This collection comprises the administrative records of the UC Irvine School of Social Sciences. The majority of the records come from the dean's office, specifically from the tenures of dean William Schonfeld, 1982-2002, and dean Barbara Dosher, 2002-2013. The records include correspondence sent and received by dean Schonfeld, dean Dosher, and other administrators; documentation on the departments, programs, and centers within the school, including information about the faculty, undergraduate and graduate programs, committees, scholarships and fellowships, and teaching; documentation on how the school worked with other campus units within UC Irvine, such as the Executive Vice-Provost's Office and academic units; administrative files of the school; and photographs.

The School of Social Sciences began as the Division of Social Sciences when the University of California, Irvine (UCI) was founded in 1965. Its first dean, James G. March, was appointed in 1964. He created an interdisciplinary program free of individual departments, enabling faculty to pursue scholarly interests beyond the constraints of departmental borders. Dean March referred to his program as the "New Social Science," a mathematically oriented discipline that involved systematic observation, interpretation, and quantitative analysis of human behavior. While many students worked toward a degree in social science, they also had the option of majoring in traditional social science disciplines: anthropology, economics, geography, political science, psychology, and sociology. The innovative structure of the school set it apart from other programs. It attracted many notable scholars, many of whom became members of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among these were David Easton, Harry Eckstein, R. Duncan Luce, William Schonfeld, and A. Kimball Romney. While dean March favored a non-departmental structure for the school, dean William Schonfeld, who took office in 1982, found that the lack of departments was not practical for the growing school. The success of the early non-departmental structure of the school is attributed to its relatively small size and to the fact that the separate social science disciplines were passing through a revolutionary period during which their traditional boundaries and methodologies were being challenged. Increasing enrollments and other considerations prompted dean Schonfeld to establish traditional departments for the school. As of 2019, the School of Social Sciences was home to eight departments, including Anthropology, Cognitive Science, Chicano and Latino Studies, Economics, Global and International Sciences, Language Science, Logic and the Philosophy of Science, Political Science, and Sociology.

49 Linear Feet (48 records cartons, 2 document boxes, and 1 floppy disk)

Property rights reside with the University of California. For permission to reproduce or to publish, please contact the University Archivist.

This collection is open for research. Access to original born digital material is restricted; researchers may request viewing copies.