The History of Westmont

NOTIC IAS Journal Of The Santa Barbara Historical Museum

Vol. LIV

No. 1

75 Y EARS

THE GENESIS was the vision of one woman. Ruth Kerr awoke from a sound sleep one night infused with a determination to make that vision a reality. And so the Bible Missionary Institute opened its doors in 1937. Three years later the institution became Westmont College. The early years were ones of precarious survival, marked by meager finances. Through hard work, determination and faith the college eventually thrived and today Westmont is one of the most respected liberal arts schools in the country.

Nancy Phinney tells the story of how Westmont “would combine faith and academic excellence” to build “a Christian college to develop Christian leaders,” a college where “genuine scholarship is not only compatible with, but necessary to, the Christian viewpoint.” In utilizing the college’s archives with its large collection of oral histories, she traces Westmont’s history through the words and memories of those who made that history. It is a compelling story.

THE AUTHOR: Nancy Phinney grew up in Santa Barbara, attended Santa Barbara Junior High and High School, and graduated from Westmont with a major in history. After earning a master’s degree in history at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, she joined the staff of the Maine Office of Energy Resources, where she developed plans for energy emergencies, monitored energy supplies and prices and advised the governor’s office on petroleum-related issues. Since 1984, she has served as the director of public affairs at Westmont and the editor of the Westmont Magazine. She works closely with administrators and faculty to tell Westmont’s story in a variety of publications, to the media and through Westmont’s website. She and her husband, Bob, have three sons, three daughters-in-law and two granddaughters.

ALL IMAGES are from the archives of Westmont College unless noted otherwise. The Latin phrase on the front cover may be translated, “Christ Holding Preeminence.” Back cover image shows the graduating class of 1954 outside Emerson Hall.

INFORMATION FOR CONTRIBUTORS: NOTICIAS is a journal devoted to the study of the history of Santa Barbara County. Contributions of articles are welcome.

Those authors whose articles are accepted for publication will receive ten gratis copies of the issue in which their article appears. Further copies are available to the contributor at cost. The authority in matters of style is the University of Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. The Publications Committee reserves the right to return submitted manuscripts for required changes. Statements and opinions expressed in articles are the sole responsibility of the author.

Michael Redmon, Editor Judy Sutcliffe, Designer © 2012 Santa Barbara Historical Museum 136 E. De la Guerra Street, Santa Barbara, California 93101 www.santabarbaramuseum.com Single copies $8.95 ISSN 0581–5916

WESTMONT COLLEGE

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Westmont College

Two red-tailed hawks circled overhead as the Westmont class of 2012 graduated May 5. Thousands of guests on Russ Carr Field cheered the seniors crossing the stage with the Santa Ynez Mountains towering in the background. The graduates, garbed in black gowns that sunny morning, encountered visible reminders of two historic events during their Westmont years: the 2008 Tea Fire and the extensive construction that added significant new facilities to campus. Speakers noted the college’s seventy-fifth anniversary and the role the class of 2012 will continue to play in the school’s history. The seniors follow generations of alumni who have built Westmont’s

reputation as one of the top one hundred liberal arts colleges in the country. Like their predecessors, the 314 new graduates will pursue callings throughout the world in education, medicine, business, ministry, law, counseling and many other professions. They will serve their communities as volunteers and leaders determined to make a difference. They will live out their faith and draw on their learning as the men and women who established Westmont envisioned they would.

W B   E V Westmont’s founders chose a challenging time to establish a college. In 1937, the Depression lingered, and Europe moved closer to the outbreak of World War II. How could Westmont survive this turmoil

Nancy L.P hinney 1

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Ruth Kerr The story of Westmont begins with the vision of Ruth Kerr, who founded the Bible Missionary Institute in 1937.

with no endowment, a small enrollment and inadequate facilities? The answer lies in the faith and commitment of a special group of people—and in the grace of God. The vision for Westmont began with Ruth Kerr, an unusual woman for her time.

Her husband, Alexander, owned Kerr Glass

Manufacturing Company. Shortly after his death in 1925, she and her six children moved from their ranch near Riverside, California, to Los Angeles. In 1930, even as she raised six children, she became president and chair of the Kerr Company, positions she held until her death in 1967. She

WESTMONT COLLEGE was one of the few woman chief executives of a large company in the country.

Convinced of the need for a Bible institute in Southern California that did not require the $150 typical of such schools at the time, Kerr decided to start one herself. “In August of 1937, God awakened this Christian woman out of a sound sleep one night, and the still, small voice said, ‘Now is the time to open the school,’” she later recalled.

The next morning, the Reverend Leland Entrekin shared a similar interest with Kerr.

Then three nationally known Bible teachers who had left the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University) offered to teach at the new school: Elbert McCreery, John Page and Anna Dennis.

The Bible Missionary Institute (BMI) opened in Los Angeles in the fall of 1937 at the First Fundamental Church (later Westlake Calvary) with seventy-two students and sixteen faculty and staff. Many students, like Margaret Fraser Anderson ’40, transferred from the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. She met her husband, Burns ’40, at BMI, who said the new school changed his perspective. “It was broadening to find out that there was a bigger church out there in the world….school was a completely soul-changing experience for me. I woke up to the fact that you didn’t have to belong to a certain little group of people….But anyone who acknowledged Jesus Christ as Lord could be my brother.”

The school faltered financially, and the founders began to wonder if Los Angeles needed two Bible institutes. In January 1939, they added a junior college curriculum and changed the name to Western Bible College.

Then, in Kerr’s words, “In May 1939,

3 we were led of the Lord to contact Dr. Wallace L. Emerson, dean of students at Wheaton College, [a Christian liberal arts college west of Chicago] to come to us as president of a proposed four-year liberal arts college built on a sound Christian basis, God having given us the vision for this larger work.”

That summer, Kerr purchased the campus of the Westlake School for Girls on South Westmoreland Avenue in Los Angeles and gave it to the college as a memorial to her late husband. The property included six buildings and four and one-half acres.

In the spring of 1940, Emerson accepted Kerr’s offer. He later explained, “I agreed to come on her request with a proviso that I would have the hiring and the firing of the faculty and nothing was to interfere with that….I told Mrs. Kerr that I was in no way interested in anything but a liberal arts college.”

So Western Bible College became Westmont College. Why “Westmont?”

Emerson had suggested “Trinity,” but students did not like it. A May 13, 1940 article in the Horizon, the student newspaper, gave Emerson credit for coining the name.

In 1984, he explained his thinking, “Well, it’s out West and it’s in the mountains….

Westmont became the name for no rhyme nor reason except that it was a name that sounded all right and had a little significance as far as location was concerned.”

T C S  S Classes began in the fall of 1940 with thirty-three faculty and eighty-five students. W. W. Catherwood, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Riverside, Califor-

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Westmont College on South Westmoreland Avenue, 1940. The new president, Wallace L. Emerson, insisted the fledgling school be a liberal arts institution.

nia, became the first president of the board, a position he held for six years. Kerr served as the secretary-treasurer.

Paton Yoder, a history professor during the 1940s, came with “a lot of uneasiness and also a lot of expectancy, and we found that same spirit at the college—a great

spirit of expectancy but also a concern for the future….”

Margaret Bailey Jacobsen Voskuyl, another professor, remembers meeting Westmont trustee John Bunyan Smith. “[He] grabbed my hand, and he held it tight, and he said to me, ‘Young lady, do you subscribe

WESTMONT COLLEGE to the doctrinal statement of Westmont College?’ It made me realize how deeply some of those people felt…[about] what they were founding.”

Emerson brought a tremendous vision to the new college. He wanted to establish a Christian institution that rivaled the best secular colleges and universities in the country. Margaret Voskuyl remembers how Emerson presented Westmont. “This was to be a school that would combine faith and academic excellence for our generation. It was to be a school, not a Bible school, not a seminary, but a Christian college to develop Christian leaders, and it was a joy to be a part of something that had so much basic vision.”

The statement of purpose in the first Quarterly Bulletin reflects Emerson’s views.

“In every step which has led up to the present organization of Westmont College, the goal has been careful scholarship, sound doctrine and consistent Christian living.

Westmont College is interdenominational and evangelical, believing that genuine scholarship is not only compatible with, but necessary to, the Christian viewpoint….”

Emerson believed it necessary to offer as broad a curriculum as possible. Yoder recalled the development of the catalog. “I sent him quite an extensive list [of courses] and told him I was sure we shouldn’t put all of them in and maybe he would like to use some discretion and decide….He put them all in….So perhaps that…illustrates the anticipation and the vision Dr. Emerson had.”

