Photo: Mark Kawakami/Body Glove

My parents both worked, so the beach was the babysitter. We’ll pick you up at 7:30, they said. My friends and I from Hermosa Beach were Junior Lifeguards up by 18th Street, Manhattan Beach, and we surfed the rest of the day.

Once when I was 10 or 11, I remember going out, turning the board, taking a couple of steps up and just feeling that acceleration and that oh-my-God, aha moment of the board taking off and picking up speed and climbing up the face of the wave.

I was really too young to grasp what was happening, but it was – it still is – that elemental feeling of acceleration and climb. Whether you’re on a longboard or a shortboard, I think everybody just wants those butterflies in the pit of the stomach, that sensation of gliding over water.

You don’t see a lot of young kids saying, I want to be a surfboard shaper when I grow up. I didn’t either. I went to college thinking, OK, I’m going to be a history teacher and coach football.

It never dawned on me that I could be in the surf industry, until 2004 when I was home on summer break from Cal Lu. I know I only lived an hour away, but college was the first time I was out on my own. It opened up my world, and that summer, before my junior year as a history major, I felt the freedom that college had given me.

My dad and I drove down to Walker Foam in Wilmington, and I got what is known as a second, or a reject, polyurethane foam plank. My dad and uncle both rode for Robert’s Surfboards in the ’60s, and I used to see the piles of boards in our backyard. My uncle had a Weber Performer 9-foot 6-inch longboard which I really liked a lot, and I made a template off of it and copied it.

For the next week, I absolutely made a mess in my garage. The board came out … OK. The outline was a little crooked. There were a lot of fundamentals that I didn’t know about. Since then, I’ve had a lot of help, from my mentor Tyler Hatzikian, teacher Michael Geib and others in the surf industry. I’ve had to shape hundreds of boards, and I’ve had to ask questions and watch and learn. But from that summer on, I knew that if I practiced – just like a sport or school or anything else – I could get this.

I owe a lot of credit to the faculty and coaching staff at Cal Lu for being just good teachers, not trying to impose their will on us but trying to pull out what they saw as the good in us. Two history teachers were really, really good to me. Michaela Reaves and Peter McDermott made it OK for me to step away from my parents’ dreams of me becoming a lawyer, and to go out in this world and make it on my own.

Good longboarding is very beautiful. (I was never drawn to the kinetic, frantic surfing style of modern shortboarding. The aesthetics of that surfing is kind of painful for me to watch.) You see someone who knows how to put the board in the right spots on the wave, turn it and noseride it. When everything goes right and you see someone get a great ride, for me at least it gives me goose bumps on my arms.

And to see someone hand shape that board, and now that rider can articulate what that shape is and how that wave works? It’s amazing how all the things we’ve learned from the ’20s all the way to 2013, all this design theory and trial and error, comes together on a minute ride at Ballona Creek or Palos Verdes or Rincon Point. It just keeps you coming back and wanting more.

—

Adam Davenport maintains close friendships from his days as a Kingsmen offensive lineman under Head Coach Scott Squires. For information about surfboards shaped by Davenport, visit www.davenportlongboards.com.

When they first visit CLU’s community counseling clinics, clients in the Verizon Intimate Partner Violence Intervention Program are asked to make drawings of a house, a tree and a person as part of an informal personality assessment. Falling leaves, half-hidden faces and a sense of isolation or helplessness are common tropes.

By Kevin Matthews

Well-educated, ambitious, religious. Kimiko’s wish list spelled out what she wanted in a man, and the one she married matched every particular. She was in love, at least before the fear took over. Before he chased her around with frying pans and destroyed her things. Before, when she was pregnant, he picked her up and threw her.

“You have to be very careful when you write a list of what you want,” she said, “because God will put those people in front of you.”

Kimiko left and divorced her husband while their children were young, but her next relationship also turned violent. The new boyfriend, an ex-Marine who drank even more than her former husband, nearly strangled her to death in her children’s bathroom.

How does this happen and happen again? When does it stop? Beyond staying alive, what does it mean to survive?

These are recurring questions for clients and for therapists at the Verizon Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Intervention Program run by CLU at community counseling clinics in Oxnard and Thousand Oaks. The telecommunications company’s commitment to fighting IPV goes back to the launch in 1995 of the cellular phone donation program HopeLine. More recently, Verizon has ramped up giving in the area of mental health, according to Jesus Torres, director of government and external affairs. Since 2010, the Verizon Foundation has provided grants to CLU’s intervention program totaling $240,000.

That backing has allowed CLU master’s and doctoral students to provide free counseling and other services to more than 200 IPV victims. A separate $40,000 grant from the Women’s Legacy Fund pays for counseling for children of victims.

After 16 weeks of individual therapy and at least 12 weeks of group therapy, CLU follows up with the adult clients every three months during the first year and again at two years out. The program’s recorded rates of success for its clients – defined as a reduction of violence, regardless of the reasons reported – hover around 75 percent. Few programs measure outcomes over as long a period, but these are high numbers in a field that’s full of setbacks and disappointment.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, roughly one in four women and nearly one in seven men in the United States have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner.

“I think it’s a dirty secret in our society that people oftentimes don’t want to acknowledge, and the scary part is it happens on every socioeconomic level,” said associate professor Mindy Puopolo, who directs doctoral studies in clinical psychology along with the IPV program.

When Puopolo launched the program three years ago along with Morris N. Eagle, a clinical supervisor and distinguished educator at CLU, neither of these seasoned therapists had much experience with IPV intervention. Similarly, several graduate students and recent graduates who serve as therapists in the program said they really learned about this issue on the job, not from life experiences.

“It was really unusual, I think. None of us had a personal history or a personal stake in it from our families,” said Daniel Knauss ’08, a doctoral student who is writing a dissertation about types of IPV victims. “I think it has, on the one hand, freed us up to think a little bit more creatively and openly, outside of the box.”

After reviewing the literature on IPV interventions, the CLU students and clinical supervisors decided to dispense with the standard treatment regimen, known as the Duluth model, that has been employed in clinical settings since the 1980s. In keeping with that model, most programs require clients to leave their abusive partners as a condition of starting treatment, and then focus attention on imparting life skills – everything from relaxation techniques to how to balance a checkbook – that are seen as the keys to independence.

“You have to deal with the relationship,” said Puopolo, who has seen IPV clients as a volunteer at the Ventura County district attorney’s restraining order clinic. “The old model is, no, you just put the batterers in jail and work with the victims, but that’s not successful. It doesn’t work, and we know that it doesn’t work.”

Broadly speaking, the clinicians in the CLU program object to the volume of directives that victims receive from all sorts of authorities. Prosecutors may want victims to face their abusers at trial, courts may order treatment, and counseling programs, police and child protective services each add their demands.

Ironically, services intended to empower victims end up narrowing their options, or forcing choices that are far harder than they sound.

“So you have women who have these kids with no money, no support, no home, usually no car, no possessions of any kind, going to a shelter that may or may not be available. And so leaving is not always the best option,” Puopolo said.

When victims of physical abuse do leave their partners, they frequently return. Or find someone else just as dangerous, if not worse. Very much like people who abuse substances, people who work themselves up to leaving their partners may experience symptoms of withdrawal afterward. In fact, one of the risks associated with leaving is the onset of a substance abuse problem.

These aren’t just facts to be faced; a lot depends on attitudes toward them. A private marriage counselor told Annie and her husband that the latter’s only fault was “loving her too much.” Contradicting himself as he urged her to stay put, he also said that if she left her husband, she probably would end up in a worse relationship.

More and more frequently during her seven years of marriage, Annie would unwillingly flip on a “switch” in her husband, for example by standing up to him. It rested on OFF as long as he felt in control of his wife, so keeping him content became her primary concern. She ate mostly meat and dressed formally because those were things he preferred, and she hid or ended personal relationships that he didn’t approve of. She realized only after leaving him how little attention she’d paid to their children and to herself.

Annie made it to therapy at CLU a few years after her divorce. In the meantime, she lost custody of her children, and a roommate had to break down her bedroom door and call police to save her from her next boyfriend.

“If it wasn’t for going through the therapy sessions, I probably would have still somehow ended up back with him or going back and forth with him,” Annie said.

Annie arrived at the Thousand Oaks community clinic with a question in mind: what is it I do that makes men violent? Low self-esteem played a part in her thinking, evidently. But after you remove the self-blame from that question, there is something left worth asking. Nearly all of the IPV victims seen at the CLU clinics ask themselves some version of it. They say, How does this keep happening? Why do I always end up here?

The CLU program is different because it goes there. It works with the victims precisely to answer these indelicate questions, winning it some critics who believe that this amounts to blaming victims for the violence.

Not only will the clinicians, in many cases, talk through IPV victims’ life experiences, in an effort to understand what’s been driving the choices of partners, but they even walk through memories of violent episodes to figure out what triggers them. In fact, this sort of procedure, aimed at improving the clients’ “reflective functioning,” is at the core of the method being developed at the clinics.

“Don’t forget, they’re not all going to leave. Some of them are going to stay in the relationship,” said Eagle. “If they’re going to stay in the relationship, it becomes particularly important to recognize: what are their partner’s trigger points and what do they do to push those buttons?”

According to Eagle, an expert in attachment theory, one of the most common scenarios in violent relationships is the pairing of (usually) a man who has a deep, chronic fear of abandonment with a woman who tends to withhold affection. In psychological jargon, he is enmeshed-preoccupied and she is avoidant-dismissive. It’s a combustible mixture.

When the man makes an overture to her, such as saying “I love you” after a fight, it may not be a hollow apology. He may be seeking, once again, proof that she will not abandon him. “We often repeat pretty awful things because we hope at least this time we’ll master them,” said Eagle.

By recalling just such an episode in detail, one woman in group therapy at CLU came to see her husband as a “sad little baby … not just this violent, aggressive, terrible man, which is how he dealt with being scared,” Knauss explained. The closest thing she’d seen to his behavior when she did not say, “I love you, too,” were her young son’s tantrums. Soon after, the woman’s insight helped another group member to avoid a fight.

“The more we can get them consciously making an effort to think about what drives their interactions with other people, what drives their emotional states – our hypothesis was and continues to be that they’ll be more able to navigate their relationships and make choices for themselves that will reduce violence. Whether they decide to leave or not,” said Knauss.

Most of the IPV clients are the ones on the receiving end of violence, but a significant number of them are the batterers. In a few cases, CLU has even worked with two former partners at once, each in a different location or on different days to protect survivors from further harm.

Meeting together weekly in Oxnard and in Thousand Oaks to go over the cases, the eight graduate student–therapists at each clinic and their clinical supervisors discover surprising things. For one, the violence in perhaps 40 percent of these relationships runs in both directions. That’s not to say that both partners are equally violent or equally at fault, but there’s physical retaliation.

Another surprise: when women are the batterers and men are on the receiving end of all or most of the violence, the dynamics of the relationships are no different than with the roles reversed. She is likely to be controlling, anxious, deeply insecure about his affections, and abusing drugs and alcohol; he is likely to have sexual trauma in his past and a picture of romantic love that was partly shaped by that trauma.

IPV victims are likely to attribute characteristics associated with chivalry, or being a caballero, to their male partners. Doctoral student Kristina Rodriguez ’08 discovered this in the process of looking for cultural differences between her Spanish-speaking female clients and other women in the program. But women in both groups shared these beliefs.

“They’re the kind of person who brings you flowers, they apologize, and you go into this mode of ‘everything is all right again,’” Rodriguez said. This is the positive flip side of machismo, and Rodriguez currently is planning to study how it fits into patterns of violence.

Victoria had no history of abuse in her family, but she was shy and lacked confidence, especially after she got glasses and moved to a new town in the fourth and fifth grades. Years later, she committed what she saw as an unforgivable sexual sin, and her self-regard fell off a cliff. When she met the man she would marry, “I was flattered that he liked me, because everybody loved him.”

On the honeymoon, he accused her of checking out a waiter, the first in a stream of accusations as he became obsessed with where she was, whom she was with, and what she was doing. The emotional abuse worsened over many years, but manifested as physical abuse only on one occasion. In Victoria’s case, that moment of violence and the threats that followed it constituted a turning point.

Six months later, after she asked for a divorce, the husband took his own life. As three different mental health professionals have told Victoria, she is lucky to be alive. They said that, given his psychological profile and the statistical probabilities, the story “should have” ended as a murder-suicide.

Survival is always slow. It took a long time for Victoria to see that she didn’t have to mourn her husband, because she had already done so during a deep depression. She came to the CLU clinic later, after reading about emotional abuse and realizing for the first time that this term applied to her.

“It was a place where I could speak my mind without being judged, where people understood the words that would come out of my mouth,” she said.

Like all of the therapists in the program, Rodriguez, the doctoral student working with Spanish speakers, has seen mixed results. One of her clients stopped coming after two sessions. But another who stayed with Rodriguez was able to work out many of the things that had happened to her back in Mexico.

By the end of therapy, the woman was significantly more independent and managed to arrange important matters such as after-school care for her kids. More strikingly, “she was able to go to a party just for her,” Rodriguez explained. “This is an individual who didn’t do anything for herself. She felt guilty if she went out to a party and they had food that her children liked.”

Outcomes vary widely, and the truth is that the CLU program’s high rate of success in reducing violence says little about outcomes. If there’s a theme running through the narratives of IPV survivors, it may be that as they regain some control of their lives, they begin to notice themselves.

“It’s been an interesting past few years, realizing what I like and what I don’t like, and what I can do and what I can’t do. It’s like finding yourself again,” said Annie.

Annie has found a loving relationship with a strong but peaceful partner. Victoria, for now, does not trust herself to date again. Above all, she does not want anyone telling her what to do. Kimiko, who is now homeless, insists that she will not get back into a romantic relationship with her ex-husband, but she said that she is considering leaving the country with her children to accept his financial help.

“It’s scary, but it’s probably the best option that’s out there,” she said.

Therapists in the program take the position that choices must lie with the survivors, that this is finally the only way to help.

“We are not assuming that we know what’s best for them,” said Jenna (Perry ’08) Knauss, who has been a therapist and now serves as coordinator for the program. “We say that to them at the very beginning: ‘We’re not here to tell you what to do. The therapist isn’t here to tell you what to do. The clinic isn’t here to tell you what to do, but rather to sit with you as you figure that out for yourself.’”

—

Names of survivors of violence and abusive relationships have been changed to protect their privacy.

Photo: Brian Stethem ’84

By Fred Alvarez

If Evan White ’06 were to squeeze his education onto video, like one of those 15-second clips composed for his social media platform, Viddy, the highlights would look something like this:

Lutheran youth board president in high school. CLU freshman homecoming prince. And creator of his own public relations firm – Evan White PR – before graduating from CLU with a communication degree.

Good stuff, but just look at the footage he is compiling these days.

White, 29, got in on the ground floor two years ago of the launch of Viddy Inc., one of the earliest and largest mobile video sharing apps on the Web.

Hailed by many in the tech world as the Instagram of video, Viddy has amassed more than 50 million unique users and is tapping celebrity power – the site is studded with video tidbits from the likes of Rhianna, Snoop Dogg and Justin Bieber – to push its platform.

White serves as “chief evangelist” for the booming Venice Beach–based enterprise, and it’s his mission to build buzz for the social video site while growing its fan base in an increasingly competitive market. It’s likely that one, but only one, of these apps will become a household name.

If anyone is up to the task, it’s Evan White, master of buzz.

After all, he once helped a client barter from a single red paperclip all the way to a house, trading up for items that included a hand-sculpted doorknob, a recording contract and a movie role. (The client got a book and movie deal out of that one.)

And he managed to launch a thriving business on the idea of wearing the T-shirts of company sponsors and using social media to advertise their wares.

As White surveys the rough-and-tumble landscape of social video, he sees Viddy on track to win the scramble for users, noting the celebrity backing and recent infusions of capital by investors including Goldman Sachs and Twitter founder Biz Stone.

“Knowing that all of these big names have bet on Viddy says a lot about who we are as a business and the value of our product,” said White, who is an equity partner in the enterprise, now valued at nearly $400 million.

“The end goal is we need more people and we need more people to use our service more often,” White added. “I want people to think Viddy when they think of smartphone video.”

White was born with an entrepreneurial gene.

Growing up in Spokane, Wash., he worked as a soccer referee as a teenager, saving his paychecks to buy his first car. He shoveled snow and raked leaves, and used money from those jobs to buy better equipment so that he could get more work and earn more money.

He arrived at Cal Lutheran as a business major, but eventually shifted to communication and marketing, and graduated with honors.

White’s professors remember him as a curious and energetic participant in the life of the school, a leader in his classes whose probing questions and passion for learning kept teachers on their toes.

“Evan is certainly bright, motivated and energetic. His mind is always working, and he is filled with ideas,” said professor Sharon Docter, chair of the Communication Department and White’s teacher and academic adviser. “I am not at all surprised by Evan’s success. He was born to do this.”

Toward the end of his CLU experience, White turned an internship for a PR company into a position as a senior account executive. He found himself balancing a corner office, a secretary and a boss with the demands of being a full-time student.

He said he learned a lot. Most importantly, he learned that he wanted to work for himself, and launched his own PR firm.

White’s projects ranged from the quirky to the sublime.

He helped a company purchase the naming rights to a town as it was launching in the U.S. market, and helped a client sell his entire life (house, car and food in the fridge) on eBay, following a divorce.

He drummed up celebrities for a Starbucks campaign to provide relief for victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

And he helped launch the live streaming platform Ustream, drawing national attention to a live video feed of a batch of newborn Shiba Inu puppies. As the live stream went viral, the puppies appeared in the pages of the New York Times and People and on air at CNN, NBC Nightly News and the Today Show.

“My mandate by the CEO of Ustream was to make us a household name,” White said. “In the end, millions of people ended up watching these puppies do what puppies do.”

As White tries to pull off something still bigger for Viddy, he has kept working for one PR client: actor and comedian Bill Cosby, who tapped White’s expertise to help bring his worldwide celebrity to social networks and the online world.

Viddy’s style is simple and short. Users shoot video snippets of 15 seconds or less on their mobile devices and use tools to add filters, music and other effects. The videos can be uploaded to a variety of social networks including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The service built its early user base on iPhone and iPad products, but late last year it added an Android app, and within about a month it had 1 million Android users.

These are heady times in the video-sharing world, with all eyes watching for social media’s next breakout hit following Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition last spring of the photo-sharing app Instagram.

Against that backdrop, a bevy of competitors have arrived on the scene, including Twitter’s recent launch of its own video-sharing app.

So where does Viddy stand? Time magazine named its website one the 50 best of 2012, and the company made a slew of year-end lists of “top tech companies to watch in 2013.”

White notes that Viddy recently turned down a multimillion-dollar offer to buy the company, expressing the belief of its founders and its now 32 employees that there are brighter days and bigger paydays ahead.

“The first time I played with the service, I was sitting on the beach and I shot a quick video and uploaded it from the beach,” said White, adding that the technology is so simple that his mother is a regular user.

“I had never done that before, and I thought, ‘This is brand new, this is mobile, and this is really sexy, cool technology,’” White said. “I spend my days talking to all of these content creators who show every day how Viddy is so powerful for their lives. This is a way to really leave your mark on the world.”

In the end, that is White’s goal as well.

He has small goals, such as paying off his student loans before he is 30. And larger ones, including buying a home for his mom.

But then there are those goals that have to do with giving back, whether it’s contributing to the Big Brothers organization, which helped guide him as a youth, or providing scholarship help at his alma mater CLU.

“I was the beneficiary of wealthy individuals who gave scholarships to Cal Lutheran and who helped kids do good things,” he said. “I was one of those. Now I want to be able to make dreams come true.”

—

Fred Alvarez is a high school history and journalism teacher who lives in Ojai. For more than two decades, he was a staff writer for several daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Photo: Grant Volk ’07

How has cuba changed since your first trip there?

I went to study Spanish at the University of Havana in 2003. Cuba wasn’t as open then, so there weren’t nearly as many tourists. The whole country was geared toward just survival. For example, there were very few new cars. Now, you see brand new Kias, brand new Fiats. A couple of rides from the Hotel Nacional were in Mercedes Benz taxicabs.

I always picture those 1950s American cars.

They’re still there. The average population still drives those cars around, and some of them are taxicabs. So if you feel like riding around in a 1957 Chevy convertible, you can.

What else has changed?

Right now they have paladares, which people are allowed to open up in their houses, and those are very good places to eat.

Regular people have a little more access to the Internet now, but it’s costly for them. I understand that they just decided to link up to a fiber-optic cable that runs underwater, so if we were going there now, our emails would be a lot faster.

What do Cubans today say they want most?

What they talk about is travel access. The very next day after we left, they opened it up so that people can now travel with just a passport and an exit visa. And people were lined up to do this. The people who still have trouble getting visas to leave the country would be doctors and scientists, because those are valuable people and they don’t want to risk them not coming back. And they do not want to give some dissidents travel access, because they know they’ll go outside the country and complain about the Cuban system.

Did students learn more about that firsthand? I imagine that the government wants you to hear from people who support the system.

One of the interesting things we did when we were there was talk to a Cuban assemblyperson. The United States has five Cubans in prison here for spying and sabotage and so on. What they were here for, of course, was to spy on anti-Cuba Americans. They’re in jail here and Cuba wants them released.

On the other hand, Cuba has an American in prison, who they claim was there for reasons that were anti-Cuba. So this is almost a stalemate. In the morning, we were getting the story from the Cuban assemblyperson, who told us what you would expect, and in the afternoon, we visited the United States Interests Section, and we got the story there that you would expect.

Do the Cuban people want capitalism and private property?

They may want it if they feel that it might give them more freedom and economic stability. But when they look deeper into it, they may be satisfied with what they have, which is free healthcare, free education, and a daily stipend for food and for housing. In a capitalist system, those things would fall by the wayside, at least to a certain extent.

They might prefer a socialist system, but they do not want a communist system. If you live there, you know it’s a communist country because there still is censorship. The newspapers still carry the party line. Cuban television is still censored.

With John Kerry and Chuck Hagel in the second Obama administration, do you think there’s an opening for better U.S.-Cuba relations?

Yes, I do. They both have been anti-embargo. They feel the embargo’s a waste of time. They feel it’s useless. They say, “We have these great relationships with China and Vietnam, both communist countries. What’s the problem with Cuba?”

There are still some old cold warriors who probably will not thaw until both Castro brothers are dead and gone. They will never forget that [Fidel] Castro was successful in the Bay of Pigs and wanted to put up missiles for the Soviet Union down there. I don’t think they’ll ever forgive him for that.

What’s your favorite thing about the country?

The music is fabulous. Very soothing, very rhythmic, there’s lots of drumming. And it feels like it gives the people a good sense of being. You know, things are tough, things are rough, but that music keeps them in a good mood. Everywhere you go, people are playing the guitar, they’re singing.

This time, I went to a baseball game. Baseball is the same, but there’s lots of drumming going on at the game. We went to the national ballet. They did a great job with The Nutcraker. It was a very multiracial cast up there. In fact, the principal dancer was a black man, which I’ve never seen in that production.

What stood out about student responses to the trip?

Their excitement. After the very first day, they really got into it. The only serious complaint I heard was at the end. One student said, “I don’t want to see any more pictures of Che Guevara.” You do not see any photos of Castro, but Che’s all over the place.

For me, if I could pick out one negative thing about it, it would be that the food’s not spicy enough. They don’t have pepper on the table. You have to ask them for hot sauce to put on the food. I don’t go for that too much.

Barton says it’s a good thing she has a creative outlet. Photo: Brian Stethem

By Kevin Matthews

Essence Barton needed to slow down. Her father had entered her in a 10-and-older mountain bike race at age 8 (she won), and she qualified for a world championship at 15, two years before she was eligible to compete. Soon after posting the world-class time, she received an invitation to train for the U.S. Olympic team. She kept it hidden, going instead that summer to a Christian camp at Hume Lake.

“I wanted to be a kid,” said the CLU junior in exercise science, who is 21 this March. “I wanted to enjoy things, because I was always gone on the weekends. I was always racing.”

Rather than going to the Olympics, Barton has made her name as a mountain bike racer at world championships and USA Cycling events. Among many accomplishments, she has won three consecutive national collegiate titles in the dual slalom, and will go for a fourth later this year.

“I can’t even explain the stress of this last race,” she said in November. “The third time, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to win it again.’ I don’t even want to think about next year.”

So how is Barton supposed to slow down now, with studying to do and the 2013 mountain bike season just getting started?

She says it’s a good thing she has dance.

Barton earns money for college not as a competitive racer, but as a choreographer, using skills that she developed at Thousand Oaks High School and Bobbie’s School of Performing Arts. Now she counts the high school’s arts program as one of her clients, in addition to students who are making applications to colleges. She also helped her friend Jacob Garcia, a senior, to found Dancers Alliance for Navigating Cultural Exploration (DANCE) as a student club at CLU.

There are a lot of parallels between her racing and her dancing. For one thing, Barton is determined not to specialize within either pursuit, but continually to add skills to her repertoires.

In mountain biking, she started with the cross-country and short track events that emphasize endurance and speed, and moved on around age 12 to the challenging downhill, four-cross (4X) and dual slalom, in which side-by-side competitors negotiate nearly identical downslope tracks. In dancing, she has spent less time training, but loves ballet, hip-hop, lyrical and contemporary styles.

“Here’s the crazy warrior side of me that just wants to win, and then here’s the other side that just wants to express and show beauty and create…,” she said. “The only thing I’m not very proficient at is tap.”

Barton’s next major biking event is the Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, Calif., April 18-21.

Roslyn Porter (r) began a lasting CLU tradition, on and off the basketball court, that continues with her daughter Jazmyne.

By Tracy Maple

After missing her junior year of basketball because of a torn knee ligament, Roslyn (Boatwright ’88) Porter not only returned to pick up her third varsity letter but also became part of a Regals softball team that advanced to the NAIA Championships in Oklahoma under head coach Wendy Olsen. Classmates convinced her to dust off her softball glove and cleats for her senior year.

For all of the impact she had on “Running Regals” sports, however, Porter had no idea that would be just the beginning of a special relationship between her family and CLU. Roslyn’s sister Maria Boatwright ’99 graduated in sociology, and her daughter Jazmyne Porter is now pursuing both basketball and her aunt’s major as a Regal. A senior guard, Jazmyne scored 18 points in the game this February that lifted the team to a second-straight conference title and an automatic NCAA playoff berth.

With a 10-year age gap between Roslyn and her sister Maria, it was a treat for the younger Boatwright to spend a weekend or part of a break with her sister in the dorms on campus. In turn, Maria carried on the tradition when she would bring her 7-year-old niece, Jazmyne, to the school for overnight stays.

Meanwhile, college education was leading to success off the court. Roslyn, a biology major, went on to earn a nursing degree elsewhere and currently works for SCAN Health Plan. As a student, Maria was involved with organizations that sparked her interest in teaching. She now teaches first grade in Compton.

“One of the groups I was active in was the multicultural and international programs, guided by Lucia Haro,” Maria said. “The Students Talk About Racism program allowed me the opportunity for eight weeks of hands-on training in a school setting.”

Although Jazmyne had been on campus as a kid, she decided to stay close to home after high school, attending CSU Long Beach and playing basketball. After her second year, she wanted to transfer and decided to take a look where her mom went and played.

Just as her mother had done when Norm Chung was the women’s basketball coach, Jazmyne took it upon herself to contact current head coach Roy Dow to schedule a visit and take a tour.

“I really enjoyed being on campus, and when I saw the dorm rooms, I was sold,” Jazmyne said.

However, Jazmyne never mentioned to her parents that she had applied or had visited CLU. So when she shared the news that she had been admitted, Roslyn was ecstatic.

“I had to control my emotions because I did not want to influence her decision,” said Roslyn.

Now, Jazmyne, a sociology major like her aunt Maria, is finishing up her tenure on the Regals squad as number 11, the same number that her mother wore through most of her playing career. Jazmyne unknowingly picked the number when she was on a travel team as a child, simply because she had just turned 11 at the time. “I found out that was the same jersey my mom wore so I kept wearing it,” she said.

The Porters’ CLU story may not end with Jazmyne. Younger sister Janelle, who played in a travel basketball tournament in 2006 in the old gym, is a senior at Long Beach Wilson High School and has submitted an application to Cal Lutheran.

Having made the commute from Long Beach to Thousand Oaks too many times to remember, Roslyn said she would not mind continuing that tradition over the next four years.

“Without traffic, the travel time is an hour and 10 minutes,” Roslyn said. “And we have definitely done it enough times to see this whole area transform.”

Brad Bauer (l), chief archivist for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, meets with Jack and Henri Mondschein at Jack’s home in January.

By Carol Keochekian ’81

Henri Mondschein, Ed.D. ’07, an information specialist in Pearson Library, grew up hearing stories about his parents’ harrowing experiences in concentration camps during World War II.

Almost as miraculous as their survival was the fact that Mondschein’s mother, Rose, was able to preserve an autograph book in the Nazi German labor camp Landshut. She was 10 when the Germans came to her home in Sosnowiec, Poland, and shipped her family members to separate concentration camps. Young Rose was forced to work in a munitions factory.

The autograph book was a special treasure, since it contained sentiments written by her father. Her older sisters also wrote entries and drew colorful pictures for Rose, the youngest of six children. During the war years, Rose wore it on a string around her neck, hidden under her clothes. She was able to save it while in the labor camp with the help of other prisoners, who protected the book when she had to undress for group shower.

After Rose passed away this December, Henri and his father, Jack, discovered more of her things dating back to the 1930s: a diary, papers, letters, passports and a heart-shaped memory book. The materials are written in Yiddish, Polish and German.

“My dad believes there is still a diary kept by my mother during the war. We still hope to find it,” Mondschein said.

Now the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., will accept and catalog the collection under Rose’s name, so that it will be available to future generations. When Mondschein wrote to scholars, historian Alan E. Steinweis, who directs a Holocaust studies center at the University of Vermont, encouraged him to donate them.

Assistant professor of chemistry John Tannaci

The Chemistry Department will receive a $500,000 grant for summer fellowships from the John Stauffer Charitable Trust, but only if alumni and friends match that amount within four years.

So far, an anonymous donor has responded to the challenge grant with a $200,000 gift, and the trust has matched that amount.

The goal is for all qualified chemistry students to do research in the summer and present work at professional conferences throughout the year. At the full $1 million of funding, the John Stauffer Research Fellows Program in the Chemical Sciences will allow about 10 students each year to work for eight weeks under faculty supervision. Right now, two or three students conduct summer chemistry projects through the Swenson Science Summer Research Fellowship program.

Items left to CLU by Beyer include two fur coats, mink stoles, a pink Moroccan kaftan with gold metal buttons and loops, and an informal yukata, or variety of kimono.

“Always dressed to the nines,” CLU’s long-serving first employee, Ethel Beyer, regularly donated clothing to help women go out for job interviews, according to former campus pastor Gerry Swanson.

Both that generosity and the sense of style remained in evidence after Beyer’s death last November at the age of 104. She left her estate toward a performing arts building on campus, and, well, just look at the shoulders on that black fur coat.

Since her visit to Beyer’s home to rescue clothing and accessories for the Theatre Arts Department, lecturer Valerie Miller has been getting to know Beyer, whom she never met in person, by way of the “Lady GaGa–esque” longhair coat and other wardrobe highlights.

“She strikes me as a person who was very fashion-forward, someone willing to take a lot of risks with her wardrobe,” said Miller, a theatrical costume specialist who also teaches courses on makeup. “Things that may have been a little avant-garde back in her day are very timely, very trendy right now.”

Along with accessories and two fur coats, Miller retrieved two mink stoles that stare back at you, a pink Moroccan kaftan with gold metal buttons and loops from neck to hem, and an informal yukata, or variety of kimono, that she imagines Beyer used as a dressing gown.

Because Beyer’s “museum-quality” items have historical value and sentimental worth for CLU, Miller won’t be using them in stage productions. She “might consider” loaning a piece or two out for a short time, perhaps to appear in a student film. Miller presides as a kind of lending librarian over a stock of more than 1,000 complete costumes from different eras.

“Students being as they are, and theater being as active and intense as it can be, a lot of clothing, especially vintage clothing, tends to break down. And it would just kill me if any of Ethel’s pieces were destroyed,” she said.

Although Beyer cared about fashion and kept up with trends, she was not one to make big entrances, according to her friend Alan Scott, who was CLU’s registrar for many years. Her sense of style was about elegance and taking care of herself and of things, including eight hats that Miller brought back in their boxes. More often, the department receives “leftovers” as donations – to be sorted with existing bins of fabric, zippers, vintage suits and dresses.

Clothes by no means make the woman, but Beyer’s attention to every article is one reminder of what she brought to CLU in 1957. She “wore out more shoes,” as she remarked, on errands between the ranch house and the chicken coops under renovation. The chicken coops were meant to be temporary, but many years afterward, with a few touches, Swanson said, Beyer could make them “look like executive offices of a Wall Street bank.”

Transfer student Melissa Skiba suited up for the Regals in the fall and soon became the first cross-country All-American in school history. She finished 11th of 263 competitors at nationals in Terre Haute, Ind., to earn the accolade.

Junior Melissa Skiba is the first All-American in Cal Lutheran women’s cross-country history. After putting his name atop seven categories in the CLU record books and being named the SCIAC Offensive Player of the Year, wide receiver Eric Rogers became the sixth First Team selection for Kingsmen football.

In volleyball, 2012 SCIAC Athlete of the Year Kylie McLogan and Shannon Pearson were selected to the First and Third teams, respectively. On the soccer field, sophomore Taylor Will was named the SCIAC Athlete of the Year and went on to earn Second Team accolades. A trio of water polo seniors, Carter Baldwin, Danny Mock and Dejan Novakovic, concluded the season and their careers on a high note, all being named to the Second Team.

Gerhard Apfelthaler

The School of Management’s first new dean in 22 years is an Austrian-born expert on international business who joined the faculty in 2009. In June, Gerhard Apfelthaler will replace the long-serving Charles Maxey, who shepherded the school through a period of tremendous growth. Maxey will continue as a full-time faculty member.

The dean oversees three undergraduate majors and graduate programs ranging from a master’s in computer science to MBAs, serving about 600 undergraduates and 750 graduate students on the main campus, online and in Woodland Hills, Oxnard and Graz, Austria.

Apfelthaler designed the MBA program in Austria and has been a key player in the growth of a full-time international MBA that now has more than 200 students from China, Taiwan, India, Saudi Arabia and European countries. He also helped develop new MBA emphasis tracks in sustainable business and arts management.

Everywhere he looks around the globe, Apfelthaler – a multilingual scholar who has successfully started companies in Austria and the United States – sees not only opportunity, but also a trail of failures. He collects examples of cross-cultural business mistakes and categorizes them, a little facetiously, under labels such as Gluttony and Sloth for a forthcoming book on The Deadly Sins of International Business.

Going forward, the School of Management will need to be “quite dynamic” to respond to competition and other challenges such as massive open online courses (MOOCs). Apfelthaler will be seeking creative ways to bring new experiential learning opportunities, including study abroad, to part-time domestic graduate students who have jobs and families. This spring, for example, an American MBA student took a compressed business course in Austria.

Apfelthaler also hopes to continue the process of whittling the core MBA curriculum down to its essentials, while putting fresh emphasis on areas such as environmental sustainability.

“We’d like to make that core more compact and also make it more appropriate to what the market demands these days,” he said, “and sustainable business is most likely going to be one of the areas that will become part of the core for students.”

• The interim director of ADEP, Lisa Buono, M.S. ’04, Ed.D. ’11, has been named to oversee adult degree and continuing education programs on a permanent basis. Buono is an eight-year veteran of the Counseling and Guidance Program in the Graduate School of Education.
• The Board of Regents in February approved the creation of a Graduate School of Psychology, giving an administrative home to three fast-growing master’s and doctoral programs and to two community counseling clinics that serve more than 400 clients each week in Oxnard and Thousand Oaks.

Program director Victoria Kelly

Expanding CLU’s reach north of Ventura County for the first time last spring, the Graduate School of Education began offering a one-year master’s degree in educational leadership near Santa Maria. With 60 percent of the coursework done on weekends and the rest online, the program is tailored to the needs of fully employed professionals. The first cohort of seven students will graduate in May.

Program director Victoria Kelly cultivates partnerships with school districts all along the Central Coast. Graduate students get additional field experience, and the schools benefit from the creative solutions they bring for everyday problems.

At the Santa Ynez Valley Charter School, Corie Ross helps children in grades three to five with specific weaknesses in reading by asking them to mentor first-graders who are learning the needed skills. Ross downloads games developed by the Florida Reading Research Institute, then prints them and laminates them so that students can use them again and again. She’s also written new guidelines on bullying for the school handbook.

Farther north in Santa Maria, Jennifer Perez works as the dean of activities at St. Joseph High School. For her CLU master’s project, she is preparing teachers there who have been given Apple iPads to use them in the classroom. The Catholic high school plans to purchase iPads for its students as soon as the fall of 2014, and Perez’s project will smooth the transition.

The Master of Arts in Educational Leadership program trains students to serve as principals, directors and superintendents and in leadership positions in teaching, higher education and nonprofit administration. Priority application deadlines are April 1 for the summer semester and July 1 for the fall.

A gauze curtain and stage lights lend texture to Dido and Aeneas, which ran Feb. 28 through March 3 in Preus-Brandt Forum.

The task of preparing more than 20 singers and instrumentalists to stage CLU’s first full-length opera over four nights fell to a mother and daughter, both alumnae, who often work as a musical team. Still, the duo had never produced a show together.

Elizabeth Helms, M.A. ’05, who teaches voice on campus and earned a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Education, and Jessica Helms ’04, who has her CLU degree in music, work together, for example, on a community choir in Ventura which recently performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Elizabeth is the choir director and daughter Jessica accompanies.

For Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the mother-and-daughter team for the first time shared duties equally, helping the director, Heidi Valencia Vas, to identify student talent for the production in only 10 rehearsals. Elizabeth prepared musical scores for the tragic love story, while Jessica played harpsichord and led the string quartet.

Both worked to familiarize young performers with baroque opera.

“Trying to get them comfortable in this different sound world was a large part of it,” said Jessica. “I wasn’t sure how they’d react to it…. They really dove into it, and I would hear them talking about it outside of rehearsal, and they would get with each other and practice alone. That was really gratifying.”

Of the dozen painters and one sculptor who have contributed works to “The Man Show,” which runs through April 18, DaLuz and Hawkes probably are the artists least accustomed to male subjects. Setting aside abstract works by DaLuz with no human figures at all, both of these accomplished artists nearly always paint women. That’s why the request from art professor Michael Pearce, curator at the Kwan Fong, to say something about 21st-century men through their art set both of them thinking.

An Air Force veteran who lives in San Antonio, DaLuz thought about the struggles of men today in their 20s to “find a sense of direction” amid poor job prospects and “conflicting messages” about masculinity: “You know, ‘Don’t be macho. Don’t be a wimp,’” said DaLuz.

Similarly, Hawkes, reached by telephone at home in Birmingham, United Kingdom, observes “a generation of lost men” in her country. “Girls in school, at university, et cetera, are doing so much better, and there doesn’t seem to be the same sort of roles now, a defined role for men,” she said.

Jim Bodie ’98, M.S. ’06

Star Trek reruns got Jim Bodie ’98, M.S. ’06, excited about space exploration. The show gave him hope as a kid that the future would always be better. He identified with Spock, the half-human, half-Vulcan first officer on the starship Enterprise, though not for Spock’s relentlessly logical perspective so much as his creativity.

“Kirk and Spock would get into trouble, and then Spock would have to devise something, make a radio out of something,” remembers Bodie, a test and integration engineer and 13-year veteran of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This isn’t far from what Bodie – who holds CLU computer science degrees from ADEP and the School of Management – does today for space missions and other JPL projects, even using off-the-shelf electronics to build a system around the hardware he’s helping to test.

For the mission that put the Curiosity rover on Mars last August, Bodie and a small team of engineers were responsible for testing the terminal descent sensor, or TDS, the crucial radar system that guided the rover’s rapid descent to the red planet. As nearly as possible, they tested it in real conditions, strapping it onto a helicopter for lower altitudes, and later bolting it onto an F-18 fighter jet’s spare fuel tank, to fly it from 50,000 to 10,000 feet.

Charged with capturing data from the sensor, Bodie also worked to keep people and equipment safe on the field tests in 2009 and 2011. His creativity came to bear in designing systems around the sensor, for example when he had to reverse-engineer an inexpensive Ethernet temperature monitor to make sure the TDS wouldn’t overheat.

Aug. 5, 2012, was a moment of truth for hundreds of engineers working on the Mars mission. More than eight months after launching from Earth, the entry vehicle falling to Mars discarded its heat shield, exposing the TDS, which began relaying data about speed and altitude. Radio waves take long minutes to travel back and forth between Mars and Earth, so a computer on board had to make decisions about when to deploy steps in the intricate seven-minute landing process, which involved a parachute, retrorockets and a delicate crane maneuver.

By the time of Curiosity’s historic landing, however, Bodie was on to new challenges. He’s always learning. Not only did he work to pay his way through community college and the associate’s degree he earned in 1987 – for a time selling tropical fish and later servicing copy machines – but he also continued to pursue his formal education after landing his first engineering job. With many college credits under his belt and strong encouragement from his wife, he responded to an ad from ADEP.

Bodie says his nontraditional collegiate experience “gave me a lot of confidence to speak in front of groups. ADEP was small enough that the instructor had a chance to talk to everyone and help everyone out.” He stuck with CLU and earned his master’s degree while already a JPL engineer.

“This is a dream place,” said Bodie of the Pasadena-based space sciences center. “I don’t know where you go from here. Hopefully, I’m able to get in different areas and different avenues of design work and electronics and computer science.”

Bodie advises young people to diversify their expertise and be willing to accept something less than an ideal position, as long as they can find a strong organization: “If you get yourself in there and start learning the culture, who knows what will happen down the road.”

