Annual Report

Record gift launches School of Management building campaign

Former Hughes Electronics Vice Chairman Steve Dorfman made the largest single gift in the history of Cal Lutheran, pledging $6 million in October 2018 toward the construction of a new home for the School of Management. The two-story, 27,000-square-foot Steven D. Dorfman Center will bring most School of Management faculty offices on the Thousand Oaks campus together with classrooms under one roof for the first time – something Dorfman recognized as a need while serving on the school’s Advisory Council.

Private giving to the university comes in all sizes. On April 3, 2019, the largest-ever Cal Lutheran Giving Day, the university accepted more than $670,000 in donations and pledges not only for the Annual Fund but also, for the first time, for designated programs, centers and scholarships.

Federal grants open doors for students, aspiring teachers

Cal Lutheran was awarded $6.45 million in federal grants in October 2018 to implement two new programs. A $3.75 million Title V grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program funds a joint project with Moorpark College to increase transfer, retention and degree-completion rates for students who are Latino, low-income or the first in their families to attend college.

With the other $2.7 million Title V grant, Cal Lutheran is addressing the shortage of Latino teachers. Nearly one out of four public school students are Latino, but Latinos make up less than 8 percent of teachers, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Cal Lutheran will create a pre-credential program for Latino students and others, enhance undergraduate advising, and hire an outreach coordinator and math and writing specialists.

University enrollment, diversity hit high marks

In the fall of 2018, Cal Lutheran welcomed its largest freshman class ever, with nearly 700 students, bringing the number of traditional undergraduates above 2,800 for the first time and the total number of undergraduates above 3,000. Across all programs, the size of the student body stood at 4,383, a record and roughly 100 students above a previous high mark in 2013.

By some measures, the student body was more diverse than in recent years. Latina/o undergraduate enrollment reached a high mark of 32% in fall 2018. More than one in three first-year students were the first in their families to attend college, and more than half were of ethnicities traditionally underrepresented on college campuses. International undergraduate students arrived from 28 countries, a jump of more than 50% from recent years. Some were from countries that had not been represented at Cal Lutheran before or in many years, such as Israel, Mongolia, Syria, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

Swenson Science Center construction underway

By May of 2019, basic structural features of the Swenson Science Center had been completed, and the $34 million building remained on schedule to open for instruction in the fall of 2020. Its advanced steel frame and pile foundation, which extends 30 feet underground, are the first of their kind on campus. While preventing earthquake damage to the three-story building, these two systems will also minimize light vibrations that can corrupt experimental data.

Connecting to Ahmanson Science Center over a bridge walkway, the 47,000-square foot building will showcase cutting-edge technologies in laboratories visible to visitors from a central hallway on each floor. The building will transform the center of campus and put science education on display.

McNair program removes barriers to doctorates

A five-year, $1.16 million effort to diversify the pool of people with doctorates awarded its first summer residential fellowships during the fiscal year. The Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, which had launched earlier in 2018, is for high-achieving undergraduates who are low-income, first-generation or in a group that has been underrepresented in graduate education.

Each year, up to 25 new McNair Scholars are selected to participate in the two-year program. They are matched with faculty mentors and provided with support to publish and present their research. In the five-week summer program, they conduct studies with help from the mentors. They also attend sessions on choosing and paying for graduate school, preparing for admissions tests and writing personal essays.

Community college transfer pact inked

A key player in striking the July 2018 agreement, Cal Lutheran joined with 35 other independent, four-year institutions in California to guarantee a pathway for students to transfer from community colleges. Students participate in the program by graduating with an Associate in Arts for Transfer or an Associate in Science for Transfer and transferring to Cal Lutheran or another of the participating institutions. The university grants them junior standing on arrival and accepts at least 60 credit units. In the decade prior to this agreement between the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities and the California Community Colleges, the number of transfer students entering Cal Lutheran’s traditional undergraduate programs had increased by 46%.

New film and TV major, commuter options announced

In response to strong student demand, Cal Lutheran in February 2019 announced that an undergraduate major in film and television would launch the next fall. For over a decade, the communication major has offered a film and TV emphasis, and the classes have long waitlists. The new, interdisciplinary program adds advanced classes and the option of pursuing an emphasis in film studies or production.

After a survey of commuter students demonstrated interest, the university began offering traditional undergraduate classes at its Oxnard and Woodland Hills centers for the first time in the spring of 2019. About 60 students took math, psychology, religion, sociology and Spanish in 10 classes at the two locations. Previously, off-campus centers offered classes only for graduate programs and the Bachelor’s Degree for Professionals.

$1M Lilly Endowment grant helps church leaders

Lilly Endowment Inc. awarded the university and its Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley nearly $1 million to help pastors and church leaders throughout 14 western states to avoid burnout and thrive in their ministries. Facing declines in church attendance and other challenges, these leaders may suffer from dissatisfaction, anxiety, spiritual depletion and loneliness as they work to revitalize their congregations.

The five-year grant supports the university’s Thriving Leadership Formation program, which will strengthen practical leadership skills not covered in seminaries for about 150 church leaders in 11 synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Theater production earns national awards

In March 2019, the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival honored “columbinus” with a Distinguished Performance and Production Ensembles Award and a Citizen Artist Award. This was the first national recognition by the festival for a Cal Lutheran production. Cal Lutheran was one of eight colleges chosen for an Ensembles Award from the pool of more than 50 invited to perform at regional festivals earlier this year. It was one of 10 that received the Citizen Artist Awards for insisting that theatrical production is central to urgent community, national and international conversations on college campuses.

The play about the 1999 Columbine High School massacre had been set to open on the Thousand Oaks campus the evening after a shooter at the Borderline Bar & Grill killed 12 people, including 2018 alumnus Justin Meek, and sent about 30 of the university’s students fleeing. The original performances were canceled as the university community dealt with the shooting and wildfires that broke out hours later. Instead, 160 people attended a single invitation-only performance. Before the cast and crew staged “columbinus” at the Region VIII Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in Los Angeles in February, they got a chance to present two public performances on campus.

Prestigious honors go to KCLU reporter, economic forecasters

KCLU Radio News Director Lance Orozco received his fourth national award for excellence in journalism in June 2018. Orozco picked up the 2017 National Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Sigma Delta Chi Award for Best Radio Feature Reporting among small-market stations at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., for his story on a former shelter dog trained to track down an invasive species of ant on Santa Cruz Island in Santa Barbara County.

Also during the fiscal year, the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (CERF) joined the select group of contributors to The Wall Street Journal’s Economic Forecasting Survey. CERF became one of only six university-based forecast centers in the country to be included in the survey. The newspaper checks in monthly with about 60 economists both from centers such as UCLA Anderson Forecast and from financial sector institutions including Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Goldman Sachs. (CERF executive director Matthew Fienup is pictured.)