Another challenge was developing a library. In five years, Elinor Berg, the librarian, collected 19,000 second-hand volumes at a cost of $30,000. Used book dealers

5 agreed to give books to Westmont and receive payment when money became available. Berg attended estate auctions where she bid books at a “ridiculously low price,” sometimes paying for them herself. She also taught students to bind magazines.

According to Cora Reno, a biology professor, they bought only the best books. “We couldn’t order something…because it appealed. It had to have a high rating.”

Developing a good library and a broad curriculum were necessary for Westmont to receive accreditation. As Margaret Voskuyl recalls, “There was no question in Dr. Emerson’s mind that…they were going to seek accreditation as soon as possible….

We weren’t going to fool around and have a non-academic institution now!”

When he applied for accreditation in 1943, Westmont fell short in four areas: financing, the “peculiar religious requirements for the faculty and the nature of the financial arrangements with them,” the ability of faculty to teach all the courses in the catalog and an incomplete library. Still, Emerson’s determination to gain accreditation set an important precedent.

Westmont suffered from lack of financing. Since faculty came on “faith,” the college did not guarantee their salaries. Professors got paychecks when funds were available, and wages not paid by the end of the year were cancelled. Few donors supported the college; Kerr gave seventy-five percent of the gifts received during the early years. Yoder remembered, “When it was discovered that our first checks wouldn’t be forthcoming….We found for the first eight years we never knew how much of our salary was coming and when it was coming.”

How did faculty survive? Emerson

6 recalled, “They were beyond all praise….

I asked…Jane McNally… ‘Jane, are you getting enough to eat?’ And she said, ‘Well I’m getting one good meal a day.’

I said, ‘Are you sorry you came?’ And she said, ‘No…I’m getting along and I’m in the best company I’ve ever been in.’ That was her attitude. And when Cora Reno was hired….I asked her, ‘What would it take, Cora, to get you out there?’ And she said, ‘A place to stay and three meals a day.’ And that was the spirit of a good many of them.”

Emerson held them together; he even sold his car to pay faculty salaries. Yoder found him to be a “very dynamic kind of person with a lot of vision. Some people might call him a dreamer. He drew us all to himself. We became very loyal to him.

I think this is the principal explanation for many of us staying more than that first year….”

Prayer also kept them going. Margaret Voskuyl has vivid memories of prayer meetings in Emerson’s office and one teacher who prayed about a bar and dance hall being built across the street. “[She] would pray concerning that lot, ‘Lord confound their evil schemes.’ Well I had never in my life heard anyone pray like that…. and the whole project just came to an end….That corner is now the First Church of the Nazarene.” Kerr recalled that faculty prayed often for the school. “Of their own volition, they met regularly—some days, the entire group—other days in separate, smaller groups, but they all spent much time in prayer on their knees.”

So did students. According to Bob Ross ’48, “One of the vital things that I remember about Westmont is that the leadership

NOTICIAS did not hesitate to call the school to prayer during times of financial need….and we saw answers to prayer.”

Margaret Voskuyl remembers, “When I think of…the stars we had in our eyes at the establishment of that school and how involved in it we were and how committed to it, what a vision we shared—those were wonderful days, they really were.”

Despite the lack of funds and the war, enrollment at Westmont grew, reaching 204 in the fall of 1944. After the war, the student body peaked at 324 in 1946, and then declined temporarily to 219 in 1950, due to fewer ex-servicemen entering college, a lack of dormitory space, a tight housing market and a shortfall in contributions. Enrollment began to rebound in the 1950s.

W C T W W II World War II created challenges and eventually opportunities for Westmont.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Westmont officials began to consider the impact of war. An editorial in the February 1942 issue of the Quarterly Bulletin stated, “As this bulletin goes to press, every newspaper and periodical calls America and American youth to the defense of all that it holds dear….Our need—before ships, armies, arms, or planes—is that we shall again be one people and that we shall again find our God. “There is a widespread belief that this war will be a long one. Young men and young women going into war service are not likely to get back to the classroom; yet America must not have fewer trained lead-

WESTMONT COLLEGE

Wallace L. Emerson was college president from 1940 to 1946. He is credited with giving Westmont its name.

ers after the war, but more. There must be better training —not poorer—for the business of the war.”

So classes at Westmont continued. The war had given the college an added purpose: to prepare young men and women to meet the current crisis. The need for a strong Christian college had simply become greater.

How did Westmont’s Christian faculty view the morality of war? They did not hesitate to support the war effort. The Quarterly Bulletin explained: “Westmont is not and has never been pacifistic in tone. We abhor war, as does every rightminded person. We believe, however, that just as communities have a right to protect themselves from gangsters, so our nation has a right to protect itself against international gangsters. [This] protection…must involve force if necessary.

The Biblical rule is found in Genesis 9:6,

7 ‘Whosoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’”

As time passed, seventy-seven mostly male students, faculty and alumni left to join the service. The August 1943 issue of the Quarterly Bulletin stated, “Because Westmont is a young school, a disproportionately large number of her faculty, student body and graduates…have been called into the military services. We doubt if any institution in the country could show so large a proportion.”

An article in the November 10, 1944, Horizon provided a humorous commentary on this exodus. The headline read, “Women Take Over the Manpower Situation: The Charge of the Blight Brigade.” Author Oscar Snodgrass noted, “Instead of having a mixed student body, perhaps we men should withdraw and leave Dr. Emerson’s Female Seminary to itself.”

Cora Reno, a biology professor during the 1940s, recalls a well-camouflaged anti-aircraft nest across the street from Kerrwood Hall. “You could see the guns sticking out from that….Every once in a while….there would be air raid alarms, and they were no laughing matter.”

As the Allies began to prevail, Westmont officials started talking about what they would do after the war. Evelyn Starr Lesslie, associate professor of English, wrote in the August 1944 Quarterly Bulletin, “More than ever before, we now need intelligent men and women, trained leaders with the high moral purpose and stability derived only from a living faith in Him who changes not…. This is the postwar challenge to Westmont College: to train choice young people in the best that has been known and thought, not as an end in

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8 itself, but as a means of sharpening tools for world service.”

The United States government helped Westmont meet this challenge in a tangible way. Congress passed two pieces of legislation (Public Law 16 and the G.I. Bill) that provided financial assistance to veterans who wanted to attend college. Without this aid, many young men could not have enrolled at Westmont after the war.

T T S   N C Well before the war ended, President Emerson asked the board of trustees to prayerfully consider a new location for Westmont.

His vision for the finest possible Christian

college demanded a plant much larger than the handful of acres in Los Angeles.

He noted that colleges generally required a minimum of sixty acres, but considered one hundred acres a “more desirable size.”

Today Westmont’s campus occupies 111 acres.

The limited Los Angeles facilities became overcrowded as enrollment increased.

The main building, Kerrwood Hall, housed a women’s dormitory, administrative offices, classrooms, an auditorium, a dining room, a kitchen and a student union. Westmont also owned science and library buildings and a dormitory for men but lacked adequate housing.

As Emerson noted, “There is absolutely no place that offers opportunity for new

WESTMONT COLLEGE buildings on our present holdings.” The gradual purchase of property in the neighborhood did not seem feasible as real estate prices would rise once the college’s intention became known.

So the trustees began searching for property with both acreage and existing buildings. Buying land and building on it simply was not an option in 1944 with the shortage of labor and materials due to the war.

One site, a former golf course with a large club house in Altadena, seemed ideal.

When the trustees approached the bank to purchase the property, they learned that Los Angeles County had appropriated $150,000 to obtain the land for a park. Altadena citizens were trying to raise an additional $25,000 to meet the cost of $175,000 set by the county and the bank.

Unaware of the bitter opposition they would encounter, the trustees made an offer of $200,000, which the bank accepted.

The board bought the land unconditionally even though they needed a zoning change to operate a college in the residential area.

The front page story in the Pasadena Independent announcing Westmont’s plans hinted at the storm to come. “The Altadena Golf Club property, subject of a long and heated controversy, won’t be turned into a county park after all…The Independent yesterday learned on reliable authority that the 115-acre tract in the center of Altadena’s prime residential area has been ‘bought out from under’ the county and soon will become the campus of Westmont College….” (August 25, 1944).

Opposite: By the mid-1940s, Westmont’s Los Angeles facility was proving increasingly inadequate, spurring the search for a new home.

9 In September, the Altadena Citizens Association announced its opposition to Westmont’s request for a zoning change.

Other local organizations joined them.

When the County Regional Planning Commission held a public hearing on the zoning change in January, nine hundred people attended. After nearly four hours of testimony, the commission asked for a vote - seven hundred people said no. The commission voted 8-1 against Westmont.

