Classic Corvettes and a variety of memorabilia will be on hand as the College of Letters and Science celebrates its 50th Anniversary Gala Oct. 19. Alumni from every era and decade are invited to attend the college’s first-ever reunion, and graduates dating from about 40 years ago are among the approximately 200 confirmed guests.

Faculty members and emeriti professors also will join in the dinner and dancing event set to start at 5:30 p.m. in Recreation Hall. The cost is $65 per person.

Corvettes, one from each of the past decades, will be on display inside the Rec Hall. And organizers are busily gathering old images of the campus "then and now" and copies of El Rodeo yearbooks to have on display, said Maureen Miller, assitant dean of college relations.

Music also will span the decades, "from the Drifters, through the Rolling Stones and Dave Matthews," Miller said.

Founded in 1951, the college then enrolled 74 students and consisted of five departments. Today, it has evolved into three divisions that house 52 departments and programs and serve some 10,000 students.

The Division of Social Sciences includes anthropology, communication, economics, history, philosophy, political science, psychology and sociology. With 20 percent of campus students majoring in the division and 11 departments, social sciences is responsible for the largest segment of undergraduates on campus.

The Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences plays a major role in educating undergraduates through basic courses in chemistry, mathematics, physics and statistics. Seventy percent of campus students, at both graduate and undergraduate levels, are focused in the sciences, and in 2000-01, Mathematical and Physical Sciences had 1,706 students in undergraduate majors, 345 full-time graduate students, more than 70 postdoctoral students and 137 faculty.

The Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies dates to the days of the University Farm. Instruction in English, the division’s oldest department, then called Agricultural Literature, began in 1910.

But it wasn’t until 1928 – when 22-year-old female professor Celeste Turner Wright was hired as chair – that it became a department. Ground-breaking Interdisciplinary programs such as Women and Gender Studies and cultural studies are affiliated with the department.

Gala-related festivities will stretch into Saturday, as a group of about 50 attendees attend UC Davis’ homecoming football game, pitting the Aggies against Cal Poly.

For details about the gala, call 752-3429 or visit www.ls.ucdavis.edu/Alumni/anniversary.asp.