The first Alpha Sigs at Cal were not undergraduates, but alumni of the Alpha Chapter of Alpha Sigma Phi at Yale College. The first and longest of these on the Cal scene was Martin Kellogg, A 1847. Kellogg was a member of Alpha Sigma Phi's second class of initiates. He had been the first editor of the Yale Tomahawk, forerunner of Alpha Sigma Phi's fraternity magazine. After graduation from Yale College, he came, in the 1850's as a Minister, to the Congregational Church in Grass Valley, California.
At the time of Brother Kellogg's arrival in Grass Valley, the gold fever was receding, and when Kellogg found his congregation diminishing he left the mine country for a faculty position at the College of California in Oakland. Kellogg served on the College of California faculty from 1860 to 1868. In 1868, the California Legislature was debating establishment of a state university under the Morrill Land Grant College Act. The College of California agreed that if the legislature would establish a comprehensive university, rather than an agricultural and mechanics institute under the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862, the College of California would surrender its charter and assets to the comprehensive University of California. The legislature accepted the college's offer, and the college and its campus in Oakland and its undeveloped campus site in Berkeley passed to the new University.
Martin Kellogg applied for and was appointed to one of the first four professorial appointments for the new University of California. He was the only College of California professor to move directly onto the University faculty. Professor Kellogg became Dean of the Faculty, an elective office, in 1870, and served in that capacity until 1885. The Dean at that time served, in addition to regular duties as Professor of Ancient Languages, as secretary of the Academic Senate, as registrar of students, he received and posted grade reports of performance and entered student averages in the record book. Kellogg made a case for obtaining assistance with these ministerial duties, becoming the father of administration at the University of California. Brother Kellogg was nominated for the University Presidency in 1881, 1885, and 1888, and served as Acting President briefly in the 1880's and from 1890 to 1892. He was named President of the University in 1893. Kellogg served until 1899 when, having sufficiently strengthened the Presidency to permit attraction of a leading national figure, and a having reached the age of 70, Kellogg retired. He was succeeded by Benjamin Ide Wheeler.
In what might otherwise have been a final spark of life, the chapter offered control of the chapter to a group of students at Bowles Hall who were unsure whether they would be able to continue to reside in University housing. While over thirty were initially interested, this group of about a score of men brought new life and leadership into the chapter. Membership grew to over twenty men for the first time in eight years. At present the membership is re-discovering and defining their programs and policies as a fraternity chapter.