The decision stunned the Westmont community. The next step was applying for a zoning change that only affected the club house and surrounding area. The county denied this proposal as well. An appeal to the board of supervisors met with a third defeat in May 1945. The college faced a serious problem. Culter Academy had bought the Los Angeles campus, and Westmont had to move.

Kerr later recalled the crisis. “We had prayed so earnestly about this location, and now it seemed as if every door was closed, but God had marvelous plans underway unbeknownst to us.” One blessing resulted from the sale of the golf course. Westmont received a total of $438,000 for the property, more than twice what it had paid.

W F  N H  S B God also blessed the frantic search for a new campus. In August 1945, Kerr and several others drove to Santa Barbara to see the former George Owen Knapp estate, Arcady, on Sycamore Canyon Road with 143 acres, a large mansion, a seventy-acre lemon grove, a pipe organ and two swimming pools. The owners wanted $300,000.

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Westmont College moved to El Tejado, a 133-acre estate in Montecito, in 1945. The estate’s primary residence, shown here, became Kerrwood Hall. (Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

The same day they visited the Holland estate, known as El Tejado, on La Paz Road.

As she drove through the gates, Kerr heard the Lord whisper, “This is the place I have chosen for you.” The Hollands were asking only $125,000 for their Mediterraneanstyle mansion and 133 acres. The trustees voted to purchase it.

Kerr described the property enthusiastically, “This beautiful place…[had] botanical gardens, a fruit orchard, a fifteen-acre lemon grove, a pine forest, water lily pools, fern dells, truck gardens, building sites galore, two gardeners’ cottages, two four-car garages, and the most beautiful home we had ever seen…. The living room walls were

paneled in mahogany, the dining room in oak, the library in walnut, all hand-adzed.

All bathrooms had marble floors, with gold swan fixtures. There was an electric elevator, a completely equipped kitchen…and a gorgeous crystal chandelier.”

Peter and Jennie Patton Murphy had built a grand house on the site in 1907.

After developing a successful business based on his railroad inventions, Peter died in 1917. His sixth child, Dwight, worked in the family enterprise and often spent winters with his parents at the estate they named Graystone Terrace and later called El Tejado. Jennie married Robert James Baldwin in 1924.

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Quonset huts transported from Port Hueneme in Ventura County were put to a number of uses including service as men’s dormitories. Two huts were still in use until destroyed in the Tea Fire of 2008.

In 1929, Mrs. Baldwin tore down her deteriorating home, and Reginald Johnson designed the second El Tejado, now Kerrwood Hall. When his mother died in 1933, Dwight Murphy brought his family to live there. He played a key role in Santa Barbara civic life, and gasoline rationing during World War II made it difficult for him to get to town. A member of the first county planning commission, the first president of Fiesta and the longtime director of the city parks commission, he had led the effort to restore Santa Barbara Mission after the 1925 earthquake. He also owned a large ranch where he bred golden Palomino horses. The Hollands bought El

Tejado in 1943 when Murphy decided to live in Santa Barbara.

Westmont moved to Santa Barbara in August 1945 as the war was ending. Getting the new campus ready in time for the fall semester presented difficulties. But with so many servicemen being discharged at the close of the summer, a number of colleges and universities decided to begin classes late. Westmont gratefully followed suit.

The veterans who came to Westmont after 1945 were older, and many were married. Some had difficulty finding housing.

Lewis Robinson ’51, a Westmont history professor for many years, faced the housing

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12 problem even before he arrived on campus as a student. He served in the Navy and applied to the college after the war. “When I wrote to Westmont, they said I was admissible…but I would have to bring my own housing with me, which puzzled me. So I wrote and said, ‘What do you mean? Do you mean I have to bring a tent or a mobile home or something?’ And they wrote back and said that’s exactly right.” Lewis and his wife, Mae ’51, found a mobile home, towed it to Westmont, and lived in it for four years.

If the war had created a housing shortage, it also provided temporary facilities.

College officials desperate for dormitories learned they could purchase inexpensive Quonset huts from the Navy base at Port Hueneme. The only problem was transporting them. Bob Ross ’48, whose schooling was interrupted by the war, recalls moving the huts to Santa Barbara. “[Westmont]

hired a trucking firm that moved those kinds of things….We were taking biology at the time, and whenever they would have one of these trucks ready…they dismissed the biology class…and we would literally ride the tops of those Quonset huts up from Oxnard, because we had…to be there with wooden poles to lift the [power] lines to be sure that they didn’t snag…[and] the Quonset huts didn’t knock down any electric lines or electric poles.”

According to Ross, the first hut became a public restroom outside of what is now the college store. Six huts housed male students in a complex known as Q-Ville located on the present site of Van Kampen Hall. Another Quonset hut, placed opposite the present post office, served as the student store. Two huts remained on campus until 2008 when the Tea Fire destroyed them, just weeks before their planned demolition.

The purchase of the neighboring Klinger home helped ease the housing situation. Christened Catherwood Hall, it became a men’s dormitory. It was lost in the 1964 Coyote Fire.

WESTMONT COLLEGE

13 Formerly a guest house on the Klinger estate, Bauder Hall served a number of purposes before its loss in the 2008 Tea Fire.

As wonderful as it was, the new campus lacked dormitory space. So college officials leased the former Jefferson School on Alameda Padre Serra that the Navy had used during the war. It became the women’s dorm, dubbed Jefferson Barracks. Ruth McCreery, a Christian education professor and dean of women during the 1940s, recalls ordering furniture for this “dormitory” and putting forty beds in each former classroom. “I wondered what the students and parents would think, but I never heard one word of complaint,” she said.

The college found a men’s dormitory nearby. Neighbors of the Hollands had watched the students who were working around campus. “Mr. and Mrs. Klinger came to us voluntarily and offered us their estate at a figure that required only a small down payment with liberal terms on the balance,” Kerr recalled. “They stated they had observed our students closely…and because of their high caliber felt they were a real asset to the community.” The Klinger home became Catherwood Hall.

About six months later, the college purchased a building and forty acres on Ashley Road for a women’s dormitory known as

Emerson Hall. Another beautiful estate with formal gardens, it provided much better housing than Jefferson.

Yet space was still tight. Ross recalls his first semester in Santa Barbara. “There was no dormitory room for me, so they said, ‘Would you mind terribly…if you…[slept] on one of the open verandas at Catherwood?’ It was covered. I said, ‘No, I’d be delighted.’”

W’ M H D  I E D The first Westmont choir went on tour like all Westmont choirs do. This group included one-third of the student body as members. How did the college field a thirty-voice choir with only ninety-four students?

The tradition of choral programs began early with a remarkable director, Helen Catherwood Strandberg, who worked hard and prayed a lot. President Emerson deliberately emphasized music, which he considered a “desirable part of the life of a normal individual.” He also knew its public relations value. Musical groups built relationships with churches, recruited students and spread the name of Westmont.

Several ensembles flourished in 1940: the trumpeters, a women’s trio, a men’s quartet and a string quartet also performed for churches. By 1941 the college added a string trio, a mixed sextet and a small sym-

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Music was an important part of campus life from the beginning. Here the Westmont Choir performs in the early 1960s.

phony orchestra. World War II made it difficult to continue all these groups, but a musical tradition had taken root, and it continued despite the war. A later choral director, John Hubbard, considered the choir “one of the best ways I knew for people to get a sampling of the type of student who came here.”

John Lundberg arrived at Westmont in 1947. His duties included teaching voice and directing the male quartet. After Hubbard left, he began working with the Westmont choir. He also sang for six years

with one of the best quartets of the time, the Charles E. Fuller Old Fashioned Revival Hour quartet. This group performed every Sunday morning at 7:30 for a live radio broadcast from Long Beach. Lundberg lived in Santa Monica and commuted to Westmont two or three days a week to teach. “I almost quit the college because it was so taxing. But I really felt the call of God to come here.”

For twenty-two years he worked with the Westmont quartet and arranged most of their music. The men toured both dur-

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15 worship. He has built the Westmont Orchestra into a fifty-musician ensemble that toured China in May 2012. The Westmont Choir and other choral ensembles join with the orchestra to present the Westmont Christmas Festival, which sells out each year.

R V P  P R  P

John Lundberg arrived on campus in 1947. He worked with the men’s quartet for twenty-two years and also directed the choir.

ing the school year and the summer. They sang every Sunday, morning and evening, and during nine to eleven weeks in May, June and July in many parts of the country. Paul Sjolund ’59 spent three years with the quartet and performed in five hundred concerts in thirty-four states and five Canadian provinces. The four students appeared on television, in churches, at banquets and for Billy Graham crusades. Many students came to Westmont after hearing the quartet. Often they knew nothing else about the college. The quartets went out of fashion in the late 1960s, and Lundberg recommended disbanding Westmont’s in 1969.

