OC Metro June 13, 2002
by Stan Brin
For 40 years, Dr. George Giacumakis, 64, of Yorba Linda has taught modern and ancient Middle Eastern History at Cal State Fullerton, and for the past 14 years, he also has served as director of the school's South County branch in a hidden corner of Saddleback College in Mission Viejo.
Consisting of a set of temporary bungalows long past their prime, the resources of the Mission Viejo campus have been stretched for years. "We were operating at 97 percent capacity," Dr. Giacumakis says, "There were literally no more seats!"
And, he added, there was no place to put more: A lack of land and parking prevented growth at the present location. Congestion and overuse at the Mission Viejo campus were symptoms of a general lack of attention to public higher education in recent decades. Only a few new campuses have been built in California since the 1960s despite a doubling of the state's population.
Now South County residents will have some relief: On Aug. 26, the Mission Viejo campus will move to a new location on the former El Toro Marine air station, just in time for the fall semester. Housed in a single elegant Spanish-style building built in 1988, the new facility will offer 24 academic programs ranging from criminal justice to nursing to 2,400 upper division and graduate students.
Giacumakis says, "We'll have everything a student will need right here, including a cafe, bookstore, student lounge and, of course, classrooms. And we intend to be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Friday - and Saturday."
The additional space also is critically important to Cal State Fullerton, Orange County's only CSU campus, which is full to capacity. It has more than 30,300 students, nearly as many as UCLA and UC Berkeley. The orange groves that once grew on every inch of the 228-acre campus have long since been torn out, yet there's no place to park.
"We passed our planned maximum of 20,000 'FTE's' years ago," says CSUF spokesperson Paula Selleck. An FTE, or "full time equivelent" is the way universities measure their student loads. One FTE equals 15 units of student course work. "We are now at 22,053 FTE's," says Selleck. The Cal State system is mandated to accept every qualified student who applies. "The El Toro branch allows us to immediately increase our capacity by another thousand FTEs," says Selleck.
Even more students are expected in the near future - a lot more - as the so-called, "Tidal Wave II," the children of the Baby Boom generation, graduate high school.
Where to put them all is causing CSUF administrators to loose sleep.
Campus Grew Quickly
Orange County's mega-versity started small, and not too long ago, as universities go. The first classes of what was then called "Orange County State College" were held in 1959 in a local high school for a grand total of 452 students. Most of Orange County was still orange groves and bean fields back then, and Santa Ana was considered "way south."
But even then, Cal State was thinking big. Four years later, the college moved into its first permanent classroom building, the giant Letters and Science Building. Now called McCarthy Hall, the building was so big that students had to use escalators to get around. New buildings followed in rapid succession. By its 10th anniversary, the renamed "California State College at Fullerton" had 13,000 students and a national College Bowl team. By its 30th anniversary, "California State University, Fullerton" was home to 25,000 students and it is still growing.
Enrollment dipped slightly in the mid-'90s, a legacy of the national "birth dearth" of the 1970s, but it was back at record levels by 1997. With a little more than 30,000 enrolled students, CSUF now is the third largest Cal State campus after San Diego and Long Beach, and is larger than UCI, which also is experiencing rapid student growth.
Meanwhile, Orange County grew from just the place "where Disneyland is" into a megalopolis of nearly 3 million people, most of them living many miles to the south and west of the Fullerton campus. By the end of the 1980s it was clear that there soon would be a need for more public higher education in the south or central county area, and the Mission Viejo campus was opened.
CSUF now faces a demographic flood, much of it due, ironically, to the high quality of local public schools. CSUF President Milton A. Gordon says, "Of all the counties in California, the graduates of Orange County have the highest rate of CSU eligibility in the state. By that I mean that Orange County high schools are very good, the best college preparation of any county in the state." Approximately 62 percent of them will go on to higher education. A substantial portion of those, as much as a third, will eventually apply to Cal State Fullerton and, by law, it must admit them.
The El Toro Campus
About the time CSUF reached its 10th anniversary in 1969, the county's population began an inexorable move south into Irvine, Mission Viejo, and beyond, but Sacramento failed to build an additional college farther south.
Commutes to the Fullerton campus became difficult. The CSUF administration responded by opening specialized satellite centers in Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Irvine Spectrum. In Mission Viejo, local students could do their lower division and general education studies at Saddleback or other Irvine Valley College and transfer to the local branch campus for upper- division work.
Desperate for room to grow, the CSUF administration discovered an attractive, 46,000-square-foot building just off the Sand Canyon entrance of the former El Toro marine base. Only 14 years old, the structure was built much like a school, with an open atrium and ample parking. Following the failure of the El Toro airport, the university acted quickly, and signed a three-year sublease with the county, with provisions for two more years.
A million-dollar conversion is under way. By the start of the fall term on Aug. 26, the university hopes to open the campus with 22 classrooms, 45 faculty offices, a student lounge, counseling center, and a cafe serving Starbucks coffee. While 24 academic programs will be offered, most will serve professions in education, including nine separate teaching credential and four master's programs. Other programs will include criminal justice, business administration, and English.
Fullerton II or Cal State El Toro?
CSUF officials are well aware that one 46,000-square foot building will not solve the county's looming shortage of university space, and they have their eyes set on more, much more. Dr. Giacumakis calls their El Toro plan "Fullerton Two."
According to Dr. Judith Anderson, CSUF executive vice president, the university is asking the Department of the Navy and the U.S. Department of Education for 400 acres on the north end of the former base, adjacent to the new campus building. "By 2010, we anticipate 14,000 students could be enrolled."
Many of the existing buildings on the site, such as a gymnasium and a cinema, could be put to new use, but the university also hopes to build a housing development on the property. Dr. Anderson recently told a State Assembly committee on El Toro reuse that "Our long-term plans at El Toro include a faculty and staff housing component in recognition of the difficult challenges we face in recruitment. Orange County is a very attractive - but expensive - place to live, with a median home price of more than $330,000."
Even with 14,000 students, CSUF officials still see the future El Toro campus as limited to upper- division and graduate students only. No freshmen need apply, except for non-credit adult education courses.
While this policy is in keeping with the university's traditional role as a destination of community college graduates (see sidebar), it rules out technical programs that are best served by an integrated, four-year course of study. These technical majors - engineering and microbiology, for example - also are the programs that produce the skilled workers needed by the area's silicon and medical technology industries.
One solution to the problem might be to think of the El Toro campus as a seed for an independent state university that could provide a complete education to south county students, without commuting hassles.
University officials haven't planned that far into the future. "We haven't even thought about that," one source replied. "For now, the El Toro campus is intended to fit within the Fullerton educational program."
Community college leaders, whose system is already bearing the weight of Tidal Wave Two, are simply looking for relief.
"I would hope that the El Toro program will evolve over time as Cal State responds to students' needs," says Dave Lang, member of the South Orange
County Community College board. "Ultimately, only the experience of the next decade will tell Orange County residents the kind of Cal State services they need."
For more on the CSUFmove click here.