The Office of Campus Ministry is offering a new menu of suggestions designed to provide a pause, or mini-Sabbath, for the whole CLU community on Thursday mornings at 11:15 – or whenever you can find a moment. 

University Pastor Melissa Maxwell-Doherty and senior Jesse McClain, last year’s Associated Students of CLU president, have worked for two years on changes to the 24-hour meditation chapel located directly under Samuelson Chapel’s steeple. This fall, with help from the ASCLU Senate, Lord of Life student congregation, and Facility Operations and Planning, they oversaw the construction of a labyrinth behind Samuelson Chapel for walking and contemplation.

Other than the new day and time, how is Chapel hour different this year?

Jesse: I’ve enjoyed working on this shift from Chapel hour to Sabbath hour. We’re saying, “We would love for you to come to University Chapel and be part of that community, but if that’s not your thing, we have resources for you to use.” Most importantly, it’s a time to take off. You shouldn’t work or study during this hour.

Melissa: The change of schedule gave us an opportunity to rethink again: what resources can we provide to encourage people to stop? We’re offering suggestions of ways to pause, to Sabbath, to unplug, to reflect – to breathe in your body, mind and heart.

This is very countercultural, but it’s consistent with the Judeo-Christian heritage. “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.”

Maybe today, in our world, it’s not so much about taking a whole 24-hour day. Maybe today it makes sense for us to think about “Sabbaths.”

What are some of the things people can do?

Jesse: We’ve created meditation walks around campus, we’ve revamped our Wennes Meditation Chapel this summer, and we’ve done a lot of work to create an open hour for people to do different things.

Can alumni living far from campus participate somehow in this Thursday Sabbath?

Jesse: Even if it’s 15-minute Sabbaths throughout the week, you can still take that 15 minutes. You can still just be quiet or do something that’s for you in the middle of your workday. There are lots of things you can do while sitting at your desk that are incredibly refreshing.

Melissa: I’ve been given little finger labyrinths to do while sitting. This summer, we discovered an online labyrinth with music and prompts. I’m quite sure that if I were wearing a cuff, my blood pressure would have gone down.

Tell me about the labyrinth on the Chapel grounds. I mean, it sounds like a good place to get lost.

Melissa: It’s different from a maze. A maze you come in and out of in different ways; something might be hidden; you don’t know where the ending is. A labyrinth you walk in, and then you’re in the center, and you walk out.

Jesse: There are no tricks. There are no dead ends. There’s one path, but how you walk it can change every time – depending on attitude, depending on focus, depending on what you’re feeling that day.

Now it sounds like a trail.

Melissa: It’s an ancient device and practice of walking. Probably the most famous labyrinth is at the Cathedral of Chartres in France. That one is very large, maybe 24 loops, and has areas shaped kind of like roses. We went with one that fit the space behind the Chapel, with I think 14 loops.

Jesse: Twelve. There are six on each side.

Melissa: And then there’s the center, which is about three widths of a path in size. At some point, we’re going to put something there in the center. But it’s also meant so that you can sit and ponder.

What made you want to put a labyrinth here?

Melissa: This is not the first labyrinth we’ve had on campus. [Art professor] Michael Pearce’s class put one up, of rocks, near Nygreen, and that was there for a time. At Scandinavian festival one year, he put one out in the grassy area between the creek and the library.

Our synod, our ELCA region, has had a labyrinth. It comes in a sort of Christmas tree box, and you set it up in three pieces. We had people walk the labyrinth in Overton.

More and more places are putting them in as a tool of contemplation: a lot of hospitals and churches. An alum in the Bay area tells us they’ve put in a concrete labyrinth outside their church. Anybody walking out in the street can use it. The church of another alum out in Palm Desert had put in a labyrinth when the University Choir went there this past year.

What do you like about labyrinths?

Melissa: Walking a labyrinth, I have this sense in my body that, oh, I’m arriving. And then, I’m actually thrust outward again.

Do you ever think, I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve got it? And then you’re in the path of life and you think, Oh my gosh, I didn’t learn that at all. I’m still a work in process. Life is like a path.

Jesse: Life is a path.

How has the Meditation Chapel changed?

Jesse: It’s been a long process. We added, for example, holy books from different traditions, Qurans in English and Arabic, incense, prayer rugs, books about prayer. Part of it is that we have a growing number of Muslim students on campus, and they really don’t have a space where they can go pray when they need to, so we’re trying to create that.

But the Meditation Chapel is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it’s for anyone who wants to use it.

Are the changes, overall, meant to stress an interfaith approach?

Melissa: That’s definitely a Lutheran way of living in the world, and we’re very blessed in this community to have so many different faith traditions.

I’d say we’re doing two things. We remain committed to a bold proclamation of the Christian gospel and, at the same time, a radical welcome and inclusion to those of all faiths, or none at all. I think if one just says, “CLU is doing interfaith,” it really misses the creative way we live here together.

Photo by Tracy Maple

Head softball coach Debby Day has more than the ordinary desire to win. She believes that she has problems, “seriously – can’t-go-shoot-baskets-with-my-friends problems.” Competitive is not the word. In fact, there is no single word for it. Day is “don’t-lose-at-Candyland-to-my-daughter-when-she-was-3-years-old competitive. But that’s made me who I am as a pitcher.”

In August, Day became the first woman to pitch a winning game at the NAFA (North American Fastpitch Association) World Series, the largest event in men’s softball. Actually, she won three games as a starter at the “A” tournament in Topeka, Kan., including a two-hit shutout, with her team Balboa Fastpitch. Day played professional softball in Japan, and she pitched the University of Arizona women’s team to the 1991 national championship.

Her “men’s career” started 15 years ago when local women’s league competition wasn’t satisfying for her and a teammate’s boyfriend asked her to join his team. From the beginning, it was a hard adjustment for some of the boys. Nobody threw fruit at her, but she has endured name-calling and carefully aimed verbal digs, as the first woman at many a tournament.

“Guys joke differently than girls, and there’s always a little bit of truth behind their joking,” she explained. Not to mention the players who balk. Up to the night before the NAFA series began, a few of the younger men in their 20s were “saying they weren’t going to play against us if there were girls out there.” Day also plays on a 40-and-over team, where the ball players are far more likely to send photos of her to their daughters.

The key to it all is to perform, she says, “hitting the catcher exactly where they want it, every time” – because “winning silences critics.”

“I’m a little fiery when I play. I tell my [Regals] girls, ‘Don’t come watch me,’ because I’d probably get in trouble,” Day said, cracking up. “They’d make me run, I think.”

Mark Glesne ’03

The CLU Alumni Association Board of Directors is pleased to recognize Mark Glesne as the 2012 Outstanding Young Alumnus.

Glesne graduated in 2003 with a major in communication (advertising/public relations) and a minor in sociology. Three years later, the young entrepreneur founded Neutral Dive Gear, a scuba diving lifestyle apparel brand, which he still owns and operates. He currently is Web marketing director at Bed|Stü, a footwear and accessories company headquartered in Camarillo.

An Iraq War combat veteran, Glesne served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2005 to 2011. He is a member of Calvary Chapel Thousand Oaks, where he plays bass guitar on the worship team and serves Sunday evenings as the preaching pastor for Upstream, the college and young adult ministry programs.

As an alumnus, Glesne continues to take seriously CLU’s mission and places a top priority on maintaining a connection to the University. Many current students and faculty know him as CLU’s stern-yet-loving Fitness Boot Camp Instructor, as well as a private personal trainer and nutrition counselor. He has volunteered his time speaking to various student groups on topics relating to business, fitness and nutrition, matters of faith, and politics.

Glesne and his wife, Corissa (Gall ’05), live in Thousand Oaks with their sons, Ethan and Asher.

Tell us about the extraordinary alumni you know!

Heather Taylor ’10 (center) hired interns Kelsey Goeres and James de Haan ’11 from CLU. De Haan is pictured on a visit home to California from his studies in Ireland.

As a communication major with an emphasis in journalism, Heather Taylor ’10 did not know her Web writing addiction would become a career until MyCorporation in Calabasas, Calif., hired her as its first social media manager. She certainly didn’t expect to be supervising her own CLU interns two years after graduation.

MyCorporation helps small businesses incorporate and form LLCs, and supports entrepreneurs applying for trademarks and copyrights. In her new job, Taylor gets to do what she loves – writing and lots of it – every day. Maintaining social media for the company is a constant job, so when her boss, CEO Deborah Sweeney (a CLU regent), suggested she hire interns to spread out the workload, she jumped at the chance.

James de Haan ’11, a graduate student in Ireland, responded to Taylor’s Facebook post and became her first telecommuting employee, making the nine-hour time difference work to the company’s benefit. CLU senior Kelsey Goeres rounded out the team.

“It’s really wonderful to have the opportunity to hire amazing people. You need to be prepared when life hands you these opportunities and be ready for them,” Taylor says. “While I knew both of them at CLU, we have been working together for over a year now, and it’s great. I try to be the kind of boss I would want to work for.”

Beyond the day job, Taylor freelances for HelloGiggles.com, a website for women founded by actor and musician Zooey Deschanel, and covers events and interviews celebrities for BettyConfidential.com.

She has advice for recent grads working in jobs that are less than they’d hoped for. “It won’t last forever,” she says. “Don’t give up. Keep working hard, be patient and stay optimistic, and your luck will turn around in your favor.”

Tricia Johnson ’11 with her third grade class in Honduras last year.

Tricia Johnson ’11, Campbell, Calif., is an Amigos Fellow in El Salvador with EcoViva, an organization that supports environmental sustainability, social justice and peace in Central America.

“I have always been passionate about sustainable, community-based development and this experience has reaffirmed that,” she said. “Dealing with so many different communities and ideas can be difficult, but it is incredibly rewarding to see the finished product, whether it is a cooperative dedicated to sustainable fishing practices, or a community-based resource management plan.”

Johnson took an interest in sustainable development as a volunteer with Amigos de las Américas in Nicaragua, where she lived with a host family and facilitated community-based projects. She studied Spanish in Guanajuato, Mexico, for a semester and worked on the program staff at the Cuernavaca Center for Intercultural Dialogue on Development, facilitating discussions and workshops on social justice issues. She also interned with the Guatemala Human Rights Commission in Washington, D.C. After graduating, she spent a year teaching at a bilingual school in San Marcos, Ocotepeque, Honduras.

In El Salvador, Johnson is EcoViva’s eyes and ears on the ground. She gathers information about projects, attends meetings, writes blogs and takes pictures.

“Because of my time at CLU, I am here living in El Salvador, working in the position I always dreamed of,” said Johnson, who has decided to extend her time with EcoViva through April.

“Wherever I am, I know that I want Spanish to be a big part of my work, whether that means working here in Latin America or back home with immigrant communities,” added the young alumna. She credits her CLU professors, mentors and friends for encouraging her to go out and do whatever she felt called to do.

To read her posts and view photos, go to http://vivaecoviva.wordpress.com/author/triciajohnson13/.

Last year Troy Tittlemier of Palmdale, Calif., told his girlfriend, Aimee St. Pierre, that she would have to read the letter aloud to him when it finally came from CLU. It mattered so much that he wouldn’t be able to look.

In a way, he meant what he said. Tittlemier, now a 26-year-old junior majoring in geology, realized late that he wanted to become the first person in his family to get a college education. He set his mind on CLU while attending Moorpark College and recovering from a 2009 motorcycle accident that, in nearly killing him, gave him “different goggles for looking at my own life.” So, yes, he’d been anxious about the admission decision, and the award of a substantial academic scholarship.

But in truth, Tittlemier had another, better reason to feel nervous on the evening of Oct. 26, 2011. Unbeknownst to St. Pierre, he’d already tucked away the real admission letter as she – in his aunt and uncle’s kitchen, in front of family members who were in on the conspiracy – began reading from a fabricated letter that arrived with the thick bundle of materials welcoming him for the spring of 2012.

A few paragraphs into the letter from CLU, in words that Tittlemier had inserted there, a baffled St. Pierre indicated that it was time to pop the question. He knelt and proposed, she exhaled something signifying yes, and the couple was married on June 9 of this year. (Her painfully real surprise is recorded in a home video.)

Setting aside how he won her heart, how did Tittlemier get CLU to stuff a customized letter into a real admission packet?

More than two years ago, he started contacting Ineke Dyer, now CLU’s associate director of admission, about transferring. Informally, she would become his academic adviser, charting the path for his successful application.

“I would say I knew what I wanted more than if I was 19. Private [college] was definitely the way I wanted to go,” he said.

Gradually, both Tittlemier and Dyer gained a lot of confidence about his chances of being accepted, and he “just kind of sprung the idea that the acceptance letter could be manipulated.”

Dyer wasn’t sure she could get permission for the stunt, but Tittlemier’s enthusiasm about CLU made her want to try. “He just bled purple and gold,” she said.

Ryan Townsend Strand ’12

For his first album, Ryan Townsend Strand ’12 received a lot of help from his friends, and some more from strangers. Mending Split Seconds, which incorporates songs Strand first sang at his senior recital at CLU, blends the classic with the contemporary, in two cycles of songs on separate themes.

The first cycle, “Songs of Travel” by composer Vaughan Williams, features Jessica Helms ’04 on piano, and the second, “Mending Split Seconds,” consists of specially commissioned work by composer Skyler Butenshon ’11. Sarah Behymer ’12 served as the audio engineer at the studio with the responsibilities of recording and mixing the music.

Strand raised funds for the project through a 45-day campaign on the website Kickstarter.

“Producing the CD was a great experience – especially being able to work on a professional album with friends of mine. I devoted my whole summer to the project, finding the studio to rent, seeing that the pianos were tuned and recording the music. And I had to start my own publishing company with ASCAP. I learned a lot about the recording industry. Now I understand why artists don’t do it themselves!” said

Strand, referring to promotion and marketing.

Strand majored in vocal performance and music education at CLU and is now pursuing his master’s degree in vocal performance at Northwestern University. He wants to collaborate again with composers of contemporary classical vocal music as a tenor soloist.

Alumni who wish to purchase the CD can find it on Amazon and iTunes.

“The music you will hear is timeless, and the emotions that are invoked can connect with people of all musical backgrounds,” said Strand.

My first trip to Haiti was a pretty clear sign of God working in my life. I knew I couldn’t go home and just forget what I’d seen.

By Rebecca Costa Smith ’08

A random act brought me to travel to Haiti in 2007. While visiting a new church one Sunday in Valencia, Calif., I responded to an announcement: everyone who was going to Haiti needed to pay in full by 10 a.m. It was 9:45, and I wasn’t sure where Haiti was or what the conditions were like there. I really knew nothing. But for some reason I had this feeling and felt this calling that I was supposed to go on this trip. So I wrote the check.

The beginning of the trip was really hard, and I wanted to go home… until our visit to the Mother Teresa Orphanage. Not just any orphanage but an orphanage overflowing with very sick infants.

That brief visit changed my heart and my life.

It was the silence that got to me. There were 90 kids 2 years old and younger all under one roof, but hardly any sound. The kids were weak and undernourished. Some were HIV positive. Some had been abandoned and left to die by parents who had no hope for them.

I was overcome with sadness for what I saw, and at that point, I knew I could not go home and just forget about it.

My life did not change right away. I went home, finished my last semester at CLU, and then took a job as a personal assistant with a wealthy family. That job showed me what I didn’t want in life.

After I quit the job, my best friend, Lindsey Connolly, and I got together to plan our next move. Even though she had never been to Haiti, she’d read a lot about it and wanted to help me to start a school there. Alarmingly high numbers of children in Haiti are not enrolled in school.

Lindsey and I, who’d grown up together in Santa Barbara, had college degrees but no experience whatsoever in business or teaching. To raise funds for our new nonprofit, we held rummage sales at home. When we saw how much stuff we could gather and sell, we decided to have rummage sales every day by opening a thrift store. The idea was to save money to start a school in the city of Mirebalais, about 40 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince.

The Ecole Destined for Grace opened its doors in October 2011, three years after we opened our first thrift shop. The school provides instruction and a hot meal every day for 150 boys and girls from kindergarten through fourth grade. Each child is sponsored by a U.S. family, and money from the stores makes up the difference in the cost of their education.

My husband, Tyron Smith, Lindsey and I all work full time for the nonprofit. We’ve developed a strong community within our little school, which has a staff of 15 Haitian educators, cooks and groundskeepers. The kids – who come running for our van when we return every four months – are genuinely grateful, and that helps us keep doing what we’re doing.

On the first few trips, it was still hard for Lindsey and me to get images of Haiti’s burdens and afflictions out of our heads. But since then, we’ve both gradually understood that we do not feel sorry for the people there. They really have so much more than we have: not things, but family and support systems. You walk by these little huts in the mud and see a family of eight all hanging out together. They’re not looking at Facebook on their phones or otherwise failing to communicate.

In spite of the language barrier and our different backgrounds, the Haitian staff, students and families have become a great support system for us. We work together, trust one another and have fruitful relationships.

I think that my first trip to Haiti was a pretty clear sign of God working in my life. Going to a Third World country was not something I would have typically done. It did not fit into my lifestyle then, but has now become my life. In the end it made me realize there was a lot more to life than meeting my own needs and doing things for myself.

Rebecca Costa Smith and her partners at Destined for Grace take 15-20 volunteers to the school in Mirebalais, Haiti, three times a year. The next trip is in March. For more about the school and Santa Barbara–area thrift stores, visit www.destinedforgrace.org.

Email ideas and submissions for Vocations to kevinm@callutheran.edu.

Kirsten (Bodding ’64) and Karsten Lundring ’65

Kirsten and Karsten Lundring were passionately involved in music while pursuing other academic majors at California Lutheran College. Both were active members of the Concert Choir under the direction of founding CLC music faculty member Robert Zimmerman and continued to sing with “Dr. Z” in a CLU alumni ensemble called The Californians.

Karsten was one of the original members of the Kingsmen Quartet, a men’s a cappella quartet that continues to perform together today. Kirsten accompanied children’s choirs for many years and was pianist for the Thousand Oaks Rotary club for more than 25 years. She also sang in a small group of six women called The Ensemble. They continue to perform annual Memorial Day concerts with The Sherwood Singers, conducted by CLU music professor emeritus Elmer Ramsey, and are members of the Chancel Choir at Ascension Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks.

Both Kirsten and Karsten have been exemplary supporters of CLU’s Music Department, attending almost every concert during the last several decades, hosting events in their home and making significant financial contributions to the department, including the Lundring Family Music Scholarship.

Rebekah Hale ’03, a teacher candidate in the Graduate School of Education, introduces an eighth-grade English class at Los Cerritos Middle School to the complex ideas behind medieval alchemy, using techniques pioneered by CLU’s Project Act. “This is the kind of purposeful play I want to bring to my classroom,” she said.

A CLU Graduate School of Education initiative to use drama techniques to teach any school subject won this year’s Ventura County Arts Council Art Stars Award for Arts Education. The award for Project ACT, launched in 2008 with a $1 million U.S. Department of Education grant, was presented on Oct. 3.

Under the program, based on 15 years of research by associate professor of education Michael McCambridge and professor emerita Julia Sieger, teachers incorporate drama into their lesson plans. Instead of sitting for quizzes, children demonstrate that they’ve understood a science unit or a short story with movements, pantomime or improvisation.

“It’s not about acting. It’s about using these techniques to teach the content,” explained McCambridge. He and Sieger found that “the more active [the students] are, the better they understand the concepts.”

Project ACT (Active, Collaborative, Transformative) has been expanding beyond elementary schools in Moorpark to other parts of Ventura County and, this year, to middle schools.

On the morning before the awards presentation, McCambridge was at Los Cerritos Middle School in Thousand Oaks observing two English classes. Seventh-graders posed in a series of dramatic tableaus that they invented to illustrate the opening chapter of Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Their teacher, Gina Mandell, M.Ed. ’06, has been learning McCambridge’s drama-centered
approach for three years.

“It’s kinesthetic, it’s visual, it’s auditory learning – so all modalities are being accessed,” she said.

McCambridge pointed out that Mandell’s students were given time to talk with one another about the chapter and then to plan their tableaus. “Studies show that students talk to each other about three minutes a day,” he said. “Here, they talk to each other constantly.”

So a legacy continues. It was Gilbert who effectively initiated the building boom that continues on campus today. He made his first gift in 1985 and contributed mightily to the capital campaign that was launched in 1999. In addition to the Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center and Gilbert Arena, which opened in 2006, many CLU facilities and programs “that do not bear his name exist because of his support,” said President Chris Kimball. “The University’s success over the last decade is due in large part to Jack’s vision and commitment.”

Gilbert was chairman of the board of Zero Corp. and, later, TOLD Corp., a former member of the CLU Board of Regents, a self-made, self-educated entrepreneur, the owner of one of the first Social Security cards issued in 1936 with the New Deal, and a great smoker of fine cigars. He was the first recipient of the Hall of Fame Award presented by the Ventura County Economic Development Association in 1989 and, in 2010, was inducted into the Tri-County Business Hall of Fame. He received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from CLU in 1990.

In a community service activity during orientation, more than 600 freshmen, new transfers and peer advisers removed an invasive species called ice plant from Ventura Harbor wetlands and began replacing it with native species.

Enrollment at CLU stands at an all-time high of 2,804 undergraduates and 1,401 graduate students. Overall, that’s more than a 100-student increase from last year, including jumps in the numbers of undergraduate transfer students and international students.

“When it really came down to it, I had to think about what was going to be the right fit for me,” said Gurpreet Sahan, who transferred from Moorpark College to major in psychology.

CLU admitted 264 transfer students this fall, up eight percent from last year and 57 percent from four years ago. More than a quarter (27 percent) of the traditional undergraduates currently studying at CLU arrived on campus as transfers.

Including all undergraduate and graduate programs, one in nine CLU students today is a citizen of another country.

Even as CLU attracts more students, it is accepting a smaller percentage of undergraduates (44 percent) and climbing in the closely watched U.S. News & World Report college rankings. This year the University leaped four spots to 14th among regional universities in 15 Western states.

A reserved, dignified and somewhat offbeat figure, Sladek practiced conservation and “invented recycling before anyone knew what it was,” said former Graduate School of Education dean Allen Leland, who recruited Sladek to the college. The professor was seen on campus collecting cans for recycling during his last days. He is survived by his wife, Patricia, four daughters and three grandchildren.

The comments about Sladek included here have been collected from interviews, the Kingsmen Regal Facebook page, and other memorials and articles published on the Web.

“Lyle was a mathematician. He applied math to the world around him to help neighbors and friends in so many practical ways and to impart to his students a guide to teaching and using math in everyday living.”
Allen Leland, former dean, Graduate School of Education

“Dr. Sladek was kind and giving. He taught me an advanced math course during breakfast one semester when I was just not getting it from another professor. He said, ‘Michelle, please meet me for breakfast every day at 7 a.m. We will discuss the important topics.’”
Michelle (Campos ’92, M.P.A. ’99) Blas

“Lyle had a distinct place in my mind as an example of living with graceful simplicity, in harmony with the environment and being physically active. I never saw him in a car or rushing to a place or forgetting to say hi to everyone.”
Jamshid Damooei, professor of economics

“Lyle was on the first faculty committee of which I was a member when I first came to CLC in 1982. I learned then that we were both Army veterans and he shared his story with me briefly. I remember that he played pool with students in the SUB and because of his knowledge of geometry would usually win. He had a very dry wit and would laugh with his whole body.”
Michael Arndt, professor of theatre arts

“I still remember playing pool with him in the student union and it turning into a lesson in angles, etc.”
Mario M. Rodriguez ’86

“I remember that he had a great sense of humor. He always came into the geology offices to tell jokes. He was from South Dakota, so he loved this one: Q. What was the best thing about Custer’s Last Stand? A: He didn’t have to go back through South Dakota.”
Linda Ritterbush, professor of geology

“Bronze that bike and place it in Kingsmen Park.”
Cory Hughes ’86

“I would often run into Lyle at Trader Joe’s. He would pump his bike over there and park it. He wanted a fresh banana with no spots every morning.”
Mary Hekhuis, M.P.A. ’80

“I became curious about the old man in the cafeteria, the only one who came every morning. I was 56. At breakfast or at the library, we talked about politics, his life on the farm in South Dakota and his experiences. I visited him every time I came back to CLU.”
Masamichi “Michi” Kira ’03, former student from Japan

This ambitious affair, dubbed TRAC 2012 for The Representational Art Conference, zeroed in on 21st-century uses of the hard-won skills of master painters and sculptors. Associate professor Michael Pearce, department chair and conference co-organizer with Michael Lynn Adams ’72, argues that “contemporary traditional art” receives far less attention than it deserves both from galleries and the academy.

In an address kicking off the gathering, New Republic art critic Jed Perl dropped ice water on the idea that modernism or abstraction has been the enemy of representation in art. Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian and Miró emerged yet again as heroes, while “Warholism” came in for criticism as a “one-two punch kind of art, that hit you with an idea and that was about it.”

Perl showed a broad appreciation for representational artists, but reserved choice terms of abuse for those who, while they may be able to imitate human forms and faces, have no traffic with tradition.

“Representation’s great claim on the arts is not in the way that it connects an artist to reality, so much as in the way that it connects an artist to traditions that engage with reality…” Perl said. “Reality itself can’t be your lifeboat.”

Near the back of the room, Kimberly Frassett, the owner of Masterpiece Classical Academy in Huntington Beach, Calif., sought to capture Perl’s speaking presence – his head inclined at the high podium – in a pencil sketch which she surrounded with her notes.

“People are often thinking I’m not paying attention, especially if I’m drawing,” she said afterward. “I can’t really focus unless my hands are doing something.”

CLU is phasing out the old Web Mail interface.

No matter when you went to CLU, you can get your own name@callutheran.edu email address. If you like Gmail or want to try it out, now is the time to request an account. Starting this fall, current students and alumni are getting CLU-branded Google accounts with the Gmail interface, and with messages old and new sitting on Google’s servers instead of CLU’s.

According to Julius Bianchi, associate provost for Information Systems and Services (ISS), the University did not make the change for the small savings on data storage. Instead, the idea was to improve service by retiring the old Web Mail interface and giving all current students access to Google’s suite of apps for classroom collaboration. In the near future, professors will be able to include their students automatically in online groups using these apps.

Perhaps best of all, these educational accounts are free of commercials, Bianchi said. Neither current students nor alumni will be presented with the narrow, horizontal band of clickable advertisements that Gmail users are accustomed to seeing or mentally blocking.

Alumni who never had CLU email accounts or who lost access to them since college can start again by sending a message to helpdesk@callutheran.edu.

High-flying wide receiver Eric Rogers broke a school record with his 26th touchdown catch on Sept. 29. Also this season, he set new marks for the Kingsmen in career receiving yards and career receptions.

In a season of milestones, the Kingsmen football team notched the 300th win in program history on Sept. 29, against Pomona-Pitzer, and a fifth consecutive victory over the rival University of Redlands Bulldogs on Oct. 6.

The win over Redlands was sweetest and, this year, earned Cal Lutheran a special prize. Head coach Ben McEnroe had proposed having the two SCIAC powerhouses play, henceforth, for the Smudge Pot, a trophy that celebrates the citrus industries in Ventura and San Bernardino counties.

Redlands accepted his good-natured challenge, with the final result that CLU took home a retired smudge pot – an oil-burning heater once used to keep frost away from orchards – to paint violet and gold and keep until next year’s contest.

It was University Pastor Melissa Maxwell-Doherty’s idea to constuct a labyrinth behind Samuelson Chapel. Students Shireen Ismail, Jamie Morriss, Jae Park and Mollie Winninger, and the Windham-Hughes family, walked the path for this long-exposure photo.

University Pastor Melissa Maxwell-Doherty and senior Jesse McClain, last year’s Associated Students of CLU president, have worked for two years on changes to the 24-hour meditation chapel located directly under Samuelson Chapel’s steeple. This fall, with help from the ASCLU Senate, Lord of Life student congregation, and Facility Operations and Planning, they oversaw the construction of a labyrinth behind Samuelson Chapel for walking and contemplation.

Other than the new day and time, how is Chapel hour different this year?
Jesse: I’ve enjoyed working on this shift from Chapel hour to Sabbath hour. We’re saying, “We would love for you to come to University Chapel and be part of that community, but if that’s not your thing, we have resources for you to use.” Most importantly, it’s a time to take off, an open hour for people to do different things. You shouldn’t work or study during this hour.
Melissa: The change of schedule gave us an opportunity to rethink again: what resources can we provide to encourage people to stop? We’re offering suggestions of ways to pause, to Sabbath, to unplug, to reflect – to breathe in your body, mind and heart.
This is very countercultural, but it’s consistent with the Judeo-Christian heritage. “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.”
Maybe today, in our world, it’s not so much about taking a whole 24-hour day. Maybe today it makes sense for us to think about “Sabbaths.”

What are some of the things people can do?
Jesse: We’ve created meditation walks around campus, we’ve revamped our Wennes Meditation Chapel this summer, and we’ve done a lot of work to create an open hour for people to do different things.

Can alumni living far from campus participate somehow in this Thursday Sabbath?
Jesse: Even if it’s 15-minute Sabbaths throughout the week, you can still take that 15 minutes. You can still just be quiet or do something that’s for you in the middle of your workday. There are lots of things you can do while sitting at your desk that are incredibly refreshing.
Melissa: I’ve been given little finger labyrinths to do while sitting. This summer, we discovered an online labyrinth with music and prompts. I’m quite sure that if I were wearing a cuff, my blood pressure would have gone down.

Tell me about the labyrinth on the Chapel grounds. I mean, it sounds like a good place to get lost.
Melissa: It’s different from a maze. A maze you come in and out of in different ways; something might be hidden; you don’t know where the ending is. A labyrinth you walk in, and then you’re in the center, and you walk out.
Jesse: There are no tricks. There are no dead ends. There’s one path, but how you walk it can change every time – depending on attitude, depending on focus, depending on what you’re feeling that day.

Now it sounds like a trail.
Melissa: It’s an ancient device and practice of walking. Probably the most famous labyrinth is at the Cathedral of Chartres in France. That one is very large, maybe 24 loops, and has areas shaped kind of like roses. We went with one that fit the space behind the Chapel, with I think 14 loops.
Jesse: Twelve. There are six on each side.
Melissa: And then there’s the center, which is about three widths of a path in size. At some point, we’re going to put something there in the center. But it’s also meant so that you can sit and ponder.

What made you want to put a labyrinth here?
Melissa: This is not the first labyrinth we’ve had on campus. [Art professor] Michael Pearce’s class put one up, of rocks, near Nygreen, and that was there for a time. At Scandinavian Festival one year, he put one out in the grassy area between the creek and the library.
Our synod, our ELCA region, has had a labyrinth. It comes in a sort of Christmas tree box, and you set it up in three pieces. We had people walk the labyrinth in Overton.
More and more places are putting them in as a tool of contemplation: a lot of hospitals and churches. An alum in the Bay Area tells us they’ve put in a concrete labyrinth outside their church. Anybody walking out in the street can use it. The church of another alum out in Palm Desert had put in a labyrinth when the University Choir went there this past year.

What do you like about labyrinths?
Melissa: Walking a labyrinth, I have this sense in my body that, oh, I’m arriving. And then, I’m actually thrust outward again.
Do you ever think, I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve got it? And then you’re in the path of life and you think, Oh my gosh, I didn’t learn that at all. I’m still a work in process. Life is like a path.
Jesse: Life is a path.

How has the Meditation Chapel changed?
Jesse: It’s been a long process. We added, for example, holy books from different traditions, Qurans in English and Arabic, incense, prayer rugs, books about prayer. Part of it is that we have a growing number of Muslim students on campus, and they really don’t have a space where they can go pray when they need to, so we’re trying to create that.
But the Meditation Chapel is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it’s for anyone who wants to use it.

Are the changes, overall, meant to stress an interfaith approach?
Melissa: That’s definitely a Lutheran way of living in the world, and we’re very blessed in this community to have so many different faith traditions.
I’d say we’re doing two things. We remain committed to a bold proclamation of the Christian gospel and, at the same time, a radical welcome and inclusion to those of all faiths, or none at all. I think if one just says, “CLU is doing interfaith,” it really misses the creative way we live here together.

Biology professor Barbara Collins chose her direction in life and has shown almost 50 years of CLU students how to do likewise.

A student struggling to keep up on one of biology professor Barbara J. Collins’ nature hikes gave her the title for her new memoir: “Dr. Collins, you sure do lead a mean trail.”

And she has. The girl from Passaic, N.J., went away to live two years in Germany, earn a Ph.D. in geology, become an expert botanist in Illinois, and teach full time with five young children and no such thing as maternity leave. She climbed mountains, took students on field trips to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii and California’s deserts, and continued to teach way past retirement age. The 83-year-old’s stories are full of love, sadness and laughter.

The following are excerpts from You Lead a Mean Trail: Life Adventures and Fifty Years of Teaching, published this year by Lutheran University Press.

Early years in New Jersey
I received dolls for Christmas, while my brother got boy things: an electric train, an erector set, and one year, a chemistry set. I can remember what he got because I wanted those things too. Without them, as a result, my education in manual dexterity and putting things together was terribly lacking. After my brother went off to school, though, I took over his chemistry set. Many of the reagents had been used up, but there were still enough left for me to have fun.

Marriage proposal
It was in late April, around the time of my birthday, that we went out driving in the park. Larry had an old Buick, and afterwards, we stopped in front of my house to talk for a bit. We would often do this, chatting for a bit about classes or things we liked to do. Then Larry said, “I hope that sometime we can live together.”
That was pretty vague, I must admit, but I took it to mean a marriage proposal, and I quickly accepted it. We were engaged and would get married!

Five children later, disabling the television set
It was about a month later that we finally told the kids that we had purposely broken the TV. I think the kids understood why we had pulled the plug. For me, it was the best thing that we ever did. Greg came home and read or went out to play instead of plopping in front of the set. That year was the first of a whole series of years that Greg got straight A’s in his classes.

Travel study to Australia and New Zealand
Now it was back to Auckland and home. By this time I was getting attached to the kids. It was like they were all my own children. Some people in New Zealand actually thought they were all mine. At one of the camps that we stayed at, I announced that I had 16 kids. You can imagine the looks that I got. One guy wanted to know where the lady with the 16 kids was going to stay because he wanted to go elsewhere.

Cracking glass ceilings
When growing up, I never remember seeing a pregnant woman. Maybe it was an unwritten rule that a pregnant woman was not to be seen…. Dr. Strunk, the head of the department in 1964…informed me that there was a rule saying you could not teach if you were pregnant. I commented that if I had known, I would have continued teaching at Northridge. After speaking to the administration, he called me in and said that I would be able to teach. He had told them that if the students had not seen a pregnant woman by now, it was about time they did. So times were changing and I was in the forefront of this change.

Leading a mean trail
Looking back, the comment from one of my students, “Dr. Collins, you sure do lead a mean trail,” begins to make sense in more than one way. That statement was particularly true for the time in which I grew up. The road I followed was different from the expected. Science was not a field that most women pursued. My love for athletics and competition did not really fit in with the role for females at the time either. Maybe it was a mean trail receiving a Ph.D. degree in a field that women rarely pursued. No one in my family had received a Ph.D. degree, and certainly not any women. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that I was the first female at the University of Illinois to get a Ph.D. degree in the field of geology.

When regular season play ended on Oct. 27 for both of the nationally ranked women’s teams, the Regals soccer and volleyball squads stood in very similar, very enviable positions. Each team had earned its third straight regular-season Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference title. Both were the top seeds in the SCIAC Tournament for the third straight year. And both had suffered only one loss in conference play.

Jordan on Sept. 3 following the medal ceremony for the 100-meter freestyle. She also took silver in the 50 and 400 freestyle events, and bronze in the 100-meter backstroke.

Senior Cortney Jordan takes three silvers and a bronze at the London Paralympics, matching her haul from 2008.

By Kevin Matthews

Although senior Cortney Jordan comes from a family of competitive swimmers, she was reluctant to take up the sport herself as a youngster and often thought of quitting. Born with cerebral palsy, she suffered disappointments at meets with able-bodied athletes.

“I was always last. Paralympics allowed me to realize that I was a good swimmer,” said the 21-year-old from Henderson, Nev., who started racing at age 7 and discovered competition for swimmers with disabilities at 13.

Today, Jordan deserves to be known as a phenomenon in the water. She owns eight Paralympic medals, four apiece from the games in London and Beijing, and still more oversized coin from three world championships. From the London Paralympics held Aug. 29–Sept. 9, she brought home three silvers and a bronze.

In order to medal this time around, Jordan had to hone her technique, because the field was much faster than four years ago. The record time that she had set for her classification in the 50-meter freestyle in Beijing, for example, would not have garnered a bronze this year for Team USA. In London, Jordan took silver in that event instead of gold, while improving from 33.84 to 33.18 seconds.

In her six events in London, she clocked five personal bests.

How did she do it? Jordan credits her training this summer in Minnesota, where she lived with Paralympic Team USA co-head coach Tom Franke and his family. In Franke’s daughters, a runner and another swimmer, she found ideal companions for cross training, including cycling, running and P90X home workouts.

Cross training helped Jordan to extend her workouts beyond her allotted pool time. Her coach did not want her in the water past the morning session, she said, because she is prone to fatigue.

“If I work out too much, then my body will shut down. I’ll lose my ability to walk, basically,” Jordan explained. “It gets so tired it just stops working. But if I don’t work out enough, then it gets really tight, and it’s hard to use. So it’s a fine balance.”

In the pool, Jordan concentrates on kicking hard and efficiently with her right leg to compensate for her much weaker left side. Cerebral palsy affects her left side only, “but it hinders my balance in the water, and balance is super-crucial in swimming. I’m the equivalent of someone who doesn’t use their legs.”

To raise her left arm out of the water, Jordan bears down with her right hip while extending her right arm, also breathing on the same stroke. When she first competed, she was not able to lift the arm above the water and ended up dragging her entire left side.

Particularly difficult for Jordan are simultaneous motions of the two sides. That’s why she’s had most of her success in freestyle competition and the backstroke. Still, she is a tough all-around competitor, taking bronze in 2008 in the 200-meter individual medley, which includes breaststroke and butterfly, and just missing a medal in that event this year.

Crying for joy on podium after podium, Jordan relished her victories in London. But she ranks at least two other recent honors higher.

One of those was being selected as captain of the U.S. Paralympic swim team, an “incredible” group of people competing across 14 classifications.

“We have people who have no arms and no legs, and they can swim. We have people who are quadriplegics and they’re swimming. We have blind swimmers. Any excuse you can think of to not swim, or to not do something – they have overcome so many challenges. I don’t even feel like I can compare to any of them,” said Jordan.

Also this year, she took athletes as young as 8 under her wing at a meet in Ohio designed partly to introduce the next generation of U.S. Paralympic swimmers. More than one girl with cerebral palsy told Jordan she wanted to grow up to be like her.

On campus, many people don’t know about Jordan’s accomplishments in front of as many as 18,000 people in a swimming venue. She said that suits her fine. She chose CLU because of the beautiful setting, the short walks to class, the teaching program and a swimming team that really wanted her to join.

“I spent a lot of my life hiding my disability, because I wasn’t really proud of it,” said Jordan, who is the Regals team captain. “[My teammates] are proud of me.”

In addition to swim team captain, she is the student director of the Writing Center, an officer in Club Teach, a member of the Phi Alpha Theta history honors society, and an aspiring elementary teacher in the liberal studies major. Under assistant professor of exercise science Janie Rider, Jordan has taken an interest in adaptive physical education for kids with disabilities.

“My main goal in life is to help people,” she said. “I want to do that. And so wherever I’m needed, I’m sure I’ll end up.”

Jordan also intends to compete at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Dunlap with the Charlotte Bobcats at NBA Summer League in Las Vegas this July.

How did one basketball coach have such a profound effect on CLU athletes in five seasons? And why did Michael Jordan and the NBA take so long to hire him?

By John Cressy

Straightforward. Focused. Intense. Demanding. Passionate. Brilliant. A basketball savant.

Ask those who played for Mike Dunlap at Cal Lutheran in the early ’90s, and these are words that immediately come to mind to describe their coach.

So while basketball legend Michael Jordan and the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats raised eyebrows around the sports world when they hired the little-known Dunlap as head coach last spring over such high-profile candidates as longtime Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, ex-Lakers player and assistant coach Brian Shaw and former Missouri coach Quin Snyder, don’t count his Kingsmen players among the doubters. They say he is the best-kept secret in basketball.

“My reaction was, ‘It’s about time,’” said Paul La Mott ’96, a member of Dunlap’s 1993-94 team that went 25-3 and reached the NCAA Division III Southern Sectional. “I mean, what took so long?”

As La Mott’s former teammate J.R. Woods put it: “Now the world’s going to experience what we’ve known all along.”

From 1989 to 1994, Dunlap’s teams came together, transforming a struggling NAIA program into an NCAA Division III powerhouse. Kingsmen basketball players from these years are still a tight group that gets together for reunions and continues to seek out its mentor’s advice.

According to Russell White ’94, the boys’ varsity basketball coach at Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, it’s no acci-dent that so many of Dunlap’s former players became coaches at the high school, community college and college levels – about a dozen at last count.

“He had a major influence on me and a lot of the other guys,” White said. “The fact that so many of us have gotten into coaching is the ultimate compliment to him, don’t you think?”

Dunlap’s former players just aren’t coaching; they’re also winning. White’s high school teams have made the CIF-Southern Section playoffs six consecutive seasons, claimed a CIF-SS championship, and made three state championship appearances. Before arriving at La Verne University as an assistant coach, La Mott in 2011 guided Big Fork High School to the Montana State B semifinals.

Dunlap’s two successors at Division II Metropolitan State in Denver, as it turned out, had both played for him at CLU and then served as assistants – Brannon Hays and Derrick Clark ’95. Hays compiled a 98-27 record in four seasons (2006-10) at Metro State, before giving way to Clark, who has led the Roadrunners to a combined 47-15 record the past two seasons.