Westmont’s musical heritage continues today under the leadership of Michael Shasberger, Adams professor of music and

The stress of starting the new college affected Emerson’s health, and he resigned in 1946. In 1948, the board called James Forrester to the presidency. He had taught philosophy and English at Westmont before entering the service, so he knew the college. His goals included moving the campus back to the Los Angeles area, gaining accreditation and expanding the public relations office. But he only stayed two years, resigning in 1950. Forrester later became president of Gordon College in Massachusetts.

A large number of faculty left with President Forrester when he resigned, but this exodus did not cause a major setback.

The college had too many faculty for its student body, so the departure of some instructors actually helped. John Lundberg recalled, “We were overstaffed in a lot of areas. My first reaction was... ‘Well, we’re not going to miss them that badly.’

Although they were fine people…it really helped us….get the budget down to where we could operate.”

Frank Hieronymus, who attended Westmont in the 1940s, returned in the fall of 1950 to teach history. “I did perceive that the faculty had gone down in numbers and in quality, but they had not lost any

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James Forrester became Westmont president in 1948, but only stayed for two years.

of their enthusiasm for the place or their degree of dedication,” he said.

The board immediately began the search for a new president and soon chose Roger Voskuyl, academic dean at Wheaton College. Voskuyl had earned master’s and doctoral degrees in chemistry at Harvard and served as a group leader on the Manhattan Project during World War II. In twelve years at Wheaton he had risen from instructor to professor to dean.

Voskuyl left the security of Wheaton for the uncertainty of Westmont on the advice of his close friend C.C. Brooks. “In his wisdom, Dr. Brooks said, ‘At Wheaton you can keep the wheels turning—at Westmont the sky is the limit,’” Voskuyl recalled.

The faculty welcomed the new president warmly. Lundberg remembered being pleased with him. “I thought, here’s a man of stature, a godly man, he’s got all the

NOTICIAS credentials, and I thought it was a condescending move on his part to come here.”

He also recalled Voskuyl’s first chapel talk. “He said, ‘I’m so happy to be here at Wheatmont.’ It just cracked up the student body.”

Voskuyl had good reason to be confused. “Mind you, I had visited Westmont on August 22, resigned from my position on August 31, and arrived in Santa Barbara on September 15,” he recalled. “That was the fastest, most dramatic move I’ve ever made in my life!”

Westmont even helped Voskuyl move.

“At the board meeting at which they decided to offer me the position, John Wilks spoke up….[He] said, ‘Paton Yoder [who had been dean of the faculty and just moved back east] bought a horse trailer from me for $100. It’s large enough for two horses. You go to Goshen, Indiana, buy it from him for $100, move your things, come back here, and I will buy it from you!’ That was the board’s assistance for our move.”

Traveling from Illinois with two cars, two trailers and four children seemed easy compared to the task Voskuyl faced as president. He had to build financial stability, attract qualified faculty, gain accreditation and expand the campus and the enrollment — and deal with the prosaic problem of sewage. If the campus grew, the college would have to upgrade and enhance sewage lines.

Kenneth Monroe, who served Westmont as professor, dean and acting president, remembered the day Trustee Rolf Jacobsen spoke in chapel. “He stood at the podium for a long time, looking from side to side over the group. He said, finally,

WESTMONT COLLEGE

17

Succeeding Forrester as president was Roger Voskuyl. During his eighteen-year tenure, Westmont solidified its financial footing, earned accreditation and expanded its physical plant, faculty, student body and curriculum.

‘When the board of trustees thinks of you, they always think of sewage laterals.’”

Voskuyl knew Westmont needed finan-

cial stability, and he made it a priority. After he came the college never missed a payroll. He endorsed the board’s wise policy of

18 not expanding beyond what the institution could support financially. This pragmatism served Westmont well—the community settled in with a feeling of greater security and optimism.

The faculty needed rebuilding after the Forrester exodus. According to Voskuyl, “The first time I went to a faculty meeting, I was quite disappointed in what I saw. Remember, I had been presiding over quite a prominent and well-established faculty at Wheaton….To attract people of professorial rank was difficult…[the dean had] sought people who were doing graduate work and…needed to teach….I felt we should seek those who had doctorates, perhaps settle for less, but then encourage them to finish their work.”

Hieronymus, who became academic dean in 1955, stressed the necessity of professors with doctorates. “The most important decision, probably, that I made was… to pay a thousand dollars or more extra for a person with a doctorate than we would pay for those with a master’s.” A number of faculty who came to Westmont in the 1950s had doctorates, and many professors went back to school to earn them while still teaching.

Voskuyl shared Emerson’s determination to gain accreditation. Early in 1956 he wrote, “It is the pledge of this administration to make accreditation foremost in all of our studies.” The faculty prepared for a visit by the accreditation team in early 1957. The answer proved disappointing. The committee recommended a two-year probationary period for Westmont. It required progress in developing a better liberal arts curriculum, a library and an endowment.

NOTICIAS In 1958 Westmont submitted a report detailing progress in improving the quality of the faculty, raising faculty salaries, expanding the library and making changes to the curriculum. The good news came in March when Westmont received a three-year period of accreditation from the Western College Association. When Voskuyl shared the news with students in chapel, they became so excited the scheduled speaker never got to the podium.

T W C T S Westmont enrolled 219 students in the fall of 1950, a number hardly adequate to support a good program. By the next fall, enrollment reached the maximum of 298 set by the county. The existing facilities could not handle this number comfortably.

So Voskuyl suggested enclosing the south patio of Kerrwood Hall to provide space for studying and dining. He also proposed an athletic field, a residence hall, a gym, a chapel and a dining hall.

The gradual expansion of the campus began with the addition to Kerrwood, called the Garden Room, completed in 1953. It cost $16,000. This project sent an important message to Westmont’s constituency and the local community; the college intended to stay in Santa Barbara, and it planned on growing.

Both the Montecito Association and the county approved the college’s request to increase enrollment to 323 in 1953.

Their response opened the door for further increases. In 1955 Westmont got permission for 375 students and a future enrollment of 650.

So Westmont began to construct new

WESTMONT COLLEGE buildings. The George Carroll Observatory provided a new classroom and two telescopes. The Ruth Gapen Hubbard Memorial Building gave music students a place to practice. The college needed a residence hall and a dining commons, and raising the money for these large buildings seemed almost impossible. But the federal government began loaning money to colleges for residence halls and dining commons, and Voskuyl thought Westmont should accept this funding. The board initially decided against using government money but later relented. So Westmont built Page Hall and the old, flat-roofed dining commons.

By 1960, Westmont enrolled nearly five hundred students and had built four new buildings and expanded Kerrwood Hall.

19 The college had achieved accreditation, and faculty received salaries based on their level of education without ever missing a paycheck. In ten years, Voskuyl, the trustees and a dedicated faculty had worked a miracle—and gave the credit to the faithfulness of God. T V S  P T Just two days before Christmas vacation in 1959, Voskuyl’s daughter, Nancy, died in a car accident. While her death brought deep sorrow to the college, it gave the Voskuyls an opportunity to share their faith with the local community. Although they grieved for Nancy, Roger and Trudy

Among the buildings added to campus in the 1950s was the George Carroll Observatory.

NOTICIAS

20 Voskuyl opened their arms to the young man who drove the car. Their response to him and their expression of faith in God touched the Santa Barbara community.

The tragedy helped make Westmont more visible in the local area.

Within a few days, the idea of a prayer chapel in Nancy’s memory took hold. Ruth Kerr encouraged the project by contributing a substantial amount for the Nancy Voskuyl Prayer Chapel. The class of 1960 provided the furnishings as their gift to the college. Professor Ed Bouslough donated the stained glass window as a memorial to Nancy and also to his father, who died shortly before the accident. A plaque in the foyer celebrates Nancy’s life. Thirty years later, Voskuyl said he thought that Nancy’s death led to a special time of personal and spiritual growth. “During that week, I

spent hours reading about what it means for a Christian to die…[and], I did most of my grieving. I feel I was given special grace from God to face the burden.”

A V R C D  C Living on campus has always been an important part of the Westmont experience.

In the 1950s, the dorms bustled with activity—except during the early evening when quiet prevailed for studying. The women lived in Cold Spring Unit I (later the Art Center and now the Music Building) and Emerson, the former estate on Ashley Road. The men lived in Cold Spring Unit III (now Reynolds Hall) and Catherwood Hall. Q-ville, a group of Quonset huts, sheltered a privileged few male students.

