First Day of Class Has Special Feel at Long-Awaited Cal State Campus

It wasn’t a bad way to start the school year.

Students arriving Monday for the historic opening day at Cal State Channel Islands found administrators swarming the halls, eager to offer guidance. They found an assortment of snacks--popcorn, snow cones and chips--available for free on the campus quad.

And they were likely to find themselves face-to-face with university President Richard Rush, who spent the morning dispensing welcomes and chocolate silver dollars to members of Channel Islands’ inaugural class.

“It’s really awesome,” said Ventura native Christine Rodrigues, 28, a biology major who transferred to the new university from Oxnard College.

Rodrigues and fellow student Nicole Manzano, both mothers with 1-year-old sons, created a child-care cooperative that turned out be one of the first clubs on campus.

“I’ve been hearing about this [creation of a Ventura County campus] since high school,” Rodrigues said. “It’s such a big deal, and I just think it’s great to be part of it from the beginning.”

After more than 30 years of planning and preparation, heartbreaking setbacks and heart-pounding successes, Ventura County’s first four-year public university opened its doors Monday, ushering in its inaugural class of 750 students.

The opening of the university, set in a series of renovated, 1930s-era buildings at the former Camarillo State Hospital, culminates a decades-long dream to deliver a four-year college to a region where generations of students have had no choice but to leave if they wanted a state college degree.

In fact, until Monday, Ventura County was the largest county in California without a public four-year university.

Boosters had cited that void as a stumbling block for local students in their pursuit of four-year college degrees.

The campaign to establish the campus took a major step forward in 1998, when CSU trustees endorsed a plan to convert the shuttered state hospital into the 23rd campus in the Cal State University system.

By fall of the next year, a satellite campus of Cal State Northridge had moved to the current Channel Islands site, providing the seeds from which the new four-year campus would grow.

“Is this a great day or what?” said Maria Tauber, who has had a front-row seat for the evolution. She started working at the CSUN off-campus center in 1997, and now is an administrator in the records and registrar’s office at Channel Islands.

With students strolling across campus and a line forming in the bookstore, Tauber said it was hard to believe that opening day had finally arrived.

“Talk about an adrenaline rush,” she said.

There were plenty of first-day jitters, even for some faculty members.

Professor Irina Costache ran into Rush in the hallway on the way to teach her first class. “I’m ready and excited to be here,” she told him, showing up for class 45 minutes early.

In class, a study of art and culture, her 30 students appeared just as eager.

Costache learned that many had transferred to Channel Islands from local community colleges. Some had even come from CSUN’s main campus, where Costache had previously taught.

“Now you don’t have to commute,” she told them. “You have your own university in your own backyard.”

Launching the campus was just the first step in a long process that will eventually see the addition of dormitories, sports teams and the other trappings of an established school as it swells to more than 20,000 students.

Rush said the university this fall will face another review of its academic plan as it moves toward accreditation.

And already, recruitment of more students for the fall semester is underway.

Then there’s the matter of recruitment next year of the university’s first crop of freshmen, since the inaugural class at Channel Islands is made up of only upper-division transfer students.

“We still have all of our other deadlines to meet,” Rush said. “Really, it’s only the beginning.”