“Brannon and I have had big shoes to fill,” said Clark, who served under Dunlap a combined eight years in Australia and at Metro State. “You’re measured by the success Mike Dunlap had here at Metro State, but I welcome it.”

For Dunlap, getting to the top of the profession has been a winding, 32-year journey. In addition to head-coaching jobs at CLU and Metro State, stops along the way included assistant positions at Division I schools Arizona and Oregon and the NBA’s Denver Nuggets. He even had a three-year stint as head coach of the Adelaide 36ers in Australia’s National Basketball League.

Last year, Dunlap served as interim coach at Division I St. John’s University in New York, filling in for head coach Steve Lavin while he recovered from prostate cancer. Under difficult circumstances, Dunlap’s team performed admirably in the powerful Big East Conference, going 13-19 overall, and helping him gain an interview with the owner of the Bobcats, none other than Michael Jordan.

“When I sat down with Mike and I heard him explaining what he’s capable of doing,” Jordan told the Charlotte Observer, “I said, ‘I can play for this guy.’ I said, ‘if that’s a guy I can play for, then that’s a guy everybody can play for.’

“He’s very fair. He’s very honest. He’s straightforward. There are no curveballs. He has a strong passion for the game and that’s hard to teach people,” Jordan continued. “I’m a strong believer if you have a passion for something, you’re going to figure it out. That’s the thing I saw in him more than anything else – his passion for coaching.”

This season, Dunlap faces a daunting task in Charlotte. The Bobcats had the worst record in NBA history last year at 7-59, with 23 losses coming in a row – another NBA record.

However, if his tenure at CLU is any indication, happier days are in store for Charlotte fans.

When Dunlap arrived on campus, the CLU basketball program had recorded just two winning seasons – 14-13 in 1979-80 and 16-14 in 1987-88 – in its 28-year history. In fact, during Dunlap’s first year in 1989-90, the Kingsmen went a dismal 5-21.

But over the next four seasons, Dunlap managed a turnaround for the program while guiding it successfully into NCAA Division III competition. The Kingsmen went 61-22 over his final three seasons with three straight Southern California Interscholastic Athletic Conference titles. His final team at CLU in 1993-94 was ranked No. 1 in the nation at one point.

Sure, Dunlap had talented players. He had Jeff deLaveaga, CLU’s all-time leading scorer with 2,549 career points, and he recruited a pair of outstanding Australian players, Rupert Sapwell ’95 and Jason Smith, who both later enjoyed long pro careers in their country.

But, as La Mott pointed out, Dunlap “has an extraordinary ability to get the best out of his players. I thought I was a good player when I came to CLU, but after Mike Dunlap taught me, I became a good player.”

What sets Dunlap off from many of his colleagues, his players say, is his work ethic. “His drive to be successful is off the charts,” said White.

“You could not arrive for practice early enough or leave late enough,” La Mott remembered. “Coach was always there before you. He was like two people.”

Woods, who is district manager of ADP Payroll Services in Woodland Hills and the assistant boys’ basketball coach at Newbury Park High, said, “When I first came to Cal Lutheran, I thought, ‘This guy is crazy!’ I’d never been around someone who cared so much about details.”

As for Dunlap’s three-hour practice sessions, well, they weren’t for the weak-kneed or the thin-skinned. And not even the biggest stars or hardest working players could escape the wrath of their coach. White remembers getting kicked out of practice for not paying attention, and making a tearful apology that allowed him to return the next day.

Woods shared a story about the time he and teammate Bryan Cantwell ’94 were late for a team meeting. As punishment, Dunlap demanded they report at 5:30 the next morning to run the hills around the CLU campus. Woods and Cantwell got there on time, but Dunlap was nowhere to be found.

“We’re thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’” Woods said. Dunlap let them nervously cool their heels for three hours before finally showing up to lecture them on tardiness. Point made. Needless to say, Woods and Cantwell never were late for a team meeting again.

That’s Mike Dunlap, say La Mott, White and Woods. He’s no-nonsense, but he’s fair, holds no grudges and always has his players’ best interests at heart. All he demands is that they be punctual and play hard.

“It’s tough love, for sure,” said White, who models his coaching style and disciplinary approach after his mentor.

Dunlap’s CLU alumni say he brought much more to the program than winning ways. Woods’ years playing basketball for the Kingsmen “were the greatest of my life.” Twenty years later, Woods said he still keeps in close touch with a number of former teammates. That, he said, is an equally important legacy of Dunlap’s.

“They’re still my ‘go-to’ guys,” Woods said. “Coach instilled in us that a team is like family and that would never change over time. And he’s right.”

Dunlap Disciples

CLU players under Mike Dunlap who became basketball coaches or sports administrators:

Kenny Caesar ’95, M.A. ’05, head coach at Mater Dei High School in Chula Vista
Bryan Cantwell ’94, former head coach at Chaminade High School in West Hills
Derrick Clark ’95, head coach, Metropolitan State University in Denver
Kelly Crosby, former assistant coach at Metro State and Utah Valley State
Brannon Hays, former head coach at Metropolitan State and Colorado Christian University; now assistant women’s coach at San Jose State
Chris Johnson, former head coach at Chadwick High School in Rancho Palos Verdes
Paul La Mott ’96, assistant coach at the University of La Verne
Rupert Sapwell ’95, Director of Sport at Trinity College in Gawler, South Australia
Russell White ’94, T.C. ’96, T.C. ’01, head coach at Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino
J.R. Woods, assistant coach at Newbury Park High School
Jeff Young ’91, M.A. ’03, former head coach at Chaminade High School and current assistant at Clovis West High School

CLU assistant coaches under Mike Dunlap:

Alan Major, M.A. ’03, head coach at University of North Carolina-Charlotte and former assistant at Ohio State
Steve Spencer, M.S. ’94, current head coach at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa and former assistant at UCLA

In July, as nine players advanced to the World Series of Poker Final Table, Jesse Sylvia led the field with nearly 44 million chips, putting him in position to go the distance in October. (WSOP/Eddie Malluk)

Jesse Sylvia takes the runner-up’s prize after a marathon World Series of Poker final. Now, will he finish that math degree?

By Kevin Matthews

Whenever Jesse James Sylvia went home to Martha’s Vineyard during college, his area code flipped from 805 to 508. He always noticed numbers. As a child with what he describes as “slight OCD,” he would “do things in fours.”

“That’s cool if you knock on something three more times, but it can get you in trouble if you hit your sister and your mom yells at you and you’re like, ‘I’m going to have to do that three more times.’”

Sylvia, the last player to go bust at poker’s world championship early on Oct. 31, got to satisfy his craze over numbers for (count ’em) four years as a math major at CLU.

“The Math Department was amazing,” he said. “I think, to say that they helped me with poker – no, what they’re teaching is mathematically so much deeper than what poker requires of you.”

The 26-year-old took home the second-place prize of $5,295,145 from the World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table in Las Vegas, the culmination of a year of no limit Texas hold ’em and other poker games. The series took a long break in July when nine players emerged from a field of 6,598 entrants, with Sylvia as the leader in chips.

What Sylvia hasn’t yet taken home is a college degree, and he still wants it. He lacked one math course for graduation in the spring of 2008, he explained. Now he thinks of himself as a CLU graduate but wishes it were official.

“If I make a list of things that I need to get done in life, that’s probably the first one on the list,” he said in August, while preparing for his Final Table appearance and planning a move from Las Vegas to LA with his girlfriend.

It was during Sylvia’s college career that poker “went from a distraction to becoming a full-time job.” He paid cash to buy into tournaments, borrowing time on his roommate’s or another computer to play online.

One afternoon, he entered a series of simultaneous contests from a terminal in Pearson Library. By evening, he’d been knocked out of all but the biggest one, which had about 8,000 people who had paid $200 to play for a top prize of $200,000. Around 9:30 p.m. Sylvia, or someone at a nearby terminal, kicked a power cord, and two rows of computers went dead.

So, like any CLU student in a bind, he sprinted straight to his department. Friends who’d been tutoring there found him on a computer in the back room at closing time, deep in 52-card combat with about that number of players remaining. Sometime after midnight, the students were exchanging high-fives as Sylvia and two top opponents finalized a deal, a “chop” in poker jargon, to divvy up the money pot, leaving him with roughly $110,000.

“I’m writing out this deal with someone else, and I’m demanding two grand more because I feel like I’m entitled to that. It was just funny because the other math majors are getting the math behind it, but they’re just like, ‘This is ridiculous.’”

Math professor Karrolyne Fogel once did a double take when she heard an amount her student had won online. But she was not fazed this fall upon learning that he was going to the finals of the biggest event in professional poker.

“If I ever found out he was working some desk job someplace, then I would go, ‘What happened?’” she said.

The thing that stands out about Sylvia in Fogel’s memory is the haikus he wrote on his exams: exactly five, seven and five more syllables about the exam itself, or how he wished he’d studied for it more. He started writing the math-themed verses as a sophomore in her course on, yes, game theory, and his classmates took up the challenge with him in a course on algebraic curves.

Math students are regularly drawn to capstone projects on games and gambling, according to Fogel. She supervised one senior’s work on the dice game craps, while another took a purely scholarly interest in blackjack after attending a conference with her in Las Vegas. Sylvia did his capstone on voting theory, a subset of game theory, because he discovered that Fogel had expertise in that field.

“A lot of people when they think about math, think about numbers,” she said. “But it’s really more about methods of thinking and organizing information. And so strategies and how you analyze strategies and keep track of them is a very mathematical type of thing to be doing.

Knowing about the math behind poker allows Sylvia to respond to some situations quickly, he said. But other college subjects have meant as much to him. He came away from professor Marylie Gerson’s course on social psychology with the insight that people are not “special snowflakes.”

“People think similarly. Once you get into that mindset you can understand that your opponents aren’t thinking all that differently from you, and you can delve into what they’re thinking about in any given hand,” he said.

Fogel sees her former student as a lover of learning, not just “schooling”: “That’s what wins, is that curiosity about learning,” she said. “I don’t think he thinks he has all the answers. I didn’t see that when he was in school, and I haven’t seen anything in the news articles that makes me think that’s changed.”

As for his one outstanding math credit, Sylvia confessed that he has fantasized about “hiring some guy in India to do it for me [online], but I think I’m going to do it myself, especially now that I told you that.”

“It’s the kind of thing that feels like busywork, and I hate doing busywork,” he continued. “I’m really good, when I have something like that to do, at distracting myself with other things.”

Jean and Steve, who were candid about their chronic alcoholism, began a romance while living on the streets.

I saw homeless people every day, because to me they weren’t invisible. I got hooked on audio podcasts because I liked to listen. And then I had an idea.

By Robert Duff ’10

I found Sean standing next to a stop sign, holding a handwritten cardboard sign asking for help. He had a shopping cart next to him with all of his belongings and looked young, maybe 19 or 20. Here in Ventura, there is a wide spectrum of individuals living on the streets, and one of the goals of my podcast, The Voices Among Us, is to make that clear.

For the unfamiliar, podcasts are essentially radio talk shows without the radio. You download episodes from the Internet and listen to them on your own time via a mobile device like an iPhone. I had no interest in podcasts until 2010, when I moved to Ventura with my wife and then began graduate school in Santa Barbara. While burning up gas on the hourlong commute, I soon realized how interesting, funny and touching they truly could be.

Last winter, I bought a used USB microphone from a creepy man in a trailer park in Los Angeles and began my quest to share the voices of homeless people, with anyone willing to listen. Nearly every week now, I sit with a homeless person at a coffee shop or right on the curb and ask them questions about their lives. I have had interviews with elderly people and teenagers, people with stories of abuse and abandonment, and others who have chosen the streets due to some internal sense of restlessness.

Jason, shown with his dog Scarlet, described breathtaking views of mountaintops on a freight train ride in Oregon.

I learned from Sean that he was originally from the United Kingdom and came to America with his parents. The father and son ran their family-owned skate shop together in Long Beach until Sean’s mother died. Sean was fairly well known as an in-line skater, having competed since he was 10. The way he tells it, his mother’s death changed everything. His father finally abandoned him, and he found himself on the streets.

He was hardly alone. On any routine trip to the grocery store or to the beach in Ventura, I see five to 10 individuals standing on the street, asking for money. Although I have been exposed to homeless people all of my life in Southern California, having this constant reminder of the issue began to stir feelings within me. I wanted to make a difference in some way, while maintaining my own well-being. I knew I would go broke very quickly if I were to help people with my own money as often as I would like to.

After hearing Sean’s story, I searched the Internet for his old skate shop, Urban Rolling. I discovered not only Web pages about the shop, but also interviews with Sean and YouTube videos of his skating. It blew my mind that someone could fall so far in a matter of months.

I reached out to some people who had interviewed Sean to see if they were aware of his situation. Many people on a roller blading message board turned out to know Sean and soon offered to help in any way possible. Over the next few months, he was showered with care packages and donations from all over the United States. Before Sean and I stopped communicating, I was able to use donated money to buy a ticket on his behalf and send him to Orlando, where he went to live and work with old friends.

More than anything, I hope the stories on The Voices Among Us inspire people to not look the other way. No one is less human for living on the streets. Take the time to listen, and you will learn something. I’ve learned about this issue, about life and even about myself from doing the podcast, possibly more than I’ve learned from any other activity.

Robert Duff is working toward a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His blog and links to The Voices Among Us podcasts are available at www.homelessinterview.com.

Email ideas and submissions for Vocations to kevinm@callutheran.edu.

Through Sept. 15, paintings and sculptures of horses, cowboys, native Americans, rodeo clowns, sheepdogs, landscapes and lonely houses from the Eubanks, Reagan and Rolland art collections are on exhibit in the gallery, under the winking title “Western Salon,” as in not a saloon. The paintings are displayed salon-style, closely next to and atop one another, and the curator has planned a series of informal salon gatherings around the exhibit.

Back at the Eubanks family cattle ranch in Santa Ynez, before it was sold, the late Irma Eubanks and later their son Trace hosted the Peppertree Art Show for 33 years, amassing and helping to market Western American art. That’s how Bob Eubanks learned about the glut of painted mountain men and the strict requirements of Western people who collect art.

For one thing, if you want to sell a horse – a painted or a sculpted one, that is, which in certain cases will set the buyer back as much as a live one – you’d better make sure that you have the bone structure and the musculature right, and that you know horses. Thomas Lorimer shows this kind of horse sense in “Distant Thunder,” says Eubanks, commenting on one of the paintings he donated.

“If you’re a horse person, you understand that you tell a horse’s emotions by their ears. If they’re paying attention, they do like this,” he says, holding up cupped palms. “If they’re mad or determined, they put them back. If they’re scared, they go up and their nostrils widen. So he’s hearing thunder off in the distance.”

In short, says Eubanks, cowboy art succeeds not because it is romanticized, but because it’s authentic. The sole exception in his family collection is a whimsical Kent Butler painting of a cowboy drinking tea, which cowboys don’t do, according to Eubanks.

However, cowboys do make cowboy art. Maybe that’s why the big association for Western American art is called the Cowboy Artists of America. You can’t tell from the name who the cowhands are, the painters or the painted.

“That’s Martin Grelle,” Eubanks says of the rider depicted in “Workin’ Buddies,” by Martin Grelle. “He gets up every morning with that dog and he goes out and he
rounds up cattle, and checks the cattle. That’s what he does.”

Another well-known Western painter, Donald “Putt” Putman, sold the Eubanks family a watercolor depicting Cotton Gray, the “roper and rough old cowboy” who ran the cattle ranch for perhaps 30 years. Eubanks has kept a few paintings in his Westlake Village home, including two “of my boys roping,” but did not have display space for the rest after selling the Santa Ynez property. He donated four sculptures and 26 paintings through his friend Rick Lemmo, a CLU regent and parent of a current student.

All of the donated works are by contemporary artists featured at the Peppertree show, according to Eubanks.

“[Irma] was so sensitive to the artists’ feelings that if an artist would come to the show and bring some pretty good stuff and not sell anything, she felt so bad about it that sometimes she’d just buy a piece,” Eubanks said. “So a lot of this art came along that way.”

By Kevin Matthews

Brendon Cussio, MBA ’10, is green but not an activist. Let’s call him an accidental environmentalist – a businessperson who’s doing his part to keep life on Planet Earth livable.

Before getting his graduate degree with an emphasis in finance, Cussio worked for nearly a decade in the financial services industry. He moved on to a leadership role in the renewable energy sector a year and a half ago after a client at Wells Fargo, who was also the CEO of Ventura County−based Solarsilicon Recycling Services (SRS), made him an offer that included an equity stake in the company.

“It’s largely opportunistic,” said Cussio, vice president of marketing and finance at SRS. “This is a great business to be in. It’s growing at a very, very rapid rate. It’s very dynamic. It’s very volatile. It’s exciting.”

It’s also work that Cussio can feel good about. Using proprietary techniques, SRS recycles waste that comes from conventional silicon manufacturers and turns it into feedstock that can be sliced up for use in solar cells and panels that produce electricity, without adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Before SRS and its two international competitors came along, all that waste was destined for landfills.

“So we’re taking, basically, material out of a landfill and turning it into a green, renewable resource,” Cussio explains. Business has been booming because recycling ultimately reduces costs for solar energy producers.

As environmental sustainability becomes a permanent focus of large and small firms, including the great majority of Fortune 500 companies, all sorts of industries will need decision-makers with knowledge of law, engineering, finance, marketing and theory as they relate to green business.

That’s one reason why Cussio, along with other CLU alumni and local businesspeople, has joined forces with management lecturer Valeria Makarova in the effort to build a sustainable business program at CLU.

Makarova, a biophysicist with a Ph.D. in biology who has done fundamental research in renewable energy, earned her own Cal Lutheran MBA in 2008 and stayed on to launch graduate courses in Green Business and Corporate Social Responsibility. She soon began collaborating with faculty and School of Management Dean Chuck Maxey on a program to meet a growing demand in the business community.

MBA students this fall will be able to choose sustainable business as a professional track, on a par with other academic emphases from macroeconomics to marketing. Graduates might take up internships and later work at green businesses in this region, or they could lead efforts at startups and established firms to build a competitive advantage on social and environmental responsibility.

“The business community realizes this is not just about being good,” Makarova said. “It’s a big challenge how to show return on investment for sustainable initiatives, but speaking long term, it makes perfect sense from the standpoint of brand value and customer loyalty. And as regulations become stricter and stricter, you’re on the safe side if you’re at least a little bit ahead.”

A native of Russia who has worked in Germany and Korea and at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., Makarova has a global perspective on environmental challenges. Her personal mission, however, has less to do with resolving international disputes than with “bridging the gap between academia and industry.”

The experience in Colorado working on photosynthesis and biohydrogen production, she says, “was a turning point in my life. In that laboratory environment, we also had people addressing what we did in business terms. And I thought, ‘OK, I need to learn how to do that.’”

In recent years, as interest in sustainable business has grown “exponentially,” Makarova said, the working definition of the idea has changed. Managers and academics alike now speak of a “triple bottom line” used to evaluate a company’s performance in social, environmental and financial terms.

The approach has had an impact worldwide, including among graduates of CLU’s full-time MBA program for international students. Having completed two of Makarova’s courses, for example, Jefferson Matsuda, MBA ’11, returned to Maringá, Brazil, with a new vision for his family’s trucking company, which transports liquid cargo around southern Brazil.

Matsuda said he got support from his uncle and his father, the CEO and CFO of Rodoviário Matsuda, on two ideas that he
came up with during the CLU courses: a sustainable new headquarters and company meetings conducted by teleconference.

“Besides reducing utilities costs, the building can also promote a better environment for the workers and increase productivity,” because of improved air quality and extensive use of natural light, writes Matsuda in an email.

With Matsuda on the Quality and Security Management Team, the company has new training for drivers and a speed control program to reduce accidents involving its 200 vehicles, which often carry hazardous materials. He reports that the company has begun an extensive recycling program and says that it is addressing carbon emissions with a low average fleet age, good maintenance and regular smog tests.

Such measures all could be considered baby steps, given the magnitude of global warming, declining biodiversity around the world and other serious ecological challenges. Calling herself a realist, Makarova said that dissent and critique from environmentalists have been very important, but that corporations will play a more decisive role in our future.

“We really think that this is a time to do something about [the environment], not just talk about it,” said Makarova. “But who will do that?”

“If you stay around long enough, it is bound to happen,” a humble Slimak said after the 3-1 victory over Whittier.

Slimak’s go-to senior, Byron Minnich, threw a complete game, striking out nine as he scattered four hits and allowed no earned runs. The record of CLU’s winningest coach now stands at 514-268-7.

One day later, on March 3, Mike Gennette hit 200 career victories as CLU’s men’s tennis coach.

By Fred Alvarez

Associate professor of sociology Akiko Yasuike, Rocio Ayala ’12, Maricela Bolanos ’12 and senior Lynzi Tarango want to shed light on a subject that often just generates heat: undocumented immigrants in the U.S. system of higher education.

CLU’s ambitious three-year project to collect the personal narratives of undocumented college students in Southern California is the brainchild of Yasuike, a Japanese immigrant who directs the University’s global studies program and whose courses explore a range of immigration issues. However, Yasuike could not easily have undertaken this project without the three undergraduate research assistants – all of them first-generation college students – and their networks of contacts.

In recent years, as Yasuike got to know and mentor undocumented immigrant students at CLU, their struggles became her cause.

“Just the fact that some undocumented students make it to college is itself a puzzle,” she said. “I really wanted to explore what actually made them succeed despite the obstacles they face.”

So she set out to ask them.

Yasuike put together her research proposal last spring and by summer had lined up the student-researchers to help her review literature on the subject, develop research questions and create an interview guide.

She also needed the students’ help to identify potential interviewees at community and four-year colleges in the region. In addition to contacting people they knew from high school and before, the research team members began connecting with student organizations on other college campuses in Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley, especially groups that fought to pass California’s Dream Act last year.

By fall, they were immersed in the interview process, exploring how the lack of legal status impacted social life, educational experiences and identity development.

The study will continue for two more years, with the goal of interviewing 10 undocumented college students or college graduates each year. While the first year’s sample was made up entirely of Latino immigrants, the plan is to expand the interviews to other ethnic and racial groups, including Asians and students from Middle Eastern countries.

“I think being undocumented probably made me the best liar in the whole world, because you end up excusing for everything: for not having a driver’s license, for not having a car. So I can come up with a lie.” — Becky

Many of the students who were interviewed reported struggling to manage their social identity, particularly in high school. They often felt that they had to hide or lie about their status, and they lived with the sense that they were inferior to others and that no one would understand their plight.

They also learned from an early age that many in this country viewed them as criminals and opportunists bent on taking jobs and resources away from American citizens.

Perhaps most devastating, the CLU researchers found, the lack of legal status eroded the confidence and ambition of undocumented students, as they began to grapple with the reality that, despite hard work and dedication to their studies, they would be facing a future of limited opportunity and menial job prospects.

“I always try to put a front so no one ever knows that I was born in Mexico…. I do not like soccer. I like the Chicago Bulls because they are the hot thing.” — Erick

Though feeling deflated, these students often respond by redoubling their efforts, which is what makes their personal narratives so moving, according to student-researcher Rocio Ayala.

“That drive, that resilience they have to keep going is really inspiring,” she said.

Ayala, herself an immigrant from El Salvador, said the study has highlighted the importance of social networking for undocumented students, with those interviewed pointing up the value of finding mentors and enrichment programs that helped them push forward despite the obstacles they faced.

The study also has underscored the empowerment that comes through higher education, with many interview subjects reporting how the college experience allowed them to dig into issues they had never explored and to start advocating on their own behalf for passage of laws to legalize their status.

“None of the students we interviewed were active politically before they came to community college or the University,” said Ayala, who like many of the students she interviewed for the project has become an activist in her own right, speaking at high schools about her own experiences and taking to the streets to demand immigration reform measures such as the Dream Act.

“It’s amazing what the college experience does – it liberates students and allows them to push for social change,” she added. “A lot of undocumented students are now coming out of the shadows, and I want people to hear what they have to say.”

“I had been chosen to go to Australia to represent my school district and I was thinking: I wish I could go, because this is a great honor, right? And that’s when it hit me the most … If I’m getting rejected by society at this point in time just because I don’t have a nine-digit number, what’s [going to] happen when I graduate from high school?” — Walter

The study comes at a time when immigration, especially by undocumented migrants from south of the border, is a hot button political issue nationwide. By some measures, as many as 1.7 million college-age undocumented immigrants between the ages of 18 and 24 live in the United States.

Studies indicate that those who lack legal status are much less likely to enroll in college or earn college degrees. Those who choose to pursue higher education do so despite the fact that they do not qualify for government-sponsored financial aid, are legally barred from employment and could be deported at any time.

To help remove some of the hurdles, a dozen states now have statutes that allow undocumented students to pay in-state college tuition, according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

California lawmakers pushed even further last year, passing a two-pronged measure – known as the Dream Act – that allows undocumented students access to private grants and scholarships, and makes them eligible for government-sponsored financial aid.

But a federal version of that act, which would have given legal status and a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. at a young age and went on to attend college, stalled in 2010 amid a rising tide of anger over the perception that immigrants were being rewarded for illegal activity.

This June, President Obama issued an order that effectively lifted the threat of deportation for unauthorized immigrants under the age of 30 who came to the U.S. as children and have been here for five years, as long as they have no criminal record and are students, high school graduates or military veterans in good standing. Before the policy change, which allows the same group to apply for temporary work permits, undocumented students could not hold jobs on campuses, regardless of whether tax dollars supported their positions.

The strength of the CLU study lies in its attention to undocumented students’ social and emotional lives, beyond their legal predicament. Maricela Bolanos figured she already knew about the immigrant experience when she signed on as a researcher last school year. After all, her parents had crossed into the United States illegally from Mexico before she was born, lured by the promise of a steady paycheck and a better future. And she had plenty of friends who were undocumented and knew plenty of students at her Oxnard high school who lacked legal status.

Still, Bolanos was surprised by the depth of the isolation experienced by college students who struggle to hide their legal status from teachers and peers. And she hadn’t understood the degree to which their status dampens their future prospects, causing many to short-circuit plans for advanced degrees and professional careers.

“It’s really sad,” said Bolanos, who graduated in the spring with a sociology degree. “They’re being shut out from a society that would definitely benefit from their hard work and talent.”

Lynzi Tarango, the only member of the student research team who did not graduate in the spring, has signed on to take part in the project again next school year.

Tarango said it would be ideal if the study influenced new legislation that would help undocumented immigrants achieve legal status. But in the end, she said, what’s most important is to break down stereotypes and prejudices.

“We’re kind of giving voice to these students who don’t have a voice,” Tarango said. “These are people who are contributing a lot to our society and who would contribute a lot more if they were allowed to.”

“Not being legal made me feel like I was less of a person. It made me feel like I couldn’t accomplish many things.” — Alex

Ultimately, Yasuike wants to publish the research and present it at academic conferences and community forums aimed at bringing better understanding about the roadblocks faced by undocumented immigrant students and steps that can be taken to help them fully plug in to the American experience.

“What I’m trying to do is put a human face on these undocumented people,” said Yasuike, who since her arrival at CLU in 2006 has encouraged her students to not only examine the challenges of immigration but to find ways to address them.

“All of the countries of the world are using immigration policy to bring the best minds to their countries,” Yasuike added. “Here we have a group of young people who are highly educated and who have a marketable skill set. Can we afford to lose all of them to other countries?”

Fred Alvarez is a high school history and journalism teacher who lives in Ojai. For more than two decades, he was a staff writer for several daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

By Kevin Matthews

The story of everything, Jarvis Streeter thinks, goes back before the Big Bang 13.75 billion years ago, perhaps infinitely back through other universes. On distant worlds, intelligent, reflective creatures have probably lived inspired by revelations from God. And Homo sapiens will eventually populate other solar systems, provided we don’t first destroy ourselves.

These are not essential beliefs for Streeter, an ordained pastor and a CLU faculty member in religion since 1988. They are just some of the guesses and inferences that he has made in roughly four decades of grappling with Christian faith, modern science and what he sees as their overlapping concerns. His notion of multiple universes, which he entertained before he was aware of related hypotheses by scientists, fits his vision of a God whose nature is to give life and seek creatures to shower with love.

“Theology is, to my mind, serious play,” Streeter says. “It’s play in the sense that you are trying to conceive that which cannot be conceived by finite minds, and so you take your best shot. But anybody who knows much about it knows that whatever your best shot is is going to be ridiculously inadequate to the reality. You just hope you get a couple of central things right.”

For more than three years, Streeter has been making progress on an ambitious, second book project called God and the History of the Universe, which will convey, among other things, his sense of religious awe about reality as it is described in the signature scientific discoveries of the past century. The universe offered up by Einstein, Hubble, Bohr and others is not something that theology can ignore, Streeter suggests, a view that aligns with Augustine of Hippo’s gesture to the Book of Nature as a source of revelation.

Streeter’s book will provide, in plain language, an up-to-date account of our universe’s development combined with “a theological understanding of where God fits into all of this – what God is doing, how God does it, what God can or cannot do.”

The stakes of this inquiry rose for Streeter last August when he found out that he had cancer of the pancreas.

The first sign of trouble came one morning before the annual faculty retreat, when Streeter woke up so weak that he could hardly move his arms and became dizzy upon standing. Was it mono? A bleeding ulcer? “Excruciating” abdominal pain sent him on a second trip to the hospital with his wife, Susan, possibly to remove gallstones. More tests revealed the source of the pain to be at the bile duct, which was blocked by the growth, soon revealed to be malignant. All this happened in less than a week.

Under the stress of the unexpected news, Streeter’s thoroughly rational approach to living showed its worth, not for the first time. He recalls spending all of five minutes in a hospital room, still with his thoughts, “making peace” with a diagnosis that raised “the odds … very high that you don’t live very long.”

Consolation was not hard to find, he says.

I’m 62 years old. I’ve had a good long life, longer than most people have in the history of the Earth.

I’ve been able to have an active life of the mind. I’ve been able to spend my whole career trying to understand who I am and who we are and where we fit into things.

If I lived another 20 or 30 years, I couldn’t be any richer in the relationships that I have with people.

A lot of people will say, “Why me, why me?” We all think this bad stuff is going to happen to other people. But why not me? Am I so special that I shouldn’t get cancer? I’m just another person.

None of these thoughts ruled out hope for longer life. Characteristically, Streeter has become very familiar with the disease and the particulars of his case. He’s thorough. When he and Susan renovated their Santa Rosa Valley home in 2010, he took charge of the woodworking and decorative finishing, and designed a media room for sound.

He’s a perfectionist with a zeal for new subjects, says his friend Tim Hengst in the Multimedia Department. Religion professor Julia Fogg and philosopher Bill Bersley both describe him as a “Renaissance man” with a passion for the arts – painting, playing guitar and serving as president of the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company’s board – and a command of diverse subjects that touch on his writing.

Streeter lost about three months of work on his book late last year because of a major operation to remove the cancer from his abdomen and the difficult side effects of chemotherapy. He mentions, almost in passing, that he fell, cut his forehead and might have bled to death because of drug side effects that made him disoriented and dizzy during the night. That hospital stay stretched out to eight days when cuts to his foot led to systemic infections, another very close call.

This spring, he returned to teaching and writing on campus. You can sense the pleasure that Streeter, a person with a strong sense of having chosen his life’s path, has taken in getting back to choosing his daily routine.

During a session of his team-taught course on Faith and Reason, he responded to a student’s objections to the idea of free will. It’s highly unusual, he said, to think that you don’t make your choices. “I believe that the belief in freedom is fundamental. I believe it explains everything we do,” he added, before launching into a summary of Alfred North Whitehead’s account of freedom.

Here are some of Streeter’s choices: Walking out on his hard sciences classes in the late 1960s to think about social issues and social science at the University of Southern California. Teaching secondary school math and science in the foothills of Mount Kenya. Three advanced degrees including a Ph.D., plus a year of reading as a research fellow at Yale University. Getting involved in politics, including the push for putting repeal of the death penalty on the ballot.

While working at an insurance company 40 years ago, after college and Kenya, he began to make his most important choice of all. His supervisor at the time was a fundamentalist Christian who handed him religious tracts, which had little appeal for Streeter.

“But he showed me a person who was vitally concerned with his faith, for whom that was really a central part of his life, and he was really a good guy,” says Streeter. “It was really in dealing with him that I came up with this idea that [faith] should be the center of my life if there really is a God. If there’s a God, God is the center of all existence, God’s the most important thing there is, and it ought to be central to everybody’s life.”

Add this determination to the person Streeter always was – the sort of kid who quizzed his teachers about dinosaurs and dreamed of becoming an astronaut or an engineer in the space program – and you get a special kind of theologian. He has never shown an aversion to evolutionary theory or, for example, the idea that life has chemical origins. The thesis that science and Christianity are at odds, he explains, has a short and disreputable history.

Streeter is untroubled, and quite thrilled, by how much science has changed the picture of the cosmos, particularly in the last century. Observation of the visible universe – no one can say what fraction it is of what sort of whole – confirms the existence of perhaps 100 billion galaxies, all fleeing one another like dots on an expanding balloon. These visible galaxies must contain some 1023 stars, he writes, “or approximately ten times the number of sand grains on all the beaches and deserts on Earth, along with the planetary systems that surround some, perhaps most of them.” At the Big Bang, the whole contents of the universe occupied a kernel smaller than an atom.

The very distant future is an even stranger place for mammals to think about, in Streeter’s summary. All life in the universe will have long been extinguished a trillion years from now, when the last of the shining stars have exhausted their nuclear fuel. No creature will watch the remaining elementary particles decay into radiation, or feel temperatures sink to absolute zero, perhaps some 10¹⁵⁰ years out.

A person might wonder, what is a dead universe for?

“To me, it’s for the production of all of the life that’s lived,” says the professor. “It’s been not just for humans, but for all of the forms of life. The estimates are that something like 99.9 percent or greater of all the life that’s ever existed on this planet has gone extinct. That’s just a part of the natural world. We’ll go extinct eventually.”

In Streeter’s narrative the remarkable thing is how quickly life began on Earth – as if taking the first opportunity after the planet solidified, cooled and “quit getting bombarded by other things in the solar system.”

A fascinated Streeter tells Earth’s story as one of leaps in the complexity of life, all the way from single-cell organisms to, eventually, the production of mind, consciousness and the human ability to regard the self as an object.

“Thinking burns a lot of calories, and it’s about all I do these days,” he says with a smile. Before I leave his office, with its books and its waiting visitors and the unfinished thoughts on the monitor, he adds: “I can’t think of another time in my life when I’ve felt so happy or so at peace.”

By Marsha Anderson

They call him a sideman.

On tambourines, cymbals, congas, shakers and sometimes the piano, he’s the percussionist behind the drummer, the guy no one notices until he comes in with his part.

He’s also the easygoing fellow everyone likes to be around on the tour bus.

It’s spring and Matthew Burgess ’90 is touring with country singer-songwriter Drake White, who is opening for Eric Church and Brantley Gilbert. Burgess hopes the trail of gigs will take him to California by the summer. The rough life of a musician means never quite knowing where the next gig will come from. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

The CLU philosophy major was living in Seattle before moving to Nashville in a “leap of faith” seven years ago.

“I saw myself 10 years down the road and knew I needed a change. So I took time out to look at different music centers in the U.S. – New York, Los Angeles, Austin and Nashville. Of all those places, Nashville seemed to open its arms to me.”

Much more than a capital for country music, Nashville is a Mecca for pop, rock and musicians from all over the country. Among other things, the city generates the background sounds for the nation’s TV shows, according to Burgess.

“Being a musician in Music City is not that different from working at a university, where you can have a conversation that might not be understood outside the walls of the institution. Conversations here are like that,” he said.

Nashville living is also like being under the Big Top in a circus, Burgess finds. Neighbors are bearded ladies – assorted musical freaks. “We all get that we’re part of the circus,” he chuckles. “Here, I’m a sideman.”

When he’s not part of a band on tour, Burgess sometimes works one-on-one with a songwriter. Now and then he’ll help on the background sounds for a video game. Three recording sessions and one gig or writing session fill up a day nicely.

“I have a soft spot in my heart for singer-songwriters,” he reflects. “I like to help them bring out what they have going on at the core of their song and ask myself, ‘How do you express that?’ If the song is better without the part you’re playing, then you’re probably playing the wrong thing.”

On the road, Burgess’ record (so far) is 430 shows in one year. He’s played with Willie Nelson, Cindy Morgan, Three Door Down and Brandi Carlile, and opened for ZZ Top and John Fogarty. Because of Nashville’s central geographical location, he usually makes it home by midweek from shows running Thursday through Saturday.

Majoring in philosophy, Burgess says, was great preparation for the life of a sideman. He can fit into different situations without getting in the way, seeking balance between having an ego and letting the ego go.

“In some ways [a philosophy major] is the least practical, in some ways the most practical. It’s helped me get through life as a struggling artist.”

Professor Bill Bersley, a mentor and friend, would host Philosophy Club meetings at home and talk about Jean Paul Sartre and existential freedom. Burgess learned that an artist has to choose every day to be an artist, to renew a relationship with the muse.

“Bersley challenged me and changed who I am as a human,” Burgess recalls. “He would probably say that he ‘unlocked the door.’”

Also at CLU, theatre arts professor Michael Arndt put Burgess in charge of sound design for two plays. The projects gave him confidence in his abilities.

“He was the first person to get me to think out of the box artistically, to think about the visual qualities of music,” Burgess says.

The longer Burgess is in the music industry, the more the stories and nuggets of wisdom embedded in music professor Dan Geeting’s lessons make sense.

“He taught me the art of listening first, playing second,” Burgess said. “One saying was ‘I’ll play music for free; you just have to pay me to load in all my instruments and set them up.’

“Another saying was, ‘The fleas may bite the camel, but the caravan moves on, baby.’ I can’t tell you how many times that makes sense in the life of an artist, when the van breaks down on tour or you’re late on the rent because you’ve been out of town. It’s all those stupid little things that if you let them pile up will make you want to quit music.”

To learn more about Burgess, visit percussionator.com. The website is named for an instrument that he built out of pipes and hubcaps just after graduating from CLU. The original percussionator is still on display at a theater in his hometown of Everett, Wash.

At the conference championship, the 4x400m relay team of Julea Juarez (l), Lauren Rohach, Melissa Muntzel and Lauren Rasmussen broke a 14-year-old SCIAC meet record with a time of 3:53.12.

Nicholas Ballou is the national runner-up in men’s singles and SCIAC Athlete of the Year for men’s tennis.

The Kingsmen tennis squad advanced to the second round of nationals, and Nicholas Ballou made the singles final in Cary, N.C., where he forced the nation’s top-ranked player to a deciding third set. With partner Ray Worley, Ballou also advanced to the doubles quarterfinal.

The men’s golf team played two rounds at the NCAAs in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida, with Mikey McGinn advancing as an individual player.

All-America honors went to Garrett, to Ballou in singles and Ballou and Worley in doubles, and to Eric Rogers, who placed sixth in the men’s triple jump.

In April, the women’s track and field team won its first Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference title, which it shared with Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. Sprinter Julea Juarez was named SCIAC Athlete of the Year in track, racking up individual and team victories at the conference level. She won the 400m championship and anchored SCIAC wins in the 4x400m and 4x100m relays.

In April, before her national championship victory, Garrett won the 2012 SCIAC javelin title, surpassing the second-best thrower by more than four meters.

But did she ever approach it that way.

“Coming down the runway, I heard the announcer say it was the last throw of my collegiate career,” said Garrett ’12, who graduated with a business degree earlier in May. “I wanted to leave it all out on the track.”

Garrett improved her personal best and the Cal Lutheran record by 2.41m, with a throw of 47.14m (154 feet, 8 inches). She was the only NCAA track and field champion from the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference this year, in men’s and women’s competitions.

His place on the bench is empty – forever.

Dr. Melvin Hayashi, CLU athletics team physician for 17 years, mentor, educator and supportive friend, died March 11, 2012. He was 71.

“He was a fantastic surgeon who knew and understood the mind-set and psyche of an athlete,” said CLU Vice President for University Advancement Steve Wheatly ’77, who had more than one surgery performed by the talented orthopedist.

As the primary surgeon to CLU athletes, Doc (as he was known on campus) performed hundreds of operations and offered his expertise to student athletic trainers. He held free injury clinics and allowed them to observe surgeries.

“He gave so many volunteer hours with our students and with me and my staff,” recalled Head Athletic Trainer Kecia Davis, who brought the orthopedic surgeon to CLU in 1994. “He was such an amazing doctor, teacher and person.”

Diagnosed in 2010 with esophageal cancer, Hayashi stayed with CLU athletics through the year’s end, even joining the football team as they traveled to Linfield College in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Hayashi tended to athletes far beyond CLU, working with Conejo Valley high schools, Moorpark College, the U.S. National Soccer Team and at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. His talents earned him membership in the United States Olympic Committee Sports Medicine Society.

Hayashi’s Thousand Oaks office showcases his dedication to sports and athletes, with photos of his teams, award citations and trophies displayed on the examining room walls. Autographed photos of known sports figures dot the walls.

“Mel was a fixture on the sidelines at so many athletic venues throughout the community at CLU, Newbury Park, Westlake and Moorpark,” Wheatly said. “When you think about people who helped to build athletic programs in the community, he is the person you think about. It was tough looking on the sidelines this fall and not seeing Doc there.”

CLU water polo player Morgan McCardell holds a photo of her great-grandfather Edward Maurer taken in 1930 when he was 18 years old and lived in a ranch water tower (back) that is now part of the CLU campus.

By Rhiannon Potkey
Reprinted with permission from the Ventura County Star

Morgan McCardell didn’t need a campus tour to convince her to attend Cal Lutheran. She was already sold on joining the women’s water polo team and working toward a degree in exercise science.

