Campus rewarded with state's funding
Ventura Star 1/21/07
The steady growth is a demonstration of the pent-up demand for a four-year university in Ventura County. It also makes CSUCI one of the most successful new campuses in California's recent history.
"We're the only startup of the last three or four that have met our enrollment targets," said management professor William Cordeiro. "I certainly think we've established ourselves. We have a reputation. People are interested in coming here."
CSUCI is being rewarded for its early success with $62 million for campus improvements that will allow the school to move out of infancy and into its next phase of development. It is the largest single allocation of state funding in the school's lifetime and will allow school officials to continue building the young campus.
CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed said CSUCI President Richard Rush has done a "phenomenal job."
"Success feeds on itself," Reed said. "It's been a very successful opening and growth of a new institution."
Reed and other CSU officials say the timing was right to give Channel Islands a funding boost because the university has met its goals, and the money will help university leaders continue to build on their early success.
In addition to meeting its enrollment goals, CSUCI is on the fast track to earn its initial accreditation later this year and will graduate its first four-year class of students in May.
More residence halls are under construction, new majors are being added and hiring is under way to bring in more faculty members.
"We've tried to be good stewards of the money we have," said Rush. "We have demonstrated to everyone that we have taken our responsibility and stewardship seriously. We're delivering what the people of Ventura County wanted."
Other startup campuses such as CSU Monterey Bay, CSU San Marcos, and more recently, UC Merced, had some stumbles in their early days, missing enrollment targets, suffering financial setbacks because of budget cuts, or struggling with the accreditation process.
Protected from budget cuts
CSUCI officials showed they learned from others' mistakes, said CSU trustee Debra Farar, a member of the board since 2000. "They took very seriously the lessons learned from previous situations," she said.
Channel Islands' success was helped by moves at the CSU level to protect the school from state budget cuts in its first couple of years. That helped the school maintain momentum as it grew, Reed said.
The campus also had a strong plan for building the campus and adhered closely to that plan over the years, he said.
In addition, the faculty has been responsive to community needs, adding programs in teacher education, biotechnology and next year, nursing, to address needs in the region.
The degrees "tend to be a good mix of small and large programs, liberal arts and sciences," said Spanish professor Terry Ballman, who heads the faculty Academic Senate. The university has been well received by the community and by prospective students, building a reputation for providing a small, private school education, with plenty of one-on-one instruction and mentoring, at the price of a public school degree. That reputation is well known by trustees and officials at CSU headquarters in Long Beach.
The success of the campus has made it easy for trustees to give CSUCI additional help, Farar said. "If you're going to have more students, these are the needs we have to meet. We want to be accessible."
Students are coming to CSUCI from all over the state, though the largest numbers come from Ventura and Los Angeles counties. Of the first-time freshmen enrolling last fall, 36 percent are from Ventura County, 30 percent from Los Angeles County and the remainder from the rest of the state.
When Jessica LaRoe started at CSUCI as a freshman in 2003, she came to a campus few people in Sacramento County, where she lived, knew. Now "we're getting a lot more students from Northern California," said the 21-year-old senior and student body president.
‘Students are willing to invest'
The students themselves are also helping the campus grow. They recently approved an increase of their fees so they can begin building a student union on campus. The referendum was approved by a 3-to-1 margin. "That demonstrates how much the students are willing to invest in the future of our campus," LaRoe said.
Students still get questions about where the campus is located (it's near Camarillo, not on the Channel Islands), but word about the university is spreading, said Brian McAleney, 23, a psychology major from Ventura.
"We're making a great name for ourselves," he said. "The experience you get on this campus — the small-campus feeling — is such a warm feeling. It makes you feel like you belong."
CSUCI was an outsider, initially, in the CSU system. When state officials gave the go-ahead for the campus in the late 1990s, they did so on the condition that Channel Islands pay much of its own way. Legislators and CSU leaders were concerned about splitting their funding pie for capital projects into even smaller pieces with the addition of another campus to the then 22-school system.
Under an unusual financing structure, a special government agency was established to generate cash for construction and renovation of campus facilities. The agency, known as the Site Authority, is building homes, apartments and a commercial town center for faculty, staff and the community, with income from the sale and rental of the space going to the university's construction fund.
Infrastructure needed now
Most of that money has been dedicated to the university library, a $60 million showpiece under construction at the heart of the campus. State officials provided about $10 million in startup costs and $10 million for a science building, but otherwise, money for construction and renovation has been hard to come by.
Classrooms, labs, and infrastructure such as heating and cooling are needed now, especially if the university is to continue to grow.
"We need hot and cold water, electricity," Rush said. "The old infrastructure can't hold up to 21st century demands."
That's where the $62 million comes in. CSUCI got nearly 10 percent of the CSU system's $690 million piece of Proposition 1D, a $10.4 billion statewide school facilities bond measure approved by voters in November. The money and accompanying projects are considered more than CSUCI's "share" of the system's funds, and are a marked increase from previous bond measures. Proposition 47 in 2002 and Proposition 55 in 2004, netted the school a combined $3.7 million. The university's annual operating budget is $46.5 million.
The rapid growth of the school — it met next year's enrollment target of 3,123 students last fall — pushed CSU officials to provide aid for the campus' ailing infrastructure. The need for the money goes hand-in-hand with student demand for classes.
Making buildings usable
"Because (the campus) is growing so fast, we have to let the university grow its programs," Reed said. " In order to grow programs faster, we have to grow the facilities, so students will have access."
Ballman said people often comment on the beauty of the campus and its Spanish-tile architecture, much of which is 50-70 years old. What they don't see, she said, is that most of the space is not workable as classroom and office space without extensive remodeling.
"The challenge is in making the buildings we have usable for students," she said. "These monies give us the ability to remodel and refurbish the existing buildings and create new buildings.
The money is a timely windfall that will pay for upgrades of campus utilities, including heating and cooling and telecommunications. It will also be used for construction and renovation of North Hall, which will include a 120-seat lecture hall, seven classrooms, three computer labs and faculty offices in the north quad of the campus, and Westside Labs, which will have instructional lab space for several disciplines, including psychology, anthropology and computer science.
"It's a huge transformation," Rush said. "Instead of playing catch-up all the time, we're trying to get ahead a little bit."
The university's goals include continuing to grow, adding degree programs such as nursing and child development and hiring more faculty members. The library is scheduled for completion in 2008. There is also talk of sports fields and a performing arts center.
"Our priorities are we're here to serve the students with quality programs with quality faculty," Cordeiro said.
"We'll just keep growing. There seems to be a demand here."