Annual Report

Science center in the works

A ceremonial groundbreaking in February officially cleared the way for a transformative new science center in the academic corridor of the main campus. By fall 2020, a three-story, 47,000-square-foot facility will connect to the existing Ahmanson Science Center through a bridge walkway and will more than double the amount of space dedicated to science. It will house the entire chemistry program, part of the biology and exercise science programs, 12 teaching labs and eight research labs, faculty offices and collaborative spaces. The labs are designed for investigations in biomechanics, organic synthesis, physiology and neuroscience, marine biology, cell and developmental genetics, exercise physiology ergometry, and nuclear magnetic resonance.

Earlier in the fiscal year, the university announced that it had raised $20.8 million toward the project and launched the public phase of the campaign to bring in the final dollars. The last of the chicken coops that had been converted into classrooms in Cal Lutheran’s early days were demolished in January.

William Rolland Art Center opens

When the fall 2017 semester began for the largest undergraduate student body in university history, a new $8 million William Rolland Art Center was ready and waiting. The two-story, 20,000-square-foot building brings all of the art classrooms and faculty offices under the same roof for the first time and also houses the Multimedia Department. It has studios for drawing, painting, photography, ceramics, sculpture and watercolor/design along with lecture classrooms, a screening room, and computer, multimedia and editing labs. Filled with light, the building features high ceilings with exposed beams and ducts and environmentally friendly features.

University cited as an innovator

A report released in March by the Council of Independent Colleges highlighted Cal Lutheran’s innovative responses to a series of challenges. “Innovation and the Independent College: Examples From the Sector” is designed as a guidebook for leaders who are pushing for change.

The report detailed initiatives from recent years. To attract and retain students, it noted, the university added athletic programs: a five-team junior varsity program in 2009, women’s golf in 2011 and men’s volleyball in 2014. In 2016, it moved quickly to offer north campus as a temporary training site for the Los Angeles Rams football team, which paid for two practice fields, a paved parking lot and other permanent infrastructure. The university in 2014 increased its financial support for veterans through the Yellow Ribbon Program so that they don’t pay any tuition or fees. In 2008, it launched the Public Price Promise, which matched the cost of attendance for students admitted to selected University of California colleges, leading to increased enrollment for underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. The report noted Cal Lutheran’s Scandinavian roots and its evolution to become a Hispanic-serving institution.

Bachelor’s in hospitality and tourism management

After two years of work with more than 50 industry leaders, the School of Management in February announced the launch of a bachelor’s degree program in hospitality and tourism management, the only one available from a private institution in Southern California. The first courses in the undergraduate major were planned for fall 2018. Companies had already committed to more than 50 internships, which will be required of students, and study abroad opportunities are available.

The university was also preparing to launch new graduate programs later in 2018: a master’s in management for non-business majors and an educational leadership program in Santa Maria, its first doctoral program outside of Ventura County.

First-of-its-kind market for groundwater

California’s first formal, centralized exchange for individual landowners to buy and sell groundwater was launched on the Oxnard Plain in the summer of 2017, with the university’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (CERF) managing all aspects of it. A brainchild of CERF executive director Matthew Fienup, the market allows farmers to transfer unused groundwater allocations for financial compensation instead of being effectively penalized for conserving resources. The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a $1.9 million grant to expand the pilot project in 2017.

Along with his School of Management colleague Edgar Terry, who is also president of Terry Farms, Fienup spent more than a year guiding about 50 farmers, city representatives and environmental stewards in the development of recommendations for the market-based remedy for groundwater depletion.

Class taught inside of jail

In the spring, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice taught the first college class inside a Ventura County jail for both incarcerated and traditional students. Schannae Lucas worked for more than two years to bring the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program to Todd Road Jail near Santa Paula, making Cal Lutheran one of only five participating California colleges. In an unusual move, the university extended college credit to incarcerated students enrolled in Examining Social, Crime and Justice Issues.

Inside-Out was launched in 1997 to bring traditional college students and inmates together as peers for learning and dialogue in order to break down social barriers, help students find and value their voices, and stimulate inmates’ interest in continuing their education. The long-term goals are to reduce the likelihood of the inmates returning to jail and to inspire all the students to address social concerns related to crime, justice and inequality.

Research team tackles antibiotic resistance

The National Science Foundation awarded two faculty members a three-year $195,000 grant to work with undergraduate students to research proteins that enable pathogenic bacteria to thrive. Katherine Hoffmann, the John Stauffer Professor of Analytical Chemistry, and Jason Kingsbury, an assistant professor of organic chemistry, use state-of-the-art techniques including X-ray crystallography and high-field nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

The Cal Lutheran team is researching the structure and behavior of an understudied family of proteins called NIS synthetases. These enzymes are involved in the creation of small iron-binding metabolites that enable the most virulent pathogenic bacteria, such as staph or anthrax, to steal the iron they need to function optimally and to survive. The research will lay a foundation for the possible development of antibiotics that thwart this iron acquisition. Drug resistance in virulent bacteria has grown so remarkably during the past several decades that the need for new antibiotic agents is reaching a critical point. 

KCLU journalist wins 3rd national award

In June 2017, KCLU Radio news director Lance Orozco picked up his third national award for excellence in journalism in Washington, D.C. This time, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) honored him with the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Best Radio Breaking News Reporting among small-market stations. Orozco won for his continuing, on-scene coverage of the 7,400-acre Sherpa Fire, which burned for nearly a month the previous summer, twice forcing the shutdown of Highway 101. His coverage featured comments from firefighters and residents as well as the sounds of helicopters, tractors and chainsaws used to fight the brush fire.

The other national honors were, in 2010, an Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Audio Sports Reporting from the Radio Television Digital News Association for his profile of the oldest living team member of the Dodgers and, in 2013, Best Feature Reporting from the SPJ for his story chronicling his own battle with kidney cancer. Orozco has won more than 200 regional journalism awards for KCLU and has been named the Associated Press Small-Market Reporter of the Year in the western United States 10 times.

Alumnus receives top-tier Fulbright grant

Erik Fruth ’14 is the first Cal Lutheran graduate to win a Fulbright U.S. Student Study/Research Award, the program’s most competitive student fellowship. With degrees in global studies and German and a command of both Lao and Mandarin, Fruth was to spend 10 months in Laos studying stakeholder interaction regarding hydropower development along the Mekong River. Since 2009, five Cal Lutheran alumni have received Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Awards.

Berkeley seminary campus sold

The hilltop property in Berkeley where Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary operated for 65 years was sold in the fall to Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal arts college. PLTS had moved to an office building on Center Street in downtown Berkeley at the end of the previous fiscal year. The sale of the hilltop property will contribute to the long-term financial sustainability of the theological seminary, which became part of Cal Lutheran in 2014.