Annual Report

 

 

Education is a wonderful thing, especially a Pacific Oaks education. I want to tell you a story.  It took place at Disney Hall, where a friend of mine, a Caltech professor, and I were attempting to turn on a faucet in the ladies’ room. We failed to figure out how to get a faucet, with its cutting-edge design, to deliver water. This brings to mind a question: How many college presidents and Caltech professors does it take to turn on a faucet?   Now you know that neither of us had the benefit of the real-life problem-solving experiences provided to every child at Pacific Oaks Children’s School. 

 

Again this morning, front page news stories dealt with killings in Iraq and murders at home. What if all people had the benefit of Pacific Oaks Children’s School, with its emphasis on peacefulness, respect, and resolution of conflict?

 

What if we could leverage what we do at Pacific Oaks Children’s School in order to make the world a better place for children and families? Indeed, we are in the process of doing so. With Pacific Oaks College educating the leadership in fields related to children and families, we leverage our impact. By growing the size of the College, we increase our leveraged impact.  

 

Pacific Oaks College is known as the best place in the country to go for graduate programs preparing leaders in fields related to children and families. Pacific Oaks awards more than half of the master’s degrees for early childhood education in California (90% of those awarded by private colleges and universities in California). Many of these graduates become faculty members at community colleges, training the next generation of early childhood educators. In short, we educate the leaders in early childhood education in California. Similarly, Pacific Oaks, with its Latina/Latino Family Studies program and its African American Family Studies program, is the national leader in developing family therapy programs that foster a deep understanding of cultural, racial, or ethnic groups, which we believe is essential to effective family therapy.   

 

As supporters of Pacific Oaks you are investors in our present and in our future. As the year-long celebration of Sixty Years of Pacific Oaks comes to a close, I see Pacific Oaks at three points in time: the Pacific Oaks of Sixty Years Ago, the Pacific Oaks of Today, and the Pacific Oaks of the Future.  I ask you to imagine with me Pacific Oaks at these three points in time. The Pacific Oaks of Sixty Years Ago was a Children’s School founded on the values of diversity and social justice and on the profound understanding that the best and most lasting education is built on respectful relationships between teacher and student and among students. Within a few years Pacific Oaks became a College as well. In its early years, both the College and the Children’s School, and even some of the original families, were housed on the present-day Children’s School campus. It soon became clear that the teaching of adults in the College would benefit from the principles of teaching used in the Children’s School. Accordingly, Pacific Oaks College became known for small intimate classes based on Socratic dialogue among faculty and students.

 

Now I ask you to consider the Pacific Oaks of Today.  We are in a sound financial position, the College is growing, and a recent accreditation report gave us rave reviews!  

 

The Children’s School of Today is a wonderful place. It has been a special pleasure for me to visit my grandchildren at the Children’s School. This year, on Grandparents’ Visiting Day, it was a treat to watch my granddaughter stringing a necklace of colorful beads shaped like whales and birds, a gift for “Nana.”    

 

Today, the Children’s School continues to be known for developmental education in the broadest sense, attending to values, creativity, relationships, and, indeed, to all of the things that make us whole as human beings.

 

For help in describing this phenomenon, I turn to a country singer, Willie Nelson, who sang:

 

 

I recently heard him sing it a new way:

 

            Mamas, don’t let your cowboys grow up to be babies.

 

I want to assure you that Pacific Oaks children don’t grow up to be babies. Director Jane Rosenberg makes certain of that. They grow up to be capable and caring adults who know how to relate to others and who have the skills and the will to make the world a better place. 

 

At the same time the Children’s School shares the challenges of the most selective colleges, which typically accept fewer than 15% of their applicants. Families applying to Pacific Oaks Children’s School, without siblings who will be continuing in the School, face similar odds. In making admissions decisions we are mindful of the value of economic diversity and actively seek funds for scholarships to sustain and enhance the economic diversity of the Children’s School.

 

Tonight, we are enjoying the Pacific Oaks Community Buildings. The Board of Trustees, at its recent retreat, determined that these building will remain central to the work of Pacific Oaks. Accordingly, Pacific Oaks has embarked on a study to determine what will be necessary to sustain these buildings into the future. The Children’s School buildings, as well, will be part of the resulting plan for sustainable buildings.  

 

The Pacific Oaks College of Today is thriving. It is growing, with plans to grow to approximately 2,000 students, twice the student body size of five years ago. With plans for enrollment growth of this magnitude, Pacific Oaks College will soon reach the size generally recommended for sustainability of small private colleges.  The College has already grown so large that I cannot take you on an actual tour of all of its locations this evening. Instead, I ask you to use your imagination as I take you on a virtual tour of the locations where Pacific Oaks College offers its educational programs. First, let’s imagine we are traveling six blocks northeast of this campus, to a building on Eureka Street, just off Fair Oaks Avenue. You are looking at a building that contains all of the faculty offices, most of the College classrooms, the provost’s office, and a student support center. Next to this building you see a building with construction that is almost complete. When the College expands into this new building, which is expected to be an award-winning environmentally friendly “green” building, we will invite you to join us for an actual tour.  

