Given the fact that George Edmonston Jr., the editor of E-clips and the Oregon Stater, will soon be retiring, he will close out his involvement with E-clips by sharing a list of the 20 historical events he considers to be the most important in school history. He'll cover one event each week.

#10 The contributions of James H. Jensen

On March 6, 1961, Oregon Governor Mark O. Hatfield, with one stroke of his pen, signed a document that fulfilled a dream Oregon Staters had been working to achieve for many years, renaming Oregon State College as Oregon State University.

Only months later, on Aug. 22, the university president who helped make the new name possible, August L. Strand, resigned. It would be up to a new chief executive to make OSU live up to the change from "college" to "university." The job fell to James Herbert Jensen, a highly respected scientist who came to Corvallis after serving eight years as provost at Iowa State. More than anything else he might have accomplished, Jensen oversaw one of the greatest periods of growth in OSU history.

Under his leadership, OSU's physical plant and programming went to the next level: the Kerr Library (now Valley Library) was completed; the Radiation Center was established; and the OSU Marine Science Center in Newport (now known as the Hatfield Marine Science Center) was dedicated. He also helped create the Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute. At Newport, Jensen assisted in commissioning the 180-foot research vessel Yaquina for the department of oceanography. He also approved the construction of more new residence halls than any of his predecessors, including McNary, Callahan, Wilson and Finley Halls. The Dormitory Service Building was opened and so too were the Orchard Court Apartments (married student housing) and Avery and Dixon Lodges (cooperative housing) on lower campus.

In every respect, OSU’s 10th president was only responding to a university in the midst of significant change.. When he accepted the position, the campus accommodated 7,899 students in all degree programs. By 1968, the 100th year after OSU's designation as the state's land grant college, enrollment had jumped to a whopping 15,791, with 2,867 degrees awarded at commencement.

Jensen witnessed three of the greatest moments in OSU's storied athletic history: the awarding of the Heisman Trophy to Terry Baker in 1962, barefoot runner Dale Story leading the Beavers to the only NCAA team championship yet won by the Orange and Black--the 1961 NCAA Cross Country National Championship--and Dick Fosbury's development of the "Fosbury Flop," a new high-jumping technique the talented Beaver track star used to win Olympic gold in 1968.

During his tenure, Linus Pauling, OSU class of 1922, was awarded the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize, thus becoming the first and still the only person ever to receive two unshared Nobels (his first was in chemistry in 1954).

Let us also not forget that it was Jensen who helped organize the Black Student Union and assisted in opening the Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center. Under Jensen, English, art, history, political science, Russian studies and speech were first offered as baccalaureate degrees, and OSU gained enormous prestige in 1968 when it was announced the university had been selected as a Sea Grant University, one of only three schools in the country at that time to be so designated.

Born in Madison, Neb., Jensen earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska before moving on to the University of Wisconsin to earn his Ph.D. in 1934.

His early career included teaching at the University of Nebraska and scientific work as a biologist and plant pathologist in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. In 1945 he became head of plant pathology at North Carolina State University. Later, in conjunction with his growing reputation for scholarship, he accepted various assignments with the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research at Princeton, the Tropical Plant Research Foundation in Cuba, the U.S. Department of Agriculture at Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, and held various positions and appointments with the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Science Foundation and the Brookings Institute, all in Washington, D.C. He was also a scientist for the Boyce Thompson Institute in New York state.

He moved to Iowa State University as provost in 1953 and became president of OSU in September 1961. Jensen served as president of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges in 1966-67. After his retirement in 1969, he continued his contributions in the field of international education by accepting a second appointment with the Rockefeller Foundation. His work included extended consultation with Kasetstart University in Bangkok, Thailand, and with other educational and research programs in Tehran, Iran.

He lived for several years in Green Valley, Ariz., then returned to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s. He died after a long illness in Redmond, Wash., Feb. 10, 1993.