It was established in the fall of 1963 by Edward Teller, director of LLNL,[1] and Roy Bainer, then dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering.
[3] Teller's push for an educational institution associated with the LLNL was part of a general movement championed by Alvin M. Weinberg of Oak Ridge National Laboratory to use the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories to educate scientists, since at the time the department employed roughly 10% of the scientists in the United States.
There Bainer and Emil M. Mrak, then chancellor of UCD, were more receptive to Teller's plan,[7] although some faculty of the College of Engineering were unhappy with the idea of outsiders teaching their students.
As part of the admissions process students were required to fill out a PSQ so that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) could do a background check on them.
The UC Davis College of Engineering closed the Department of Applied Science in July 2011 for budgetary reasons after 48 years of operation.