California State University-Los Angeles

Peterson became the acting president of the state college. Since the college had opened in September, 1947, with 136 students, it had grown in two years to over 2,000 students. Most were studying under the GI Bill, which had been largely responsible for establishment of the college. The first class of seven students graduated in 1948.
In 1949, when Howard S. McDonald became president of both Los Angeles State College and Los Angeles City College, the state college upper division classes were being taught in borrowed spaces on the City College campus by mostly part-time faculty. He hired administrators to help him formally organize the colleges. Then he found a site within Los Angeles to house the new "Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences," which replaced the Los Angeles State College also in 1949 after being reconstituted by the Legislature. McDonald enjoyed telling how some influential supporters of the University of Southern California opposed his selection of a piece of land in Baldwin Hills, …