After President Voskuyl”s daughter, Nancy, died in a tragic automobile accident in 1959, the college constructed the Nancy Voskuyl Prayer Chapel in her memory.

WESTMONT COLLEGE

21

As Westmont moved into the 1960s, some long-time traditions of student life began to disappear. Freshman initiation ended in 1965.

When they were not enjoying conversation by the fireplace in one of these residences, students liked to unwind in Kerrwood Lounge, gathering around the piano for sing-alongs after dinner. Later in the evening, after lights went out, women might hear the strains of “You Are My Sunshine,” as a group of male students with a ukulele serenaded them outside their windows.

By the mid-1950s, Kerrwood Hall could not house all the classrooms, administrative offices, library shelves and space for student organizations the college needed. In 1954, students decided to construct a building for student government, the student newspaper and the yearbook. They oversaw all aspects of Operation Elbow

Room from raising money to the actual construction. Most students contributed in some way. Today that building houses the post office.

Students volunteered for various ministries in the local community. The Fisherman’s Club sent teams to Hillside House, which cares for people who are physically and developmentally disabled, the county jail, Santa Barbara General Hospital and the Salvation Army Mission. Students also led Young Life groups and taught Sunday school in rural areas, especially for migrant workers. They gathered for Wednesday evening prayer meetings, and the Student Missionary Fellowship supported alumni missionaries throughout the world with letters, tapes and prayers.

NOTICIAS

22 Many traditions continued into the 1960s only to fade away by the end of that decade. Initiation subjected freshman to three days of enslavement to the sophomore class. The theme differed each year from “A WestMonster is Born” in 1960 to “No Time for Privates” in 1962. Freshmen wore special beanies, performed menial tasks for sophomores and wore ridiculous clothing. As a Horizon editorial noted in 1961, “Some will remember Initiation as the chance to return the favors done to them by last year’s sophomore class. Others will remember it as a time when they felt that the best definition of a sophomore was ‘evil one.’”

One student criticized freshman initiation in a letter to the Horizon in 1962. “I

think the associated activities are frivolous and time-consuming, showing a lack of seriousness in intent, and serving no purpose other than to alienate personalities and bring enmity between the two participating classes.” According to the sophomores, the purpose of freshman initiation was “to welcome the freshmen, to orient them to the ways of Westmont and to unite them as a class.” Concern about dangerous initiation practices on other campuses ended the annual rite in 1965.

Senior Sneak also pitted class against class, but with greater goodwill. Each year the senior class tried to “sneak” off campus for a three-day retreat without the junior class catching them. If the seniors succeeded, the juniors hosted a steak fry for them,

New buildings continued to spring up on campus during the course of the 1960s. Clark Hall was just one of the new dormitories built to house Westmont’s growing student population.

WESTMONT COLLEGE but if the juniors caught them, the seniors picked up the tab for dinner.

Once they left campus, the seniors traveled to places like Yosemite, Lake Arrowhead and Palm Springs. They played, ate and joined in Bible study and prayer together. Sneak strengthened ties among class members and served as a rite of passage.

In the 1960s, students built floats for the annual Homecoming parade down State Street, and a queen and her court presided over the festivities. Eventually, students became critical of the costly floats. In 1969 the student council voted to end the parade, citing the poor quality and expense of floats and the small number of spectators.

The practice of choosing Homecoming queens also ended. Today Homecoming focuses on alumni and involves students only peripherally.

Students never held protests on campus during the 1960s, but they did stage an All-School Fall-In party in 1967. “‘Bring your own protest’ is the strategy for the human Fall-In scheduled to erupt at Emerson tomorrow….Dress is to be casual or grubby for the event which will feature the creation of protest signs and speeches….

Protestors will be pacified with a non-controversial watermelon feed.”

G C    Despite the upheaval on many college campuses during the 1960s, the liberal arts curriculum and mission at Westmont remained unchanged. The college experienced a coming of age in this era, not a revolution.

The campus erupted with buildings as

23 Westmont constructed or acquired twelve major facilities during these years, including Voskuyl Library, Murchison Gymnasium, Porter Hall and the Deane School complex. Three new residence halls (Clark, Van Kampen and Armington) housed the growing number of students.

President Voskuyl rejoiced over the growth of the campus, but noted in 1965 that buildings “are but the container in which the educative process takes place…the faculty [is] the catalyst, bringing about the maturing process more completely.” The president worked with Dean Hieronymus to strengthen a faculty he described as “young” in 1960. “A college twenty years old does not have a backbone of faculty who have taught for twenty years and who have had time for meditative research.”

The faculty matured in the 1960s. The number of full-time professors grew (from twenty-nine to forty-nine) as did the percentage of those with doctorates (from thirty-eight to fifty-seven percent). Meanwhile, teaching loads decreased. According to the dean, professors used their extra time “to engage in greater depth of study in their own field, in research, and in writing.”

They also concentrated more on their areas of expertise in the classroom. As a history professor in the 1950s, Hieronymus had taught “everything in our curriculum, except Latin America and the Far East.” Faculty in most disciplines no longer stretched themselves so thinly.

Enrollment set a record nearly every fall during the 1960s. The number of students jumped from 490 to 892 in ten years. The addition of badly needed facilities and professors improved education at Westmont.

24 The era of Emerson Hall ended in 1969 when the college sold the dormitory that had housed first women and then men since 1945. With the purchase of the Deane School in 1967 and the construction of Armington Hall, Westmont no longer needed the beautiful old mansion.

Four Deane School buildings added architectural diversity to campus: a chapel (Deane Chapel), and three dormitories: El Encinal (Deane Hall), La Huerta (Reynolds Hall) and the Junior Dormitory (Music Building). Deane School, a private boys school, had operated from 1912-1934; former headmaster Hewitt Reynolds owned the Deane campus, which he had leased to Westmont from 1951-1965.

NOTICIAS Spring Sing is Westmont’s oldest student tradition, dating back to 1961. For many years, one of the highlights was the entrance of the event’s master of ceremonies, religious studies professor Lyle Hillegas. Here he kicks off the festivities from the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

W’ O S T S F-O Y Spring Sing began small and grew big.

The simple choral competition of 1961 has evolved into a large production that draws thousands of people to the Santa Barbara County Bowl each year. Much has changed—the setting, the backdrops and the choreography—but students still compete to win honor and glory for their dormitory.

After a year inside in Porter Hall, Spring Sing moved outside to the lawn next to the dining commons (DC). At first, students simply sang a medley of songs. As the years progressed, students made their presentations more elaborate. They wrote skits, made backdrops and wore costumes, working the songs into the skits. “There were more than one thousand people crammed onto the DC lawn,” Dave Talbott recalls.

“The trees on three sides and the dining

commons on the other created a natural amphitheater.”

Lovely as it was, this amphitheater offered limited seating. To make reservations, people showed up early on the morning of Spring Sing with blankets in hand. Money meant nothing—perseverance and speed were everything. The crowd impatiently awaited the appointed hour when they could claim their seats. When the directors gave the word, everyone rushed to the lawn and threw down their blankets. The first people there got the best spots—it resembled the Oklahoma Land Rush. For a day, the blankets transformed the lawn into a patchwork quilt.

Professor Lyle Hillegas, the long-time

WESTMONT COLLEGE master of ceremonies, gave people an incentive for wanting a good seat. He surprised and delighted the audience in 1967 when he arrived in a hot air balloon to celebrate the theme, “Around the World in 80 Days.” For a number of years, the tradition of the unusual entrance continued. Hillegas came dressed as a sheik astride a camel one year. Another year he drove up in an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Few people knew ahead of time how he would arrive, so the audience eagerly watched for his entrance. One year he spent his sabbatical in England, and no one expected him to emcee. But he flew back and surprised the audience by arriving in a Rolls Royce dressed as an English lord.

In 1972 Spring Sing outgrew its home on the DC lawn and moved to Spring Sing Hill, now the site of the newest student residence on campus, Emerson Hall. Three years later, Westmont signed an agreement with the Montecito Association that prohibited Spring Sing as an outdoor event. In 1976, it moved to the gym, but the venue did not work. Spring Sing premiered in its present home, the Santa Barbara County Bowl, in 1977.

Students celebrated Spring Sing’s fiftieth anniversary in 2011. Norm Nelson ’61, president of Compassion Radio, and who had founded Spring Sing as a student, returned as a featured guest. “I would never have thought Spring Sing would become such a major part of Westmont’s and Santa Barbara’s life, graduating to the Santa Barbara Bowl,” he said.

“It’s a tribute to the ingenuity of Westmont students that it’s become such a special part of student life.”

