Collecting area: UMass (1947- )

A distinguished political scientist, specialist on urban affairs, and advisor to two U.S. Presidents, Robert Coldwell Wood was named the first President of the new University of Massachusetts system. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard (PhD 1949), Wood built his academic reputation on the faculty at MIT. An advisor to John F. Kennedy on urban policy, he served in the Johnson administration as Under-Secretary, and briefly Secretary, of Housing and Urban Development before coming to UMass in 1970. His Presidency was marked by considerable turmoil as he navigated the reorganization of the university into a system of three campuses and as he struggled with discontent among students and faculty and conflict with the legislature. Wood died in April 2005 at the age of 81.

Although far from a comprehensive record, the Wood papers offer insight into the tumultuous tenure of Robert C. Wood as President of the University of Massachusetts, 1970-1977. The largest series in the collection (Series 2) consists of the central office files from Boston, including a fairly full record of outgoing correspondence, materials on staff and facilities at the various campuses, minutes of meetings and reports, and records of Wood’s numerous trips and lecture engagements while in office.

The distinguished cellular biologist Chris Woodcock came to UMass Amherst in 1972 after receiving a doctorate at the University College London (1966) and appointments at the University of Chicago and Harvard. During a long and highly productive career, Woodcock became widely known for work on the structure and functions of the cell nucleus and its components, applying a variety of advanced techniques to investigate the architecture and dynamics and chromatin folding at the nucleosome level and the larger scale architecture of chromosomes. A prolific grant writer and recipient, he helped build the Central Microscopy Facility at UMass, serving as its Director, and was appointed Gilbert Woodside Chair in Zoology in 1994.

The Woodcock collection consists of a series of laboratory notebooks kept during his early research on the green alga Acetabularia, accompanied by hundreds of electron micrographic photographs of cellular structures.

Ervin H. Zube was the head of the University’s Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning department (LARP) from 1965-1977. His groundbreaking research on landscape architecture and assessment helped define the international importance and influence of the field and his consultancy work, most notably with the National Park Service, brought his intellectual achievements into practical application. Born on April 24, 1931 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Zube earned his B.S. at the University of Wisconsin in 1954. After a two year service in the United States Air Force, Zube enrolled in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design where he received his M.L.A in 1959. Zube held teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley before beginning his ten year professorship at the University of Massachusetts in 1965. As the head of LARP, Zube established the Environmental Design program, which introduced a revolutionary cross-discipline approach to the study of landscape architecture. Zube became the director of the Institute for Man and the Environment in 1972 and restructured the institute to support academic research in new, important topics including community development and cooperation with the National Park Service, seeding important national and international institutions with progressively educated researchers. As a consultant, Zube helped the National Park Service develop their “master plan” for Yosemite and worked with numerous national and international institutions to manage and assess their environmental resources. Zube ended his career as a professor at the University of Arizona where he retired in 1983. He remained active in the field until his death in 2001.

The Ervin H. Zube papers include Zube’s lecture notes and academic correspondence, research materials and publications representing his work in landscape assessment and architecture, notes and reports from his consultancy work with many institutions and committees, correspondence from his role as a conference planner, as well as correspondence relating to his many book reviews. Zube’s papers also cover his research and teaching while at the University of Arizona and contain photographs from his research on the Connecticut River Valley.