After an unhappy stint at UC Irvine, the family-oriented McCardell was eager for a fresh start closer to home and CLU felt like the perfect fit. Little did McCardell know just how close that connection to her family would be.

As CLU women’s water polo coach Craig Rond showed McCardell and her mother around campus, they arrived at the historic Pederson Ranch house and water tower. McCardell and her mother gasped. They had no idea both structures still existed, let alone were on CLU’s campus.

McCardell’s great grandfather, Edward Maurer, lived in the water tower and worked on the Pederson Ranch when he first arrived in California from Oklahoma in 1930.

“At the risk of sounding cheesy, it was one of those moments where everything kind of came full circle and I knew I was where I was supposed to be,” McCardell said. “It kind of brought it all together and brought a sense of family here. It made me believe everything happens for a reason.”

McCardell wanted to play Division I water polo after graduating from Rio Mesa High, but she never felt comfortable with her role at UC Irvine.

“They didn’t really have a spot for me,” the junior driver said. “I was a utility player and supposed to play wherever they needed me, but it really kind of turned out to work negatively toward me because they never really had a place they needed me.”

McCardell became more homesick during her sophomore season. She missed seeing her younger sisters play water polo, and didn’t even want her family at her own games anymore.

“I told my parents not to even come watch me because I knew I wasn’t going to play much,” she said. “In high school, I loved when they were there, but it just didn’t make me happy anymore.”

At the time, Rond was coaching McCardell’s younger sister, Madison, who was on a team with his daughter. The team had a game in Irvine one weekend, and McCardell came over after practice to watch. She struck up a conversation with Rond, unaware of his ties to CLU.

“I walked in and was totally beat down and looked terrible,” she said. “I had no idea who he was. I just thought he was some random dad. He asked how things were going. I told him things were not working out well, and he was really nice and told me to stay positive. That really made an impression on me.”

Although McCardell’s unhappiness at UC Irvine was emotionally taxing, it pales in comparison to the tragic upbringing of her great grandfather.

Maurer and his three brothers lost both their parents in the span of a year. His father was gored by the family bull and died when Maurer was 8. A year later, Maurer’s mother was killed when a train hit her car at a railroad crossing.

Maurer lived in an orphanage until he was 18. He had partial scholarship offers to play baseball in college but couldn’t afford the remaining tuition, so he decided to move west with some friends and find a job. He had only one dollar to his name, which he put in his shoe. The dollar remains in circulation with the family to this day.

Maurer eventually reached Moorpark and began knocking on doors asking for work. He found a position as a field hand on the Pederson Ranch and was allowed to live in the water tower. He remained in the county until his death six years ago on Christmas Eve.

McCardell’s mother, Julie, learned about her grandfather’s background while doing a midterm paper for a history class at Moorpark College.

“Like a college-aged kid I was annoyed with the whole thing and wanted to just get it over with,” she said. “But once he started telling me about his life story, it was amazing. I am so grateful that class made me sit down and write this paper. I would have never been aware of any of this if not for that.”

The story came flooding back during the tour of CLU.

Richard Pederson gave 130 acres, including the ranch house and water tower, to Cal Lutheran’s first president Orville Dahl in 1957. The house and tower were renovated in 1986 and moved from their original location to the northeast corner of Faculty Street and Regent Avenue.

Rond was telling McCardell and her mother the history of the ranch as they approached the site.

“Her mom said her grandfather worked on the ranch and started talking about this water tower and how she has a picture of him on the steps of the water tower,” Rond said. “As she is saying this, we turned the corner and I said, ‘You mean like that one right there?’ It was crazy. It was like something out of a Hollywood movie.”

McCardell is working on the fairy-tale ending. Once again sporting her familiar smile, she is leading CLU in most statistical categories this season.

“It’s nice to be a needed player,” she said. “It’s nice to be somebody who, when games get tight, is put in and expected to perform. That is what I love. I love pressure and I love the feeling of having responsibilities. I feel like I play better that way.”

More important to McCardell, her parents and grandparents can attend nearly every CLU game, and she can watch her sisters play on a regular basis. If she needs even more family comfort, she can walk by the water tower at CLU to rekindle memories of her great grandfather.

“I couldn’t be happier,” McCardell said. “It is like night and day from the last few years. Going through what I did at Irvine has made me appreciate Cal Lutheran that much more. Everything just kind of worked out like it was destiny.”

Ventura County Star, April 17, 2012

It doesn’t matter what you wear: Walter demonstrated ballet positions and other steps at a public lecture in April.

When did your fascination with dance start?

I was a little kid living in Philadelphia. We were watching something on NBC, a ballet of some kind. And there was a ballerina there doing pirouettes, and she had on a tutu, and I said, “I want to do that.” I was 5, maybe 4.

What I did was go to the library and check out a book on ballet and started working on the positions by myself. Over time, I took a tap/modern ballet combination class at the Y, and did dance and gymnastics through high school. I started taking ballet classes in college at UC Riverside and have been taking them ever since.

And you founded a professional ballet company here on the West Coast. You also went to work in business and in municipal finance consulting. How did that come about?

Nobody wants you to be a dance major, at least not in my family. So as an avocation I always danced, and I majored in something else, eventually finishing with my bachelor’s degree in economics. Later, I was looking for an MFA program, but decided to do an interdisciplinary Ph.D. instead. My dissertation had to do with the way ballet companies are run in different countries.

Did you start researching dance in TV advertising because you liked ads with dance or because you couldn’t stand them?

Advertisers learned really early on that they had to go to aesthetics to get people to pay attention to their ads in the first place, because nobody wants to hear, “This is going to be good for you because….” Commercials like the Diet Pepsi “Brown & Bubbly” commercial, or the T-Mobile commercial in the Liverpool train station, or like the Kia Soul commercial with dancing hamsters: those are aesthetics. They’re beautiful art forms even though they reside in cyberspace or television. It was an iPod advertisement that actually got me really into this.

But there’s a problem, right?

Yeah. The problem is, the advertisers are taking something that would be considered sacred in a particular social setting and using it to further consumption of a product that people don’t really need.

Dances like hip-hop and jazz, or social dances like rave, are social commentary. When you see people out there dancing, they’re actually saying something back about the superstructure, making a commentary. When you take dance out of that context and change it so that it’s tied to consumption, you diminish it. You diminish the power that was there.

So would it be better to have ads without dance?

Look, everyone likes to have a good time. But I also know that we live in a world where fewer and fewer people are being exposed to dance in the streets and in the theater. I find that deeply troubling.

The other day I went to the Apple store and I downloaded some music, and I had it going into my subwoofers and my big speakers in my office at home, and I turned it up, and I’m standing there and I’m dancing by myself in my office. Back in the day, we used to do that in a group. You have your music outside, or you have it at a party. People might still be doing that – they probably are – but I think it’s happening less and less as a real social environment and it’s happening more and more virtually.

Why do advertisers think it’s effective to use dance? Are they right?

It works in this area of awe. When you see people dance, you go, “Wow. Oh, man, that was really, really awesome.” There’s some relationship between a positive movement in your body, whether you know it or not, and a perception toward a brand. This is part of what we’re looking into.

What happens in this car commercial for the Kia Soul, the one with the hamsters and the warrior robots dancing together in a post-apocalyptic landscape?

The animated cyborgs are so happy that they’re dancing. They stop fighting.

I mean, what makes the ad interesting for you?

A car is a high-involvement product, and high-involvement products are candidates for emotional appeals. And the ad has lots of African-American dance, hip-hop or whatever, moved off of an African-American body and put onto animated beings.

Depending upon how you read that, it might not be so cool for you. Black social dance has been in the background of television advertising since the 1950s, since the dawn of television, but people could only swallow the aesthetic on the television if it was on a non-black person.

And here it’s on cartoon hamsters and deadly robots. This seems like some sort of strange progression. In the Pepsi commercial, the can dances.

There’s a human universal that people have danced since the beginning of time. Maybe what’s happening is that the way that we dance is transitioning away from what it has been to something else. I don’t know.

If you pull up a Yahoo page, you’ll see a little ad over there with somebody dancing about getting a degree. The big question we should ask is whether this is favorable or detrimental. Do we get to a point in a society where we no longer have dance on the ground?

Junior Chad Phillips was deejay of a Wednesday-night country music show in spring and plans to return to iCLU this academic year.

“We really want everyone to use it as a way to promote themselves,” said Ashley Messersmith ’12, the first general manager. She envisions interviews with student musical acts and members of issue-oriented clubs, poetry slams and coverage of careers, majors and campus events.

“It’s been a very student-driven project, and I think it will be that way for a while if nothing goes wrong,” Messersmith said.

Rivera-Tubbs’ parents were high school dropouts who placed a high value on education and had dreams of their daughter going to college. She hid her pregnancy from them for nearly half a year before finally having to witness their tears and disappointment. Still, they supported her and her decision to keep the baby. A few years after high school, she joined the Air Force, and she met her husband, Richard Tubbs, while they were both stationed in Korea.

When Rivera-Tubbs decided to leave the Air Force in 1996 with no idea of what she would do next, it was her husband who inspired her “to go the distance, to be more than I thought I could be,” she said.

What she did next was complete college and become a special education teacher. She also earned master’s degrees in special education and educational administration and has worked as a middle school teacher, dean of at-risk students and summer school assistant principal. She currently teaches in the Oxnard School District.

“I wanted to give my children the opportunity to go to college,” Rivera-Tubbs told the Commencement audience. The next day, she watched her daughter Brittany graduate from CLU and, in June, watched daughter Tajah graduate from Stanford University.

Like other see-through buildings on campus, the two-level structure will draw in natural light with high glass walls. Its sloped roof will nod to the south, amid three large
upper-level patios for
eating and gathering.

Many of these key design features were temporarily axed under a scaled-back budget for the project. CLU Regent George “Corky” Ullman Jr. ’76 and his brother Steve Ullman ’77 compared the two plans and ultimately decided to kick in $2 million to rescue the
original $15 million design.

The gift comes from the Ullman Foundation, which also represents alumni Cody Ullman ’01 and Chad Ullman ’08. The family has provided support for CLU scholarships and facilities, including Ullman Stadium, for nearly 35 years.

• The building is designed to meet requirements for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
  (LEED) Silver status.
• The lower floor includes a conference center, kitchen and late-night coffee bar. A pedestrian breezeway leads from theater facilities to the academic corridor.
• The west second-floor patio was restored to the plan with a gift from the Ullmans.
• Glass curtain walls draw in light and afford clear views of Kingsmen Park. The scaled-back plan made less use of glass and brick, and the roof was flat.
• An international food station features a large, round Mongolian griddle for barbeque. Choose your ingredients. Vegan and Asian options.
• Pizza oven, pasta, deli, made-to-order grill, and a prominently placed salad and soup bar.

The summer residential experience is part of CLU’s Upward Bound program that motivates and prepares low-income and potential first-generation college students to continue their education.

Thanks to more than $3 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the largest five-year awards CLU has ever received for the program, the University will add 60 students a year from two Los Angeles County high schools, while continuing to serve 86 students a year from Oxnard’s public high schools.

In the last five years, CLU’s TRIO Traditional Upward Bound program has served more than 250 students whose GPAs upon acceptance ranged from 1.5 to 4.2. All of them graduated from high school, and 96 percent enrolled in post-secondary institutions. This year’s 27 graduating seniors have all enrolled in colleges.

This bandolier bag, item 1520 in the Minnesota Historical Society’s Bishop Henry Whipple Collection, was made by Sophia Smith, a Minnesota Chippewa Tribe member. The spot-stitch bag is decorated with glass seed beads.

Museums cannot decide by themselves how to tell indigenous communities’ stories.

By Rosa Corral ’06

Beginning with a senior project involving the La Boyteaux Collection of New Guinea Art at CLU, I’ve had a series of opportunities to work with indigenous collections. Each time, I’ve learned practical skills involving the care and the exhibition of cultural material, but more importantly, I have gained perspective on the ethics of cultural property.

I’ve learned a simple lesson: possessing an object does not entitle a museum to interpret and display it as they please. Many collections housed in museums have deep meaning for the descendants of people who made and used them − meanings which may or may not align with the stories told by curators. However, museums are transitioning away from this imperialistic paradigm and are starting to build relationships with the communities in which their collections originated. Collaboration between museums and indigenous communities on the process of interpretation and display is becoming the common practice.

In 2007, I moved to Australia to attend a graduate program in museum studies at the University of Sydney. While conducting research for the Aboriginal Heritage Unit of the Australian Museum, I learned first-hand the importance of developing positive relationships between museums and indigenous communities. I received an invitation to attend a repatriation ceremony. Specialists at the Australian Museum were working with the University of Sydney to repatriate Kuringgai ancestral remains that were believed to date back to the 1500s. These were the last of 36 Indigenous Australian ancestral remains that the university had held for more than a century.

With the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council, descendants of the local Kuringgai community organized the ceremony and the traditional burial in a designated Aboriginal resting place. The ceremony took place north of the city in Sydney Harbour National Park, overlooking the Manly Quarantine Station that was originally used during the rise in European immigration in the 1820s.

The repatriation ceremony was emotional – a reminder of the painful history endured by Indigenous Australians. It had different meanings for each of the parties involved. For the University of Sydney, it was a rewarding moment, symbolizing a relationship of mutual respect with local Aboriginal communities. University officials saw repatriations like this one as a move toward reconciliation between Aboriginal people and the Australian government.

For the museum staff, the ceremony affirmed the Kuringgai people’s right to reclaim their cultural material in all of its forms. In Australia, museums are often more advanced than the government in their attitudes and policies on these issues.

For the Kuringgai community, the return of ancestral remains meant that the spirits of the individuals would finally be at rest.

For me, witnessing the effect that it had on the community, the reburial ceremony brought the realization that repatriation is more than the transfer of objects or ancestral remains. It was a transfer of power and part of a healing process.

After completing my program, I returned to the States intending to continue my work with indigenous collections and projects that incorporate indigenous perspectives. I began working on a project for the Minnesota Historical Society, digitizing a significant regional collection of Ojibwe and Dakota cultural material. This process included the creation of a virtual exhibition called In Honor of The People (inhonorofthepeople.org), which also serves as a platform for American Indian voices and raises awareness about Minnesota tribes.

Similar to a repatriation, the website restores community access to cultural materials. In support of ongoing language revitalization efforts in Minnesota, it includes Ojibwe and Dakota translations for the titles of objects. When making decisions about content, design and display, and throughout the process, our team consulted an American Indian Advisory Committee of local Dakota and Ojibwe community representatives. At the committee’s request, we omitted the images of a number of culturally sensitive items. Photographs of objects considered possibly sacred were not included.

This year, as museums in Minnesota observe the sesquicentennial of the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862, controversy is sure to arise about which items to put on display and which ones to withhold from public view. My experience tells me museums have a challenging task ahead. If there is to be any success, American Indian communities will need to be equal partners throughout the process.

Rosa Corral, a program researcher for the Minnesota Historical Society, credits her introduction to indigenous cultures to a California history course with professor Michaela Reaves.

Email ideas and submissions for Vocations to kevinm@callutheran.edu.

When Edlyn Vallejo Peña, a specialist in equity and inclusion in higher education, learned that her son had autism, she set out both to understand his world and to push for faster change at universities.

By Kevin Matthews

Education professor Edlyn Vallejo Peña has about 15 years to get Diego ready for college and to get college ready for Diego.

As she suspected not long after his first birthday and confirmed at about 18 months, her son has a lifelong disability. His problems with communication place him on what Peña and other researchers call the autism spectrum. For now, at age 4, he expresses wants and needs not through speech, but primarily through an Apple iPad with a baby blue bumper and special software.

One day last November, unprompted, he began using the iPad interface to steer his mother to the couch for affection.

“I want … hug,” said Diego, tapping icons.

As Peña sees it, having a child with autism magnifies everything about parenthood. Uncertainties about the future loom large, and each of Diego’s accomplishments feels like a breakthrough. When other parents leave their kids to play, she remains at his side in case he needs protection or a break. Precisely because of his difficulties with communication, the parenting never stops.

“When he’s in his own world and he doesn’t acknowledge me in the way that most people acknowledge each other, it’s easy to say, well, I’m just going to do my own thing,” Peña said. “But you can’t do that. I can’t pretend that Diego doesn’t know what’s going on, because he does.”

At the same time, having a child with autism magnifies the challenges facing an education professor who specializes in ways to promote equity and inclusion on campuses. Peña, who is Cuban-American, wrote her dissertation on building the capacity of faculty members to support students from racial and ethnic minorities. Since Diego’s diagnosis, she has become an expert in similar issues as they relate to autism and Asperger’s.

“As I learn more about Diego, that feeds into my research, and as I do more research, that feeds into my work with Diego,” she said.

With her colleague Jodie Kocur in CLU’s Psychology Department, Peña is launching a study, based on interviews with parents, about the path through college for undergraduates with autism spectrum disorders.

Peña also chairs the dissertation committee of Barbara Sorter, a CLU doctoral student who conducted interviews with college students on the autism spectrum at a four-year public university in this region. Sorter is assessing the challenges these students face and rethinking how college disability offices can respond.

For Peña, progress in the field can’t come quickly enough.

Don’t Underestimate

Until he was about 13 or 14 months old, Diego Peña met all of the usual developmental milestones on time. He sat up, crawled, walked and said “mama” and “dada.” But sometime between then and 18 months, he stopped speaking. He stopped pointing and stopped sucking from a straw. He stopped following simple instructions.

Peña and her husband – Damien, a former CLU staff member now working at CSU Channel Islands – soon found themselves engaged in the “very political process” of getting their son an official diagnosis, which involved an independent assessment. There was also a lot of introspection.

“Emotionally, it tears up your world, because you start questioning, what does this mean for our family, for our future?” Peña said. “And I think there’s a bit of denial in the beginning where you think, ‘I can fix this.’”

In a poignant telling of her story, a video short titled “Finding Diego,” Peña describes how she learned again to talk to her son after several distracted months spent “talking in front of” him and struggling to make a connection. The toughest period followed his diagnosis at age 2.

Now, Diego attends a mainstream class at a private preschool and gets 35 hours of behavioral and other therapy every week at home. Five or six people come and go during the week, so the house doesn’t know much quiet before dinner.

Peña supposes that the interior world where Diego often dwells includes characters from the “Toy Story” films, Super Grover, swimming pools and a lot of music. Lately, with the help of medication for epileptic seizures, a new diagnosis, Diego sleeps more deeply and has emerged from his sometime “fog,” she said.

He learns sight words and numbers quickly, and has academic potential. Peña’s concerns about his future revolve instead around the consequences of his limited social skills.

“Smart isn’t going to get you everywhere,” Peña said. “You need to navigate the world, and you do that by interacting with people.”

Accommodate

College students on the autism spectrum face daunting challenges, in part because of the premium that college life places on independence. For lack of friendships, the seven students interviewed by Sorter continue to see their mothers as their main source of support. They benefit when the disability office provides note-takers, who free them from having to write down information while trying to absorb it. But they are generally unable to manage their own time, and disability offices have been slow to offer the study reminders and coaching that many of these students received in high school, according to Sorter.

Life after college is a topic that these students don’t often broach.

“It’s more about just getting through the week. For some of them, it’s about getting through the day. As far as having long-term goals and objectives, they don’t have any,” Sorter said of the interviewees.

Among the day-to-day struggles are relationships with instructors. A student who zones out during a lecture or, conversely, talks out of turn and at length may appear rude or abrasive. If that student has autism or Asperger’s, he or she may be oblivious of any problem and feel mortified when called to account.

For Peña, the remedy involves not only careful instruction for students but also more mandatory professional development for faculty members. Making this sort of training voluntary sends the wrong message, she said.

Roughly one percent of children are now diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and 10 percent of today’s college students have a learning disability of some sort. Although discussion of the issues is healthier than it was a generation ago – when children with autism, for example, were often thought of as either robotic or aggressive – Peña observed that in the last two decades the leading professional journals in higher education have devoted about one of every 100 articles to disability.

“I would like to do research on students with autism, and not only that, but also publish it in top-tier, mainstream journals, so that we’re not just relegating these issues to the disability journals.”

Naturally, Peña’s main focus is on her son. Between his communication devices – he has his own talking iPod Touch, along with the iPad – and the daily therapy, she believes his prospects of overcoming the obstacles arrayed ahead of him are good.

“I adjust my expectations of Diego with caution, because I need to be realistic about his capacities, but I don’t want to limit him. Everyone else will do that for him,” Peña said. “One day he will set foot on a college campus, and I want that campus to be ready.”

Petty officer second class Jeanette Zimmerman (right) was deployed on the USS Boxer in 2005 with petty officers first class Amber Bates (left) and Molly Morales.

The number of military veterans enrolled at CLU has tripled in three years, as troops return and Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits kick in. Communication major Jeanette Zimmerman and other veterans are working on a smooth transition.

By Fred Alvarez

The transition from soldier to student wasn’t an easy one for CLU senior Luis Peña.

Following two tours in and near Iraq, during which the Marine Corps machine-gunner ran combat missions and delivered humanitarian aid, Peña returned home in 2003 to find the pieces of his once orderly life jagged and out of place.
He was quick to anger and struggled with feelings of isolation. He lashed out at those closest to him and distrusted anyone he didn’t know.

The Oxnard resident said he felt out of place in a world at peace, as if he had spent the four years following high school graduation sliding sideways while all those around him had moved forward with their lives.

Then Peña landed at CLU, drawn by its small campus and its welcoming community. He was buoyed by the openness and support of students and staff, and impressed by the classes and teaching faculty.

Most of all, he said, he felt safe to explore his academic interests, taking on a double major of Spanish and art. He is preparing now to graduate in the spring and pursue an advanced degree.

“I felt really comfortable, like I could let go of everything and actually study, learn something, and see life from a different perspective,” said Peña, 31, who has used Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to pay for much of his CLU education.

“There’s something about a person who goes overseas and does his duty – you come back and you feel like you have missed so much of your life,” he said. “I felt like I had lost myself for a couple of years. Cal Lutheran helped me find my way back.”

Florida resident Rene Bruer, MBA ’11, came to campus for graduation after completing his degree online.

Marching Home to Study

Peña is part of a wave of military veterans across the country who are returning from combat zones and heading to the classroom, aided by federal programs designed to ease the shift to civilian life. Nationwide, more than a half-million military veterans have used the benefits of a revamped GI Bill to return to school in the nearly three years since the program took effect, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The VA has paid out more than $11.5 billion in GI Bill benefits since 2009, and officials expect to see a rise in the number of service members tapping those subsidies with the end of military operations in Iraq and the announced drawdown of troops in Afghanistan.

At CLU, enrollment of military veterans has tripled in three years, from just 29 veterans in the fall of 2008 to 93 in fall 2011.

CLU is one of more than 2,600 colleges and universities nationwide participating in the Yellow Ribbon Program, a provision of the GI Bill in which the federal government and universities share some of the cost of attending more-expensive private institutions. The program benefits military veterans who have served at least three years since Sept. 11, 2001.

Under an agreement forged with the VA in 2009, CLU awards up to $2,500 per school year to eligible veterans, and the government matches that amount. Last year, 35 veterans at CLU received Yellow Ribbon grants.

Beyond financial aid, offices across campus are finding creative ways to welcome and support veterans. For example, CLU’s California Institute of Finance launched an interactive website aimed at providing a place for veterans and active duty personnel to meet, exchange ideas and learn more about the School of Management.

Other potential initiatives include expanding counseling services for veterans, establishing a veterans club on campus and creating a veterans liaison position for the University to smooth the enrollment process and support veterans academically.

“We believe we can be a great place for veterans and local military personnel to continue their education,” said William Rosser, CLU’s vice president for student affairs and dean of students.

A veteran of Vietnam, Rosser was surprised by the size of the recent surge of fellow veterans attending CLU. He started to look for ways to expand counseling outreach and other support services to them.

“This is a group of people we want on our campus,” Rosser said, “and we want to make sure that we are providing all of the support necessary to help them be successful while they are here and in making this transition in their lives.”

Andrew Gonzalez poses on the wreck of a jet that had been sabotaged prior to the invasion of Iraq.

‘Small, Mobile Force’

For many veterans, that transition can be bumpy.

Most are older than traditional college freshmen and many come with jobs, families and other responsibilities not typical of college students. In addition, many plunge into university life still struggling with the experiences of war, which may have left physical and emotional wounds.

But they also are a highly desired group, bringing an arsenal of problem-solving skills and a level of maturity that show through in class projects and interactions with professors.

Senior Andrew Gonzalez, a 41-year-old Moorpark resident, arrived at CLU with business as well as battlefield experience. After graduating from Agoura High School in 1989, he wandered through a few years of college and a series of dead-end sales jobs before deciding to join the Marine Corps Reserves in 1998. He was 28 and working as a personal trainer. And he saw boot camp and military service as the challenge he needed to jumpstart his life.

Six years later, he was called up to serve in central Iraq with the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at the Al Asad Air Base.

A staff sergeant, Gonzalez said his deployment was not particularly harrowing. A dozen or so rockets were lobbed his way during his six-month stint, but for the most part, he spent his time in relative safety, directing air resources to support Marine and Army infantry troops throughout Iraq.

“We had it incredibly easy when you look at it,” Gonzalez said. “I wasn’t one of those guys knocking down doors.”

Upon his return to the states, Gonzalez decided to get serious about his schooling, first attending Moorpark College then choosing CLU as the place to pursue his interest in exercise science.

As a cycling coach who was about to open his own gym, Gonzalez was looking to expand his knowledge base by exploring the facets of human performance. After considering a handful of universities, he settled on CLU as the best fit, both because of its cutting-edge exercise science curriculum and its ability to navigate the intricacies of the GI Bill and extend aid and scholarships to finance the bulk of his education.

“Cal Lutheran is very much like the Marine Corps – it’s a small, mobile force, and ultimately I felt more at ease with that team than any other team,” said Gonzalez.

On target to graduate in December, Gonzalez is facing the prospect of another deployment in 2013, this time to Afghanistan. He believes it will be harder the second time around.

He is married now and the father of a 3-year-old son. He is also a business owner and will be, by the time he deploys, a freshly minted college graduate. But Gonzalez has known that this was part of the deal all along. He said he’s grateful to be part of the group of military personnel who have helped blaze a trail at CLU.

“What Cal Lutheran has done, and is learning to do, is figure out what it takes to support service members,” Gonzalez said. “It is undoubtedly the right thing to do. And, when you look at return on investment in the number of military personnel who are going to go on to get degrees and contribute to their communities, it’s undoubtedly a worthwhile thing to do.”

Creating Community

The School of Management has gone high-tech with its outreach to military personnel. Two years ago, CLU’s California Institute of Finance – which offers an MBA and a certificate program in financial planning – launched an online military lounge aimed at promoting its programs to service members.

The military lounge allows visitors to take a virtual tour of the campus and the online classroom, view graduate student work, and hear from military personnel about their CLU experiences.

“I thought this would be a unique way for us to show (military personnel) how much they are appreciated and how we were trying to make this a convenient experience for them,” said CIF Associate Director Harry Starn, a West Point graduate and Army veteran who devised the online concept.

“When you look at what a military student looks for in a program…they’re looking for things like accreditation of the school, quality of the courses they’re getting into, industry experience of the faculty and flexibility of program,” Starn added. “They’re looking at how a university will be able to meet their unique needs.”

Last May, Marine Corps veteran Rene Bruer earned his MBA in finance, along with a post-graduate certificate in financial planning, through the CIF’s online distance-learning program. The Florida resident and father of two did so by taking night classes while working full time as a financial planner.

Bruer said he chose CLU, over universities closer to home and other distance-learning programs, because of its flexible and highly rated academic programs, and its reputation for working with military veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“Although this was distance learning, at no point did I feel this was a distant relationship. I felt taken care of, especially because I was a veteran. I couldn’t think of a better university to attend.”

Transforming Our Service

While CLU has attempted in many ways to reach out to and meet the needs of veterans and active duty personnel, there’s momentum across the campus to do even more.

Matthew Ward, CLU’s vice president of enrollment management and marketing, said the University has become much more knowledgeable in recent years about the challenges veterans face navigating the college process, from application to graduation.

It was his team that recognized the rise in CLU’s veterans population and prompted the University to join the Yellow Ribbon Program. And while he believes there is a solid network of support services in place to help veterans, he knows that more can be done to better coordinate and publicize those efforts.

“The overarching question for me, as we look toward the future, is how to come up with a more comprehensive, holistic approach that focuses on the multiplicity of issues and needs of this population,” Ward said.
CLU senior Jeanette Zimmerman has a few ideas.

The Navy veteran brings a unique experience to CLU, including deployment for months at a time on an amphibious assault ship in the Persian Gulf, protecting oil platforms from attack.

Before she graduates next December, she wants to create a veterans club on campus and work with the University to establish a veterans liaison office, a one-stop shop in which veterans can complete the enrollment process, file financial aid requests and learn more about VA and CLU programs available to support them.

“I have a wild dream, that’s still in the works, to unite the veterans here on campus so that we can work together, share stories and build camaraderie based on our similar experiences,” said Zimmerman, a Simi Valley resident and single mother of two.

Zimmerman has enrolled in courses at various universities in a long march toward earning her degree, having joined the Navy in 2003 with the intent of taking advantage of the new GI Bill. The communication major said that CLU “has some of the best classes and some of the best teachers I’ve ever had.”

“But I also think that we, as veterans, have a lot to offer the University in terms of the different life experiences we bring to the classroom,” she added. “We are able to talk about experiences younger students might never consider. It can kind of open their eyes to what’s really going on in the world.”

If you catch the CLU campus looking and feeling like an all-outdoor space, or maybe a great green indoors, the credit goes to a coastal climate and CLU’s first architect.

By Carol Keochekian ’81 and Kevin Matthews

Jefferson A. Elmendorf, the architect of CLU’s original Centrum – not just the structure that now houses a café, but the seven barrel-roofed buildings in shouting distance of it – died Nov. 30 at the age of 85.

Maybe that ends an era for CLU, or maybe not. According to the master plan approved under founding president Orville Dahl, the Centrum was supposed to become a shopping center with professional suites, a sort of bucolic strip mall that would serve (and employ) students while raising revenue for the campus. Higher learning was to move uphill from the chicken coops that Elmendorf converted for the new college, with a chapel and a conference center at the summit of Mount Clef and academic buildings nearby.

Since that vision was never realized, you could make the case that Elmendorf’s impact on CLU has steadily faded.

The early building frenzy that he led definitely came to an end. Sounds of heavy machinery, hammers and saws were rarely heard again until Pearson Library’s construction in the 1980s. Then came the largest construction boom in campus history, which continues today with at least one building dedication or groundbreaking in each of the past 12 years.

Still, if you stop to consider what Elmendorf was up to, as the architectural guidelines that are today in effect explicitly do, then you may come to an opposite conclusion about the extent of his influence on the campus today. From the Swenson Center up the academic corridor, and on across Olsen Road, many echoes linger of the Centrum complex dedicated in 1962.

The most noticeable feature of the original buildings is the barrel-vault roofs made of poured concrete. Donald DeMars ’64, who designed Pearson Library, wrote that the scalloped forms “were chosen by Elmendorf because they did not require vertical structural support, thus allowing large, open and uncluttered interior classroom spaces.” These interiors enjoy natural light reflected from the rows of lunettes underneath the rooftops, which jut far out from walls of glass to prevent heat from gathering indoors.

The rooftops were also the architect’s way of projecting Dahl’s vision of an optimistic, futuristic campus fit for the Space Age. Elmendorf took his direct inspiration from photographs in an architectural journal of new buildings in Mexico, according to Ernst F. Tonsing’s California Lutheran University, College of Our Dreams: the First Fifty Years 1959–2009.

The concrete half-cylinders were not common at the time, recalls Jack Samuelson of Samuelson Brothers, one of the contractors for the emerging college. His firm had never made them before.

“The walls were built first, and then forms were placed on top of the plate lines [walls],” Samuelson said. “Concrete was then poured into the forms to about five inches thick. The roof was poured in sections, and once the concrete set, the forms were moved to the next section.”

What was the effect of this trouble, over the years? You’ll know if you’ve ever made eye contact from yards off with someone standing in the Centrum Café. More recently, it is possible to look right through the William Rolland Stadium complex to the goalposts and the hills beyond.

“Transparency” is one of the watchwords of the architectural design guidelines that were approved in 1999 and are still in use. Citing the need for continuity with older structures on campus, the guidelines endorse extensive use of glass, as well as interior and clerestory windows, allowing people to see one another and be seen. Entryways of academic buildings are supposed to be inviting and lead to indoor and outdoor gathering spaces. Usually clothed in glass and framed by brick, they present, as the guidelines put it, “a clear entry and public face to the campus.

Think of the two grand entryways that showcase stairwells in the Spies-Bornemann Center for Education and Technology, completed in 2002. They are set off from the brick and stucco by more than two stories of glass and feature shade-making protrusions.

In a way this is Elmendorf all over again, albeit with updated materials and straight lines. The newer residence halls, the Soiland Humanities, Swenson and Gilbert Centers, and even Rolland Stadium exhibit variations on this pattern, although they don’t all include the whole checklist of features.

A direct connection between indoors and outdoors is important in sunny Thousand Oaks, because faculty members and students constantly meet and do their work in both kinds of spaces. The architectural guidelines pick up on this, starting with the premise that community is integral to campus life. Landscaping and building design are meant to promote interaction and collaboration, providing meeting and working spaces. CLU senior project manager Valerie Crooks points to the Swenson Center’s patios as “a good example of expanding gathering areas to the outdoors.”

Crooks, who has managed campus construction projects including Trinity Hall and Rolland Stadium, said that Soiland Humanities Center (1999) and Samuelson Chapel (1991) have become touchstones for subsequent building designs. The rounded façade of Lundring Events Center borrows from the chapel, she said. Because of the importance of the chapel, she added, care is taken not to allow new structures to overshadow it architecturally.

“We want to make sure all buildings look somewhat the same—have a tie—but also have an element that differentiates them,” Crooks said. So Trinity Hall mirrors the design of Grace Hall, but also adds a third color to the exterior.

Though it’s a very notable feature at CLU, transparency is not appropriate for all of the buildings on campus. Elmendorf also designed the ornamental grillwork that obscures the view of windows at Mount Clef Hall and the magazine editor’s hiding place in Pederson Administration Building. A repeating “bubble” motif, which the Samuelson brothers produced by slicing PVC pipe into circles and then gluing the rings together, served as an inexpensive means of filtering light. It also seems to complete the suggestion of tubular forms on the nearby Centrum complex roofs. Crooks said that the design was ahead of its time in promoting sustainability.

While continuing to build green facilities and to seek LEED certification for them, as it did successfully with the Swenson Center, CLU will stick to architectural guidelines that owe a lot to Elmendorf. Expect more large entryways of clear, pale green or frit glass, light-colored stucco, brick, flat roofs for the buildings in the academic corridor, and sloped roofs for buildings around the perimeter.

We like the open feeling, even if we’re not sure we’d call this the Space Age.

Actually, we’re not sure whether to call it new.

Cynthia Hernandez, a CLU alumna who trains teacher candidates at No Limits for Deaf Children, covers her mouth so that Brian Pinto Pacheco can’t rely on lip-reading skills to understand her.

A $1.2 million federal award will help put 48 teachers for deaf and hard-of-hearing students through CLU’s Graduate School of Education.

Jeff Westendorf has early memories of feeling “wiped out” by speech therapy. His 12-hour days as a preschooler who wore hearing aids started with flash cards before the morning bus arrived, and ended with him falling asleep in front of “The A-Team.”

He was struggling to talk, and it paid off. By age 5 or 6 he was speaking, and today he sounds like the graduate
student he is.

“A lot of people said there were things I couldn’t do, and I did them. I played sports all through high school,” said Westendorf, who is working toward a CLU teaching credential and master’s degree in education for the deaf and hard of hearing.

With early screening and diagnosis, cochlear implants for profoundly deaf children, better hearing aids and more effective teaching methods, children with hearing loss are having unprecedented success in general education settings.

To meet the needs of its fast-growing deaf and hard-of-hearing populations, however, California needs more specialized teachers. And this school year, the CLU Graduate School of Education’s efforts to remedy the shortage received a major boost in the form of a $1.2 million Education Department grant.

Eighty percent of the federal money goes toward tuition and books in the two-year program, covering the better part of Westendorf’s master’s degree and those of 11 other currently enrolled teacher candidates. In all, the grant will allow CLU to prepare 48 specialists to teach students from birth to age 22 and to advise general classroom teachers. Based at CLU’s Woodland Hills Center, the program is the only one in California that prepares educators to teach listening and spoken language to students older than age 6.

For those teacher candidates who started last summer, the tuition aid came as a late, very welcome surprise.

“It’s a great relief,” said Westendorf. “Now I can just focus on my program and class and homework.”

Teacher candidates arrive at CLU with varied strengths, such as skills in sign language and Spanish. More than half of Californians diagnosed with hearing loss live in homes where Spanish is spoken.

“I really feel like I’ve found a good niche to use my Spanish-speaking abilities for something good,” said Jessica Lopez, who had her eyes opened to new possibilities when she taught English to children with hearing loss on her year abroad in Madrid.

Josue Alva plays a game of Pin the Ornament on the Christmas Tree that builds vocabulary and tests his reactions to spoken cues.

Although the teacher candidates must learn to sign, CLU’s program makes maximum use of the listening abilities of young students.

“Hearing, but also listening. They really have to attend to sound,” explained program director Maura Martindale, who has more than 30 years of teaching experience and is the chair of CLU’s Special Education Department. “Spoken language is learned through audition, and that’s the best, fastest way to do it. We’ve tried for centuries to do it all kinds of other ways.”

Cynthia Hernandez, M.S. ’11, first learned about the field through L.A.’s John Tracy Clinic, where she now works.

“I was fascinated to think that children with hearing loss could actually learn to listen and to speak,” she said. “Whenever you think children with hearing loss, it’s everyone’s assumption that you think sign language.”

Hernandez remains involved with the CLU program as a field supervisor at No Limits for Deaf Children, a Culver City–based nonprofit. There, the teacher candidates design and execute lessons for students in grades K-6.

One Saturday last semester, teacher candidates led three boys and their families in games under Hernandez’s supervision. Josue Alva’s eyes brightened as he guessed what was inside of the gift boxes that he and his mother were shaking.

The lessons are for parents as much as anyone; 92 percent of deaf and hard-of-hearing kids are born to two hearing parents.

When Westendorf had his first teaching experience last semester, at a West Hollywood elementary school, parents peppered him with questions about hearing loss and how far their kids could progress.

“Do you drive?” asked one Spanish-speaking parent through a translator. The question surprised Westendorf, who went away to Denver for college to learn independence.

“I said, ‘Of course. I drive.’ And they asked how I could hear the ambulances and the fire trucks. I said, ‘I don’t. I have the music blaring.’ They got a good laugh out of that.”

After class at No Limits, Lizeth Pacheco said that free instruction for her two sons with cochlear implants has shown her how to be a teacher for them.

“It helps me to help,” she explained in Spanish.

By Kevin Matthews

Rocio Bravo-Chavez, M.S. ’07 (l), and Richard Castaniero, who is now seeking a master’s degree and special education teaching credential, came through the migrant program and decided to give back. There are more CLU alumni like them.

As a young student, Rocio Bravo-Chavez, M.S. ’07, was always starting over “from the bottom.” She attended three elementary schools in Oxnard before the family of seven moved to Camarillo, where she was the only one in her third-grade class still learning to speak English. About the time she felt comfortable with the language, in the middle of fifth grade, it was back to La Piedad in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

Bravo-Chavez would enjoy a first academic triumph about a year later, rising to the top of her class in Mexico, and suffer more setbacks on her way to two master’s degrees and a K-12 counseling credential. She got help through her journey from her determined father and a federal program for migratory students.

With instruction on Saturdays and during the summer, the Migrant Education Program focuses on closing the achievement gap for students whose learning is interrupted as parents move around to work in agriculture, fishing, the dairy and lumber industries, and packinghouses.

“My dad worked for more than 40 years in the fields here and in Mexico, and he always encouraged me: If you don’t want to work in the fields, then you have to work hard and go to school,” Bravo-Chavez said.

As a counselor at Santa Paula High School, Bravo-Chavez now helps hundreds of students facing the same obstacles she overcame as a kid. And she’s not alone. Over the last decade, CLU’s Graduate School of Education has conferred advanced degrees and teaching or counseling credentials on at least eight former migrant students who are now using their training to serve current migrants at Ventura County schools.

“It’s something that we saw when we were growing up, and we’ve been through it, and we wanted to come back so that the future generation would also have that opportunity to be successful,” said David Ramos, M.S. ’05, a special programs counselor at Hueneme High School in Oxnard who assists migrant students, English-language learners and disadvantaged students.

In addition to preparing professionals such as Ramos, the education school collaborates with the Rio Learning Academy, a Saturday school for migrant learners in Oxnard’s Rio School District. CLU faculty and doctoral students mentor middle school students on the academy’s speech and debate team and serve as judges at its science fair.

Last April, the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company gave an all-day workshop and performance at the school site. With funding from the Target Foundation, CLU’s education school is running professional development seminars this year to help Rio teachers use visual and performing arts education across the curriculum.

At a science exhibition last summer at the Rio Learning Academy in Oxnard, assistant professor Maureen Lorimer (r) speaks with Rio Mesa High School students Nora Aguilar and Giselle Vergara. Lorimer manages CLU’s collaboration with the academy for migrant learners, including professional development programs for teachers.

“I think CLU is a very special place, because it’s a small school where you get a lot of direct dialogue with the teacher about your ideas, about your projects,” said Richard Castaniero, a current student pursuing a master’s degree and a special education teaching credential. “I’ve never had a professor tell me they can’t meet with me because they’re too busy, and I’ve even had professors talk to me late at night after class. Overall, it’s an academic community that’s really focused on supporting students.”

