BY ALAN HANSON

I could not have imagined when I started working at UCLA in 1965 what the campus might look like nearly four decades later. It is remarkable how much can change in such time. No place, I think, is this more evident than the transformation of The Hill, where much of our on-campus student housing is located and where I served for 37 years — 25 of those as director of the Office of Residential Life.

When I began here, the four high-rise towers — Dykstra, Sproul, Rieber and Hedrick halls — had opened sometime within the previous six years. When Dykstra opened in 1959, it was the first coed hall in the country, with men living on the lower six floors and women on the top four. The other three buildings, which opened in the early ’60s, were planned with the aim of putting men and women in separate wings with no adjoining common lounges except on the lobby level. Hershey Hall, built in 1931, was a women’s hall, later to be converted to a coed graduate hall in the 1970s.

So began the storied life of our ever-growing and progressive campus residence hall program. In the intervening years, policies and living arrangements in the residence halls dramatically changed. Men and women now live on the same floors and share lounges and other facilities (except, of course, the bathrooms). There are no longer lockout hours (which used to start at midnight on weekdays and 2 a.m. on weekends) or visitation hours for visitors of the opposite sex.

The opening of the high-rises may have marked the beginning of UCLA’s shift from commuter to residential campus, but it would be many more years before that transition would produce the vibrant impact that is evident today. No doubt the evolution was kicked into high gear in the mid-1980s with the planning of Sunset Village, which opened in stages during 1990-91. First, more than 1,300 beds were added to the existing 4,000 in the high-rises and Hitch and Saxon suites, which had been built in the 1970s. Then, another 1,200 beds were added when DeNeve Plaza opened in 2000-01. But the story won’t end there. By the end of this decade, some 4,000 more spaces for both undergraduate and graduate students should be completed.

With the physical changes to The Hill have come significant program changes that make the halls more than just a place for food and shelter. Rather, it is the creative integration of a strong student development program with popular aca-demic programs such as Faculty in Residence, Academics in the Commons, the GE Clusters and Fiat Lux classes that is critical to keeping the housing experience attractive and meeting the needs of an ever-changing and highly diversified student population.

Then there are the people who make it all happen. The range of skills, creativity and ability to focus on solving such a wide range of problems involving teams of students, housing and residential life professionals — particularly those at UCLA — is incredible. I’ve been privileged to work with extraordinary people and to see wonderful things happen on this campus. It has been a great run. And with the solid foundation that has been put in place, the future can only be better.

Hanson retired in January as director of the Office of Residential Life.