25 T C F T C A thin curl of smoke drifted into the sky near Westmont on a hot afternoon in September 1964. Students could see the fire across the canyon on Coyote Road as they walked to class. At first the danger seemed slight, but strong winds pushed the blaze closer to campus. By late afternoon, flames tore down the hill next to Page Hall as students and faculty watched anxiously from the parking lot. For two sleepless nights, the Coyote Fire ravaged the foothills, threatening the college and the entire Santa Barbara community.

Firefighters set up the main fire camp at Westmont within a few hours. As daylight disappeared, the wind arose and blew the fire down the hillside. Men on campus changed clothes and prepared to protect the college. Women started packing. When they got word to evacuate, students fled to private homes, local schools and motels limited to what they could carry in a pillow case.

About one hundred men stayed on campus to fight the fire. Professor Ed Bouslough joined the army above Page Hall that held off the blaze with hoses and equipment and recalled, “Wherever the flaming embers swirled, the Westmont men were there with shovels and hoses and forks and sacks and sometimes nothing but their own soggy tennis shoes, digging, swatting or stamping out the flames.”

A small group camped out on the roof of Page Hall, keeping it wet. Others worked to save faculty homes on Westmont Road and Circle Drive and the John Pickett residence north of campus. In an interview on NBC’s national Huntley-Brinkley news

NOTICIAS

26

Westmont lost only one building to the Coyote Fire of 1964, despite the wildfire’s intensity.

Here the fire threatens Page Hall, which was spared.

program, Mrs. Pickett thanked Westmont students for preserving her home. This lovely residence burned to the ground during the 2008 Tea Fire.

As the morning light struggled through the clouds of smoke, the wind expired.

By midday, the fire had consumed 3,500 acres and fifteen homes, but the campus remained untouched. The worst seemed over—a few residents of Catherwood actually moved back to their rooms.

That evening the wind roared down from the mountains again, spreading flames east to Summerland and west to San Marcos Pass. The fire resumed its attack on the college with greater ferocity, threatening Emerson Hall on Ashley Road as well. The

Westmont community prayed incessantly.

Students who evacuated formed prayer groups, and Ruth Kerr roused trustees and friends across the country at 3 a.m. to pray as well.

Bouslough returned to campus that second night. “Everyone was fighting and crying in frustration, because no matter how many fires you put out, new ones came snowing out of the sky,” he said. “It was a picture of flame and heat and smoke and embers and too little of the vital element, water. The embers were like snow—beautiful but frightening.”

When Catherwood Hall caught fire, the men could not save it. Bouslough described the dormitory as a “raging blowtorch.” To-

WESTMONT COLLEGE day the president’s house sits on the site of the former estate that had housed thirtyfive men.

The men who stayed behind expected to lose more than Catherwood. According to Bouslough, “[We] were able to stop the fire on the ground, but we didn’t know how to cope with the flames in the trees. I remember standing in the roadway inside the main gate trying desperately to keep the fire from the heart of the campus…

As we stood there watching, not knowing what to do…all at once a fire truck from Los Angeles drove through the gate….

The firemen sprang from the truck, unreeled the hose, sprayed into the tops of the trees, put out the fire and saved the campus.”

As students and faculty returned to campus the next morning, they found only Catherwood missing. Voskuyl described the college as a “green oasis in a world of gray ash.” The fire scorched nearly 90,000

27 acres in all and destroyed more than one hundred homes.

Bouslough described the emotional chapel service held that day to thank God for His protection. “The first song we sang was ‘Great is Thy Faithfulness.’ It breaks me up every time we sing it. No, I’ll never forget.”

T C M  L Westmont students, faculty and staff moved a library in the spring of 1968. They did not move the building, but they carried every book and magazine from the old library in Kerrwood Hall to the new Roger John Voskuyl Library.

College officials originally decided to name the building the Armington Library after Everett and Eleanor Armington, who played a major part in funding the project, but the Armingtons wanted to surprise Voskuyl, whose birthday fell on moving day. Usually a quiet man, Everett Armington asked to speak before the move began. He announced that he and his wife had agreed with the trustees to name the new facility the Roger John Voskuyl Library. The Armingtons did not know Eleanor Armington leads the way as 450 people move the contents of the old library into the new Roger John Voskuyl Library in 1968.

NOTICIAS

28 that the next day Voskuyl would announce his resignation as president.

Entire books discuss the feat of moving a library, and the process can take days. Yet Vernon Ritter, the head librarian, planned it carefully to take just a day. Classes were canceled, and 450 people went to work.

Each person simply carried a stack of books from its old home to the new stacks. At the entrance of the library building, they learned where their books went. Thanks to Ritter’s work, the move went smoothly.

Ritter and Voskuyl were standing on the stairs inside the new library when the last books arrived that afternoon. Ritter recalled, “I suggested to Dr. Voskuyl that it might be a good idea to sing the Doxology. We gathered everybody together and sang it. And then the new library was ready for business.”

Following Roger Voskuyl into the office of the presidency in 1969 was John Snyder. Enrollment limits contributed to financial concerns during his two-year tenure.

T V E E Voskuyl resigned in 1968 after eighteen years, announcing his decision the day after Westmont received reaccreditation for a five-year period for the first time. With the campus and the curriculum well established, he moved on to a new challenge and became the executive director of the Council for the Advancement of Small Colleges in Washington, D.C. Despite the many changes he brought, Voksuyl carefully preserved the college’s heritage, and Westmont endured as an excellent Christian liberal arts college. He wrote to the trustees, “I go with the same thought in mind as when I came: ‘Without Me ye can do nothing,’ but ‘with God, all things are possible.’”

John Snyder resigned as acting chancellor at Indiana University to become Westmont’s fourth president in 1969. Why did

he leave the Bloomington campus of 31,000 students for a college of 800? He explained, “I’ve always had a very strong personal commitment to evangelical Christianity. . . . At Westmont, there is an opportunity to get directly into the mainstream of the evangelical community and its educational processes. A lot of exciting things are going on at Westmont now.”

When Snyder stepped away from the turmoil of student riots into the calm atmosphere at Westmont, he simply traded one set of problems for another. Once again, the college faced serious financial difficulties. The limit of eight hundred students restricted the college financially.

With virtually no endowment, Westmont

WESTMONT COLLEGE depended entirely on income from tuition and gifts from friends, which were inadequate at the time to sustain a quality academic program.

Snyder wanted to strengthen Westmont’s curriculum and faculty, and he knew he needed money to do it. If enrollment grew to twelve hundred, the income from tuition could fund a sufficient number of majors and professors and improve the financial situation.

So the college applied to Santa Barbara An electrical short circuit was deemed the cause of a fire in Kerrwood Hall in 1970. Portions of the building were badly damaged, but the quick action of staff and students saved much of the contents in these areas. Kerrwood Hall reopened in time for the fall term.

29 County for permission to enroll 1,200 students living on campus and 360 commuting students. In the past, the county had granted requests for more students without much controversy – not this time. Some people in the community considered it too much of an increase.

This denial, coupled with a national economic slump, created a financial crisis.

In January 1971, Snyder announced the layoff of a professor and the elimination of two majors. Westmont was not alone— many other colleges encountered budget troubles.

Weeks later, President Snyder submitted his resignation. In an interview with the Horizon, he said, “When I came, I tried to make it as clear as possible that, one, Westmont needed a major infusion of funds, and, two, I was an academic administrator and not particularly a fundraiser…the fiscal situation is such that there’s simply no alternative but for me to spend a major portion of my time on the road raising funds.”

A F  K H I H A Students may have felt a premonition of disaster on March 17, 1970, as final exams for the winter quarter had just begun. By midmorning they had forgotten all about finals as a smoldering fire ate away at Kerrwood Hall, the heart of the Westmont campus.

30 Several people noticed unusual heat and a smoky smell in the building when they arrived for work, but they did not worry.

The furnace had been acting up, and a crew was trying to repair it. Everyone just stayed in their offices and kept on with their tasks.

President Snyder met with the administrative committee in his office as scheduled.

Suddenly, the ceiling in the president’s office cracked, and smoke drifted into the room. Forgetting their agenda, the people in the meeting rushed out into the hall to evacuate the building. People got out quickly, but then they began thinking about all the documents and furnishings— transcripts, financial records, paintings and manuscripts—that were irreplaceable. They surged back into the building and began to empty it, beginning with the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Kerr.

During the morning, a continuous caravan of furniture traveled outside to the lawns surrounding Kerrwood. Men covered their faces with wet cloths before dashing into the building to rescue valuable documents like transcripts and financial records. To get to offices upstairs, students scaled ladders. Rather than passing buckets of water toward the fire, lines of women passed files, books and personal belongings away from it. Groups of students stood below the windows with sheets to catch objects—especially books—thrown from the building.