Costs of Relocation

“Once you work with the migrant population, you fall in love with it,” said Andres Duran, M.Ed. ’05, who as a teen immigrant from Mexico did not qualify for the program. “They’re very respectful and they really listen to their teachers, and they really want to get ahead, but they don’t have the tools. So you try to provide them all the things that you can to make them successful.”

A former director of the Rio Learning Academy who’s been working in migrant education since 1998, Duran is now at the proposal stage of a CLU dissertation that asks why some migrant students succeed, while others do not. Given that roughly one in 10 migrant students go on to college and become professionals, the study will address a burning question.

The issue is not immigration. All of the former migrant students consulted for this article were born in Ventura County or obtained U.S. permanent residency at an early age.

The migrant student population in Ventura County is mostly Latino, but includes others such as young Filipinos who qualify because their parents work in fisheries.

What nearly all of these students have in common is poverty, low self-esteem and high, everyday exposure to risk. If you want to know why most students don’t “make it,” Duran says, start by looking at how many of their mothers don’t get prenatal care, how many words their parents speak to them at home, compared with affluent families, and how many of them don’t start school until age 6 or 7.

Based on his research, Duran estimates that every move costs a migrant student half a year of instruction. And all too often, by high school these students face a stark choice between continuing their education and providing for their families’ basic needs.

‘People Just Worked’

Valentina Avalos, M.Ed. ’05, a reading intervention teacher for Camarillo elementary students, was born in Oxnard, the middle child of seven, and brought up by a single mother. While her mother picked strawberries, oranges, onions and lettuce, the family lived in rented rooms, garages converted into rentals and, during one especially hard period, a car. Her mother showered at the beach then.

For most of Avalos’ childhood, her mother woke her up by 4:30 a.m. and took her to an aunt’s house, where she slept again until it was time for school. Avalos, who wanted a different life for her family, thought of an hourly wage as her highest aim.

There was nobody out there that really cared about my education, about what I was doing at home, if I was eating or not eating.

“Like many people, I didn’t really have people telling me, ‘go to college.’ In my family people just worked,” she said. Her high school friends “all either dropped out, or they started working, or they got pregnant. I was the only one who made the choice not to live like them.”

Ramos, the Hueneme High counselor, and Bertha Zaragoza, M.S. ’06, a counselor at Buena High School in Ventura, had fathers who worked on construction projects and in the fields, and mothers who packed sea urchins and avocados.

Ramos moved for two years with his family to the state of Jalisco, Mexico, in time for kindergarten. Zaragoza was constantly changing elementary and middle schools in Port Hueneme and Oxnard.

“There was nobody out there that really cared about my education, about what I was doing at home, if I was eating or not eating,” said Zaragoza, the youngest of seven children and the only one of her siblings to attend college.

For generations, members of Rocio Bravo-Chavez’s family came to California to work in the fields. Her father also had a ranch in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

Zaragoza tries to offer the caring and attention she missed to the roughly 380 students on her caseload, perhaps two dozen of whom participate in the migrant program. Along with her regular duties, she is responsible for helping seniors apply for admission and financial aid at nearby Ventura College.

“It’s just rewarding to see the kids continue, because I know how it feels to have your degree, to not have to work a minimum wage job anymore, to not have to work in a factory,” she said.

Drawing Students Out

Near the end of a 5 ½-week summer program for migrant students at Hueneme High, Ramos pauses to advise a senior named Cristina to take three workbook-based courses to fulfill graduation requirements. Days before, he convinced her mother to let her stay in mariachi, the school band where she was learning violin. In walks Ana Rosita, and Ramos jabbers about her smile until she cracks one.

“What they really need is someone they can trust, someone they can go to for whatever reason, someone that they can feel comfortable with,” he said, recalling a male student who rode his bike to Saturday school in spite of heavy rain.

Much of the energy in migrant education is directed toward drawing students out of protective shells, so that they can discover and pursue their talents. This, even more than exposing them to subject matter, is the point of having a regional speech and debate competition for migrants and the science fair at Rio academy.

Two years ago, Castaniero left a successful L.A. film career and began working with K-8 migrant students at Rio Learning Academy and in the Hueneme school district. As a product of UC Berkeley’s English program and UCLA’s film school who never read a book “cover-to-cover” before college, he is acutely aware of the developmental and emotional hurdles many students face.

The former screenwriter and current CLU master’s degree student has painful early memories of being scolded or punished for mixing Spanish into his writing.

“Sometimes I was made to feel dumb, versus made to understand that I was bilingual,” he said.

Castaniero held back tears when discussing his efforts to help one Mixtec-speaking student, who obviously loved books, to put down a well-worn young reader’s biography of baseball player Roberto Clemente and try something more advanced. Fearing ridicule and failure, the boy hated to read aloud and avoided challenges.

What’s going on in California is serious. The prison system looks at fourth-grade reading levels to decide how many beds they’re going to make.

“I went into special ed trying to find that key to unlock his reading skills,” Castaniero said. Asked about his commitment to the Hueneme district’s science program, he said, “It’s a passion. It’s not about hours. You can’t pay me the hours that I put into it.”

“What’s going on in California now is very serious,” Castaniero added. “The prison system looks at fourth-grade reading levels to decide how many prison beds they’re going to make. I got a lot of support during my education. I have friends who didn’t, and they’ve been through the prison system.”

Drivers of Success

For the 10 percent who go on from the migrant program to college and good-paying jobs, the most common thing they had going for them was a parent who cared deeply about their schooling, according to Duran. But there are all kinds of stories. For his dissertation, Duran will combine personal interviews with data collection, in the hope of uncovering hidden drivers of success.

“Even people that have it all sometimes don’t make it, and some people who have nothing end up making it. So what is it?” Duran said, adding, “I believe that there’s a trigger in everybody’s life where we come to the realization that, oops, I’d better get it together.”

Avalos, for one, completed seven straight years of higher education not because of anything an adult told her, but because she didn’t want her mother’s life.

“What drove me, too, is that I wanted to be an educated person,” she said. “I wanted a job where I could give back and work with children like myself, and help them out and be a model for them.”

Not one of the former migrant students said that they would have met today’s strict eligibility requirements for the program. After repeated cuts, the number of students in the migrant program at Hueneme High has fallen by about half, to fewer than 300, in the six years he’s been a counselor, Ramos said.

These CLU educators are concerned about the consequences of squeezing the migrant program. All of them cited the it as a bright spot in their early experiences at school.

For Bravo-Chavez, her lowest moment as a student came when the family returned to Michoacán during her fifth-grade year. Somehow, though they couldn’t afford it, her parents hired a private tutor for the children then struggling to read, write and speak Spanish well enough for school.

Bravo-Chavez worked hard over the summer and the following year and finally had the privilege, reserved for the top student in each class at the Mexican school, of being a flag-bearer at a year-end ceremony.

She didn’t forget what the flag meant.

“Working hard for what you want in the end is worth it,” Bravo-Chavez said. “That was one of the best memories I have from my childhood.”

Something happened under the new William Rolland Stadium lights on Oct. 1, and by some accounts what happened wasn’t just memorable football.

“‘Magical’ is definitely the first word that comes to mind,” said Karsten Lundring ’65, CLU’s first pep commissioner and number one sports fan. “It felt absolutely like a storybook or a filming of a movie. It felt like we were both living it and being part of the story that was being written.”

Cal Lutheran took the lead over Redlands for the first time that night with just 16 seconds on the clock, on a
1-yard sneak by quarterback Jake Laudenslayer at the far end of a 98-yard scoring drive. Redlands’ Hail Mary pass to the CLU end zone failed, time expired and Kingsmen fans rushed the field.

Twenty-eight to 24. And that’s only the ending.

It started on a gorgeous late afternoon that, if you’d left your sunglasses behind, was too bright in the West-facing home stands. As the sun was setting, Bill Rolland, the $5 million donor parked there, received a warm ovation.

Babies arrived with CLU logos on their cheeks. Latecomers clogged the steps and began filling the visiting team’s bleachers. Students yelled the words to the national anthem. As the crowd brimmed to nearly 4,000, fans took up places mountainside behind the north fence.

Back in the stands, junior accounting major Stanford Anthony gave the new stadium a thumbs-up. Did he attend all of the games? “I will now,” he said.

Linda Nausin ’70, a staff member in the Graduate School of Education, recalled the late 1960s: “They kept talking about how we would have a new stadium before we graduated. Well, guess what? This is well worth the wait.”

“You see every demographic here,” said CLU athletic director Dan Kuntz. “The excitement, the fun, the anticipation: it’s the first time ever in Ventura County for an intercollegiate, four-year university to have a stadium that brings people together for football games.”

What could spoil it?

Featuring the two strongest teams in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, the season opener promised to be a pivotal contest. During the first half, University of Redlands quarterback Chad Hurst scrambled almost at will, and his offense put up 14 points in the first eight minutes. At halftime the Kingsmen faced a 24-0 deficit.

In the end Lundring – who figures that he and his wife, Kirsten ’64, have missed a total of 11 CLU games, home and away, in almost 50 football seasons – could think of just two games that he liked as well as this one.

There might be five like it in the whole history of the team, he said.

“The football was almost secondary except that it then became the story with the perfect ending,” said Lundring.

“From being almost hopeless at halftime to being filled with hope just a few minutes later, to thinking, ‘Hey, this team can do this,’” he went on, “[the game] definitely just raised hopes throughout the second half, and they kept building and building.”

North of Olsen Road, the newest symbols of CLU are a 70-foot clock tower and a 7-foot-2-inch bronze football player. The specially commissioned statue, titled “Heading for the End Zone,” greets visitors to CLU’s new $8.9 million stadium and art gallery.

On Oct. 29, Bill Rolland participated in a Homecoming pre-game ceremony dedicating the construction. A real estate developer and decorated former firefighter from Westlake Village, Rolland contributed $5.45 million to the effort, the largest single gift in University history.

“Coming from a humble background and serving as an L.A. firefighter, I believe in giving back to the community,” Rolland said. “I feel like my passion for building great facilities, higher education, athletics and art have come together perfectly in this new space.”

President Chris Kimball welcomed the William Rolland Stadium and Gallery of Fine Art as marking a new phase in CLU’s history.

“This new facility is more than a stadium and more than an art gallery; it is a centerpiece to all that we want for our students,” Kimball said.

The stadium is already changing the atmosphere on campus. The carillon chimes, songs and call to service that used to emanate from the Pederson Administration Building were silenced one late October day and soon heard again from across Olsen Road, amplified by speakers.

Since the beginning of October, the facility has hosted football games and several Kingsmen and Regals soccer games. The Regals added five victories to a 16-game regular season winning streak on the new field.

By all accounts, Mount Clef Stadium had served CLU as long as it could. The stadium built in 1963 for a fledgling Kingsmen football program and the Dallas Cowboys’ summer training didn’t have outdoor sports lighting or a usable concession stand, and wasn’t up to National Collegiate Athletic Association standards. The Kingsmen football squad earned Division III playoff berths the last two years but lost out on bids to host the games.

Now CLU’s home turf is the same stuff used in National Football League stadiums, which ought to inspire grads at the spring commencement ceremonies it will be hosting.

Seating capacity has gone up from more than 1,500 at Mount Clef to a calculated occupancy of 1,998, according to Valerie Crooks, project manager for this and other new constructions on campus. That’s not counting the portable bleachers for visitors.

The 6,000-square-foot space within Rolland Stadium’s energy-efficient bronze-tinted glass includes coaches’ offices, a press box, meeting rooms, home team locker rooms and, best of all, a bright and roomy art gallery located just past the tall bronze ball carrier.

The William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art may be the country’s only dedicated art gallery inside of a stadium. It initially houses pieces of Rolland’s own extensive and eclectic collection of bronze statuary, paintings and high-performance automobiles.

The collection “is an appreciation of what the human being can accomplish,” Rolland said. In that sense, it’s a wholly appropriate addition to a building that celebrates athletic excellence.

Rolland got started as an art collector in the mid-1950s, buying a 500-pound bronze statue of a boy on an electrical generator by turn-of-the-century German sculptor Hugo Kaufmann. The work, a tribute to Germany’s power industry, spent the war years in a rotunda at Luftwaffe headquarters and was eventually picked up by American troops, Rolland explained.

He sized up the statue and his later acquisitions not only as art but also “by the number of hours, how long it would take the artist to create such a work.” In the case of his bronze sculptures, the oldest of which are from the 18th century, countless hours were spent on a “lost-wax” mold for casting and a “chasing” process for fine details.

Besides bronzes – including some muscular male forms that belonged to Elizabeth Taylor – the collection has Murano glass, oil and watercolor paintings, winning Indianapolis racecars from three eras and such curiosities as a letter penned by Mark Twain.

The gallery contains only a small part of the collection, which Rolland and his longtime companion Kay Green are still assembling. He intends to donate the entire collection to CLU over time.

Senior John Saucedo, who was an infant when the Berlin Wall fell, looked into the Reagan administration’s view of the Soviet threat. A section of the wall stands at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley.

John Saucedo, a senior majoring in political science, was barely 2 weeks old when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in the fall of 1989. He wasn’t around when terms such as “Star Wars” and “evil empire” were passing from Ronald Reagan’s lips to newspaper headlines, a time when doomsday scenarios and mutual distrust framed the relationship between two superpowers.

He just missed the Cold War.

Still, Saucedo is no rookie when it comes to that era and all things Reagan. In the spring semester, he joined a select group of CLU students in a first-ever partnership with the Central Intelligence Agency aimed at measuring the value of Cold War intelligence-gathering.

One history class and four students pursuing independent study received access to thousands of pages of recently declassified CIA documents touching on everything from the Soviet influence on Nicaragua to the role that civil unrest played in undermining the Soviet Union.

The collaboration marked the CIA’s most extensive effort to date to engage university students in sifting through its declassified material.

And it provided CLU student-researchers an extraordinary opportunity to collaborate with CIA historians and gain a behind-the-scenes perspective on world-shaping events.

“This project was phenomenal because it really allowed us to see how our government operates and the thought process behind decisions made by our elected leaders,” said Saucedo, whose career goals include military intelligence work and possible stints with the CIA or FBI.

Audience Full of Plants

Under the direction of CLU professor Gregory Freeland, chair of the Political Science Department, four students chose topics and analyzed the correlation between data in CIA reports and the words and actions of President Reagan and his staff in the 1980s. Saucedo produced a 15-page report and a presentation on how the administration assessed the Soviet threat to U.S. security interests.

Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (l), a translator, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, a translator, and Secretary of State George Shultz sit for their first meeting at the Hofdi House, during the Summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, Oct. 11, 1986. (Photo by Ronald Reagan Library/Getty Images)

The projects were the centerpiece of a Festival of Scholars panel last spring titled “Perspectives on the Cold War.” CIA analysts sat in on the student presentations.

“I think the Cold War was one of those things where everyone has a perspective, but there is so much unknown and a lot of room to fill in the blanks,” Saucedo said.

In laying the groundwork for a recent Cold War symposium at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, analysts with the CIA Historical Collections Division met with library officials in the summer of 2009 and expressed interest in working with local universities upon the release of the declassified Cold War documents. The documents were released on a limited basis as part of a yearlong celebration of Reagan’s 100th birthday, which was Feb. 6.

CLU has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the Reagan Library, and CLU professors jumped at the opportunity when approached.

By the start of the spring semester, faculty members had received the first of three information drops, and throughout the semester, CIA analysts were on campus speaking to students and even editing their work.

“It was an extraordinary opportunity,” said CLU history professor Michaela Reaves, whose Cold War America class used the documents to produce research papers on everything from a comparison of Cold War cartoons to a look at the state of Soviet military technology following the introduction of Reagan’s “Star Wars” defense initiative.

Many students were surprised to learn that the CIA’s role in the Cold War was far more academic than cloak-and-dagger, Reaves said.

“Overall, I think this research was probably more rigorous than what many of these students had done before, but as a group they rose to the occasion,” added Reaves, noting that she plans to permanently incorporate the CIA documents into her course. “By the time it was over, they were pretty much little experts in their fields.”

Redacted Sources

Six of Reaves’ students took their research one step further. They put together poster presentations for the Festival of Scholars, during which they fielded questions from their peers, their professors and CIA historians.

“It was kind of intimidating,” said junior Cortney Jordan, who examined the significance of social unrest among Soviet youth in the breakdown of the Soviet state. “Here I was making judgments about CIA research and then explaining that to the people who wrote the documents.”

The research work was intense, Jordan said.

Because she carried a full load of courses, served as a student teacher and worked out twice a day as a member of the CLU swim team, she had to do most of her research on the weekends.

Luckily, the CIA documents – about 150 in total – were available to her at the click of a computer button via an electronic blackboard set up by her teacher. The department assistant made life easier by sorting the material by topic.

Fidel Castro (r), Cuban leader receiving Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, in Havana in June 1988. (Photo by Françoise De Mulder/Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

Still, Jordan estimated that she spent more than a dozen hours poring over hundreds of pages of material, some of which was blacked out in true covert fashion

What she uncovered and wrote about was a growing level of dissatisfaction among Soviet youth during the 1980s, a state of unrest fomented by economic instability and punctuated by outright rebellion against the Communist regime. Jordan concluded that the disillusionment of Soviet youth provided a catalyst for the downfall of the USSR.

“Sometimes, when I leave a class, the information doesn’t really stick with me, but I can tell you so much about the subject I researched for this class,” said Jordan, a liberal studies major who plans to teach elementary school. “This is definitely something I’m going to remember forever.”

An Ongoing Collaboration

CIA representatives were pleased with the quality of the student work and have invited the University to participate in a similar research project scheduled to take place next year at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda.

“I was very impressed with [the students’] enthusiasm and excitement over material that happened before they were born,” said Peter Nyren, project manager for the CIA’s Historical Collections Division. “It was refreshing to see that the Cold War has not been completely forgotten by today’s generation.”

Going forward, Professor Freeland is looking for ways to engage CLU students in even broader research efforts – perhaps a yearlong independent study project – delving still deeper into the CIA material. The project dovetails with the University’s goal of sharpening the research skills of its students, especially through the use of primary documents, he said.

“I think their work was significant enough to continue in some form or another,” Freeland said. “This points up the diversity of important research CLU students are involved with.”

Nicholas Dujmovic, a historian from the Center for the Study of Intelligence, visited history professor Michaela Reaves’ Cold War America course last spring.

Senior Elizabeth Palko wouldn’t mind another crack at the CIA documents.

Using that material, the global studies major spent part of the spring semester in her History and Politics of Latin America class exploring the triangular relationship among the United States, the USSR and Nicaragua. She grew fascinated with how the ideological duel between capitalism and communism played out in far-flung regions of the world.

When it came time to present her information at the Festival of Scholars, Palko spoke on the subject for about 25 minutes. She was supposed to talk for 15.

“I love to research and I loved the idea of getting my hands on documents that people had never seen before,” said Palko, who is considering graduate school and then possible careers in government or the ministry.

“I think in general this is the kind of project usually reserved for students who go to Harvard or who go to Yale,” she added. “I was proud to be able to show the kind of work CLU students can do.”

Fred Alvarez is a high school history and journalism teacher who lives in Ojai. For more than two decades, he was a staff writer for daily newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Marshall Bowen ’75

Dr. Wyant Morton with Marshall Bowen at the 2011 Homecoming Choral Concert

In the Los Angeles film and television music scene, Marshall Bowen has worked as arranger, orchestrator, conductor, copyist, proofreader and librarian with top professionals on hundreds of projects. With the Disney Music Library for more than 20 years, he can be found prepping musicians, conducting the orchestra, and being the “ears” for the composer in the recording booth. Recently, he’s worked on Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers,
Cars 2, Super 8, Cowboys & Aliens and Mission: Impossible.

Bowen has served four Lutheran congregations in Southern California as minister of music, directing adult, youth, children’s and handbell choirs, and arranging countless pieces for instrument and voice.

Psychologist Bettina Hodel spends most of her days in prison.

No, the board certified behavioral therapist is not doing time. She performs assessments of severely mentally ill prisoners at Atascadero State Hospital on California’s central coast and develops behavior modification plans for staff members to utilize with the inmates. Her specialty is working with developmentally disabled inmate patients who may also have dementia.

One night each week, she brings her extensive research and practical experience to CLU, where she teaches behavior modification in the graduate psychology program. The psychologist culls case studies from her daily field experience to illustrate common obstacles and ways of overcoming them.

Educated in Switzerland, Hodel did her undergraduate work at the University of Fribourg and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Berne. She served as a senior research psychologist at Berne and an assistant professor at the University of Geneva before coming to the United States in 2000.

Petite and passionate, she started working with dementia patients during her graduate student years. At that time, patients with dementia were known only as cognitively limited. She kept pace with the emerging field and eventually won international recognition within it.

In order to become a licensed psychologist in California, Hodel was required to complete a multi-year internship. “It was almost like starting over,” she said.

She began working with prisoners as an intern at California Men’s Colony, where she was later a psychologist in the Developmental Disabilities Program. Now she continues that work as a senior psychologist specialist at Atascadero. She also has a private practice working with dementia patients in skilled nursing facilities.

Hodel’s evaluative studies of treatment interventions have been published in three languages in peer journals. She has made multiple international presentations about psychosocial interventions for patients with cognitive impairments (especially dementia) and mental illness. Most recently, she presented at conferences in Ireland, Scotland and California.

A passion for teaching and an introduction by psychologist Timothy Kuehnel ’69 brought Hodel to CLU in 2003, and she keeps coming back. “I love teaching at CLU,” she said. “I like to have contact with young people who like to learn. It’s a wonderful experience.”

As a boy on the family ranch near Ventura, Edgar Terry ’81, MBA ’83, always knew what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“My father was a farmer,” explained the president of Terry Farms Inc., who can trace his family’s farming roots back 100 years. “It is something that I have loved to do from a young age.”

Not long after completing his CLU education, Terry discovered a new and rewarding avocation: teaching working adults at the college level. He’s been lecturing in finance and management in ADEP and the MBA program
since 1987.

He puts in long days at his full-time job. Starting at 7 a.m., he makes rounds to a dozen company sites in Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Paula and Fillmore on some 1,800 acres. He spends the rest of the day in meetings and doing administrative work for Terry Farms, which grows peppers, celery, strawberries, spinach and lettuce.

Despite the demanding schedule, he looks forward to his evening classes. “I like the interaction and dialogue.  I learn so much from the adult students,” Terry said.

He brings a dose of reality there, laying stress on how to solve problems creatively and work with all types of personalities. Critical thinking skills learned at CLU laid a foundation for his success in business, he said.

“Once you graduate from college, most of what you were taught is obsolete. In essence, you need to re-learn everything again every two years.”

As a medium-sized grower in Ventura County who employs 11 full-time workers and as many as 350 contractors at a time, Terry has to keep learning and remain open to change.

“A lot of people have this bucolic, romantic view of farming,” he said. “Farming does add a lot to a community; however, it always comes back to economics.”

With high labor and production costs, variable demand, food safety requirements and constantly changing regulatory schemes, he sees growers moving to high-value crops such as raspberries and strawberries and to hydroponic growing.

“The organizations that are left in the industry are going to be larger to be able to pay for the costs of compliance,” he summed up.

Although Tony Pro made a career designing movie posters and DVD packaging, interactive menus and toothpaste boxes, his primary focus today is creating portraits, landscapes and still lifes in oil. His paintings hang in homes, galleries and museums throughout the world, and his portrait of Rose Ann Vuich, the first female member of the California State Senate, is displayed in the state capitol.

During 18 years as a graphic artist, primarily for the entertainment industry, Pro started teaching at art schools. This fall he moved his studio to CLU, where he paints, teaches basic design and mentors students on careers in art. His work with a brush and palate is fine and delicate, a direct contrast to his large bearlike frame and overwhelming exuberance.

“The reason I started teaching,” the artist said, “is that I learn more about my work and myself.” Fundamentals such as composition, tonal values, how colors are produced and how they work together, he continued, have to be applied constantly. “Teaching is a daily exercise that keeps me sharp and keeps me in touch with the younger generation.”

In exchange for their fresh outlook and enthusiasm, Pro gives young artists realistic insights into the commercial art world, along with the academic basics.

“They see firsthand the experience of me actually working, and then see [the artwork] on the shelves later.”

He invites other professionals to visit his classes, share experiences and explore creative and commercial avenues available in art.

Pro grew up surrounded by artists. First it was his father, Julio, an award-winning wildlife artist, and later his brother, Greg, a professional illustrator. He followed the family tradition by majoring in graphic design in college and teaching himself to paint.

Two years after a trade magazine recognized Pro for Best DVD Menu Design (“James Bond: Die Another Day”), he won Best of Show at the Oil Painters America 2005 annual exhibition in Chicago. The painting, “Mother’s Love,” was featured later that year on the cover of Southwest Art magazine.

A signature member (the highest membership level) of the century-old California Art Club, Pro is one of the nation’s leaders in promoting the re-emergence of classical realism. From the early 20th century, he explained, modernism took over the arts.

“Visual arts are a form of communication,” he added. “Art should communicate with the viewers, not confuse them, and that starts with good design.”

The painter is trying to popularize art that demands technical ability and brings back beauty.

“I want to help students understand the need for beauty,” he said. “Beauty gives us hope.”

Women’s Volleyball

During her two seasons at CLU, “Mo” Coverdale led the Regals to the 2005 SCIAC Co-Championship and the 2006 NCAA West Region title. She was named American Volleyball Coaches Association First Team All-America and SCIAC Player of the Year both seasons. Coverdale holds the CLU season record for kills and hitting percentage. She was tops in the nation in hitting percentage in 2005 and third in percentage of kills in 2006. At the time of her induction, her 764 total kills ranked ninth in school history.

Cathy (Fulkerson ’82) Waltrip

Women’s Track and Field, Cross-Country

Cathy Fulkerson was the first Regal to earn All-America status in cross-country after placing 19th at the AIAW National Championships as a sophomore in 1979. She went on to compete three times at the national level, earning All-America honors for the second time as a senior after finishing 29th. Fulkerson also competed for two years in track and field, setting program records in both individual and team events. She was part of the 4×800 and distance medley relay teams, whose records still stand. Her individual marks in the 800-meter and 1,500-meter held for 27 years and now rank second all time.

Tim Lins ’85, M.A. ’94

Football

Tim Lins arrived at CLU from Cerritos College in 1980 and immediately made an impact on the football field. During the 1981 and 1982 seasons, he hauled in 77 catches, scored 12 touchdowns and racked up 974 yards. His efforts helped lead those teams to back-to-back NAIA District 3 Championships. Lins was named to the NAIA All-America First Team both years as a Kingsman and is one of only three two-time NAIA All-America First Team selections in CLU’s history.

Justin Muth ’01

Men’s Basketball

Justin Muth led the Kingsmen to a conference championship in 2001, averaging more than 20 points and eight rebounds per contest. He led the SCIAC in both scoring and blocked shots. Muth earned National Association of Basketball Coaches Second Team All-America and SCIAC Player of the Year honors during his senior season and was later invited to participate in the Arafura Games in Australia. One of only two Kingsmen to be named All-American by the NABC between 1967 and 2007, Muth is considered one of CLU’s most productive players ever.

Doug Rihn ’76

Men’s Track and Field, Football

Doug Rihn has the distinction of being one of the very few CLU athletes to earn All-America status in multiple sports. An outstanding defensive back for the Kingsmen football team, he earned Second Team All-America honors in 1974 and First Team All-America recognition the following year. In 1975, he was part of the team that earned victory number 100 for Coach Bob Shoup and advanced to the NAIA National Championship game. Rihn also excelled in track and field. In 1976, he received All-America status in javelin by finishing sixth at the NCAA Division III National Championship meet.

Make your 2012 nominations at www.callutheran.edu/hof

The CLU Alumni Association Board of Directors is pleased to recognize Ronald Scrofano as the 2011 Outstanding Young Alumnus.

Scrofano graduated summa cum laude in 2001 with a double major in mathematics and computer science and a minor in physics. He was the first CLU student to receive the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, an award reserved for highly qualified student scientists, mathematicians and engineers who intend to pursue careers in these fields. In 2006, he completed his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Southern California.

The Los Angeles resident accepted a position as a member of the technical staff at The Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit that has provided independent technical and scientific research, development and advisory services to national security space programs since 1960. The El Segundo–based corporation operates a federally funded research and development center for the United States Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office and supports all national-security space programs.

Now an engineering specialist at Aerospace, Scrofano researches new computer architectures and applications related to high-performance computing.

Melberg was part of a 16-member team that cycled 700 miles in 10 days. The feat amounted to 11.5 hours of riding a day, sometimes through 115-degree heat.

The team started the ride in Dana Point, Calif., and traversed the southern states with stops in Phoenix, Albuquerque, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans and Tallahassee, eventually ending the ride in Daytona Beach.

After each day’s ride, team members met with host congregations to discuss the toll the AIDS crisis in Africa has taken on two generations of people. Ride for Hope raised $93,000 in support of its mission.

Melberg (l) and lead rider Tim Patton signal that relief from the steep grade is coming in one mile. The photo was taken at 2 p.m. on June 14, Day 2 of Ride for Hope, as the team headed for Payson, Ariz., with the temperature at 114 degrees.

Assistant professor of communication Monica Gracyalny, one of 17 new faculty members to join CLU this fall, collected data from almost 800 people for her 2010 dissertation about how remorse leads to forgiveness in close relationships. So, she’s an expert on seeking forgiveness from family members, romantic partners and close friends. We were feeling low one day and gave her a call.

I did something pretty bad to someone close to me. Actually, it was really bad. I’d like to make it up to them and make everything all right again. Do you have any advice for me?

Somehow, you want to open up a line of communication with them. People who’ve been hurt want explanations of what happened, but not excuses and not justifications. Not “I had a good reason,” but just “I was wrong and here’s what happened.”

You also have to acknowledge that they were hurt and say that’s why you feel horrible: “I feel horrible because I hurt you and I care about you. I just feel so terrible. Is there anything that I can do? Is there anything that you think I could do?”

Thanks, that’s good. I was also thinking of begging.

It’s not usually the first thing to say, but actually asking for forgiveness at a certain point in time is helpful: “Is there any way that you could forgive me?”

In my research, though, the strongest connection I found with forgiveness was emphasizing the importance of the relationship. You don’t just feel horrible about the deed, but you feel horrible because that person was hurt.

It’s not about you. The other person wants to see that other-oriented emotion. That’s what makes remorse different from guilt, and it’s what really predicts forgiveness.

I’m not sure I’m up to it. Could I maybe fake it?

That’s not remorse.

Have you ever had to do this?

The thing is, I’ve been on the other side of it. I’ve been on the forgiving side, and I was wondering what made me make the decision to forgive. I realized that it was partially that the person seemed really torn up about the fact they had hurt me. I thought, “They’re really probably not going to do it again.” A lot of these kinds of thoughts entered my mind because I could see it was sincere.

And when someone wasn’t very remorseful and I could see that they didn’t feel bad about hurting me at all, then I was very cold toward them. I didn’t ever want to have anything to do with them again.

Can it be healthy to feel so bad about something? I bet you felt good forgiving that person, but this is awful.

If you do not feel bad for hurting someone, that’s actually not a good thing. People who don’t feel remorse for hurting someone—we tend to fear them. We think, “This isn’t a good
person to be around.”

From an evolutionary standpoint, remorse is actually a very functional emotion. It can help you get back in the good graces of your group. When you don’t express remorse, you’re a lot more likely to be ostracized. Not to mention that it can help you save or repair important relationships in your life.

Yeah. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to pick up a few gifts.

Well, no, gift giving and doing special favors on their own are negatively related with forgiveness. I found out that you’re less likely to be forgiven when you use those. I wasn’t expecting that one.

The reason a gift falls flat might be that it just looks like you’re going to buy something material that’s going to take away something emotional. It just doesn’t work. People who really feel horrible about hurting someone don’t usually go for buying the gift. They’re going to try to connect on a personal level.

Spending time with the person might help, as long as it shows how much you care and value the relationship, but washing their car doesn’t.

You know, I thought you were going to make me tell you who it was I’d hurt.

The advice would have been the same. In the surveys, I did ask participants to specify if it was a parent, sibling, romantic relationship, close friend, etc. But I did not find any differences based on the nature of the relationship. That is, I did an analysis asking, is this process different if it’s a romantic partner versus a parent, and it wasn’t.

I wonder if it works the same way with strangers. Maybe you could figure out how some people manage to forgive violent criminals. I’m sure you could help a politician through a scandal.

That’s actually my next study. I do think that this process works differently in close relationships. Like I said, the expression of remorse that really predicts forgiveness is the one where you emphasize the importance of the relationship. You have to say that you really care about them, that they’re a special person to you, that you love them, depending on the relationship.

Strangers can also emphasize the relationship but would have to do it in a different way: “We’re all part of the same group,” “We all live on the same planet,” or “I’m sorry I did this, this organization is important to me.” I’m interested to know if those types of expressions have the same effect.

You see pretty negative ratings of public apologies. A lot of people who watch them don’t think the offenders are sincerely remorseful, and I’m interested in why that is. Maybe, in their expression of remorse, the people making those apologies are missing something.

With eight classrooms and two computer labs that double as classrooms, CLU’s 13,000-squarefoot center in Woodland Hills is about twice the size of the previous location.

The center’s upgraded equipment and more comfortable furniture were ready in time for fall classes with about 110 graduate students and 40 Adult Degree Evening Program (ADEP) students. In addition to bachelor’s programs
in accounting, business management and organizational leadership, a new ADEP program in psychology debuted this semester at the center.

The Graduate School of Education and the School of Management are celebrating 25 years as professional schools this year. The Woodland Hills Center offers master’s degrees in business administration, counseling and guidance, and education for the deaf and hard of hearing.

The USPTA recognition was for the 2010 season, during which CLU posted a 19-3 record, earned a trip to the NCAA Tournament, and produced two All-American players. Gennette also marked his 100th conference victory last year when the Kingsmen advanced to the SCIAC Tournament championship match.

This fall, the Cal Lutheran men’s doubles team of Nicholas Ballou and Ray Worley came up just short of the program’s first national title since 1997, after losing a tight, three-set final at the Small College Division III Doubles Championships held in Mobile, Ala.

Freshman Taylor Will scored two goals including the game-winner in a 3-2 road victory over Chapman.

Women’s soccer was the fourth athletics program to earn a national ranking this fall. The Regals were perfect in conference play and ended the regular season on a 16-game winning streak.

For the second time in Frank Marino’s three years as head coach, Cal Lutheran set an all-time program record of regular season victories. The Regals won 19 of 20 contests this fall, improving upon their 18-win season a year ago. The team’s lone loss in 2011 was a 2-0 defeat at Hardin-Simmons, the defending NCAA National Champions.

By the 10th match – halfway through the regular season – freshman Taylor Will had amassed 13 goals, more than any Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference player had racked up in all of 2010. A late-season injury slowed down the pace of her scoring, and she finished regular season play with 17 goals and eight assists.

The football and volleyball teams also won conference titles, and were ranked nationally along with men’s water polo and women’s soccer for the second straight year.

Sophomore Maren Asbjornsen tees off in CLU’s first-ever women’s golf team competition this September in Temple, Texas. Coached by Jeff Lindgren ’88, the five-member team captured seventh place in a tough field that included Division II and NAIA schools.

The Rev. Paul Egertson

CLU posthumously bestowed the Christus Award on the Rev. Paul Egertson, a longtime member of the religion faculty and a former bishop of the Southwest California Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), at Founders Day Convocation on Oct. 28.

Each year, CLU presents the Christus Award to someone who has made significant contributions to strengthening the partnership between CLU and the ELCA out of love for both institutions.

An ELCA pastor for 21 years, Egertson led several congregations in California and Nevada. He had been a part-time or full-time member of the CLU faculty since 1984 and was a senior lecturer when he died unexpectedly last January of a heart attack at the age of 75. He had also served as director of the Center for Theological Study, a continuing education program for Lutheran pastors at CLU.

“He brought the church to campus in that he was active in making CLU a place where the church, pastors and laity could get educated,” the Rev. R. Guy Erwin, the Gerhard and Olga J. Belgum Chair of Lutheran Confessional Theology at CLU, told the Ventura County Star.

“He walked in both the world of the academic and the world of the church in so many ways and provided leadership in both of those worlds,” former interim CLU President Howard Wennes, a cousin of Egertson, told the Star. “He was a gifted preacher, an inspiring teacher and persistent prophet.”

Fostering connections within the ELCA was a priority for Egertson, his son Greg Egertson ’78 explained in an interview.

“His whole professional life was dedicated to strengthening partnerships throughout every expression of the church, because he saw it all as one big family,” said Greg Egertson, an associate dean at Golden Gate University School of Law.

Greg Egertson ’78

The senior Egertson gained national attention when he decided part of that family was being excluded. After Greg Egertson found his path to ministry blocked because the church began requiring a vow of celibacy of gay candidates for ordination, his father became an advocate for full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons in the life of the church. In 2001, he became the first active bishop in the denomination to join in the ordination of a noncelibate gay or lesbian pastor. In response, ELCA leaders asked him to resign. He resigned one month before his term expired, as he had promised to do if his convictions led him to act against national church policy.

“If we are a family, then we treat each other a certain way,” said Greg Egertson, summarizing his father’s view. “One of the ways we don’t treat each other is we don’t judge each other, because families don’t do that. We support, we encourage, we love, and we are grateful to each other.”

The church finally changed its policy at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly, which voted to allow the ordination of gay and lesbian pastors in monogamous, committed relationships. After the vote, the late bishop urged Erwin, who fit that description, to put aside fresh doubts about his calling and to join the ministry. He was ordained in May of this year.

“I thought that maybe it was too late,” Erwin said. “And Paul said, ‘That’s nonsense. The church has been calling you all your career.’”

The profound impact Egertson had on members of the CLU community was evidenced by the standing ovation Greg Egertson received as he approached the podium at Founders Day Convocation to accept the Christus Award on his father’s behalf.

“I suspect he would … say that of all the things he accomplished in his professional life, the Christus Award from CLU is the one that probably means the most,” Egertson told the audience. “He would be both blessed and, I am quite sure, humbled by the honor you have given to him and to us today.”

Sophomore Huong “Ivy” Nguyen, who plans to use the 3-D printer to make platforms for chemical instrumentation, talks with bioengineering and physics lecturer Bob Rumer. Her adviser Grady Hanrahan (r) is the John Stauffer Endowed Professor of Analytical Chemistry and co-director of the Hugh and Hazel Darling Center for Applied Scientific Computing.

A newly installed printer in D Building cost $70,000, and the stuff in its replacement cartridges goes for about $4 a cubic inch.

No, CLU is not buying computer peripherals from a Pentagon subcontractor, but it does have one of the most advanced 3-D printers in all of Southern California. The top-of-the-line ZPrinter 650 by ZCorp doesn’t use paper. Instead, its jets blow out fine layers of selfadhering plastic powder to build just about any model or prototype that you can dream up, in a full range of colors, with applications all the way from biology and computer science to multimedia art.

Students in Bob Rumer’s introductory bioengineering and physics classes are using the machine to make parts for robots and intricate tracks for rolling marbles.

“If we were to do this with regular plastic, forget it. It would be six months,” Rumer said.

The 3-D printer is not the only fancy widget or widget-maker available to students through CLU’s Hugh and Hazel Darling Center for Applied Scientific Computing, which was launched this semester with a grant from the Los Angeles-based foundation. But, perhaps even more than a high-performance computer cluster or a robotics instrument, this printer captures the imagination.

“We’re thinking of making a science building out of this, piece by piece,” said Grady Hanrahan, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and co-director of the center, with only a trace of a smile.

That could take some time. As of fall 2011, printing out objects was such slow work that one of Rumer’s test runs – a hollow dodecahedron that took a few minutes to design – kept the machine busy for four hours. That was simply because the final product measured more than four inches in height.

“Tall hurts,” Rumer explained.

Hanrahan described the printer as a “really fun tool” that will help CLU to recruit top-notch science students. One of the main goals of the center is to enhance the scientific computing skills of middle and

high school students, through workshops and teacher training.Part of the grant will fund 10 $5,000 college research fellowships during the next two years, increasing the number of CLU students doing full-time research with faculty mentors during the summer.

As freshmen paint rocks on Mount Clef Ridge during orientation, one student prepares to spread around the white.

CLU has more international students than ever, owing in part to big increases in this population at the graduate level. The number of foreign nationals studying on campus this fall is 330, about 20 percent higher than last year and more than five times the level of 10 years ago.

An international MBA program that began in fall 2002 has been the biggest driver behind a decade of increases. Meanwhile, international enrollment among traditional undergraduates has risen steadily and stands at 112 students.

The largest sending countries this year are China (63), Taiwan (61), Saudi Arabia (56) and Norway (48). Saudi Arabia boosted its studyabroad scholarship offerings for the year.

Auriane Gamelin of France came for programs in business and global studies, while Abhi Sridharan of Chennai, India (formerly Madras), wanted to take advantage of the “great music program, which focuses on the more contemporary and technological aspect of music than other universities do.”

Thirty-one percent of this year’s first-year and transfer students are the first members of their families to attend college, a slight decrease from last year.

At the same time, the University’s selectivity increased dramatically, with the acceptance rate decreasing from 62 percent to 47 percent. SAT/ACT scores and the percentage of freshmen in the top of their high school classes both increased.

As part of their orientation program, freshmen and new transfer students converged on the Ventura River to remove trash. This year they also found time to paint over graffiti.

By Carol Keochekian

For Leanne Neilson, provost and vice president for academic affairs, bringing in adjunct faculty to teach selected courses at CLU has a positive educational impact.

“We see our adjunct faculty as an extremely important part of the University and a very important part of the academic experience for the students,” Neilson said. The adjunct faculty offer a wealth of professional know-how and on-the-job knowledge. “In many ways they open the door to career opportunities.”

