SAN BERNARDINO - Rehearsals, set design, lighting, directing, costuming plus a full load of academic classes. The typical working student at Cal State San Bernardino may not have the time to meet the demands of a theater major.

Time and concentration is the first requirement of students who say they're committed to the stage, said Ronald E. Barnes, who is the university's first theater department chairman and professor emeritus since 1998.

An $80,000 endowment scholarship fund, raised by 150 colleagues and former students of Barnes, will free more students of financial pressures, university officials say.

To further honor Barnes, now 73, the campus theater will be renamed in his honor at an invitation-only dedication Sunday.

"He's responsible for this building sitting here, said Jeanette Janik, development director for the College of Arts and Letters. "We also wanted to provide a living example of Ron's commitment to education and his love of students."

The $80,000 infusion in the Ronald E. Barnes Scholarship Endowment brings to $16,500 the amount theater students can be awarded annually from the department, Janik said. About 13 of the 80 theater majors already receive partial scholarships.

The latest contribution to the theater arts program represents a wider effort at the 17,000-student university to raise scholarship money. The purpose is to attract brighter students and students who are hurting financially in a depressed economy, Janik said.

"Recent state funding cuts have made donor support all the more critical to the university's mission," Janik added.

Seven out of 10 students at the San Bernardino campus receive some form of financial aid from scholarships, grants or student loans.

A university scholarship fund-raising campaign, led by President Albert Karnig, has exceeded $1 million.

Barnes insists that scholarships in his name be awarded to students "who know what they are committing to. Many have stars in their eyes and decide the first quarter they don't want to be in the discipline when they see the work involved."

Barnes was the university's only theater arts professor when it opened in 1965 with 250 students.

The Minneapolis native created the curriculum, recruited the faculty, now 10 full-time professors, and acquired $1.8 million in state funds to build the 143-seat theater in the 1970s.

Former students remember his rigorous classes and his dedication. "A number now in the entertainment world are indebted to his teaching," Janik said.

Jody Duncan of Riverside, editor of Cinefex, a trade magazine for the visual effects industry, praised Barnes for his high academic standards.

"It was rough in his classes, but when doing post-graduate work you were grateful that you went through that Barnes 'trial of fire,' " she said.

Former students Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, producers of television series, movies and video games, made the largest contribution to the Barnes fund - $25,000, Janik said.

Barnes never planned to become a theater professor, he recalled, sitting in a front-row seat in the Barnes theater. Originally, he wanted to be a lawyer until three dramatic literature courses sidetracked him at the University of Minnesota.

He was searching for truth, and the law didn't cut it, Barnes said.

"Law is based on manipulating the language to arrive at a result rather than going for the truth of the result. In theater, the performer knows he or she is pretending. In that sense, they have a better understanding of reality. You aren't kidding yourself," he said.

Themes of universal truths drew Barnes to the classics, plays that are centuries old, yet resonate today, he said.

"It's astounding to think that so many of the problems that people faced in theater-writing hundreds of years ago haven't changed that much in the 20th century and beyond.

"We're still confronted by the same stupidities. We're still learning you can't retire from life's responsibilities. I'm still learning. Each year I discover more and more that's true."