Meanwhile, smoke gushed from the roof while firefighters attacked the elusive blaze.

The fire started with a short circuit in a hidden electrical cable, and it had been burning in between the walls, floors and ceilings for hours. To put out the inaccessible fire, the men had to cut their way to it.

NOTICIAS Professor Robert Gundry had been getting the manuscript of his book, Survey of the New Testament, ready to send to the publisher. It was lying in piles around the perimeter of his office floor. But when he found out that Kerrwood was on fire, his first thought was for his Greek Bible. “By the time I reached Kerrwood, the smoke had already filled the upstairs. I really needed my Greek New Testament because it had years of notes in it. So I took a deep breath and raced upstairs to get it. Then some students put up a ladder to my office to rescue my book. They had to grope around the floor for papers—the smoke was so thick, they couldn’t see. Amazingly, they found all the stacks and didn’t miss a single sheet of paper. I didn’t lose one page.”

Doris Roberts Fuller Sanger ’72 will never forget watching John Eicher ’70 save this manuscript. “He would stick his head out of the window, take a big gulp of air, run inside, grab a stack of papers, and throw them out the window. Then he’d take another breath, and go back for more.

Sheaves of paper floated through the air while Dr. Gundry rushed back and forth, collecting them.”

News of the fire spread to the local media. One radio station reported that students were looting the building as it went up in flames. Just twenty days earlier, a few students at UC Santa Barbara had burned down the Bank of America in Isla Vista.

The media soon got the story straight, and they praised Westmont students for their heroism.

At first, Snyder thought the building was a total loss. But with the insurance payment and gifts from friends, the college was able to restore Kerrwood. Since students saved

WESTMONT COLLEGE almost all the furnishings and important records and no one was hurt, the fire did mostly structural damage. The building reopened in time for the fall 1970 quarter.

W P B  N P Professor Kenneth Monroe served as acting president for the second time; he had filled the same position when Forrester resigned in 1948. The search for a new president took nearly a year, and ended on campus with religious studies professor Lyle Hillegas in 1972. At

31 thirty-seven, he was the youngest man to become president and the first to come from the Westmont faculty.

Westmont students did not stage political protests, but they challenged longstanding rules and traditions. In the early 1970s, they increasingly voiced their opposition to the Code, the behavioral standards they signed when they enrolled. This prohibition against drinking, smoking, dancing and gambling both on and off campus became more and more unpopular.

Two other requirements—attendance at chapel and a curfew affecting only women—also chafed some students. In 1971, the student council asked the administration to end the practice of women signing in at their residence halls by a certain time each evening.

The administration rejected the recommendation, noting that the college stood “in loco parentis,” meaning “in the place of a parent.” Students were also unsuccessful in their move to make chapel attendance voluntary.

Debate over rules and regulations did not always take center stage, espeLyle Hillegas became president of Westmont in 1972. Under his watch, the student code of behavior was revised, as he continued to wrestle with the school’s economic concerns.

32 cially with a wonderful lecture-artist series.

Students of the 1970s had an opportunity to hear masters like Van Cliburn, Andres Segovia, Leontyne Price and Beverly Sills perform in Murchison Gymnasium. The new Interterm, a four-week period of study during January, also generated a lot of interest and discussion. Focusing on the nature of a Christian liberal arts education, the program offered short, in-depth classes in a wide variety of subjects. The course, “Christian Perspectives on Learning,” clearly presented Westmont’s distinctive approach to education, which blends a rigorous liberal arts curriculum with a heartfelt commitment to Christian faith.

Hillegas took action to revise the Code early in his presidency. In fall 1972, he appointed a commission of students, staff, faculty, administrators and trustees to consider changes. On the basis of their recommendation, Westmont adopted a new standard in 1973 that restricted behavior only within a mile of campus.

Enterprising students immediately went out and painted blue lines on all the roads leading to campus to mark “Lyle’s Mile.”

In the 1990s, Westmont developed its current Community Life Statement to set behavioral expectations in the context of Scripture, noting that “community flourishes in a place where love for God and neighbor is cultivated and nurtured.

It grows strong when members practice integrity, confession, and forgiveness, attempt to live in reconciled relationship, accept responsibility for their actions and words, and submit to biblical instructions for communal life.”

A high turnover in administrators in these years left the college without direc-

NOTICIAS tion at times. By appointing a new administrative team, Hillegas brought much needed stability to campus. These administrators presided over the revision of the Code, the end of hours for women and the adoption of contiguous housing (men and women living in the same residence halls but not on the same floors).

These actions created a new openness and harmony on campus, but Westmont’s economic problems persisted. In October 1974, the president announced the dismissal of ten full-time professors and a librarian, the elimination of four majors and substantial budget cuts. Faculty offered a counter-proposal that reinstated half the programs cut with a special fundraising effort. Westmont still needed that major infusion of funds.

Hillegas continued the difficult process of asking Santa Barbara County to approve an enrollment increase to 1,200 students on campus. An initial study concluded, “To maintain the breadth of program offerings required in a liberal arts college and to conserve the present faculty, college enrollments must increase.” Then in fall 1975, Hillegas resigned as president, citing a desire to take a more active role in pastoral ministry. He became senior pastor at El Montecito Presbyterian Church, where he served for eighteen years.

O-C P H S D  G P Westmont faculty began developing off-campus programs to expose students to different cultures. Two sociology professors taught a three-week course in San Francis-

WESTMONT COLLEGE co in 1968 that evolved into the semesterlong Urban Program. (Westmont switched from a quarter to a semester system early in the 1970s.) From the start, this program focused on professional internships in the city and urban studies classes. The college renamed it Westmont in San Francisco in 2010, and the program continues to immerse students in the economic and racial diversity of urban areas. Three full-time professors run the program at the historic Clunie House, a Victorian mansion in the center of the city.

Europe Semester started small in 1969 with one professor and ten students, but it soon grew into an important part of the college’s curriculum. Every fall, Westmont faculty continue to lead students on a pilgrimage to Europe’s great cities and museums, an adventure that blends intensive study with first-hand experience of the places and people that have shaped European history and cultures. Students read, research and write extensively, travel widely and learn from experts and everyday people in many countries.

Since 1972, English professors have directed England Semester, which combines travel to literary and cultural centers with residential study in the British Isles. Professor Arthur Lynip and his students returned to campus in 1974 with a wardrobe that C.S. Lewis had owned; they bought it because it matches the description of the wardrobe in the book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The English department proudly installed it in Reynolds Hall, where visitors can peek inside.

After the college established the sixweek Mayterm program following the spring semester, professors began offer-

33 ing Mayterm classes that featured travel to places such as China, Southeast Asia, Africa, India and Europe. To further expand international programs, the college developed Westmont in Mexico in 2004, which takes students to Querétaro for a semester to live with local families, study with Mexican university professors and travel. The college’s newest off-campus program, Westmont in Istanbul, debuted in spring 2012, and alternates with Westmont in Jerusalem, scheduled for spring 2013.

W R P  , S The search for a new president, the third in five years, coincided with the request to expand enrollment. Public hearings began in October amidst controversy and opposition from some neighbors.

New President David K. Winter had served as executive vice president at Whitworth College in Washington before coming to Westmont in 1976. After three days on the job, he spoke at an all-day hearing before the county planning commission on the request to increase enrollment. Many people testified on both sides of the issue.

According to a Santa Barbara News-Press report, the commissioners had expected solid opposition to the increase but found the community “fairly evenly divided.”

They finally voted at 6:30 p.m., approving the request 7-2.

Neighbors who opposed the increase appealed this decision to the board of supervisors, which received more than one thousand letters on the issue. After three hours of heated testimony, the supervi-

34 sors upheld the planning commission’s decision in a close vote (3-2). Westmont had finally won approval to enroll 1,200 students.

Elated as he was, Winter realized his work had just begun. “Now we can demonstrate what we can be to Santa Barbara and Montecito: a source of enrichment and pride to our community and a good neighbor,” he said.

To improve relations with local people, Winter appointed a committee of neighbors to meet regularly and carry on a “long-term, ongoing conversation between the college and the neighborhood.” At the same time, he became actively involved in the community, serving on a number of local boards.

With the battle over growth behind him, the president turned his attention to the academic program. “Westmont simply must increase its quality, and there’s no magic: quality costs money. Too many colleges are second-rate, and I would not be a part of Westmont if that were our future.” The rising enrollment helped the financial situation, but did not solve all the problems. To strengthen the curriculum, Winter called for an increase in tuition.