According to data from CLU’s office of Educational Effectiveness and Institutional Research, the share of courses taught by adjunct faculty has changed little in the past five years, even as the student population at CLU has soared. For traditional undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences, that proportion hovers around one-third. It is closer to two-thirds in graduate programs and ADEP.

Maya Tenenbaum, Ed.D. ’10, wrote her recent dissertation on “exemplary” adjunct professors. Amid growing reliance on these faculty members at U.S. colleges and universities, she wanted to know how some of the most dedicated people in this group, at a variety of institutions, approached their undergraduate teaching. Tenenbaum is teaching this fall as an adjunct faculty member in the Political Science Department and the Graduate School of Education.

Among those Tenenbaum interviewed for the dissertation were part-time faculty members who taught during off hours from their full-time jobs. She said that this group of teachers “talked about this idea of returning the investment that other people had made in them.”

“They see the classroom as an opportunity and a forum to share their accumulated wisdom that would otherwise not necessarily reach the next generation and younger people,” she said. “And so I think most of them were very grateful to have the ears of young people.”

The part-time faculty members profiled in this issue all make a living mainly by doing something else. They say they teach because they love it and because they learn so much from their students.

He began his tenure at California Lutheran College in 1965 as professor and chair of the art and English departments and later served as director of summer sessions, director of evening college and acting dean of the college. Following his retirement in 1988, he relocated to Harstine Island, Wash., with his wife, Doris.

Originally from New Jersey, he received his B.S., M.A. and Ed.D. from New York University and worked in the New Jersey public schools as both a teacher and administrator before moving to Thousand Oaks and CLC. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, six children, 14 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

By Dr. Marcie Leeds ’99

Leeds was interviewed by The Daily for a video news segment, “Saving Gabrielle Giffords,” that appeared in May and is available on YouTube.

After a long evening on call, I had just started my morning shift on Jan. 8 in the trauma bay at Tucson’s University Medical Center when a call came in that EMS would be bringing 10 gunshot victims. We didn’t know about the shooting rampage or that our congresswoman, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was one of the wounded.

As the second-most senior doctor on duty, I stood in the hallway ready to examine the victims as they arrived, and triage them according to severity of their wounds. After what seemed like a lifetime, the first patient, a 9-year-old girl, arrived. EMS was actively doing chest compressions, and my attending physician and the other chief resident on duty rushed to resuscitate her.

EMS rolled the next critically injured patient up to me moments later, a female around 35 with an obvious gunshot wound to the head.

Photos of Rep. Giffords were posted in June (P.K. Weis/AP Photo).

“This is the congresswoman,” yelled the emergency medical technician.

In surgical residency, when we are trained in trauma, we are taught a “recipe” of sorts, a structured way of examining every patient, every time, so that no injuries are missed and details are not overlooked. Although I was stunned by the sudden tragedy I was now part of, the training kicked in.

After running through my trauma protocol, I was able to see that Giffords had no other life-threatening injuries. We proceeded through her neurologic exam, noting the deficits. I quickly notified the attending of my findings and immediately called our neurosurgical team. This last step was probably the most significant thing I was able to do for her that day.

The most amazing part of the whole experience was the response of the other clinical staff and nurses who were not in the hospital at the time. No one waited to get called in. They all drove in from home after learning of the tragedy.

As you can imagine, this vocation takes discipline and professionalism, lessons I learned early. From the ages of 5 to 14, I was a working actress, starring in movies and television shows. Early on, the toughest part was convincing adult casting directors that I understood the craft, that I could portray a character and be a professional at the same time.

The bond I had with those professors is something I will never forget.

Back then, my dad was my manager, my coach and my agent, and he gave me good advice: He always said my acting was a job, not a career.

I worked hard those years both as a student and as an actress, knowing full well that this was the recipe for me to become the surgeon I always dreamt about being. By the time I applied to college, I had a love for science. I initially left my home in Simi Valley to attend a university out of state.

Two years later, my younger brother was accepted to Cal Lutheran University, and he told me about his CLU experiences and what a great school it was. After multiple conversations with him, I made my decision to come back to California to be closer to my family. I was accepted at CLU as a junior biology major.

I loved my experience at CLU so much, the incredible camaraderie. The respect that I had for my professors encouraged me, and I graduated with honors. The bond I had with those professors is something I will never forget. My medical career seemed far away, but they gave me the strong support and the tools I needed to be the doctor I am today.

Marcie Leeds ’99 is in her fourth year of a five-year general surgical residency at University Medical Center in Tucson, Ariz.

Email ideas and submissions for Vocations to kevinm@callutheran.edu.

Nick Boggan

Sophomore Nick Boggan became the first CLU player in six years to earn American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) All-America status, earning third team honors in 2011. He was one of two Kingsmen to earn All-West Region recognition and one of five to receive an All-SCIAC selection.

Chad Kimmelshue

Men’s Golf
The golf team’s fourth-place conference finish equaled the highest placing for the Kingsmen squad since the 2007 campaign. CLU finished fourth or higher in each of the six SCIAC competitions including a runner-up finish at the fourth regular season round hosted by Occidental. In that round, sophomore Chad Kimmelshue tied for the individual crown by shooting a 74 (+2) at Brookside Country Club in Pasadena. Host Cal Lutheran won the team title by seven strokes at the Kingsmen Invitational at La Purisima Golf Course in late March. The team finished the regular season ranked No. 20 in the nation.

Andrew Giuffrida

Men’s Tennis
Cal Lutheran finished the season ranked No. 19 in the country and in the top 30 for the fourth straight season. The Kingsmen were invited to play at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) National Indoor Team Championships as one of the top programs in the nation.

Three players were named to the All-SCIAC team including firstteam pick Andrew Giuffrida, who became the first CLU player this millennium to earn three first-team selections.

Giuffrida was named CLU Senior Co-Athlete of the Year and ITA Arthur Ashe West Region Award winner. He was invited to play at the National Singles Championships in Claremont, Calif., where he advanced to the second round to secure his third straight All-America selection.

Eric Flores

Men’s Track and Field
Senior Eric Flores was named the Division III United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches of America (USTFCCCA) Male Field Athlete of the Year after winning the national title in both hammer throw and shot put.

Sophomore Eric Rogers also qualified for the NCAA OutdoorNational Championships, and his third-place finish in the triple jump earned him All-America status along with Flores. Their combined score of 26 points put CLU in eighth place in the final standings.

Cal Lutheran took fourth place at the conference championship meet with Flores earning SCIAC Track & Field Athlete of the Year honors. He won the hammer throw and shot put while teammate junior Adam Hayes was victorious in the discus. Both secured individual conference titles.

Danika Green

Softball
Seven seniors finished their collegiate careers in 2011 with a doubleheader sweep of Whittier on April 16 on Hutton Field. Those victories were two of the team’s 11 home wins, including a four-game win streak.

Danika Green hit .358 in conference play as a freshman and earned All-SCIAC Second Team honors. Senior pitcher Allyson Salas finished her CLU career with 169
strikeouts, ranking seventh all-time in program history despite playing only two years with the Regals.

Kim Kolibas

Women’s Tennis
Former head coach Mike Benson returned for the 2011 season on short notice and led Cal Lutheran to a fourth-place finish in the conference. The Regals debuted with a 6-2 victory over nationally ranked NAIA opponent Westmont College on Feb. 4.

CLU concluded a season-long four-match win streak by defeating Whittier in its opening round match of the SCIAC Championships.

Junior Kim Kolibas received All-SCIAC Second Team honors after winning 17 matches as the primary top-seeded player for the Regals.

Toccoa Kahovec

Women’s Track and Field
Juniors Toccoa Kahovec and Britlyn Garrett each made their first appearance at the NCAA Outdoor National Championships in late May. Kahovec finished eighth in the
3,000-meter steeplechase to earn All-America status and score for the Regals in the team competition.

Cal Lutheran took third at the SCIAC Championships featuring individual event titles by Kahovec (steeplechase) and sophomore Erica Whitley (high jump).

Kahovec was named to the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches of America (USTFCCCA) National All-Academic team, earned All-America status in track and field, and earned College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) All-District VIII honors this past academic year.

Bobby Sanders

Women’s Water Polo
Cal Lutheran closed out the season winning four of its final five matches to place fifth in the conference. Senior Bobby Sanders and junior Christina Messer were named to the All-SCIAC Second Team.

Sanders finished her career ranked in the program’s top 10 in all four major field player categories and holds the single season record for steals with 93 set in 2009.

She also was named Cal Lutheran Senior Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year and was selected College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-American Third Team and Academic All-District VIII At Large First Team. Following graduation, she became the first CLU athlete to receive a prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship.

Rondeau, program director and morning anchor for the National Public Radio station serving Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, beat out finalists from KABC, KCRW and KPCC.

Through the years, many organizations have honored Rondeau for his coverage of stories ranging from wildfires to same-sex marriage. Under his guidance, KCLU’s audience has increased substantially, and the station has become a leader in news and public affairs programming.

Relocated from tiny studios in a campus residence hall, the new high-tech 6,570-square-foot center houses the Paulucci Studios, the Martin V. and Martha K. Smith Education Suite and a community room/performance space.

All Things Considered anchor Dave Meyer, front right, shows guests the equipment in Studio 2B Master Control room. Everything that happens on air is controlled from this room, the nucleus of the station.

Mary Olson, general manager of KCLU; Board of Regents member Rod Gilbert, chair of the Construction Oversight Committee; and CLU President Chris Kimball welcomed guests to the joyful occasion.

Following the dedication, attendees were invited to take self-guided tours through the two-story building. The second story of the broadcast center includes production studios, a talk studio (large enough for four guests), master control room, newsroom, engineering center and administrative offices.

On the ground floor are the community room/performance space, which will be used to host forums, speakers, receptions and debates (the room is wired to air live broadcasts), and the education suite, which includes a large classroom and production studios to enable CLU students to have their own Internet radio station.

KCLU went on the air in the fall of 1994. Since then the station has won numerous awards for excellence, and its audience and broadcast area have expanded.

On their way to tour the Paulucci Studios, visitors pass a built-in trophy case displaying KCLU’s Golden Mike, Mark Twain, L.A. Press Club, and Radio and Television News Directors Association awards.

She served 10 years on active duty as a clinical psychologist for the Navy. After transferring to Navy Reserve in 2008, she opened a private practice in Leonardtown, Md., and co-founded the nonprofit organization MISSION: PTSD to help meet the needs of veterans.

The vast majority of Vieten’s career focuses on the care of veterans. Her private practice provides pro-bono or low-cost treatment in an effort to bridge the gap for veterans who are suffering from hard core PTSD and have not been helped by other programs, are not well enough to navigate the complexity of veterans services, or have no health insurance or means to pay.

She is outspoken concerning the state of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and serves as a consultant to the Tri-County Council of Southern Maryland on veterans issues. She has a strong connection to the lieutenant governor’s “Maryland’s Commitment to Veterans” program and is frequently called upon to provide same- or next-day evaluations for veterans who can’t be seen by the VA for weeks or months.

Vieten is also an adjunct psychology instructor for St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She and her husband, Detlef, live in Lexington Park with their three daughters, 16, 10 and 3. The youngest was adopted from China in October 2009 at 14 months.

“Helping her catch up physically, developmentally and medically has been challenging and exciting,” said Vieten. “When she arrived, she couldn’t even roll from her back to her front and now, at age 3, she is on target for almost everything.”

Tell us about the extraordinary alumni you know!

From a Quonset hut to a modern fitness center, from an overcrowded house to a state-of-the-art technology center, from chicken coops to spacious classrooms – much has changed at California Lutheran University during the last 25 years.

One of the most significant turning points was not a new facility, but the renaming of then California Lutheran College to California Lutheran University. The name change reflected not only the school’s expanding curriculum and offerings but also the growth of its graduate programs in education and business. The reorganization of the education and business departments into schools resulted in their having an even greater impact on the region by building the expertise and capacity of local business and education leaders.

This fall marks the silver anniversary of the reorganization. In recognition of the 25 years of accomplishments and the breadth and growth of its graduate programs, CLU has renamed the schools of education and business to the Graduate School of Education and the School of Management, respectively, to more accurately represent the far-ranging programs offered by each.

With the changing of the names comes an even stronger commitment to serve the educational, professional, social and emotional needs of the region. The anniversary motto “A History of Innovation, Excellence and Service” is reflective of the schools’ amazing reach and the progress they have achieved.

Preparing Future Educational Leaders

The Graduate School of Education (GSOE) at CLU has become a leader in preparing students for professional careers in education.

Offering only one Master of Education degree in 1966, today the GSOE confers five master’s and two doctoral degrees. Its graduates, who number almost 8,000, work in local, national and international settings, making a difference wherever they are. These reflective, principled educators are well prepared and deeply committed to being the best at what they do.

Accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC), CLU has prepared thousands of teachers, counselors, principals and superintendents as well as professors and higher education administrators. Among those alumni are numerous bilingual classroom teachers who obtained their first master’s degree through the innovative Title VII federal grant program funded from 1983 to 1990. The carefully selected students received full tuition, books, mileage reimbursement and, with their CLU training, went on to make a significant impact on Ventura County bilingual education.

In addition to enhancing bilingual education, the University has provided professional development in literacy to nearly 5,400 teachers through its California Reading and Literature Project (CRLP). Started in 2000, CLU’s CRLP is the only such program housed at a private university. The program’s grant funding was recently renewed for another year enabling the University to continue serving Kern, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

CLU is recognized for its work with the K-12 school community and for providing high quality fieldwork through its professional development schools partnerships that help to bridge theory to practice and develop excellent mentors. CLU has formal relationships with Flory Academy of Science and Technology in the Moorpark Unified School District and Los Cerritos Middle School in the Conejo Valley Unified School District, one of the few middle school partnerships in the nation.

Strengthening Professionalism

CLU’s School of Management (SOM) has helped to shape the region by providing consultants to local businesses and by strengthening professionalism in business through education. The SOM has broadened its influence beyond the local area through economic outlook conferences and online degree programs. The success of these programs in educating leaders was recognized by inclusion in the 2010-2011 Global 200 Top Business Schools report, which is based on a survey of international employers.

Faculty and graduates of the SOM contribute to the vitality of business, nonprofit and civic life. In the last 25 years, CLU has awarded nearly 3,000 graduate business degrees; 80 percent of these alumni live and work locally. In the past decade, tremendous growth has taken place in the number, quality and variety of graduate programs offered, and the number of students in the part-time MBA program has doubled.

New master’s degree programs include an international MBA program that has 100 full-time students from China, Taiwan, India, Saudi Arabia and many European countries; and an online MBA program that has been honored by the United States Distance Learning Association. In addition to a greater variety of degree programs, the SOM has established research centers to provide viable information on economic trends and forecasts.

The silver anniversary of the GSOE and SOM will be celebrated throughout the academic year with a series of signature events, including distinguished speakers and celebrations. Sponsorships are available for the events, and limited supplies of commemorative pins are available for alumni who wish to promote the anniversary. For information, contact Director of Development Kristine Calara, kcalara@callutheran.edu or (805) 493-3837.

Alumni Online

During the Silver Anniversary celebration, the Graduate School of Education and the School of Management are highlighting a sampling of alumni who are prominent in their fields, rising stars in their professions, or champions of service. These alumni, who represent CLU’s tradition of excellence, innovation and service, are active, principled, reflective educators, astute business and management professionals, and avid community advocates.

To learn more about these outstanding alumni, please visit
www.callutheran.edu/Silver50

Silver Anniversary Signature Events

2011-2012
Join us in celebrating the 25th anniversary of the School of Management and the Graduate School of Education.

Sept. 13, 5-7 p.m.
5901 De Soto Ave.
Kickoff Celebration and Grand Opening of the new Woodland Hills Center

Sept. 15, 5-7 p.m.
The Palms
2201 Outlet Center Drive, Suite 600
Kickoff Celebration at the Oxnard Center

Oct. 13, 6 p.m.
Lundring Events Center
Distinguished Speaker Series
“Preparing 21st Century Learners through the California P-20 Pipeline”
Jack Scott, Chancellor, Community College System
Former California State Senator

Nov. 16, 6 p.m.
Lundring Events Center
Distinguished Speaker Series

“Talents: Competing for the Future”
Markus Tomaschitz, Managing Director
Magna Education & Research, Magna International

Spring 2012
CLU Educator Appreciation Day Celebration

April 26, 2012
Culminating Celebration

For more information, contact Lauren Amundson at
lamundso@callutheran.edu or (805) 493-3445.

Graduate School of Education

Graduate Programs

• M.Ed. in Teacher Leadership
• M.S. in Special Education
• M.A. in Educational Leadership
• M.S. in Counseling and Guidance
• M.S. in Deaf and Hard of Hearing
• Ed.D. in Educational Leadership (K-12)
• Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership

Centers and Institutes

The Professional Development Schools provide students an opportunity to connect theory to practice in a realistic environment working for one or two semesters alongside a veteran cooperating teacher.

The Center for Academic Service-Learning provides faculty, students and graduates with a model to integrate service learning into the curriculum at all levels.

The Educational Research and Leadership Institute provides services to local, state and federal agencies and schools.

School of Management

Graduate Programs

• MBA
• International MBA
• Online MBA
• MBA in Financial Planning
• MBA in Austria
• M.S. in Information Systems and Technology
• M.S. in Economics
• M.S. in Computer Science

Centers and Institutes

The Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (CERF) prepares economic modeling to help businesses accurately assess the trends that affect the region.

The California Institute of Finance (CIF) provides resources for certified financial planners (CFP™), academics and CFP™ practitioners in this field.

The Center for Leadership and Values (CLV) provides resources, articles, speakers, and an extensive online database to promote discussions on value-based leadership.

Samples of the first vegetable harvest from the CLU Garden are displayed by geology professor Linda Ritterbush, center, and students, from left, senior Bradley Minnich, freshman Marilyn Arceo, senior Jenna Tovar, senior Jennifer Arceo, freshman Michael Hooten, junior Steven Shirk, senior Brittany Rahm, junior Peter Gonia and junior Matthew Eaton. Edible pod peas, beets, onions, lettuce, radishes, turnips and bok choy were picked by the students and delivered to the Manna Food Bank in early May. According to Ritterbush, one of the creators of the CLU Garden, vegetables are being donated to Manna every few weeks. The summer crop includes tomatoes, beans and squash.

Water bottles strung between flagpoles serve as a reminder to refill bottles from the new sustainable water fountains installed on campus. The fountains have automatic dispensers for filling bottles and each has a ticker to count how many water bottles were saved from going into a landfill. The fountains were purchased through the ASCLUG Senate Go Green Committee.

Crown Disposal donated $20,000 in cash and supplies for the CLU Garden, which is part of a nationwide movement encouraging people to eat local products. CLU students juniors Steven Shirk (left) and Matthew Eaton and senior Brittany Rahm harvest edible pod peas from the garden, which is planted and cared for by students and faculty. Rahm, who graduated in May, is volunteering on an organic farm in France this summer.

A local farmer’s market set up a produce stand during Earth Week where students and staff could purchase fresh vegetables.

Students add new plants to the landscaping near Samuelson Chapel. This was just one of several beautification projects taking place around campus during Yam Yad.

Performing the first staged reading of Under Fire: Stories of Combat Veterans Across Generations on June 18 in Preus-Brandt Forum are, from left, Aaron Anthony Bonilla, Alex Colello ’11, senior Brent Ramirez, Kenny Toll, Andy Babinsky and junior Jeremy Hanna.

Third-year theatre arts student Jeremy Hanna began to grasp the Iraq-war experiences of the two soldiers he knows best, his sister and brother-in-law, during rehearsals for Under Fire: Stories of Combat Veterans Across Generations.

“My brother-in-law was a tank commander. He saw some things and went through some things that he really couldn’t explain, and he told it to me, but I couldn’t see it,” Hanna said. “I couldn’t really understand it the way he understood it, and doing this play helped me understand more what it would be like to be right there.”

The theatrical work by professor Michael Arndt combines video interviews of veterans, including CLU Vice President Bill Rosser, with actors’ interpretations of some of the same veterans’ words and stories. In the first public workshop reading on June 18 at Preus-Brandt Forum, six college actors, including CLU’s Hanna, Alex Colello ’11 and senior Brent Ramirez, played young incarnations of real U.S. soldiers from World War II and Vietnam. Future performances will include veterans of other wars, Arndt told the audience.

The actors watched their characters on video but never met them during just three rehearsals. Still, Colello got to know Rosey Nolan, a World War II parachutist nicknamed for his youthful looks.

“He just wanted to run around, have fun, have a good time and do the whole teen angst thing, but then [he was] thrust into this circumstance where you kind of have to grow up real quick,” Colello said.

The CLU actors had worked with Arndt on projects such as Shakespeare’s Pericles and Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, but never anything this personal.

“Because he was so passionate about it, you wanted to be passionate about it, and you wanted to be the best you could be,” said Hanna.

From Arndt’s script, which was revised throughout rehearsals, the young actors gained a perspective on warfare and warriors that stands apart from politics.

“What’s important is that these soldiers are willing to do it. They’re not questioning it…,” said Colello, who is from Canada. “If nothing else, appreciate that. You don’t have to appreciate the war itself, but appreciate what people who are representative of your country are doing to try to help you.”

Bryant has withstood five CLU presidents and has employed somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 students throughout his career. He is the man behind the curtain, here long before anyone arrives and after the last patron has departed.

He has worked his magic pulling all-nighters to turn a gymnasium into a choir hall; he has been the primary point of contact for the Secret Service in preparation for a campus visit by President George H.W. Bush; and he has been the first responder to complaints that a mother duck and her ducklings pooped all over the carpet mere hours before a Board of Regents banquet.

Bryant connects us to our founders and institutional history vouching for the many special people who have walked this campus with dreams of this place being much more than just an educational institution.
He has witnessed the likes of Tom Landry, John Wooden, Sparky Anderson and others coming to CLU again and again despite the fact that there were better facilities elsewhere.

And through his thoughtful care and faithful service to the people of this campus these 30+ years, he reminds us of qualities that make CLU a special place.

The United States is the world’s economic powerhouse. Our markets, productive capacity and workforce are the envy of every other country. Still, with over $4.5 trillion in trade, our economy is not immune from imported distress. Today, the risk that some overseas event will seriously damage our economy is as high as it has been in decades. This is not because of the large volume in trade, which is generally good. Instead, today’s risks arise from geopolitical sources and we are still weak from our recession.

Before discussing those risks, though, we should dismiss risks that tend to be exaggerated. China’s newfound economic strength leads this category, with talk-show hosts lamenting the forecast that China’s economy will exceed that of the United States in relatively short order.

We hope China’s economy exceeds that of the United States, and the sooner the better. China’s per capita output is currently at most $7,180, depending on the conversion method. This is dismal compared to the United States’ per capita output of $48,190. If China’s economy were the same size as that of the United States, its per capita income would still be only $11,181. Their economy will exceed ours only because of their population. It is no indication of American weakness. We should be pleased that billions of people are finally enjoying the benefits of the industrial revolution.

The economic impacts of Japan’s recent disaster are also overhyped. While this was and still is a terrible tragedy on a human scale, its economic impacts will be so small as to be unidentifiable in U.S. economic data. The economic impacts are measured in billions. The U.S. economy is measured in trillions. The sheer size of the American economy and world trade just swamp the size of the disaster.
By contrast, the risks in Europe are underappreciated. Europe’s banking system is under extreme stress, a result of the financial crisis that initiated our most recent recession and continuing sovereign debt issues. Given the weakness of our own economy and financial sector, we are poorly prepared to suffer another financial shock.

We hope China’s economy exceeds that of the United States, and the sooner the better.

Unfortunately, European risks are not limited to its banking sector. The Eurozone is too big for a common currency. A functional currency zone requires both capital and labor mobility. So, a large place like the United States can prosper under a single currency because labor and capital are very mobile here. Europe has too many language and cultural differences to be an effective currency zone because those differences limit labor mobility.

We see the impacts of a too-large currency zone in huge variances in unemployment rates. Germany’s is less than 10 percent, while Spain’s exceeds 20 percent. Worse, Spain has no monetary and few fiscal policy options. It gave those up when it joined the European Union.

Those differences in unemployment are unsustainable, and lead to social unrest. We’ve seen this in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. Eventually, some countries must leave the EU. How and when that’s done could have serious economic impact here. If countries plan ahead for an orderly exit, the economic impact to other economies such as ours will be minimized. However, we would still likely see somewhat higher risk premiums tightening credit markets.

What happens, though, if countries postpone the inevitable and wait for a crisis before exiting the EU? We would expect a worldwide financial crisis on the order of what we saw in September 2008.

The dramatic changes sweeping the Middle East pose the most immediate threat to our economy. Uncertainty necessarily accompanies wholesale change, but except for the possibility of oil supply interruptions, most of the uncertainty has the potential for only small impacts to our economy. Who governs and how may have huge impacts on the local economy and its people, but if the oil flows, we will be mostly insulated.

Of course, the risk of oil supply interruptions is high, and supply interruptions would generate sharp price increases, which would have very serious impacts. Oil price changes have been a recurring source of American economic distress. There is even good evidence that oil prices contributed far more to the recent recession than is generally recognized. A sudden spike in oil prices would surely initiate a sharp new recession.

Unfortunately, European and Middle East risks come at a very bad time. Our financial institutions are still weak. Our real estate markets appear to still be in decline. Millions of Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Worse, we can only minimally influence the policies that may have such impact on us. In large part, we’re reduced to hope.

Bill Watkins is Executive Director of the CLU Center for Economic Research and Forecasting, which provides local, state and national forecasts for government, business and nonprofit leaders throughout North America. He and other members of the CERF team have been quoted by many news organizations including the Wall Street Journal, CNN and Forbes.

Michael Arndt pictured near the site of the battle where he and 19 of his comrades fought on March 7, 1970. He returned to Vietnam for the first time in 2010, almost 40 years to the day of the battle.

It’s been more than 40 years, but Michael Arndt is still haunted by memories of his deployment during the Vietnam War. So much so that the CLU theatre arts professor is taking steps to alleviate the painful remembrances, including a journey into the past and a stage play that probes the emotions of combat veterans of six wars.

The battle. The bloodshed. The screams of agony. Michael Arndt and 19 of his comrades from Echo Company, 1st Cavalry Air Mobile Division, were sent on a reconnaissance mission in the heat of the jungles of Vietnam. Almost immediately they came under enemy fire as the North Vietnamese troops opened up with 30-caliber machine guns. “I remember the rattle of the shrapnel hitting the trees,” Arndt recalled. “It was sheer terror.”

Arndt in 1970 at the same site with two Kit Carson Scouts.

When it was over, only about six of the men who went into battle that day were left untouched. Nearly 15 were either wounded or dead.

Among them was the company’s medic Theodore Ropchock, affectionately called Doc Candystripe. After he was hit with shrapnel, Ropchock refused morphine, asking that it instead be saved for others. He then explained how to administer the medication, all along knowing he was dying.

Through the night, Arndt and those who survived lay in the thick jungle alongside their fallen brothers in arms.

“I was between two guys whose backs were blown out,” Arndt said.

The next day, the soldiers were told it was too dangerous for helicopters to come in to retrieve the wounded and dead. So the few who were strong enough tied their ponchos around bamboo poles, creating makeshift gurneys, and carried their comrades out of the jungle. Arndt carried Ropchock. They left no one behind.

For 40 years, Arndt carried the burden of the memory of that day and the year he spent in Vietnam. But last year, with a new mission in mind, he decided to face the horrific memories he had longed to forget.

Michael Arndt in 2010, at the memorial museum at the former Khe Sanh Airbase

A reluctant soldier

Arndt enrolled in Augsburg College in Minnesota as a freshman in 1964. When he graduated in 1968, the United States was at war, and those who remained stateside dealt with the civil unrest of a nation battling itself.

“Martin Luther King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy was assassinated,” Arndt said. “I went into college a Goldwater Republican. By 1968, I was campaigning for Eugene McCarthy.”
He was also among those avoiding the draft.

“I decided to teach high school English in a low-income community,” he said. “It was common knowledge that people in that position were given a break.”

While many of his friends had found their way to Canada and even jail, Arndt received his draft notice on Sept. 16, 1968. He hadn’t received a break.

He appealed and was cleared until January, when he received his second notice. Again he appealed and was cleared, this time until June.

“The superintendent of my school district wouldn’t support another appeal,” he said.

On June 17, 1969, Arndt was inducted into the Army in Minneapolis. He was sent to Fort Lewis, Wash., for basic training, and remained there for advanced infantry training until October. Five months after his induction, Arndt received orders to report for duty in Vietnam. After a 15-day furlough, he boarded a commercial aircraft that made its way to Tan Son Nhut Air Base just outside of Saigon.

Michael Arndt in 2010, having lunch in a Khe Sanh restaurant

To war and back

Arndt and the rest of Echo Company were assigned strictly to reconnaissance missions, often spending 25 out of 30 days in the jungle looking for the enemy. In a year’s time, they had completed 52 combat assaults, including the bloody battle on that March day.

“Despite everything bad about the war, I wanted to get to know the people there,” Arndt said. “I didn’t get much of a chance to do that other than the Hmong boys that had been recruited as Kit Carson Scouts. They, in part, served as guides through the jungles.”

In November 1970, Arndt received notice that he was being reassigned to Germany, where he served until he received an honorable discharge the following March.

The young veteran enrolled in graduate courses at the University of Minnesota. From there, he began directing and teaching theatre in Minnesota before joining the Theatre Arts Department at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington. In 1982, he received an offer to teach drama at CLU.

“I didn’t want to come to Southern California,” Arndt said. “When I decided to come, I thought I’d only stay for a couple years.”

It’s now been nearly 30.

Michael Arndt in 2010, one of many battlegrounds in Vietnam that have been converted to tourist attractions.

Portraying Emotional Wounds of Combat

After all these years, Arndt has written a play reflecting on not only his memories but also those of veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan.

For Arndt, it’s a healing process.

“I remember as a child asking my dad why some of the World War II veterans had what we called shell shock,” he said. “I used to say to myself, ‘Wasn’t that a long time ago? Let it go.’ Now I understand that combat is something you never lose sight of.”

The stage play production started in the spring of 2010 when Arndt applied for a sabbatical as well as a project grant from the Ventura County Arts Council. For the first time since leaving in 1970, the former infantryman returned to the battlefields on which he fought in Vietnam. And though he had always been able to talk about his time in combat, he had not yet faced the traumatizing memories of what he saw.

When he returned home, Arndt began approaching local veterans groups for interviews, eventually partnering with Jerry Knotts of the Military Order of World Wars and Military Order of Purple Hearts.

In June, with more than 15 video interviews completed, Arndt was ready to bring Under Fire: Stories of Combat Veterans Across Generations to the stage. Combining video with actors portraying local veterans and original musical compositions by Christopher Hoag, the true stories of war came alive in front of a live audience at CLU in a format Arndt hopes to eventually share with universities throughout the country.

Arndt intends to stage his play for veterans groups and hospitals with hopes of starting a dialogue with the viewers.

“I would simply like to see others have the chance to share their stories. To experience that healing process,” he said.

Jannette Jauregui is a columnist for the Ventura County Star and has been writing profiles of military veterans for more than 10 years. Her book, Ventura County Veterans: World War II to Vietnam, was published this summer. She also serves as an adjunct lecturer in the Communication Department at CLU.

Colbie Caillat and Justin Kawika Young perform at a concert benefiting Japan in April.

More than 300 people who came out for a luau and concert benefiting Japan were treated to a surprise performance by Colbie Caillat, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter best known for her double-platinum debut album “Coco” (2007).

Caillat turned up at Grace basketball courts with the show’s official headliner – her boyfriend, Justin Kawika Young, a Hawaiian pop artist who also plays guitar for Caillat. Young called Caillat to the stage to perform “Turn Your Lights Down Low” and “I Never Told You.”

Young accepted an urgent call from members of the Hawaii Club, Asian Club and Friends, and Action Abroad Alliance to help victims of the earthquake and tsunami. The April event – dubbed All Attached for Japan after Young’s album “All Attached” – raised $2,300 for work in Japan by the nonprofit Relief International.

The event also featured hula dancing, Hawaiian food and a presentation on the tragedy in Japan for the gathered students, staff members and community residents. Energized by their success, the student organizers are talking about a similar fundraiser for next year.

By Kristina (Johnson ’91) Haar

Jake Blehm confers with Sam and Ephraim Chirwa, who help run a Grow Biointensive demonstration farm for a widow’s organization in the village of Mbowe, located near the city of Mzuzu in northern Malawi.

It’s not hard to have a green thumb in California.

Just think of all the avocados, citrus fruit, grapes, nuts, olives and strawberries that thrive from border to border. Not to mention the home gardens that produce swaths of herbs and vegetables practically year-round. And one doesn’t have to go far to find a farmer’s market or roadside produce stand bursting with seasonal offerings.

Other regions, of course, aren’t so lucky when it comes to a temperate climate and rich soil. And some farmers don’t have the means to grow enough food to sustain their own families much less feed a village of hungry people. That’s where Jake Blehm, MBA ’94, and the crew from Ecology Action, a sustainable mini-farming nonprofit, come in.

Based since 1982 near Willits, Calif., roughly 120 miles north of San Francisco, Ecology Action is essentially a research garden that grew out of a concern about worldwide starvation and malnutrition in the early 1970s.

Its original purpose was to teach classes, collect data, make land available for gardening and publish information on food-producing techniques, which emphasize soil preservation, smallest-scale crop growing and seed preservation. Soil and climate conditions in Willits are similar to those experienced by farmers in much of the world: steep and rocky, with heavy winter rains, prolonged summer droughts and a short growing season.

Today the organization’s Grow Biointensive method has caught on globally, and it provides training for practitioners and projects throughout the United States, India, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and Russia, as well as more than 100 other countries. Workshops and how-to publications are made available to farmers and farm advisers, representatives of farm organizations, officials from state and national departments of agriculture, and the public.

“[The method is] particularly suited to small landholders who want to improve their nutrition, food security, income and environment,” said Blehm, who has served as assistant executive director for just more than a year.

Green Revolution technology that began in the 1950s temporarily increased crop yields, but at a tremendous cost in the degradation of soil, water and biodiversity resources, he pointed out.

“By some estimates, we may have only 35 to 50 years of farmable soil left in the world. Unless we do something about it very soon, demand for food and other natural resources will become even more challenging,” he noted.

Planting a Global Garden

Blehm has been getting his hands dirty since he was a kid. He was raised in rural Ojai, Calif., where his dad consulted with citrus and walnut farmers, and helped start a business in agricultural pest management in the 1960s. His family hosted international business colleagues at their home, piquing his curiosity about other countries and cultures.

Blehm attended the College of Agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University (Fort Collins) and took a summer internship with one of his father’s business connections in El Salvador in 1978.

“That experience had a huge impact on me,” he said. “At 20 years old, I was living and working in an extremely poor, developing country just months before a civil war began.”

After that first international experience, Blehm was hooked on travel and becoming a global citizen.

“I knew [my life] would have to include finding out more about the world and those who lived in faraway corners of the planet,” he added.

After college Blehm returned to Ventura to work in the family business. He began traveling more frequently, and his international work prompted his decision to acquire more professional tools. He earned a certificate in international management from Thunderbird School of Global Management in 1988 and his MBA in organizational development from CLU six years later.

In 2001, Blehm became a fellow in the California Agricultural Leadership Program, a premier leadership development course of the California Agricultural Leadership Foundation. The 18-month program culminated in a job offer to work part time as the program coordinator. After three years, he moved to Sonoma County to take a full-time position as director of programs for the foundation, which included three-week educational travel assignments in Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa.

“This position really opened a new world to me, and the classes I took at CLU as an exploration of various electives really changed the direction of my career,” Blehm said.

A stint as director of operations at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania – one of the most respected organic agriculture research farms in the world – took Blehm east, but he was soon ready to return to California. In 2010 he interviewed with John Jeavons, director of Ecology Action since 1972.

Being of Service

Jake Blehm visits a cheetah reserve in the small farming town of Alma, South Africa. The reserve rescues injured or displaced cheetahs.

Blehm conducted his first international training with Ecology Action last May in Mexico and was amazed to see more than 200 people from 22 countries come together to learn the Grow Biointensive method.

“Even those who were learning about the program for the first time had their own unique experiences to contribute,” he said. “It’s much easier to feel optimistic about the future when you see the excitement and willingness to learn coming from such a wide variety of people and places.”

Teaching trips and conferences help spread the word, as does the training of six-month interns from around the globe who often direct significant Grow Biointensive projects in other countries. The Peace Corps and UNICEF are just two major organizations that follow Ecology Action’s advice.

Blehm has been to nearly 60 countries, including Bulgaria, Bangladesh and Vietnam where he has done volunteer service-learning work, and the adventure in sustainable agriculture continues. He recently returned from Malawi and South Africa, where Ecology Action is looking to establish new projects that will help Africans become more self-sufficient in nutrition and food security. This would also improve their income and provide ecosystem services in the form of soil formation, water-holding capacity, biodiversity and carbon sequestration, which helps mitigate atmospheric CO2 and moderate climate change, he explained.

Even as Blehm looks ahead to helping expand Ecology Action’s African program – as well as seeing the Grow Biointensive method take root in countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq and other areas that desperately need to improve their nutrition and food security – he recognizes the value of reaping what he sows.

“There are many ways to make a living and be of service to the world. I’m so grateful that I’ve found a career that allows me to do both.”

His career also comes with an unusual perk.

“I live in the beautiful Mayacamas Mountains of Sonoma County, and one of my favorite things to do is sit outside at sunset and watch the Douglas firs and redwood trees sequester carbon,” he said. “A glass of local biodynamic wine is a nice addition.”

Kristina Johnson Haar is a freelance writer and former Assistant Managing Editor of Muscle & Fitness and Muscle & Fitness Hers magazines.

Pamela Brubaker

The Thousand Oaks resident, who will now be an emerita faculty member, taught courses in Christian and religious ethics. She is known for her devotion to her students and has brought activists and community leaders to campus to expose students to complex domestic and global social justice issues.

A Christian social ethicist and activist, Brubaker has passionately sought peace, justice and advocacy for the disadvantaged. She has participated in several World Council of Churches consultations on economic globalization and recently was a member of the Christian perspectives panel at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Kingston, Jamaica. She has been an active member of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics.

Brubaker has conducted research throughout the world and published extensively on the topics of economic ethics and feminist studies in religion. She has written or co-written several books including Globalization at What Price? Economic Change and Daily Life, Justice in a Global Economy: Strategies for Home, Community, and World and Women Don’t Count: The Challenge of Women’s Poverty to Christian Ethics.

Born in Richmond, Ind., Brubaker earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Roosevelt University in Chicago, a master’s degree from United Theological Seminary in Ohio and a master’s degree and doctorate in Christian social ethics from Union Theological Seminary in New York. Before coming to CLU in 1994, she taught at Cleveland State University and College of Wooster.

O’Connell, who grew up in Oxnard and taught government at Oxnard High School, served as chief of the state’s public school system and leader of the California Department of Education from January 2003 to January 2011.

Skyler Butenshon, a music major who minored in philosophy, spoke on behalf of the traditional undergraduate students. Josefina Garong, a 46-year-old native of the Philippines, spoke on behalf of the Adult Degree Evening Program students. The Oxnard resident graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in accounting.

M.P.P.A. candidate Erik Rodriguez, field representative for State Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, represented the graduate students; and Rose Dunn, director of instruction for the Las Virgenes Unified School District, spoke on behalf of the doctoral candidates.

Now, 37 years and more than 2,500 preschoolers later, the House on the Hill has been transformed into the Fredrickson Family Early Childhood Center, a brand spanking new modern facility located on Campus Drive.

In the old House on the Hill, handprints in concrete formed a tree, marking the preschool’s opening in 1974. Many hands since then have helped grow and sustain the school as a highly regarded community model for early childhood education. Some of those hands include the talented, energetic directors who have guided the school until today.

Founding Director: Margaret Lucas

Former House on the Hill students Diana Fielding and Garrett Meadows relive their jungle gym days with current preschoolers Santino Romero (l), Atom Wroblewski and Lorenzo Romero in February before the move to the new center. Meadows, now a CLU junior, loved the big wooden jungle gym and the dancing and songs around the circle. “Notorious” for wandering off to explore the hills, he especially loved those “really big” hikes up to the cross. Fielding, a sophomore, remembers being so disruptive during nap time that she had to be put in a room by herself to play while the other kids took naps.

To hear Margaret Lucas tell it, “Every one of my jobs has been starting something.”

She first started a lab school at Mansfield College in Pennsylvania. When she married and her Navy husband was sent to Newport, R.I., Lucas converted an orphanage to a day care center for United Way. When the Navy moved the family to Port Hueneme, she answered a job ad in the newspaper and began teaching at CLC. The opportunity soon arose for her to start something new once again.

Lucas, who became the first CLU preschool director, was the right person at the right time. Her experience plus the information gleaned in a project by graduate student Anne Purvis, M.A. ’78, laid the groundwork for the initial preschool program.

The House on the Hill soon became the place where undergraduate students came for observation as part of their child development classes and graduate students taught under Lucas’ supervision. Many of the project assignments in Lucas’ classes were incorporated into the preschool curriculum. Over time, Lucas and her students developed rich curricular materials, a workshop, publications, and training for other preschool teachers in the area.

In 1978, her husband was transferred to the D.C. area, and Lucas was hired to develop a preschool program for the Army.

“A lot of seeds sown during those days [at CLC] are still being used throughout the country,” she said. She now helps administer Army programs all over the world, with 150 new childcare centers under construction.

A Change of Direction: Joy Brooks

With Lucas’ departure, Ingrid Tiegel was named interim director, and Carol Rodning-Otteson, who also taught in CLC’s Education Department, followed as director in 1979.

