site for the University Farm, a 779-acre farm near a tiny Yolo County town then known as Davisville. The Regents officially took control of the property in September 1906 and constructed four buildings in 1907. Short courses were first offered in October and November 1908, and then the University Farm officially opened in 1909 as the University Farm School, offering a three-year non-degree vocational program. The vocational program was shortened from three to two years in 1923. Initially, no degrees were awarded at Davis. Students in the College of Agriculture at Berkeley often enrolled at Davis for a single semester to obtain practical training on an actual farm alongside the vocational students, but had to return to Berkeley to earn their degrees. Because the non-degree vocational program at Davis was so disconnected from the traditional degree programs on the main Berkeley campus, agricultural interests began to agitate to separate Davis and the entire College of Agriculture from the University of California. This forced the Board of Regents in 1922 to silence such proposals by authorizing a four-year undergraduate degree program at Davis. The first class graduated from Davis in 1926. Renamed in 1922 as the Northern Branch of the College of Agriculture, and, in 1938, as the College of Agriculture at Davis, the institution continued growing at a breakneck pace: in 1916 the Farm's 314 students occupied the original campus. By 1951 it had expanded to a size of . In 1958, the vocational program was discontinued. Promotion to general campus For much of its early history, Davis was supervised by a director. In 1952, the title was upgraded to provost. Stanley B. Freeborn served as Davis's first provost from 1952 to 1958 and then as its first chancellor from 1958 to 1959 (in anticipation of its promotion to a general campus). However, Freeborn retired in 1959 after only one year as chancellor, then died the next year. In October 1959, Davis was formally designated by the Board of Regents as a general campus. The Board of Regents declared that Davis's College of Agriculture "will continue to be the University's major center of teaching and research in agriculture, which will remain a dominant emphasis." The Board also suggested that due to its proximity to the state capital at Sacramento, the Davis campus should give "special attention" to "opportunities" to be of service to the state government. Finally, the Board set