her own philosophy of public service. She serves on numerous boards, among them the Harborside School in Downtown, the San Diego Library Commission, the San Diego Foundation and the Greater San Diego Chamber. She sat on the board of the YWCA from 1975 to 1979, and in 1982 earned a YWCA Tribute to Women and Industry Award. In 1992, Walshok was honored by Women Together, an event that raises funds for battered and homeless women.
"She's a dynamo," says County Supervisor Ron Roberts. "Every time you see her, she's smiling. She's in perpetual motion."
'She's a dynamo,' Supervisor Ron Roberts says, describing Mary Walshok.
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Walshok's skills at connecting the faculty and the community come as no surprise to those who have known her for long.
Cub Parker, one of the pioneers in offering broad insurance coverage to San Diego’s emerging technology companies, attended Palm Springs High School with Walshok. He remembers her as the captain of the tennis team, a fellow student council member and a girl who had "a great circle of friends.
"She's the same person, except now she's getting paid for it," says Parker, senior vice president of Sedgwick Technology and still a friend of Walshok. "She's got a great sense of humor, and she is so engaging that she has the ability to break down barriers in 30 seconds."
After high school, Mary Lindenstein (her maiden name) earned a bachelor's degree from Pomona College. She got her master's and doctorate in sociology from Indiana University, where she met her husband, Marco Walshok, who was finishing up a doctorate in political science.
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He was hired by San Diego State University, where he remains on the faculty. She got a job at California State University Fullerton. The two lived in Laguna Beach and commuted. In 1974, Walshok took a leave from her Fullerton teaching job to head the women's studies program at UCSD.
"It was a fascinating time," says Walshok, noting that when she first took her position, she was still called Mrs. Marco Walshok in the newspaper's lifestyle section. "I grew to love San Diego and this university and never left."
Walshok began studying women's issues in the local community and sat on the board of Project Repair, a school to train handywomen. She landed a $300,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study women in nontraditional jobs, and wrote a book on the subject, "Blue Collar Women."
Meanwhile, she won promotions, rising from dean of university extension to associate vice chancellor of extended studies in 1987. As an adjunct professor, she teaches one upper division or graduate sociology course a year.
In 1995 she wrote her second book, "Knowledge Without Boundaries: What America's Research Universities Can Do for the Economy, the Workplace, and the Community." The work articulated her vision of integrating UCSD into its surroundings.
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While most of her extension programs flourished, she did suffer one setback when the UCSD extension program in Downtown San Diego shut down in 1997. "We were down there five years and we lost a great deal of money," says Walshok, adding that another UCSD extension program in Rancho Bernardo has flourished and expanded.
Historically, the University of California ran an extension in Downtown San Diego — by UC Berkeley in the early part of the century and by UCLA after World War II — until UCSD was founded and moved the extended studies program to its La Jolla campus. Urban renewal officials say it was a mistake to abandon an effort to re-establish the extension's Downtown presence, sort of an echo from an historic political battle over where to establish the main campus itself. Roger Revelle, who ran the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, prevailed in founding UCSD nearby. An alternative to Torrey Pines had been Downtown in Balboa Park.
Nearly four decades later, Peter Hall, president of the Centre City Development Corp., says the Downtown extension office could have served as a base of operations not only for extension courses but for professors working and studying urban issues. "How can you do that at the top of a hill in La Jolla?" he asks, adding the extension's Downtown existence should not have hung solely on the amount of revenue it generated.
But it’s nothing personal. Although they may disagree on the validity of a Downtown extension, Hall and Walshok are friends. He served on the San Diego Opera Board with Walshok and her husband. Both families lived in Del Mar. "She's the real thing," concludes Hall. "She's one of the great visionaries."
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CCDC's Peter Hall calls her 'the real thing.'
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