Rodning-Otteson served as a change agent, guiding the school toward a more Christian focus. She and assistant director Joy Brooks, M.A. ’82, started infant and parent classes, toddler and parent classes, toddler mommies’ morning out and extended child care.

In 1985, Brooks became director, and the preschool continued to flourish. Brooks recalls that the school was so much in demand that many parents asked to be put on the waiting list before their babies were born

“In fact, one woman who was considering conceiving contacted me to see what the chances of her child being accepted to the center would be,” she noted.

The wait list for the school continues today, with new parents lining up for a spot for their infants.

Brooks helped the school achieve accreditation in 1994 and developed and implemented the curriculum that helps each child flourish socially, emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually. The current curriculum at the preschool was derived from her master’s thesis titled “Nurturing God’s Child,” which was later published by Augsburg Fortress Press.

For Brooks, the House on the Hill became a family affair. Her son and six of her grandchildren have attended the preschool, and her parents supported the preschool financially.

A New Home: Elaine Davis

The new Fredrickson Family Early Childhood Center

After 20 years with the preschool, Brooks retired in 2000, and Elaine Davis, M.A. ’82, was named interim director, becoming its director in 2001. Once again, the transition was a smooth one – Davis had been teaching at the center for 14 years.

“I inherited a program that was well run and well respected,” Davis said. “It was very easy to step in because it was already an established program, well thought of in the community.”

New curricular materials have been added through the years, but the basic focus is still on meeting the developmental needs of each child, Davis noted. The new outdoor environment [at the new facility] with the emphasis on reconnecting children to nature is one example of making a change based on new research in the early childhood field, she added.

For Davis, like her predecessor, working at the preschool has involved the whole family. Davis’ daughter went to the preschool, and now her grandson attends.

For the Children

Davis is the first director to serve in the new Fredrickson Family Early Childhood Center, which she lovingly helped plan, watched grow and considers a dream come true.

The center, which provides double the space of the previous house, boasts a child-sized island in the kitchen, child-sized bathroom fixtures and even a special children’s door for entering the building. The outdoor area has a three-tiered climbing structure, a slide built into the hillside, a tire swing, garden beds and a meandering creek.

The well-loved Katie’s House, built by the Conejo Valley Rotary Club in memory of preschool student Katie Joy Motley on the old site, is being duplicated in a new playhouse at the new site, also to be named Katie’s House.

Lisa’s Corner, another innovation featuring special literacy initiatives, including window seats and reading lofts for different age groups and a book rack with materials just for parents, was made possible through a gift from CLU regent Joan Young, her husband, Richard, and their family in memory of their daughter Lisa.

Even the infant room, which has space for six children aged 3 to 18 months, has a “hideaway cube” the children can crawl into with their stories.

“I just love what I do,” Davis reflects. “I love the challenges, the new families coming in, new children. This is part of our stewardship, the way we serve for God. It’s part of our ministry to serve the children and families.”

What Parents Say

“Both of my children attended House on the Hill Preschool and the experience, quite frankly, spoiled them for any other educational experience.” (1981)
Beverly Merrill Kelley, Professor of Communication; mother of Brendan Kelley ’02 and Trevor Kelley ’04

“My husband and I have been delighted to watch the growth and happiness of our children at the preschool – it has been one of the best parts of my experience at CLU.” (1987)
Linda Ritterbush, Professor of Environmental Science/Geology; mother of Kristine (Ritterbush ’04) Rodriguez and Kathleen Ritterbush ’06

“As a parent, there are two wonderful benefits. One is just the proximity – my children are close to me. But more importantly is the fact that the people who work there are all so professional and give the best quality care possible.” (2006)
Michele LeBlanc, Associate Professor of Exercise Science

“The CLU preschool is an enormous benefit to CLU employees. We know our children are just two minutes away, being cared for by people of faith and integrity.” (2005)
Mary Olson, General Manager of KCLU

“The teachers are fantastic. They love the kids. They love their jobs. They seem to enjoy each other, in what is a nice community of teachers. They have a thoughtfully articulated program where kids are encouraged to develop skills and knowledge. It’s not just all play time – though there is plenty of that, too!” (2011)
Sam Thomas, Assistant Professor of Religion

“My son’s experience with the House on the Hill was an exercise in experiential learning, long before it was commonplace. It was so ‘hands on,’ even before that was in the educational lingo. I attribute much of his continued interest in learning and international travel to those early experiences.” (2011)
Jean Kelso ’84 Sandlin, M.P.A. ’90, Instructor in Communication; mother of Evan Sandlin, Class of 2012

“We feel so blessed to have the boys in such a wonderful environment, surrounded by such amazing people, particularly the teachers … It means the world to us that you all care so much. It shows in everything you do and say and this is such an important trait to model for our kids. So, thank you.” (2011)
Sarah (Lavik ’99) Holmes, Vice President, Frank N. Magid Associates

Win number two of the season was career coaching victory number 400 for CLU Head Coach Rich Rider who amassed his total while at the helm of the Chapman and Cal Lutheran programs.

After winning the final four regular season conference contests to earn a spot in the SCIAC Post-Season Tournament for the fourth straight season, the Kingsmen fell in the semifinals to Redlands by a 68-58 score.

Senior Greg Grimm earned first team all-SCIAC honors and became the 24th Kingsman in program history to score 1,000 points in a career. He led the conference averaging nearly 20 points per game in conference play and was named SCIAC Male Athlete of the Week (Dec. 6-12).

Women’s Basketball

The season was highlighted by a five-game win streak capped off with a 66-61 victory over then-No. 24 Calvin on New Year’s Eve.

Despite a four-game conference win streak and taking three of their last four games, the Regals finished one win shy of a berth into the SCIAC Post-Season Tournament.

Sophomore Starla Wright earned first team all-SCIAC honors for the second straight year after leading the Regals, averaging 12 points per game. Sophomore teammate Brianna Parker received second team recognition for back-to-back seasons.

Men’s Swimming & Diving

During the regular season, the Kingsmen earned four conference dual wins, equaling the most in the program’s eight-year history and repeating last year’s performance.

Freshman Conrad Sheffer was the top CLU performer at the SCIAC Championships with his best finish coming as runner-up in the 400-yard individual medley. In just his first year, he is either the sole or co-owner of seven school records.

Junior teammates Jake Kaija and Grant East each set two individual school records at that competition. East was also named SCIAC Male Athlete of the Week (Jan. 3-9).

Women’s Swimming & Diving

With a team roster that featured no seniors and only one upperclassman, the Regals welcomed several young and talented members to the squad
this season.

Freshman diver Sheyenne Machida highlighted the Regals’ performances at the SCIAC Championships taking second place on the one-meter springboard.

Freshman Shelby Brooks set CLU records in both the 100-yard and 200-yard backstroke events at that meet, with fellow newcomer Kelli Miller earning a top-five finish in the 200-yard breaststroke.

CLU Among Top Athletic Schools

Following the completion of the fall athletics season, CLU ranked No. 25 in Division III in the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup Standings. The standings are based on points awarded to team finishes of respective schools in each of the 18 selected sports—nine men’s and nine women’s—throughout the year.

Cal Lutheran leads a group of four Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference institutions that earned points during the fall season. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps was ranked 49th, Redlands 77th and Whittier 180th.

CLU currently sponsors six of the seven fall programs recognized with three of the six earning 139 points. Volleyball garnered the most, 64, after reaching the Round of 16 in the NCAA tournament. Regals soccer provided 50 points with a spot in the second round of the postseason, and football contributed 25 after earning its second playoff appearance in as many years.
Washington (Missouri) University led the standings with 336 points.

Women’s Water Polo

The 2011 preseason Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) poll ranked CLU at No. 4 in Division III to begin the year. The Regals won the Collegiate III Championship title last season.

Volleyball

Out of 446 Division III teams, the Cal Lutheran Regals ranked above all in kills per set and received an award presented by the NCAA. Only one other team in the country averaged more than 14 kills per frame.

Sometimes, change occurs almost as an evolution, a natural flow of events, as in the case of a successful marriage and family therapist who became aware of a need in the mental health profession and set changes in motion to help fill that need.

Sometimes, change is thrust upon us and can wreak havoc with our lives. When a human resource specialist found herself among the unemployed, the challenge seemed overwhelming. But in the ensuing months, she became aware of a need she shared with her fellow job seekers beyond finding work. Meeting that need helped her move on with her life.

Sometimes, we realize that life isn’t quite what it should be, and we set about to make it better. For example, the corporate executive who felt the need to spend more time with family and less time commuting to work or the full-time working mom who wanted to spend more time at home with her daughter.

Whether it happens to us or we make it happen, change can be good. For these four newly re-energized CLU alumni, the transition to a new direction, a new career, a new business started with a first step – embracing the changes that would lead them down more fulfilling professional paths.

Noah Rubinstein ’94

Putting a Positive Spin on Mental Health

goodtherapy.org

As a licensed marriage and family therapist, Noah Rubinstein ’94 believes that therapy has great powers to heal. Unfortunately, it can also do harm. Over the last 20 years, Rubinstein has provided counseling and consultative services in a variety of settings including private practice, mental health clinics, residential treatment centers, emergency shelters, hospice organizations, home-based therapy programs, summer camps and schools.

Having heard a few too many stories about therapists treating clients as flawed, deficient, unlovable, or worse, Rubinstein launched GoodTherapy.org, an online mental health directory designed to help people find practitioners who view and treat their clients as fundamentally capable and proficient human beings.

“Our experience is that nearly everyone has an innate capacity to return to their loving and happy self if they put in the time and energy, and have a good therapist to help guide them,” said Rubinstein, who lives in Olympia, Wash., with his wife, Charlene (Koutchak ’93) and their two sons.

The difference between Goodtherapy.org and other online directories is the requirement that listed therapists adhere to healthy elements of therapy including practices that empower and engage clients as collaborative partners in the healing process. Launched in 2007, the site currently has 6,000 registered members in 27 countries and receives 1.2 million therapist searches each month. Committed to helping people gain a better understanding of what constitutes healthy therapy, GoodTherapy.org is also a resource for blogs, online workshops and book recommendations.

Lauren Godfrey ’85

Helping Others Find their Calling

vocarenetworking.com

After losing her job in March 2008, Thousand Oaks resident Lauren Godfrey ’85 found herself navigating a mid-career job search in a brutally competitive job market. As the months passed, she met more and more people out of work due to recent changes in the economy and felt that the typical networking events weren’t addressing the harsh realities that she and others were experiencing. The anxiety, loss of self-esteem and financial setbacks that come with a prolonged job search make it difficult to maintain a positive and upbeat attitude – the kind of attributes that employers are looking for.

With the help of Steve Herder, her pastor at Ascension Lutheran Church, Godfrey started a job networking and support group that addresses the emotional, mental and spiritual wellness that is vital to finding new employment. The Vocare Networking and Support Group, which meets bimonthly, has attracted help from clergy and pastoral representatives, financial and legal advisors, psychological counselors, mortgage and foreclosure specialists –
all of whom provide their services on a sliding scale or pro bono basis. With continued community support, Godfrey hopes that Vocare (from the Latin verb “to call”) will be able to provide scholarship-based job training and advanced certification to people stranded by unemployment.

“I see a lot of people that keep falling short in securing a job because of a missing certification or qualification, and they’re in the agonizing position of either paying the rent or mortgage, or paying for that training. It’s a vicious cycle and just a little bit of help can change the game,” Godfrey said.

After 21 months in transition, Godfrey landed a job as a Lutheran Engagement Specialist with Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, a position she sees as her true calling.

Michele (Thompson ’02) Rivard

Marketing Makeovers

glendoratreasurehunter.blogspot.com

Michele (Thompson ’02) Rivard of Glendora was a full-time working mom with a healthy freelance marketing business on the side. The configuration left little time to be a mom, and her freelance business was doing well, so Rivard decided to give up her day job in order to spend more time with her daughter. Soon after that, the market crashed and all of her freelance clients closed, merged or simply cut their marketing budgets leaving her without an income.

But Rivard, now the mother of two daughters, knows a bargain when she sees one. While at a garage sale, she came across a sturdy antique secretary’s desk in need of a little TLC. She bought it for a steal, painted it, added some inexpensive hardware and sold it on Craigslist for a $100 profit.

“I could hardly believe it,” Rivard said. “It got me thinking that we have a need right now for some extra income and
that this might be a good way to fill the need. Each week since then, I continue to be in shock at the treasures I find for next to nothing and the HUGE profits that I make turning them around on Craigslist and Ebay.”

With a few months of trial and error under her belt, Rivard is learning the finer points of pricing, inventory management and consumer demands. Utilizing her network of buyers and sellers, she has partnered with another mom-friend to start a business helping other people sell dusty and neglected items for stellar profits. The tagline for the new business called Mommy Pickers is “Making yard sale leftovers a one of a kind treasure.”

Mark Howe ’88

From Corporate to Coffee

javakaicoffee.com

A few years ago, Mark Howe ’88 set out to make a change. He had a lucrative job and 20 years in corporate finance, but the commute and the long hours were getting to him. It was just too much time away from his two daughters.

Longing to open his own business, Howe had his eye on a vacant storefront near his home in Moorpark. He felt the area was in need of a good coffee shop and while doing research on various franchises found one that spoke to his heart. Not long after, Java Kai was born.

Howe had spent some time in Hawaii as a child, so he liked the idea of bringing a little “island attitude” to his California neighborhood. And so, paying tribute to Hawaii, family and the “best darned” coffee you’ll find on the mainland, Howe and his wife, Sandy, opened the doors of Java Kai.

According to the proud owners, Java Kai is the only place in town where you can get a cup of 100 percent Kona coffee – coffee grown only in Hawaii and considered to be among the world’s finest. For those who don’t like coffee, Howe can serve up a Lava Lust, Molokai Mango or Hula Hula smoothie to suit your mood.

Java Kai recently celebrated its second anniversary prompting Howe to reflect, “It’s been an extremely challenging but very rewarding experience. I love the atmosphere, and meeting and talking to new people every day.”

The enormous body of work across virtually all disciplines that comprises Holocaust studies tries to come to terms with a human context forever changed after 1945. Whether it is Quentin, Arthur Miller’s protagonist in After the Fall, or the array of characters in Albert Camus’ The Plague, or a host of other literary points of reference, including many eloquent survivor stories, the inherent post-Holocaust question always goes something like this: Who are we as human beings and who shall we become and based on what, now that we know more comprehensively than ever before that we are both a dangerous and a glorious species?

I have been stunned by the window into all human suffering and transformation, perhaps even a kind of illumination, which Holocaust studies opens. It requires and therefore teaches empathy.

One of my favorite responses to such an impossible question comes from Kurt Vonnegut. In his poignant, funny, horrifying World War II anti-war novel Slaughterhouse V, he asks a question of the question, “What does one say to a Holocaust?”

The reply is the song of a bird, “Po-tee-weet,” which suggests there are no adequate words to honor the existential suffering we humans experience, nor is there a language to measure the anguish and injustice we so often inflict on one another. On the other hand, the bird still sings, an aspect of mystery, a yearning for meaning abides.

Clearly, the crucible of Holocaust studies is rich, almost endless, in its curriculum and perpetually relevant in its lessons, but here are a few things I’ve learned from teaching this particular class. First, I have a renewed appreciation for CLU’s legacy of respecting diversity imbued with a prevailing concern for peace and justice in the world as well as for the many trail-blazing individuals (faculty, administration, staff and students) who are part of that legacy.

Second, teaching this class not only prompts me to remember and to be thankful for legacy but also to reaffirm a liberal arts education, a teaching environment directed to the whole person not just to a professional or skill set piece of one. Harvard scholar Robert Coles, an academic hero of mine, suggests in The Call of Stories that literature and all the arts resonate with moral imagination.

To me, this idea means that as a teacher I am obligated to make those qualities that define the best in us … visible, even as we attempt to acknowledge and comprehend the worst. In the Holocaust class, I think this happens most effectively when a survivor comes to be with the students.

The late Piri Bodnar, mother, wife, author, insatiable reader, Holocaust survivor, was a great friend of CLU. If there was ever a person who embodied the best in us and made it visible as a teaching for our students over many years in many classes, it was Piri.

And it is always Piri who whispers the third lesson, a kind of chant really, that still reveals her to me, bent over a table at Barnes and Noble, reading Tibetan Buddhism: Wake up. Be grateful. Be humble. Be kind.

I have been stunned by the window into all human suffering and transformation, perhaps even a kind of illumination, which Holocaust studies opens. It requires and therefore teaches empathy.

There is a scene in Elie Wiesel’s Night where Francois Mauriac in his Foreword says he wants to comfort Elie, the inconsolable survivor, and perhaps himself by sharing with him the consolations of his own (Mauriac’s) beliefs, but that he “… could only embrace him weeping.”

Empathy for the reality, the anguish of others, walking within the spaces that are not us, to be active healers in the world wherever prejudice and injustice rear their hydra-like heads – that is the mandate of teaching the Holocaust and of ceaselessly learning from it.

Sigmar J. Schwarz, a past Woodrow Wilson Fellow and NDEA Fellow, is a professor in the English Department. He is interested in non-Western and minority studies and currently teaches a seminar in non-Western writers. He emphasizes the African-American, Chicano and Native American “voices” in his writing and literature courses.

N. John Beck, a member of CLU’s Board of Regents for 20 years, died peacefully Jan. 8, 2011, in his Bonita, Calif., home. He was 85. Beck provided support and leadership in countless projects throughout the life of the University. In addition to serving as board chair, he was chair of the Academic Affairs Committee and of the search committee that elected Jerry Miller as president. He played a leading role in several capital campaigns and was one of the staunchest supporters of establishing the University’s NPR station, KCLU. Beck’s commitment to service extended to his community as well. He was a member of the San Diego City Council, past president of the Society of Automotive Engineers, a major supporter of the Boy Scouts and an active member of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Chula Vista. CLU recognized his outstanding stewardship to his community, church and the University by presenting him with the Distinguished Service Award in 1996. Beck, who earned a master’s degree in engineering from the California Institute of Technology and a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, distinguished himself equally in his professional career. After working for several large companies, he founded BKM Inc., which manufactures diesel fuel-injected engines, and a BKM subsidiary, Servojet Electronic Systems. Passionate about ecology and the global environment, in 1992, he started Clean Air Resources, which develops and installs devices that convert diesels into virtually zero-emission, natural gas-powered engines. In 2004, he and his wife, Janet, endowed a science scholarship, with the goal of its becoming a scholarship in engineering physics. Survivors include his wife of 64 years, two sons, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Helmut Haeussler, a founding faculty member of California Lutheran College, died Feb. 2, 2011. He was 88. A resident of Thousand Oaks for 50 years, Helmy, as he was known on campus, was a gifted history professor and academician. Before heading west to join the CLC faculty in 1961, he taught at Luther College and Wittenberg University. After three years at CLC, he moved to California State University Northridge where he remained until his retirement in 2004. His undergraduate education was interrupted by service in the U.S. Army during World War II, but he later completed his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin and a master’s degree at University of Maryland. He was preceded in death by his wife, Annie, and is survived by his brother, Erwin, and son, Tom.

See has always been intrigued by stories that have been lost, forgotten or deliberately covered up. In her latest novel, Shanghai Girls (2009), the author delves into the forgotten history of two sisters who leave Shanghai in 1937 and go to Los Angeles in arranged marriages. It is a story of immigration, identity, war, love and sisterhood.

Her first work, the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (1995), traces the journey of her great-grandfather, Fong See, who overcame obstacles at every step to become the 100-year-old godfather of Los Angeles’ Chinatown and the patriarch of a sprawling family.

See’s other novels, which include Flower Net (1997), The Interior (1999), Dragon Bones (2003), Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005) and Peony in Love (2007), have all received praise and awards for their excellence.

Students in Robert Rumer’s Introduction to Engineering class designed and constructed the fountain, which features a handcrafted waterwheel that uses hydropower. Camarillo-based SolarWorld USA donated a top-of-the-line 245-watt module for the project.

The fountain, which was later disassembled to make way for the demolition of E Building, will be reassembled and installed in the newly landscaped area where the building stood.

The landscape fountain is the latest green project undertaken by the CLU community, which is committed to reducing its
carbon footprint and to finding sustainable solutions to environmental challenges.

As a result of the fountain construction, Rumer has received several inquiries from groups and individuals looking for assistance on solar projects.

Jamba Juice, a new addition to campus, opened for business in January. Located in the former retail kiosk across from Ahmanson Science Center, Jamba Juice offers healthy snacks and drinks at the University’s first fully branded retail operation. Expanded seating is provided adjacent to the walk-up windows.

Retail Kiosk – Construction is under way in the Student Union Building for the relocation of the retail kiosk. This “Grab ’n Go” station, which provides sandwiches, salads, fruit cups, parfaits, muffins and a variety of beverages, is expected to be up and running later this semester.

Centrum Café – The popular daytime and evening dining spot is slated for an update and re-branding of both image and menu this summer. In the meantime, the popular table delivery system will continue, and some new “specials” have been introduced. Look for more changes next fall.

Sophomore Jordan Skinner portrays Trofimov, sophomore Jessica Butenshon is Anya, and junior Elyse Sinklier is Ranevskaya in the Theatre Arts production of The Cherry Orchard.

Only 10 productions from Southern California, Arizona, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah were invited to fully mount their shows at the festival. This is the second time a CLU Mainstage Theatre production has been selected.

The 42-year-old program is designed to encourage, recognize and celebrate the finest and most diverse work produced in university and college theater programs. CLU design students Shaun Hara, a junior, and senior Julianne Kunke were finalists in the design competion with Hara receiving an honorable mention (third place).

The CLU production was originally staged in November under the direction of theatre arts professor Michael J. Arndt. Assistant professor Nate Sinnott designed the evocative and symbolic set and the lighting that reflects the haze of time. Costume designer Val Miller, a lecturer at CLU, captured the look and feel of the period; professional composer Chris Hoag provided a haunting score and sound design; and Barbara Wegher-Thompson coached the performers on movement.

The Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, first recipient of the CLU Peace Prize, speaks at the Martin Luther King Jr. chapel service.

The Peace Prize recognizes the contributions of an individual or organization in the region whose service to humanity builds the foundation for peace and justice in the world. Salvatierra’s organization, CLUE-CA, is a statewide alliance of interfaith groups and religious leaders helping low-wage workers in their struggle for a living wage, health insurance, fair working conditions and a voice in the decisions that affect them.

Salvatierra accepted her award and was guest speaker during the University’s Martin Luther King Jr. service on Jan. 19, which celebrated the life and legacy of the late civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

A pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Salvatierra has more than 30 years experience in ministry, community organizing and legislative advocacy. The Los Angeles resident has focused on helping the homeless, migrant farm workers and inner-city youth.

Before joining CLUE, she started a gang-prevention program for at-risk immigrant youth as a pastor in Fresno. In Oakland, she integrated her congregation with block parties, a community computer center and a garden where the elderly taught at-risk youth to grow produce. In 1998, she became the founding director of the Berkeley Ecumenical Chaplaincy to the Homeless, a program that was replicated in six other cities. She has also worked on projects in the Philippines, Central and South America, and Northeast Africa.

Bácsi’s extraordinary sculpture is exhibited coast to coast and is held in significant collections throughout the country. In 1999, he won the National Sculpture Society’s (NSS) Gold Medal and Maurice B. Hexter Prize for his first submission to a national competition. In 2001, his fellow exhibitors at the California Art Club (CAC) 91st annual members’ exhibition awarded him the Gold Medal for sculpture. He is a fellow of the NSS and a signature member of the CAC.

His CLU exhibit not only displayed his graceful work in marble and bronze but also showed how a work comes into being from maquette, or small preliminary model, to finished product.

It was something akin to a perfect storm – all the right elements coming together at the right time and in the right place.

However, it wasn’t the weather that led to the naming of George J. Petersen as Dean of CLU’s School of Education. It was ability and experience intersecting with an opening at the University that produced the ideal results.

“It was a perfect match,” said Leanne Neilson, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, when asked about Petersen’s appointment. “The School of Education is very complex,” she explained. “We wanted a leader who could manage the wide range of programs, who could strengthen our partnerships with districts and provide a vision for the SOE.”

Petersen filled the bill perfectly. He had the experience, managerial know-how, credentials and charisma to succeed. He was attracted to Cal Lutheran because of its size, reputation, location, and especially its mission and vision, which aligned with his own professional and personal belief system.

CLU was also a place where Petersen could apply his extensive experience and expertise. Prior to coming to CLU, he had been a public school teacher, administrator, university professor, chair of the Department of Graduate Studies at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, and co-director of the University of California Santa Barbara and Cal Poly Joint Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership.

Leadership Expertise

Much of Petersen’s scholarly research has focused on the executive leadership of district superintendents, their beliefs, roles and work in the area of instructional leadership and policy. His work has been widely published and is internationally recognized for its quality and impact.

Because of his considerable interaction with superintendents and school boards, Neilson sees Petersen as a “very good fit” to expand partnerships with school districts – a goal the new dean shares.

The School of Education already has demonstrated success with professional development, research and service at several local schools, Petersen noted, and these relationships have improved CLU’s presence and reputation. The dean plans to build on those successes and envisions the SOE continuing “its exemplary efforts in community outreach in order to serve the educational, social, emotional and professional needs of the citizens of California.”

Petersen expects the SOE to be a leader in the preparation of professional educators and practitioner-scholars and to promote, support and maintain genuine collaborative partnerships with important constituencies including area school districts, local organizations, state agencies and alumni. He foresees CLU expanding its reach to encompass entire districts, working with counselors and administrators as well as teachers from elementary school through high school.

Tough Times for Public Schools

With public school budgets being slashed, negative media reports, and parental and governmental expectations growing, Petersen is taking the helm of the SOE at a difficult time. Yet, he remains optimistic. He contends that despite difficult constraints, dedicated school personnel are working very hard throughout the country to make education as good as it can be.

“CLU must educate students as best we can for future educational roles despite this economic downturn and unfriendly environment,” he said. “We must encourage our students and make them aware that they are highly trained and qualified to be effective teachers, leaders and counselors.”

Petersen believes he has the personnel to accomplish this vision. On the job for less than a year, he observed that the School of Education has a cadre of dedicated faculty and staff who are interested in improving their practices and applications and working collaboratively in an effort to affect students and partner schools.

“The level of care among SOE faculty is something I haven’t experienced at any other institution,” he said. “They are student focused, put students first and focus their research on improving practice.”

Scholar and Author

A scholar at heart, Petersen is the author or co-author of three books and more than 100 book chapters, professional articles, research papers, monographs and commissioned reports. He earned a doctorate and master’s degree in educational policy, organizations and leadership studies from UCSB and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, Italy.

The new dean has held faculty and administrative positions at the University of Evansville (Indiana), Bowling Green State University (Ohio), the University of Missouri-Columbia and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. From 2000-2004, he also served as the Associate Director of University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA).

The recipient of numerous awards for his leadership, scholarship and service to the field, Petersen began his career as a high school social studies teacher and was named one of 100 Outstanding First Year Teachers by the American Association of School Administrators. His many other honors include the national 2004 UCEA Distinguished Service Award, the 2008 Association of California School Administrators Region XIII Education Professor of the Year and 2008 UCSB Distinguished Alumni Award.

“The mission of CLU – educating leaders for a global society – clearly focuses in the School of Education,” Neilson related. Petersen, with his extensive background in educational leadership and his personal resonance with CLU’s mission, has a proven track record with superintendents and school boards and is a very good fit with CLU’s faculty, she added.

Simply put, CLU and Petersen produce the perfect storm.

But not the Forrest Fitness Center. The place is buzzing with energy as dozens of student-athletes lunge and lift their way through intense workouts that crank up the heat in the state-of-the-art sports facility.

Somewhere amid this swirl of athletic endeavor, Patrick Holmberg is applying his sweet science.

Holmberg, 32, is CLU’s strength and conditioning coach. But really he is much more than that. Moving among basketball players and track runners, he is a master motivator – part coach, part cheerleader and part exercise guru.

He guides athletes through weight training and flexibility workouts, supplying high-fives and words of encouragement as they build power and agility. He preaches the gospel of injury prevention, and provides exercise regimens designed to keep athletes healthy and performing at peak levels.

He speaks with authority. And he knows what he’s talking about.

Less than a decade ago, Holmberg was the starting point guard for CLU’s basketball squad and at that time dedicated himself to the study of athletic performance. He earned a bachelor’s in kinesiology from CLU in 2003 and a master’s in exercise science from Cal State Northridge two years later.

Holmberg recently completed his doctorate in higher education leadership at CLU, penning his dissertation on the relationship between self-determined motivation and athlete burnout.

What Motivates Some But Not Others?

Fueled by a lifelong love of athletics, Holmberg said he chose the research topic because he had long wondered what motivated some individuals to pursue sports while others were content to sit on the sidelines.

As he reviewed literature on the subject, he came across articles on athlete burnout, and with further exploration began to see a correlation between that syndrome and one’s motivation to compete in sports. That subject has consumed him for the past three years.

His research – which included an extensive study involving 600 student-athletes in seven sports at 10 West Coast universities – produced breakthrough findings.

Like researchers before him, Holmberg found that athletes who engage in sport for sheer love of the game are less likely to experience burnout, while those who lack desire to play are more likely to do so.

But Holmberg’s research took that basic understanding a surprising step forward, exploring a motivational middle ground once thought to be a predictor of athlete burnout.

Within that middle ground, Holmberg found a level of motivation – called autonomous extrinsic motivation – in which athletes are motivated to play sports for external reasons, yet have integrated those reasons into their personal value systems.

Those athletes, like the ones who play for love of the game, are more inclined to invest themselves long term in athletic endeavors and less likely to experience burnout, he concluded.

Reducing Burnout

CLU strength and conditioning coach Patrick Holmberg ’03 (l) observes senior Jordan Barta (r) and sophomore Jayvaughn Nettles during a conditioning workout. In recent years, Holmberg has shifted his emphasis from enhancing player performance to injury prevention.

Holmberg was the epitome of the student-athlete at CLU. He played basketball for three years and as a sophomore helped lead the Kingsmen to a SCIAC championship and an appearance in the NCAA tournament for the first time in nearly a decade.

After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Holmberg returned to CLU in 2006 as an adjunct faculty member in the Exercise Science Department. He also began working with the men’s and women’s basketball teams as the strength and conditioning coach.

Fast-forward three years and Holmberg would begin working in that same capacity with CLU’s two-time conference-championship football teams.

Just recently, Holmberg was put in charge of strength and conditioning for the University’s entire sports program, a move that puts CLU on the cutting edge of NCAA efforts to expand strength and conditioning opportunities for Division III athletes.

“What a powerful message he brings home to our students,” said CLU basketball coach Rich Rider, who has watched Holmberg blossom from student-athlete to teacher, coach and scholar.

“Here is a young man who not only played sports, but who attacks these academic subjects with research and a tremendous body of knowledge,” Rider added. “He is a strong role model for all of our student-athletes, and they are sold on the program because they see the results.”

Holmberg is quick to point out that the results aren’t necessarily about building superior athletes.

Preventing Injury

In recent years, he has shifted his emphasis in the weight room from enhancing player performance to injury prevention. Again, he knows what he is talking about.

Holmberg injured his knee at the end of his junior season at CLU, and then blew it out altogether at the start of the next season, forcing him to miss his entire senior campaign.

He believes proper training could have prevented his injury. And it’s with that mindset that he approaches his work with student-athletes, confident in his conviction that his most important job as a trainer and coach is to keep athletes in action by reducing the likelihood of injury.

Count junior point guard Meaghan Goodenough among the converted.

Knee injuries have marred her basketball career, dating back to her playing days at Simi Valley High. But each time she has been down, she has devoted herself to rehabilitation through strength training and conditioning.

The hard work has paid off. She started all 25 games for CLU as a freshman and sophomore, and this year serves as a team captain and leads the squad in assists.

“I swear by this stuff,” said Goodenough, cooling off after a strenuous conditioning workout under Holmberg’s watchful eye. “Coach Holmberg motivates each one of us; he makes us mentally tough as well as physically tough. It’s amazing to see his dedication to us and his dedication to his job.”

CLU officials say Holmberg’s work has been instrumental in reducing injuries among student-athletes, and Holmberg said there is a strong connection between his research and his emphasis on injury prevention as a strength and conditioning coach.

The perception of fatigue that accompanies overtraining, for example, can and often does lead to injury, and that in turn can produce the symptoms that define burnout such as emotional exhaustion and a reduced sense of accomplishment and devaluation.

Holmberg said it’s his job to manage the training schedule of his athletes so that the likelihood of overtraining – and thus the potential for burnout – is minimized.

“I came to realize that my true passion lies in working with athletes; that’s what brings me a real sense of purpose,” Holmberg said. “In my mind, every student-athlete who sacrifices his or her time and energy deserves to look back at his or her college career in a positive way.”

Fred Alvarez is a high school history and journalism teacher who lives in Ojai. For more than two decades, he was a staff writer for several daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Study Abroad Endowment Fund will generate up to $50,000 a year for study abroad grants and will dramatically increase the number of students who can afford to make international study part of their educational experience, according to Study Abroad Director
Lisa Loberg ’98.

Three scholarships have already been awarded, enabling students to study in Australia, France and Portugal during this spring semester. A fourth student received funds to study and work for a nonprofit immigration agency through the Washington Semester Program.

“I chose [CLU] because I knew I would benefit from the well-rounded education opportunities, such as the study abroad program,” said Danika Briggs, a junior communication major who is studying at Southern Cross University in New South Wales. “Learning is the main reason I am here and, in my opinion, traveling is the ultimate learning experience. I feel that study abroad will help me excel by allowing me to experience another culture firsthand.”

Nationally, the number of American students studying abroad is on the rise. CLU is keeping pace with that trend through the newly endowed scholarship and several external and partner-affiliate grants that have recently been awarded.

Four students received Benjamin A. Gilman scholarships to study in Argentina, Indonesia and South Korea this spring. The awards, sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, require a “follow-on” project upon completion of the academic program.

The Los Angeles Chinese Consulate awarded comprehensive scholarships to two CLU students to study in China – one for a semester and the other for a full academic year. Three students were awarded Ernst Mach scholarships for study in Graz, Austria.

“Students who study overseas come back with new ideas about themselves, their goals and the world,” said Loberg. “Their experiences influence their decisions for the rest of their lives.”

Jim and Sue Swenson

Perhaps it was their Midwestern upbringing or the fact that their parents set an example of helping others. Maybe it was because they received assistance when they most needed it or because a faculty member took a special interest in career development.

Whatever the reasons, the lessons Jim and Sue Swenson absorbed while growing up in Superior, Wis., resulted in a successful multimillion-dollar business and a foundation that generously supports colleges and universities as well as many other nonprofit organizations.

The largess of the Swenson Family Foundation was introduced to CLU in 1997 with the initiation of the Swenson Scholars program, which provides 50 percent of tuition and fees to 16 recipients for four years. The foundation’s support later expanded to include the Swenson Summer Science Internships and most recently to the construction of the $8.5 million Swenson Center for the Social and Behavioral Sciences, which opened in the fall.

Although it is gratifying to the Swensons to see their name on the building, Jim said it’s “more gratifying to see kids get college degrees where we have helped. We want to give where we can see results.”

“Jim and Sue are genuinely interested in helping people get an excellent education, and their generosity has made a tremendous difference in the lives of so many Cal Lutheran students,” said President Chris Kimball.

A Helping Hand Remembered

As a young man, Jim personally experienced the challenges of paying for college. The eldest of five brothers, he worked in his father’s bakery to keep the family together after his mother died in 1955. Jim’s mother had always wanted him to go to college and left him a life insurance policy of $1,800 to assist with expenses. However, when Jim reached 18 (the age he could cash in the policy), things were difficult at home and his father needed the money.

Conflicted, Jim consulted a local banker as to whether to keep the insurance funds or give them to his father. The banker recommended signing the policy over to his father, but told Swenson that if he ever needed financial assistance to come to him for help. Jim remembered that offer when he was a college student needing to repay a loan, and sure enough, the banker lent Jim $900 from his own personal funds. Jim credits the banker and his remarkable gift with “planting the seeds” for the Swensons’ future generosity.

Jim graduated from University of Minnesota Duluth in1959 with a degree in chemistry while his high school sweetheart, Susan Locken, completed her teaching certificate at University of Wisconsin Superior. Following their marriage in 1959, Jim completed military service with the National Guard and began a job at Honeywell Research Center in Minnesota where he developed new computer memories.

“Jim and Sue are genuinely interested in helping people get an excellent education, and their generosity has made a tremendous difference in the lives of so many Cal Lutheran students.” ~ President Chris Kimball

After working for several large corporations, including Univac where he learned how to make circuit boards, Jim was recruited to Lockheed Electronics in California in 1968 by a former employer and mentor.

“Every time we’d have a snow storm in Minneapolis, he would call and ask if I was ready to come to California yet,” Jim laughingly recalled.

A Business of His Own

In 1978, Jim tired of the corporate structure and launched his own company with $15,000 and four employees. Located in Anaheim, Calif., the start-up company named Details Inc. created the “inner layer details” for printed circuit boards. It became the fastest, quick-turn-around engineering prototype circuit board shop in the United States.
One of the secrets of Details’ success was its excellent customer service. Jim had found that designers in large firms had stopped checking their work.

“We would spot deficiencies in their designs and fix them quickly,” he explained.

Details Inc. became known for meeting deadlines and doing things right. Their client list included Compaq, IBM, Apple and Motorola. “We made boards for nearly every computer company in the country,” Jim said. He thanks his father and father-in-law, both small businessmen, for teaching him the importance of customer service.

While Jim was building his business, Sue returned to college and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Cal State Fullerton. She worked for many years as a patient representative in acute and rehab hospitals.
In 1996, Details Inc. was sold, giving the Swensons more time to pursue other interests.

Swenson Center

The 33,000-square-foot Swenson Center for the Social and Behavioral Sciences was dedicated Oct. 22. The first LEED-certified building on campus, the center contains faculty offices, classrooms and computer labs.

The Swensons’ generosity extended to capital giving this year making possible the 33,000-square-foot center for the social and behavioral sciences located on the site of the former tennis courts.

CLU’s first LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building, it contains 43 faculty offices, nine state-of-the-art classrooms, two computer labs, a psychology lab and a conference room. The new structure has enabled professors to finally move out of the converted chicken coops that have been in use since classes began in 1961.

Psychology professor Steve Kissinger, who had an office in a converted chicken coop for 19 years, described the new building as open and airy.

“I served as the Social Science rep on the construction committee, and at the end of each meeting we took a walk-through tour of Swenson. It was difficult to return to my office in G Building. It was so dark and dingy in comparison.”

The new center houses several departments and gives faculty the opportunity to interact with more colleagues than in the past, Kissinger observed. He also thinks the new classrooms have a big impact on students.

“The classrooms are large, bright and modern. They are all equipped with the latest technology, especially the computer labs.”

“With Jim’s commitment to science and technology, it is very fitting for our first ‘green’ building to bear the Swenson name,” added Kimball. “We are all proud of this new and long-awaited academic facility.”

Giving Back

Donor Jim Swenson addresses the celebratory crowd gathered for the ceremony.

Jim Swenson gives more than financial resources to CLU. A member of the Board of Regents since 1998, he encourages his fellow board members to think outside the box when coming up with new ways to better serve students.

Besides CLU and their alma maters, the Swenson Family Foundation supports the Ocean Institute of Dana Point, Orange County Performing Arts (Children’s Programming) and Children’s Hospital of Orange County where they established the Swenson Assistance Endowment for Families.

When asked why they are so generous, Jim talks about his mother. “She was very giving,” he said, explaining that she always made soup and shared it with a poor man that scavenged in their neighborhood.

“Why did you have that dirty man in,” young Jim would ask his mother. “We have plenty. We can share,” was her response.

“That’s the Midwestern way,” Sue clarified. “That’s just what people did.”

The first Convocation of the college was held on October 24, 1958, when seventy representatives of the five Lutheran church bodies gathered in the converted chicken coops to elect their officers, nominate the Board of Regents and adopt a fifteen-year Master Plan. Thereafter, that day was designated as “Founders Day,” to be observed each year to recall the genesis of the school and to pray for its success.

EXCERPT FROM
College of Our Dreams: The First Fifty Years 1959-2009

First Convocation October 24, 1958

Convocation 2010: Today’s 80-person Convocation, which represents the corporation of the University, is made up of members of the five synods of Region II of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, faculty, students, the University president and members at large. In addition to ratifying the election of CLU’s Board of Regents, the convocators serve as ambassadors, counselors, recruiters and development support for the University.

First Board of Regents 1962

Board of Regents 2010: The 30-member Board of Regents directs the administration through its policy-making role, safeguards the mission and assets of the University, authorizes budgets and strategic plans, elects the president of the University, and approves the appointment of chief administrative officers and faculty.

Freshman applications increased by 66 percent over 2009. CLU admitted only 47 percent of applicants, down from 63 percent the previous year. Admitting fewer than 50 percent of applicants places CLU in the selective category nationally. The average grade point average and SAT scores of the freshman class are the highest on record at CLU with 20 percent of the students ranking in the top 10 percent of their graduating class.

Even though CLU was more selective in admissions, there are 556 traditional first-year students enrolled in the freshman class, a 13 percent jump over last year. The number of new transfer students increased by 12 percent to a record 241. Transfer applications increased by 32 percent this year.

One third of the freshmen and new transfers, which come from 23 states and 26 foreign countries, are the first in their family to attend college. Of the freshmen, 43 percent come from traditionally underrepresented groups. In particular, CLU welcomed significantly more Latino and Asian American students.

The record number of new students brings CLU’s total number of undergraduates to 2,545. This includes Adult Degree Evening Program students who began classes in Thousand Oaks, Oxnard and, for the first time, Woodland Hills. The number of students enrolled in graduate programs rose to 1,386 bringing total enrollment to just below 4,000.