  

Now let’s imagine a tour of Pacific Oaks Academic Centers around California. These Academic Centers, the fastest growing part of the College, respond to community requests for Pacific Oaks degree programs. Last year, we had two groups of students in Academic Centers. This year we have eight. We will come close to doubling that number next year. We are able to deliver programs of uniformly high quality, with faculty from the Pasadena campus teaching most of the courses. The financial plan for the Centers allows Pacific Oaks to remain nimble by sticking to short-term commitments.  To begin our virtual tour of the Academic Centers, let’s first travel up to Visalia, in the agricultural center of California, where three groups of Latina/Latino Family Therapy students are earning master’s degrees and setting up a social services structure for agricultural workers in the area.  The next stop is in nearby Porterville, where the community, having seen Pacific Oaks successes in Visalia, requested that we offer graduate programs in early childhood education. Next we travel to Salinas, where we offer the only bilingual bachelor’s degree in early childhood education in California.  Next we stop in Oakland, where we continue to meet the need for early childhood education leaders in the Bay Area. Next we continue up to Sacramento, and then to Chico, then back down to San Diego for additional early childhood education graduate programs.  We complete our imaginary tour in Palm Springs, where we serve students from a large geographic area including parts of Arizona that had lacked graduate programs in early childhood. 

  

Now let’s imagine traveling in another dimension, through online education, which can give anyone around the world the opportunity to earn a Pacific Oaks degree. The online education offered by the College preserves the close relationship among faculty and students and has become a model for online education of working professionals. Growth of the College in Pasadena, across California, and online around the world helps sustain Pacific Oaks financially. More importantly, it helps Pacific Oaks make the world a better place, starting with children and families. 

 

Commencement this year was a grand event in the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, with the largest graduating class Pacific Oaks has ever had, with almost 300 graduates.  As the graduates walked across the stage, their enthusiasm was palpable, and the audience was reminded of the diversity of the student body. The majority of the students are of color, and the ages of the graduates range from early twenties to “old enough to be a great-grandmother.” We are mindful of the financial sacrifices they have made for a Pacific Oaks degree and of the need to increase scholarship funding as we increase enrollment in the College.    

 

The talented management team of Pacific Oaks College and Children’s School is busy planning for the Pacific Oaks of the Future, with educational and financial plans and with the systems to sustain our successes. Peter Drucker wrote, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”  The management team takes seriously its role in creating the future. I would like to introduce them:  

 

First, I would like to introduce the members of the Planning Council:

 

            Provost Corrine McGuigan

            Vice President for Administration Jan Brown

            Vice President for Advancement Aristide Collins, Jr.

            Children’s School Director Jane Rosenberg

            Executive Assistant to the President, Director of Board Relations, and
            Secretary to the Board of Trustees, Barbara Raskin

 

This year we have enhanced our management capacity with the following appointments:

 

            Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Cindy Grutzik

            Vice Provost for Enrollment Nahid Razavi

            Director of Human Resources Don Cole

            Chief Information Officer Tom Onwiler, an employee of SunGard, our
            technology provider

 

We now have the responsibility of sustaining Pacific Oaks into the future. We have a solid start on building a strong and sustainable future for Pacific Oaks. Using an architectural analogy, we are building an arch to sustain Pacific Oaks, just as it is the arch that sustains the architect’s buildings. We already have put in place many of the bricks that make up the pillars:  the mission, the vision, a clear focus on children and families, a strong financial model, and extraordinary students, faculty, staff, trustees, parents, and administrators.  To complete the pillars, we are embarking on initiatives to increase funding for scholarships for both the College and the Children’s School and for sustaining the buildings and the technology on our campuses. After that, we will complete the arch with the keystone, the central supporting element of any arch, with an initiative to raise funds for an endowment that will sustain Pacific Oaks into the future.  One of the early steps in this plan is to encourage supporters to become members of the Pacific Oaks Legacy Society by stating in writing that Pacific Oaks is included in their will. In the near future you will be hearing more about these initiatives from Vice President Aristide Collins.   

 

Can we take our time since we are talking about the future?  Gabriela Mistral, Colombian Nobel Prize winner, had something to say about this:

 

            Many things can wait; the children cannot.

 

Children and families are the future. There is no better way to invest in the future than to invest in the future of Pacific Oaks.  

 

I want to thank all of you tonight for your investment in Pacific Oaks. This year we have experienced increased annual giving from all constituencies: Children’s School parents, College alums, Trustees, Business Advisory Council members, and friends. Jennifer Johnson, head of the Children’s School Annual Fund is with us tonight. Thank you, Jennifer. We also made significant progress on fundraising for scholarships, faculty support, and facilities. I thank all of you who helped raise these funds. I thank each of you here tonight for your gifts to the Annual Funds and to special initiatives. This evening is to recognize you and your generous contributions to Pacific Oaks.  

 

Thank you.