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IN 1974, CECIL LYTLE traveled from Grinnell College in Iowa to the Torrey Pines mesa to help build a music department for the new University of California, San Diego. His office, on a former Marine Corps base used as a firing range, was modest, at best.
“We were teaching out of Quonset huts,” he recalls. “Spaghetti was still on the wall of my office, which was in the old mess hall. Rattlesnakes slithered through the Mandeville parking lot.
“But it was very exciting. UCSD and UC Santa Barbara began at the same time. While UCSB put its money into buildings, UCSD put its resources into human potential by recruiting Nobel laureates. The first wave of hiring was for the Scripps faculty. I was part of the second wave that was hired to teach students.”
Professor Lytle taught music, recorded and continued to tour as a concert pianist (he’s performed with the Boston Pops and at Royal Albert Hall). In 1980, he was named chair of UCSD’s music department. Eight years later, Lytle found himself both flattered and somewhat unprepared when he was named provost of Third College (now Thurgood Marshall College).
“You wake up one morning as dean and someone comes into your office and says, ‘I want a raise’ or ‘I’m going to sue you.’ Very few of us who became administrators were trained in conflict resolution,” he says.
Lytle honed his diplomacy skills and in 1997 prevailed in a tough battle to establish an on-campus charter school for low-income students; today, the Preuss School is a top high school in the county. At press time, 96 percent of this year’s graduating class had been offered admission to the UC system or other top-tier schools such as Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Stanford. In 2005, Preuss became a model for Gompers Middle School when it received its charter.
Lytle maintains that while conflict is inevitable, it’s manageable. “People are going to bump into each other,” he says. “They need to learn how to dialogue, to talk and listen.”
He also points to the digital nature of modern interaction: “Part of the problem is technology, which has forced us into shorthand. There is no facial expression in e-mail. We need to know when to respond by e-mail and when to pick up the phone or walk down the hall and talk.”
In 2005, Lytle began volunteering with the National Conflict Resolution Center, which provides conflict resolution and mediation training for groups——including UCSD administrators. NCRC boasts an 80 percent success rate in keeping cases out of court.
To commemorate NCRC’s 20th anniversary next year, Lytle is producing a CD of popular songs dealing with conflict resolution. Tracks include “We Can Work It Out” by the Beatles, “Imagine” by John Lennon and “Lazarus Heart” by Sting.
Two years after stepping down as dean, Lytle has returned to teaching and performing.
“I spent two quarters of my life in music and the third in administration,” he says. “I’d like to spend the last quarter doing music again.”
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