SMJC Becomes CSM
1954 name change reflects college’s breadth of course offerings and community role
By 1954, San Mateo Junior College was doing far more than its original task of duplicating the first two years of a university experience for local high school graduates. Its average student age rose to 21, thanks in part to the GI Bill that funded education for World War II veterans. Seven times more SMJC students were enrolled in evening programs than in traditional day programs, and they tended to be older and more career-focused. Many followed paths such as aeronautical engineering or plumbing, rather than transferring to the kind of “senior” college that was assumed by the “junior” in SMJC’s name.
Therefore, many folks at the college thought a new name was called for. They embraced two-year colleges’ distinct role – by no means “junior” to anything – in serving communities’ many local needs. San Francisco Junior College had already become San Francisco City College. Marin Junior College re-baptized itself College of Marin.
A 1953 campus poll showed 72 percent of SMJC students favored a name change. “College of San Mateo” was favored by 62 percent. Other options included “Peninsula College” and “San Mateo Community College.”
San Matean editor Marlin Gill argued that College of San Mateo “would be a standing memorial to the junior college’s past president, Charles S. Morris. The initials of the new name would be the same as President Morris’ initials. The school radio station already bears the name KCSM.”
James Tormey Sr., a SMJC English instructor and later San Mateo County superintendent of education (and father of a longtime trustee), emphatically stated in the 1970s that the initials of both the radio station and then the college itself were chosen as a tribute to Morris.
In April 1954, college trustees voted 3-2 to adopt “College of San Mateo” as the school’s new name.
Morris, who had done so much to strengthen the college’s links to its community and to broaden its career training and adult education, had died two years earlier. Awaiting his signature was Federal Communications Commission licensing paperwork for the future KCSM-FM. Evidence suggests that the college submitted a first and second choice for call letters, either KCSM or KSMC. In any case, the FCC assigned it the former in late 1952.
The San Matean scrambled to design a new masthead, then celebrated the change: “It would be safe to say that the vast majority of students here will appreciate the dropping of the “junior” from the college’s name.”