Stakes are high at annual poker party

Dan Naef (l), Mike Bloomgren '82, Guy Corrigan, Bob Voelker, Earl Slee and Dean Clark enjoy another spirited poker game in memory of their friend Sven Slattum '82.

It’s supposed to be a friendly poker game. After all, the players – mostly Cal Lutheran alumni – know they won’t head home with a bundle of cash at the end of the night.

For the past 25 years, every nickel, dime and quarter wagered in their annual poker tourney has gone to a Cal Lutheran scholarship fund established in honor of their buddy Sven Slattum, who was killed a year after graduating from CLU.

Still, when the guys get together for their poker showdown, a year’s worth of bragging rights are at stake. There also is the possibility of taking home a perpetual trophy created as a tribute to their poker pal – a fun-loving geology student remembered for his good humor, zany betting habits and reluctance to let a good poker game come to an end.

“His spirit is definitely alive in the game,” said Redding resident Dean Clark, a former CLU student who for the past year held the trophy awarded to the winner of the Sven Slattum Annual Poker Tournament.

“Sven would just bet like crazy; he didn’t care if he had money or not,” Clark added. “When Sven played, almost everybody walked out of there with IOUs, and we all knew we weren’t going to get our money back. All he cared about was keeping the game going.”

Keeping the game going is what some of Slattum’s closest friends have been doing for a quarter century. Once a year, they come together from all over the country to take part in the poker party, which rotates to the home of a different player each year.

The 25th anniversary of the game was held in September at the Moorpark home of Guy Corrigan, a friend who used to play poker with Slattum and friends in Pederson Hall.

Clark drove down from Redding, former CLU classmate Dan Naef arrived from Nevada, Earl Slee traveled from Laguna Niguel and longtime friend Bob Voelker came in from Arizona. Slattum’s former roommate Mike Bloomgren ’82 came the furthest, flying in from Michigan.

The games range from five-card draw and seven-card stud to unconventional hands that come with a dizzying amount of direction and require a degree in high math to fully comprehend.

But whatever the game, whatever the winnings and losses at the end of the night, all of the proceeds are collected and delivered to Cal Lutheran.

Since the poker tournament began, Slattum’s buddies have contributed about $6,000 in poker proceeds toward the scholarship that is awarded annually to a geology student in need of financial assistance.

Just as important, the annual gathering has served the larger purpose of keeping Slattum’s memory alive, as his friends gather to share stories of the laid-back guy who was always the life of the party.

“We are all good friends who saw this not only as a way to remember Sven, who certainly is worth remembering, but also as a way of preserving our unique relationship with each other,” said Naef, who lives in Henderson, Nev. “Without this, we all probably would have stayed friends, but we certainly would not have stayed in touch to this degree.”

The accident that killed Slattum in 1984 rocked the Cal Lutheran campus. He was riding in a car with fellow CLU alum Brian Solem and CLU senior Sally Jo Mullins when their vehicle went off the road and crashed. Solem and Mullins died that day; Slattum succumbed to his injuries a week later.

The accident was made all the more heartbreaking because Slattum and Solem were the sons of beloved CLU art professors Jerry Slattum and John Solem, both of whom have since retired.

The CLU community responded with open hearts. Family, faculty and fellow students pulled together to set up memorial scholarships in the names of all three students. The University established a meditative memorial site with a large white rock at its core next to the creek that runs through Kingsmen Park.

“The whole thing just hit the campus like a thunderbolt,” said Della Greenlee, CLU’s Director of Foundation Relations and Scholarship Development. She worked closely with the families to establish the memorial scholarships, and has developed a special connection with Slattum’s poker playing buddies.

“I think it’s absolutely amazing that these guys would think it so important to honor Sven every year,” Greenlee said. “It has meant so much, not only to us to receive and award this scholarship, but to the family to know their son is remembered.”

His friendship was unquestioned, his legacy indelible. Through births and deaths, marriages and divorces, graduations and job changes, he has kept this group together. And through the group, he has made it easier for some cash-strapped geology students to continue their studies.

“It’s nice to realize that potentially you can touch someone’s life,” said Corrigan, “that you can leave a lasting memory.”

Fred Alvarez is a high school history and journalism teacher who lives in Ojai. For more than two decades, he was a staff writer for several daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Memorial Scholarships

Endowed scholarships have been established at CLU in memory of two alumni and a student who died as a result of a car accident in July 1984.

Sally Jo Mullins Memorial Scholarship is awarded to an upper-division student who is actively involved on The Echo staff and shows editorial leadership.

Brian Solem ’83 Memorial Scholarship is granted to an undergraduate or fifth-year geology major. Individual merit is given special consideration.

Sven Slattum ’82 Memorial Scholarship is given to an undergraduate geology major. Individual merit is given special consideration. Any year that there is no qualified geology major, the scholarship can be awarded to an art student.

Information about contributing to these and other CLU scholarships may be obtained by calling Foundation Relations and Scholarship Development at (805) 493-3160 or by contacting department director Della Greenlee at greenlee@callutheran.edu.

Upward Bound Director Sergio Galvez ’03, M.P.P.A. ’09, is one of two dozen CLU Upward Bound graduates who have earned a college degree from CLU since 2003 or are currently enrolled as students. During that time, 100 percent of CLU’s UB alumni have graduated from high school and entered a post-secondary education program.

When he was in high school, Sergio Galvez was recruited for Upward Bound, a program aimed at preparing bright, low-income students for college. Now 29, he is running the program he once attended at California Lutheran University.

Each summer, high school students gather at the Thousand Oaks campus, where they take classes and get tutoring and counseling. A dozen years ago, Galvez was one of them.

“It sounded like something I needed to be part of, a program that helps you get to college,” said Galvez, who lives in Somis. “I was getting good grades, taking some honors classes, but I had no idea where to start, where to go.”

Galvez almost didn’t complete the program. Shortly after starting his senior year at Camarillo High School, he learned his girlfriend was pregnant. Galvez applied to colleges anyway, but when he started getting acceptance notices — including from USC, his dream school — he decided he needed to get a job instead so he could support his family.

Galvez went to the director of Upward Bound at the time, Oscar Cobian, and told him he was going to drop out, so another person could take his place. Cobian would have none of it. If family was his priority, Cobian told Galvez, had he considered going to CLU?

Galvez started at CLU the following fall, now the father of Viviana, who had been born a month before he graduated from high school. At CLU, Galvez gave up another dream — playing college baseball — and concentrated on his classes, majoring in history. He planned to become a teacher and, after graduating, earned his credential at CLU.

He taught for a year, but then a job as assistant director opened up in the Upward Bound program. Galvez got the job. Now, five years later, he’s earned his master’s degree in public policy and administration and is the director of CLU’s two Upward Bound programs, which are offered through the U.S. Department of Education.

Year-round help

The first is a general program for students at Channel Islands, Hueneme, Oxnard, Pacifica and Rio Mesa high schools. In addition to attending the five-week summer session, students come to CLU throughout the school year for classes, tutoring, field trips and help in preparing for college.

The second focuses on math and science. Students in that program come from across the western U.S. and the Pacific islands. They attend a six-week summer session at CLU and receive seminars, tutoring and counseling during the school year.

While he’s been in Upward Bound, Andrew Ozuna, 17, has gone from being unsure about college to being committed to attending a four-year university.

“It helps to motivate me,” said Ozuna, who started the program as a sophomore at Channel Islands High School. “I sometimes used to think I wanted to go to college, but it seemed impossible.”

Ozuna’s younger brother, Aaron, is in the math and science program. Both are now students at El Camino High School at Ventura College.

Giving an expanded view

It’s not just the academic help that benefits students, said their stepmother, Stacey Ozuna, who has encouraged all her children to go to college. Participants also go on field trips, letting them see a play or go white-water rafting – activities they otherwise might not do, she said.

“It exposes them to other ways of living,” she said. “It really opens doors for them, helps them expand their horizons.”
Jessica Ramirez, 17, was reluctant to join Upward Bound because she was uneasy about being away from home for five weeks, but her mother encouraged her.

“She didn’t get to do everything she wanted to,” said Ramirez, a senior at Oxnard High. “She’s telling me, ‘I want you to do everything you want before you get married and have kids.’”

Galvez’s parents also stressed the importance of getting an education. When Galvez was a child, his father always checked his children’s homework before he allowed them to go out and play, although he had only a third-grade education himself.

“He cared enough to make sure it was done,” Galvez said. “He laid down the path for us to care enough to get good grades.”

Paying it forward

Today, Galvez is divorced from Viviana’s mother but is continuing that focus on education with his daughter. That means school is the first priority. So if Viviana, 11, is not with him after school, Galvez calls her to make sure she’s finished her homework. And she has her own desk in his office.

Galvez also still teaches the Upward Bound senior seminar every year, because that allows him to stay connected to students like Ozuna and Ramirez.

“I want to be an Oscar Cobian to somebody someday because I had that,” Galvez said. “I had someone who believed in me.”

I first came to California Lutheran College in the late 1960s as a 17-year-old freshman. Then, after five years of graduate school at University of Texas and four years as a research psychologist at UCLA, I returned in 1975 as a faculty member in the Psychology Department and never left.

Cal Lutheran has changed from my student days. When I was a student, girls had to wear dresses until 6 p.m., boys and girls could only visit each other’s dorm rooms from 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays, and the dorm curfew was 10 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends. The curfew was enforced with random bed checks.

All these rules just challenged us to spend time and ingenuity finding ways around them – like climbing out our dorm windows after curfew, even though most of us didn’t have cars and consequently had no place to go. At the time, breaking the rules was the point in itself.

CLU has changed in many substantial and positive ways. The old rules don’t apply now. Our student body has been enriched by becoming more diverse – ethnically, racially and culturally. Our classrooms are no longer converted chicken coops, but are “smart classrooms” with technology available at our fingertips.

However, the core values of Cal Lutheran have not changed. Our mission is still to educate and empower students both in and outside the classroom. Faculty members are here to teach students, and hopefully excite them, about subject matter and mentor them to achieve their academic and career goals.

This is also still a place where students can be empowered to make a difference in the microcosm that is CLU. For example, a few years ago students excited by what they had learned in a Holocaust literature course put together a daylong series of speakers and panels featuring concentration camp survivors and soldiers who freed them. CLU is a place where you can learn to lead and make things happen.

It is also still a place where you can broaden and enrich yourself by becoming involved in a variety of activities. I remember Jim, who came to Cal Lutheran from Alabama. He was the first student from his high school to go on to college. He majored in political science and wanted to become a lawyer. But he also sang in the choir, acted in school plays and got involved in student government, becoming student body president. He went on to Stanford Law School and is now a federal judge. Last I heard, he was still singing in a choir and acting in community theater.

Although Cal Lutheran has changed in some ways, it remains a place where faculty members focus all their resources into providing students with endless opportunities to try new things, expand their knowledge and become empowered to make a difference. Graduates can leave with the tools and confidence to realize their potential and live lives of significance. But, for this to happen, students must accept the University’s invitation to learn and to grow.

One thing is for sure – students will change while at CLU. How they change involves the choices they make. Take me for example. Partway into my first semester, I began ditching most of my classes and leaving papers and studying until the night before due dates and tests. I ended up with a 1.24 GPA and a less-than-friendly letter from the dean informing me that I was on academic probation.

I made changes. I learned time-management skills from a professor. I chose to attend classes and to engage myself in readings and class discussions. I took a required general education course and found something that I loved – psychology. I also found a mentor in Dr. Baranski, the Psychology Department chair. He encouraged me to get a Ph.D., which led me to a career I love and where I like to think I sometimes make a difference, helping others live lives of significance.

Cross-cultural research by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman has found some common virtues to creating a life of significance. They include the development of knowledge and wisdom, courage, humanity and justice. And that is exactly what CLU helps students to do. That hasn’t changed since the beginning.

Julie (Menzies) Kuehnel graduated from CLU in 1969 with a degree in psychology. She is Chair of the Psychology Department and Coordinator of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division. As recipient of the 2010 President’s Award for Teaching Excellence, she was the keynote speaker at Opening Academic Convocation. This article is taken from her speech.

Psychiatrist challenges prevailing  mental health treatments

Few physicians would deny that advances in pharmacology have dramatically improved the lives of many patients. However, the medical necessity of drugs that affect brain chemistry – Prozac, Paxil and Xanax, to name a few – is a claim that  Grace Jackson, M.D., openly disputes.

Jackson, a North Carolina board-certified psychiatrist, also believes that Americans are being dangerously over-medicated with psychiatric drugs as a quick fix, replacing counseling sessions aimed at getting to the root of a patient’s existential problems.

“Too many people are taking drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives,” Jackson maintains, adding that studies also show that use of psychiatric drugs leads to dependence and can cause permanent brain damage – even premature death.

So, are Americans addicted to psychiatric drugs? Jackson, the author of two books – Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent (2005) and Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime (2009) – answers yes and cites data from IMS Health, a market intelligence company that tracks worldwide daily pharmaceutical sales.

According to IMS Health statistics for 2009, the United States (which makes up 4.5 percent of the world’s population) accounted for 90 percent of the world’s sales of prescription stimulants, 63 percent of antipsychotics, 51 percent of antidepressants and 41 percent of antiseizure drugs.

IMS Health also reported that pharmaceutical sales in the U.S. topped $300.3 billion in 2009. Antipsychotic drugs were the pharmaceutical companies’ No. 1 moneymakers, totaling $14.6 billion, ahead of cholesterol-lowering medications at $14.3 billion and gastric acid-lowering medications at $13.6 billion. Antidepressants are fourth on the sales list, at $9.9 billion.

“Something must be really wrong in our country,” Jackson concludes. “What is so different about our brains from everyone else’s around the world?”

Grace Jackson, M.D.

Jackson is especially alarmed by the dramatic increase in the number of children taking medications – an estimated 6 to 8 million boys and girls, or about 10 percent of the population under age 18 in the U.S. – for what are classified as mental health problems, including autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Global use of ADHD drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall rose 80 percent – from 28.6 to 52 tons – between 2004 and 2008, according to the United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board 2009 Report.

Jackson noted that many of today’s college students, members of the so-called “Ritalin Generation,” have been taking psychiatric drugs most of their lives, “and that to me is a scary thing.”

Jackson, 47, earned her bachelor’s degree in political science in 1986 and her master’s degree in public administration a year later, both from CLU. She returned to CLU and added a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1992, before enrolling in the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center to pursue a medical degree. After graduating in 1996, she completed psychiatry internship and residency programs in the U.S. Navy.

She calls the 1990s the “Decade of Deception,” when pharmaceutical companies became extraordinarily powerful and influential in the medical community and began pushing their drugs directly to the public through television ads.

Jackson added that pharmaceutical companies began funding clinical trials that promoted their medications as well as heavily manipulating studies that appear in medical journals.

As a result, “Doctors are doing what they’ve been told to do,” by prescribing psychiatric medications as opposed to recommending safer and more effective alternatives to drugs.

In addition, Jackson claims, “Few patients today are receiving psychotropic drugs within the context of an authentic or genuinely informed consent to such treatment.”

“The elephant in the room is that these drugs are toxic to the brain, even in small doses,” Jackson said.

Jackson reached a “crisis in conscience” in the Navy as she “watched what was happening to patients who were right in front of me. They were being prescribed medications but were becoming stuck in their behavior. I began asking myself, ‘Why are these people becoming chronically disabled and not recovering?’

“I thought the model of care was unnecessarily harmful. It was like, ‘Your brain’s broken so here’s your pill,’” she added.

Jackson resigned her commission with the Navy in 2002.

“Few patients today are receiving psychotropic drugs within the context of an authentic or genuinely informed consent to such treatment. The elephant in the room is that these drugs are toxic to the brain, even in small doses.”

Questioning authority, challenging the status quo, speaking one’s mind and protecting the rights of patients are ideals that Jackson holds dear. They are ideals, Jackson said, she gained in large part from the challenging liberal arts education she received at CLU.

“I really didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, but as I get older I think, wow, my professors were very special people who taught me the skills to become a critical thinker and an independent human being,” Jackson said.

Jackson quickly names German professor Walter Stewart – “One of the reasons I took foreign languages at Cal Lutheran was so that I could connect with other people around the world, and Dr. Stewart helped me in that regard.”

She credits English professor Sig Schwarz with teaching her “what it means to be an ethical person.” She also looks back in awe at the teaching skill of the late Robert Woetzel, a professor of constitutional law who was for many years a leading proponent for the establishment of the International Criminal Court. “It was a tough class. He made you work your tail off, but it was worth it.”

But Jackson saves her warmest recollections for Ed Tseng, professor emeritus of political science and former Associate Dean for International Education.

“He was – and is – an extremely gifted lecturer,” she said. “He really knew how to bring the subjects of government, political philosophy and Asian history alive, and he did it with humor.”

Grace Jackson pictured during a USN combat casualty care course in February 1997.

Tseng, Jackson added, selected her to work as a political science departmental assistant when she was an undergraduate and he encouraged her to pursue her master’s degree in public administration. Tseng also invited Jackson to teach an introductory political science course at CLU for two years.

“Each of these chances provided me invaluable experience in research, writing, teaching and communicating – skills that I continue to use in my professional and personal life today,” she said.

Jackson noted that CLU also provided her opportunities to grow outside of the classroom. As a senior, she needed a physical education credit to graduate. So Jackson joined the women’s cross country team, even though she had no previous competitive running experience.

“I can’t say I never finished in last place,” Jackson said, laughing. “But I appreciated being part of a group. My approach to running was not to die.”

Since leaving the Navy, Jackson has worked in a variety of healthcare settings, including the North Carolina Department of Corrections. She is currently employed as the Medical Director for several social service agencies in her community. She also has a private practice in Greensboro, N.C.

An internationally renowned lecturer, writer and forensic consultant, Jackson has submitted testimony to governmental agencies and authorities on behalf of patients’ rights, medical ethics and healthcare reform. She also has served as an expert witness for the Law Project of Psychiatric Rights, a nonprofit organization based in Anchorage, Alaska.

John Cressy is a freelance writer who currently works in public relations for Whisenhunt Communications of Ventura and teaches writing skills to probation officers. He is a former staff writer, columnist and sports editor for the Ventura County Star.

With a “Senior Night” sweep over Occidental College on Oct. 29, the Regals earned their first outright conference title since 1999. That victory also extended the team’s win streak to a program record 24 victories.

During the streak, CLU head coach Kellee Roesel earned victory No. 100 and moved into second place on the school’s all-time wins list. Senior co-captain Allison Kerr was named American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Division III National Player of the Week earlier in the season.

Kerr also was named SCIAC Player of the Year becoming the first Regal to earn SCIAC Freshman of the Year (2007) and Player of the Year (2010) recognition. Sophomore setter Jackie Russell and senior outside hitter Megan Thorpe earned First Team all-SCIAC honors. Junior right side Casy McWhirk was named to the Second Team.

Cal Lutheran extended its winning streak to 27 at the SCIAC Postseason Tournament in Gilbert Arena on Nov. 5-6 and earned an automatic berth into the NCAA Championships. Kerr, Thorpe, Russell and McWhirk were named to the AVCA all-West Region team. Kerr, Thorpe and Russell were named First Team and McWhirk Honorable Mention. It was Kerr’s third straight season for regional honors and second overall for First Team selection.

The No. 20 Regals traveled to No. 1 Emory University in Atlanta for Regional play where they defeated Hardin Simmons University 3-0 in the opening round and Southwestern (Texas) 3-1 in the second round. A history-making season came to an end in the title match with a five-set loss to top-ranked Emory. It was the first loss for the Regals (29-4, 14-0 SCIAC) since Sept. 4 and snapped a 29-match winning streak.

Postseason accolades continued for the Regals as Kerr, Thorpe and Russell were named AVCA all-Americans. Kerr earned first team honors and became just the second Regal in history to earn multiple all-America selections. Coach Roesel was named AVCA West Region Coach of the Year.

Women’s Soccer

On the final day of the regular season, Cal Lutheran defeated Occidental College to earn the team’s first conference title since 2002, and 12th in the program’s existence. That victory was No. 18 of the year, setting a new program single-season record under second-year head coach Frank Marino.

Junior midfielder Sinead Vaughan, one of six Regals to earn all-SCIAC honors, was named Player of the Year. Junior Kaitlin Walters and senior Brittany Clark were named First Team all-SCIAC while senior goalkeeper Kristin Borzi and freshmen Anna Medler and Kristina Hulse earned Second Team honors.

Top seed and host of the SCIAC Postseason Tournament, Cal Lutheran was upset by University of Redlands in the semifinals but earned an at-large bid into the NCAA Division III Championships. The Regals, ranked No. 21 in the nation, were one of 63 teams to qualify for the tournament. After earning a bye in the first round, the host Regals lost to Redlands 3-0 for the second time in post-season play. CLU finished the season 18-3-1 overall, 10-1-1 SCIAC.

Men’s Water Polo

No. 9 Cal Lutheran defeated No. 2 Pomona-Pitzer by a 10-5 margin at Samuelson Aquatics Center on Oct. 30 moving into a tie for first place in the conference standings through the first round of play. It was the Kingsmen’s first win over the Sagehens in program history.

After completing regular season play with their best conference mark since the program began, the Kingsmen (6-1) went into the SCIAC Championship Tournament seeded No. 2 and looking for their first-ever SCIAC title. However, a 9-8 overtime loss to Whittier followed by a 15-14 overtime loss to La Verne left CLU matched with Caltech in the tournament’s seventh-place game. The season ended with an 18-6 victory over the Beavers and a fifth-place finish in the overall conference standings.

Men’s Soccer

The Kingsmen soccer team concluded its 2010 schedule as seniors Jorge Martinez and Robbie Spangler played in their final contests for CLU. Freshman Ivan Sanchez led the squad this season with seven points, contributing three goals and an assist during his first year of collegiate action.

CLU head coach Dan Kuntz racked up coaching win No. 195 at the helm of the Kingsmen program and career victory No. 354 overall which includes his 159 wins while head coach of the Regals soccer team from 1993-2005.

Men’s Cross Country

Senior Ray Ostrander led the team with his eighth place individual finish at the SCIAC Championship meet. The result earned Ostrander all-SCIAC First Team recognition as he became only the second Kingsman to earn multiple first team honors.

Ostrander was the third Kingsman in history to qualify for the NCAA Division III Championships in 2009, and this season he is the first CLU men’s harrier to compete in the national meet for a second time following his 11th place finish at the 2010 West Regional meet.

Junior Evan Reed finished 21st overall at the SCIAC Championship, with the top five CLU runners all finishing in the top-40 and placing fifth as a squad in the team competition.

Women’s Cross Country

Junior Toccoa Kahovec finished fourth at the 2010 SCIAC Championship meet earning first team all-SCIAC recognition for the second straight season. She became just the second Regal harrier to earn multiple conference first team honors.
Freshman teammate Natalie Bullock was the second-best Regal taking 51st overall. As a squad, the team finished seventh.

Kahovec just missed out on a trip to the national championships last season, and this year she secured the bid with her ninth-place finish at the 2010 West Region Championships.

Women’s Water Polo All-Americans

Meredith Butte (left), Bobby Sanders

The Cal Lutheran women’s 2009-2010 water polo team received five Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Division III All-America selections, the most in the program’s seven-year history. Seniors Meredith Butte and Joy Cyprian highlight the Regals chosen with each earning first team honors, doing so for the third consecutive season.

Fellow senior Lauren Bridges and sophomore Kelsey Bergemann each notched their first All-America selection taking down second team honors. Junior Bobby Sanders received Honorable Mention recognition to earn her second All-America pick in as many years.

Butte and Sanders also achieved recognition for their efforts in the classroom, earning 2010 ESPN the Magazine College Division Academic All-American Women’s At-Large Team honors. They were two of only three water polo players to earn First Team honors.

Swenson Scholars, which is patterned after successful programs the foundation initiated at University of Minnesota Duluth and University of Wisconsin Superior, provides 50 percent of tuition and fees for qualified students.

Since the Swensons are active members of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Dana Point, Calif., they decided to make the scholars program available at a Lutheran college. They consulted with their pastor, the Rev. John Knutson, who suggested California Lutheran University as the recipient, and that was the genesis of the Swenson Scholars program at CLU.

Parameters of the CLU program require scholarship recipients be U.S. citizens, members of an Orange County Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) congregation, nominated by their pastor, and accepted by CLU with a 3.0 minimum GPA that must be maintained in order to keep the scholarship. To date, a total of 57 students have received the scholarships.

The Swenson Summer Science Internships, a program that encourages undergraduate science research, was started in 2005. Students must apply to the program by submitting a description of their proposed research and the name of their faculty mentor. A faculty committee makes the final selections. If selected, the student receives $4,000 for 10 weeks of research, and the faculty mentor receives a $500 stipend plus $500 for project consumables.

The number of Swenson summer science researchers has grown steadily, reaching 17 this year.

George “Sparky” Anderson

Anderson endeared himself to players and fans alike for his simple demeanor, his story telling and unpretentious lifestyle. In recognition of his support of the University and the community in which he resided for nearly 50 years, CLU named its new baseball venue George “Sparky” Anderson Field in 2006.

The former MLB manager, who won more than 2,000 games and three World Series championships during his career, was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000. He is survived by his wife, Carol, two sons, a daughter and nine grandchildren.

Terence R. (Terry) Cannings died Aug. 13, 2010, at the age of 67. Born and educated in Australia, he completed a study tour of schools in Canada, the United States and Great Britain on a Churchill Fellowship in 1974 and earned a doctorate in education from UCLA in 1980.

After serving as an associate dean at Pepperdine University and dean at Azusa Pacific University, Cannings came to CLU as Dean of the School of Education in 2005. He retired three years later, having given 46 years to education. He loved to travel and his work took him around the world, which enabled him to establish an international component to CLU’s educational doctorate programs.

A gifted researcher, he published numerous papers, presented at conferences and published several books about technology in education. He is survived by his wife, Judy, three children and five grandchildren.

John S. Marshall, a professor emeritus in the School of Education, died Oct. 14, 2010, in Thousand Oaks. Marshall came to CLU in 1990 following a distinguished career with the California public schools.

He served as a full-time faculty member and as Director of the Educational Administration Program until his retirement in 2002. He led the program through several accreditation visits and was instrumental in the development of CLU’s first doctoral program in educational leadership.

After retiring, he continued to teach part time and advise candidates with preparation of their dissertations. Much beloved by students, he was named an honorary alumnus in 2002. He is survived by his wife, Judith, four children and five grandchildren.

As marketing director, Larcombe coordinates with regional partners in developing strategic brand and integrated marketing campaigns. Currently based in Canton, Mass., she has opened stores in Shanghai and Xi’an, China; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Bangkok, Thailand; and is specifically focused on the company’s further expansion into China. Having a position that entails a travel suits Larcombe, who loves exploring new places.

The outstanding young alumna’s favorite challenge is creating and naming the next Baskin-Robbins Flavor of the Month. In 2011, she plans to initiate an international partnership program between Baskin-Robbins and Avon to support breast cancer research.

Larcombe served as an intern for Baskin-Robbins while studying at CLU, and the company offered her a full-time position after she graduated in 2000 with a degree in communication. She credits her success, in part, to her decision as a CLU freshman to run for president of her residence hall. She went on to serve in various leadership roles on campus, including peer advisor and Residence Hall Association president. Her classmates selected her as Student Leader and Senior of the Year in 2000.

The first Cal Lutheran student to receive a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship, Sheets is teaching at two schools in the small town of Horn, Austria, northwest of Vienna. Her selection was made by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture in the spring and announced by the Fulbright Commission in Austria.

While attending CLU, Sheets was active in student government, serving as a student senator for two years. She also played the French horn in the University Wind Ensemble and served as a committee chair for Go Green, during which she initiated sustainability efforts on campus. Sheets, who traveled extensively while growing up in Oklahoma, spent her junior year abroad studying in Vienna, where she volunteered as an intern in an English class and tutored individual students in English.

Sheets graduated from CLU with departmental distinction and was elected to Psi Chi, the psychology honor society.

Jason Carignan '95 and President Chris Kimball pick up trash for "You Got Served."

In 2009, Jason Carignan ’95, along with David Czerwinski and Brent Reinke, founded Vapur, the Anti-Bottle, in response to an alarming consumer trend.

According to the National Recycling Coalition, the average American consumes 167 bottles of water a year and only recycles about 38 (23 percent). That means that every year Americans are sending 38 million plastic bottles to landfills, or worse, into our oceans and rivers, where it will take them upwards of 700 years to decompose.

Vapur is an environmentally friendly and reusable water bottle that can be rolled, folded or flattened when empty – easily fitting into pockets, purses or packs. The innovative design, intended to be both fashionable and portable, comes in a variety of colors complete with a carabiner. Thanks to features in several mainstream magazines and on talk shows, sales have skyrocketed from 10,000 units in 2009 to 1 million in 2010.

This year Carignan and the folks from Vapur (including Jennifer Guy ’10) welcomed CLU’s freshman class to campus and helped deliver a message of sustainability. Every incoming student received the Vapur Anti-Bottle, partially donated by the company, and Carignan and Guy participated in “You Got Served,” a community service event for first-year students.

For more information on the Vapur Anti-Bottle, visit www.vapur.us.

Tim Pinkney ’70 (l), an investment adviser with The Savant Group, began his term as the 97th president in July 2008. The Rev. Scot Sorensen ’80, Senior Pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, took over as the 99th president July 1 of this year. During Pinkney’s presidency, the club donated more than $250,000 to Sacramento community needs while also providing more than $100,000 for international efforts to fund youth dental and surgical procedures, build libraries, and eliminate health issues for indigenous children and their families.

“From my perspective, the values and leadership skills learned and honed at Cal Lu were instrumental decades later in helping us reach the peak of volunteer service in our northern California community,” said Pinkney.

Following April’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Sawitz decided to use his talents to help the region’s
endangered wildlife. He began by designing a T-shirt featuring some of the animal species harmed by the disaster.

With the help of his son, Tanner, and Tanner’s friend Nathaniel Dueber, the project grew into a three-minute YouTube video. The “BP Gulf oil leak shirt” video documenting Sawitz’s creation of the artwork was shot and edited by Nathaniel with original music written and performed by Tanner.

The video can be viewed at http://bit.ly/Gulf_Ts. The site includes a link to purchase the T-shirts, which were produced by Dolphin Shirt Co. in San Luis Obispo. Twenty percent of the purchase price is being donated to the National Wildlife Federation.

Created by the Music Department in conjunction with CLU’s 50th anniversary, the award will be given annually at Homecoming in recognition of exemplary dedication to and distinguished artistic achievement in music.

Sonstegard is Director of Worship and Music at Ascension Lutheran Church.

Fifty years ago, these students acted with considerable bravery. They agreed to attend a school that, prior to their arrival, did not exist. The very act of their setting foot on this campus, answering the call and believing in the dream of a Lutheran college in the southwest, was the moment CLU, as we know it, came into being.

Even more impressive was the spirit in which these students arrived. Construction of many of those early and vital buildings was still in progress, which meant that these students were traversing a campus that could very easily have been mistaken for a construction site. They made the first walking trails, staged athletic contests on obliging fields, and performed recitals from a garage – all without complaint. They demonstrated a playful, can-do attitude and set about building the infrastructure of a community. That spirit of community still resonates today and remains one of CLU’s greatest strengths.

Classes of '64 and '65

He is responsible for gathering feedback and reporting on behalf of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and the Northwest Conference, as well as relaying important events, hot topics and educational information to both the campus and conference levels.

In addition to relaying information across campuses and conferences, D-III SAAC speaks on behalf of the entire D-III student-athlete body throughout the NCAA governance structure. Halvaks was selected by the Division III SAAC Nominating Committee from a diverse pool of candidates submitted by the conference office.

CLU opened the season at home with a 47-42 win over then No. 4 Linfield College on Sept 11. Immediately following the victory, the Kingsmen suffered the only loss of their season by a 35-21 margin at Pacific Lutheran University. In their first SCIAC contest two weeks later, CLU blocked a game-winning field goal attempt in the final seconds to outlast University of Redlands, 24-22.

Following the three competitive contests, the Kingsmen won their next six by an average score of 35-9. Having already secured a spot in the NCAA Playoffs for the second straight season, the final victory over Occidental gave CLU its second consecutive outright SCIAC title, and marked its first back-to-back league crowns and third title in the past four seasons under head coach Ben McEnroe.

In a rematch of the 2009 NCAA Division III playoffs, the Kingsmen (8-1) traveled to McMinnville, Ore., for first-round play against Linfield (8-1) on Nov. 20, looking to avenge last year’s 38-17 playoff loss. Unfortunately, it was the Wildcats who avenged their season-opening loss with a 42-26 victory over the Kingsmen.

Cal Lutheran finished the season 8-2 and made back-to-back NCAA playoff appearances for the first time in program history.

The founder and CEO of a construction consulting and real estate development company, Soiland served on CLU’s Board of Regents from 1974 to 1995 and chaired the Administration and Finance Committee for 20 years. He was also a member of the California Lutheran Educational Foundation Board of Trustees.

Soiland began contributing to CLU in 1959 when he first heard the college would open. Through the years, he and his wife, Fran, have become two of the University’s most generous donors. In recognition of their ongoing support, Soiland Humanities Center was named for them in 1998. They also contributed to the Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center, Pearson Library, Samuelson Chapel, Spies-Bornemann Center for Education and Technology, and the new Swenson Center for the Social and Behavioral Sciences. The couple created the Soiland Family Endowed Scholarship in 2007.

This year’s federal process was especially competitive given the overall economic climate in higher education, increased pursuit of federal grant dollars, and minimal federal funding increases for TRIO programs, said Angela Naginey, Director of Retention, Center for Academic and Accessibility Resources, in making the announcement.

As SSS marks its 20th anniversary, Naginey said, “We are proud to continue providing holistic support services to assist first-generation and low-income students to be retained and graduate from CLU.”

Morning Glory

The ACP Magazine Pacemaker honors general excellence in collegiate magazines. Given annually since 1927, these coveted awards are unofficially known as the “Pulitzer Prizes of student journalism.” CLU is one of only six four-year universities in the country to be named a finalist in its category.

This is the third time Morning Glory has been a Pacemaker finalist. The magazine was honored for the first time in 1982. The ACP has also presented 26 All American Awards to Morning Glory through the years. In 1990, the magazine was inducted into the College Media Association’s Hall of Fame.

Cindi Daley, board member of the Martin V. and Martha K. Smith Foundation (l); Larry Hagman, Honorary Chair of the fundraising campaign; Rod Gilbert, Chair of the Board of Regents Construction Committee; Pat and Joe Paulucci; and KCLU General Manager Mary Olson gleefully kick off construction of KCLU’s new broadcast studios. The Pauluccis and the Martin V. & Martha K. Smith Foundation gave gifts of $1 million for the new center.

Shovel after shovel of dirt flew into the air as Cal Lutheran broke ground for three new facilities this fall.

Leading the celebrations was groundbreaking for the KCLU Broadcast Center on Aug. 24, followed by ceremonies for the Early Childhood Center on Sept. 12 and William Rolland Stadium on Sept. 13.

Construction is moving quickly on the KCLU center and the preschool. Located near each other on Campus Drive, both are scheduled for occupancy next summer.

The Rolland stadium, situated adjacent to Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center, will be completed in time for the 2011 football season.

The award, established in 1968 to honor the first chief geologist of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is given annually in recognition of outstanding contributions to the interdisciplinary field of engineering geology.

Bilodeau and four others, including his wife, Sally Bilodeau, were honored for an article they published on the geology of Los Angeles in the Environmental & Engineering Geoscience journal.

The first paper Bilodeau and his wife wrote together, on the geology of Boulder, Colo., also won an award in 1988.

CLU’s program is designed for working professionals who are specially trained in spoken language instruction for this population of children. The nonprofit organization No Limits provides theatrical and educational experiences and individual therapy for children with hearing loss as well as family support and community awareness.

Each summer, seven to eight CLU teacher candidates are assigned a caseload of No Limits students and their parents. Under the supervision of CLU Special Education Program Director Maura Martindale and No Limits founder and Executive Director Michelle Christie-Adams, each candidate provides assessment, planning, instruction and parent education during hour-long sessions each week. Parents actively participate in the sessions and are expected to carry through with specific activities all week long.

The program, Martindale points out, is a true win-win scenario where CLU teacher candidates gain valuable teaching experiences and No Limits families receive needed educational services.

Wheatly, who just experienced his most successful fundraising year (bringing in more than $21 million to CLU), was appointed vice president in 2002 after completing seven successful years as Director of Estate and Gift Planning.

He accepted the vice presidential post during the middle of the University’s largest capital campaign. When the campaign seemed to hit a plateau, Wheatly reinvigorated the staff, board and donors, advancing the $80 million “Now is the Time” campaign to close in excess of $93 million.

Immediately following this campaign, he helped raise funds for the $8.5 million Swenson Center for Social and Behavioral Sciences, which opened this fall, and its $2 million program endowment. More recently, he has spearheaded efforts resulting in groundbreakings on the $8.9 million William Rolland Stadium, $2 million Early Childhood Center and $2.9 million KCLU Broadcast Center.

A past president of the Ventura County Planned Giving Council and the Southwest Chapter of the Association of Lutheran Development Executives and former chair of the ALDE National Ethics Committee, Wheatly currently sits on the board of the Lamplighter Foundation.

Wheatly was honored at AFP’s National Philanthropy Day® luncheon in November. AFP is the professional association of individuals responsible for generating philanthropic support for nonprofit, charitable organizations worldwide. Each year AFP honors individuals and groups who, through their hard work and dedication, have enhanced philanthropy, their communities and the world.

Lance Orozco pictured with MSNBC political analyst Keith Olbermann.

KCLU, California Lutheran University’s National Public Radio station, has been awarded a 2010 National Edward R. Murrow Award.

News Director Lance Orozco accepted the award for Best Audio Sports Reporting in the small market radio division for his story “The Oldest Dodger.” Orozco profiled Tony Malinosky, a 100-year-old Oxnard man who is the oldest-living member of a Major League Baseball team.

KCLU has won more than 140 regional awards for broadcasting excellence in the last decade, but this is the station’s first national award since it signed on in 1994. KCLU is the only small-market radio or television station in California that received a 2010 national Murrow award.

The Radio Television Digital News Association presents the annual Murrow awards to honor excellence in electronic journalism. RTDNA is the world’s largest professional organization exclusively serving the electronic news profession. This year, 59 news organizations including NBC News, CBS News and The Associated Press received 89 awards.

Orozco and KCLU General Manager Mary Olson attended the black-tie ceremony at the Grand Hyatt New York. Orozco, a broadcast journalist for nearly 30 years, worked at KEYT-TV, KCBS-TV and other television and radio stations throughout California before joining KCLU in 2001.

Three of the four inductees, Cindie (Jorgensen ’88) Van Noy, Eugene Karimov ’99 and Coach James Park ’86, were on hand to be officially welcomed into the ranks by Master of Ceremonies Hank Bauer ’76, Director of Athletics Dan Kuntz, M.A. ’02, and 12 CLU Hall of Famers. Darren Bernard ’91 was unable to attend.

Next time you are on campus, be sure to visit the Athletic Hall of Fame in the Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center to view the great accomplishments of all our Hall of Fame athletes.

James Park ’86

Women’s Volleyball Coach 1993-2001
Hall of Fame Class of 2010

High school geometry teacher by day, volleyball coach by night, James Park has led both university and high school teams to victory over a 25-year career. His tenure as coach at CLU began in 1993. Within a year, he took the team from barely breaking even with a 14-13 record to a 20-9 record and the 1994 SCIAC championship. Through the next seven years, Park and his teams reigned as SCIAC champions four times and were two-time runners-up. The team was an NCAA Division III West Regional finalist in 1994 and 1996, D-III runner-up in 1995, and Regional semifinalist from 1997 to 1999. Under Park’s leadership, the Regals earned 30 individual player awards for both athletics and academics.

Cindie (Jorgensen ’88) Van Noy

Women’s Volleyball and Basketball
Hall of Fame Class of 2010

Cindie Jorgensen earned her volleyball awards playing in the Old Gym, in which the digs hit the ceiling almost as often as they went over the net. A two-sport athlete in volleyball and basketball as a freshman, she began to focus on volleyball in her sophomore year. During her senior year, the Regals went 31-7 overall and 17-3 in district play. The team was crowned 1987 Golden State Athletic Conference champion and NAIA District III runner-up. Jorgensen was chosen NAIA All-American and selected to the NAIA All-District III First team and All-GSAC team.

Darren Bernard ’91

Men’s Track and Field
Hall of Fame Class of 2010

Jamaican by heritage, British by birth, and American by education, Darren Bernard arrived in the United States in his early teens and immediately began to run away from his competition. In fact, he is still ahead of his competitors as the record holder for the 400 meters (46.65), a school record that has stood for more than 20 years. A standout academically as well as athletically, the biology major was a two-time First Team All-American in the 400, 1990 and 1991, and led his team to three national third-place finishes. Bernard qualified to represent the United States in a dual meet with China and Hong Kong, running the 400 as well as the 4×100 and 4×400 relays. Not only does he still hold multiple records at CLU, but with his dual citizenship, he also owns records in Great Britain.

Eugene Karimov ’00

Men’s Tennis
Hall of Fame Class of 2010

Eugene Karimov travels in elite company. He owns one of only three national championship titles in CLU’s 50-year history. This one earned in tennis with his doubles partner, Mark Ellis. The two-time NCAA All American, 1997 and 1998, has a 53-5 overall record for singles matches and a 40-9 career record in doubles play. His impressive list of awards includes 1997 First Team All-SCIAC, 1998 SCIAC Player of the Year, 1998 West Region Tournament Champion and 1998 NCAA Tournament Singles Semi-finalist. He also holds four school records: Most Match Victories at #1 and #2 singles and #1 and overall doubles. As an assistant coach for the past nine years, Karimov has helped lead multiple CLU teams to high national rankings, including the 2010 team with a match record of 19-3.