He also continued to build the endowment, a permanent investment that yields annual income.

NOTICIAS

A G C  C S A remarkable movement of ministry began at Westmont in the late 1970s. Students had long volunteered in the Santa Barbara community, but Christian service took on a new vision and vitality. Students like Dave Dolan ’78 and Gordon Aeschilman ’79 challenged their peers to expand their concept of ministry, serve God in more diverse ways and assume full responsibility for their work. Today students continue to take the lead in overseeing outreach programs.

Christian Concerns (now called West-

WESTMONT COLLEGE David K. Winter became Westmont’s third president in five years in 1976. Perhaps the largest issue during his twenty-five-year term was growth – both in enrollment and physical plant. He began the process to update Westmont’s master plan, a process that continued after he left office. M. Bradley Elliott photograph

mont Student Ministries) began to change under Dolan’s leadership, and he made the organization more visible on campus. “The key was telling students about the needs that existed and letting them know that Christian Concerns could help them meet those needs,” he later recalled. “To spread this message, we got as much publicity as we could—we even put flyers in the bathrooms.”

Dolan recognized the importance of developing a good organizational chart and created three divisions: on-campus ministries, off-campus ministries and world ministries. Programs on campus include Bible studies, a vespers service and prayer meetings. Outreach to the local community took the form of visits to the elderly and people with physical and mental disabilities, work with juvenile delinquents and teenage mothers, and help for the homeless and disadvantaged.

Students participating in short-term missionary projects around the globe fell under world ministries. Dolan believed the success of the organization depended mostly on developing student leaders. “It doesn’t do a program any good if you have great leaders one year but nobody to take their place the next year,” he said. “Pretty soon the program will fall flat on its face.

The key is proper leadership develop-

35 ment—there has to be someone there to take the torch. And there have been some excellent Christian Concerns leaders over the years.” Dolan had been elected to the position, but subsequent directors chose their successors.

Potter’s Clay became Westmont’s most visible student ministry. The students who started the week-long outreach in Mexico wanted to stretch themselves spiritually and culturally—to become “clay in the potter’s hands” (Isaiah 64:8). “Eventually we came to see Potter’s Clay as a great opportunity for giving,” said co-founder Gordon Aeschliman ’79, “but we originally conceived of it as a way for students to learn.”

Gordon’s own education began by visiting dumps, orphanages and inner cities in Mexico. “The experiences I had challenged some of my narrow-minded categories of Christian service,” he said. “I wanted others to benefit from these experiences.”

In 1977, Gordon and twelve friends went to Mexicali to see ministries by other college students in Mexico. After this trip, he worked with Randy ’79 and Clara McKinney ’79 Maranville to plan the first official Potter’s Clay. They chose Ensenada as the site.

“Our goal was pretty simple: recruit fifty Westmont students to spend all of Easter week 1978 with us in Ensenada,” Aeschliman said. “We hoped the trip would accomplish three things: challenge us toward a lifestyle of compassionate service, minister to spiritual needs in Ensenada and minister to physical needs.”

More than one hundred students signed up and began planning and gathering the necessary tents, vans and supplies.

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36 Three weeks before the trip, flash flooding in Ensenada left thousands homeless.

Rather than discouraging students, the disaster prompted fifty more to join the outreach and help with relief efforts.

“This week was an excellent time of building relationships within our group and among the Mexican people,” Aeschliman said in a 1978 interview. “We were successful in achieving our goals of evangelism, meeting physical needs and raising the cultural awareness of the students who participated.” The same goals guide the students leading Potter’s Clay thirty-four years later.

As visitors from a different culture, the founders decided not to arrive with a prepackaged program in 1978. “It was important that we let the local pastors call the shots,” Gordon said. Students became assistants, working with pastors

as they ministered to their congregations and reached out to the communities.

From the beginning, students have directed Potter’s Clay themselves. The task is considerable - transport hundreds of students across the border with enough supplies to feed them for a week and carry out a wide range of ministries. They bring everything they need, including construction materials, medical and dental supplies, clothing and items to give away.

Lining up cars, vans and trucks, recruiting doctors and dentists to work with the medical teams, and soliciting building materials takes hundreds of hours. To fund the program, students raise money and solicit in-kind gifts from friends and family members as well as Santa Barbara businesses. In 1979 the budget for Potter’s Clay was $3,500; in recent years, the students have collected more than $80,000.

Potter’s Clay, a self-directed student ministry, began in the late 1970s and continues today.

For one week each year, students travel to Mexico to help minister to the spiritual and physical needs of the local populace, while enhancing their own cultural awareness.

WESTMONT COLLEGE A T A  E C T L A tragic car accident in 1989 took the lives of three students participating in Potter’s Clay and gravely injured two others.

On the morning of March 27, Lisa Bebout, Patty Hallock, Megan Harter, Alan Voorman and Garth Weedman piled into Alan’s car to travel to a nearby village. The students belonged to a team doing construction work on a dilapidated house. As they were driving to the work site, an oncoming vehicle suddenly jumped the divider and landed on top of Alan’s car. The two Potter’s Clay cars behind Alan screeched to a halt.

Students piled out to rescue their friends as ambulances rushed to the scene and took the injured students to local hospitals.

Students who witnessed the accident headed back to camp to marshal prayer forces. The morning chapel service was still in progress as sophomore Amy Malmsten ran into camp and told Potter’s Clay coleader Dave Harbeson about the accident.

Harbeson announced the news and asked everyone to pray. During the course of the day, over 140 people went to the hospital to give blood, which was critical in saving one life. Lisa Bebout, Alan Voorman, and Garth Weedman died in the days following the accident. Patty Hallock Crosby ’92 and Megan Harter ’97 were badly hurt but eventually recovered and returned to finish college.

Aeschliman traveled to Ensenada to speak to the students, as did President David Winter, Dean Jon Hess and Chaplain Bart Tarman. While noting the ugliness of death, Aeschliman proclaimed God’s victory over death. Then he asked

37 each student to find three rocks. With the first, they made a mound at the campsite in memory of Lisa, Alan and Garth. They built a similar memorial on campus with the second. The third rock reminds them of the presence and faithfulness of God in the midst of sorrow. A plaque also hangs in Voksuyl Prayer Chapel honoring the three students.

While the media covered the 1989 accident extensively, they have also featured good news about the ministry. In 1985, a film crew from the KCET public television program, On Campus, documented Potter’s Clay, focusing on relationships between the students and the Mexican people. The host praised Westmont’s “view of Christianity that values action over rhetoric.” Ten years later, a reporter from the Santa Barbara News-Press made the trip to Ensenada and wrote a lengthy, page-one story describing the students’ activities and the faith that motivates them.

W B I E The 1980s brought increasing national recognition to Westmont for its academic excellence and Christian commitment. In 1976, Santa Barbara County had mandated gradual growth to the new cap of 1,200, setting limits for each year until 1985. At first, enrollment rose steadily and kept pace with the annual goals. But in fall 1982, it dropped sharply, falling 171 students below the ceiling. Losing tuition from so many students created a budget deficit. Westmont received fewer applications for admission during these years, and more students left at the end of each semester. Due to demographics,

38 cutbacks in financial aid, inflation and recession, both enrollment and retention (the percentage of first-year, sophomore and junior students who return the following year) dropped. The baby-boom generation had grown up, and the number of eighteen-year-olds began declining.

When Westmont needed more students, fewer were available. In addition, the administration of President Ronald Reagan reduced federal financial aid, putting private colleges out of reach for many families. An unhealthy economy simply made matters worse.

Westmont’s survival depended on recruiting and retaining more students. The financial crisis of the early 1980s became a catalyst for evaluating every aspect of the college’s program. In response to federal cuts in financial aid, Westmont started its own loan program and offered more student scholarships. Each year, the college committed more money to scholarships and loans, a trend that continues to the present. For the 2011-2012 academic year, Westmont allocated more than $20 million to institutional financial aid.

A deficit in both 1982 and 1983 forced administrators to trim expenses. They eliminated several positions, reduced counseling services, froze salary increases and required each department to make additional cuts.

Dean Tom Andrews and a faculty committee scrutinized the curriculum. Existing programs had to meet four criteria: quality, centrality to Westmont’s mission as a Christian liberal arts college, marketability and cost. After several months of study, they recommended reducing staff in music and political science and adding faculty in art, drama, economics and business. The

NOTICIAS proposal included a new computer science major and an expanded engineering physics major.

These changes shifted resources away from more costly, less popular programs to those in greater demand. In a Horizon article, Andrews said, “The most crucial thing is that we serve our students and society well through programs of the highest quality and that we maintain the flexibility to meet the changing demands of the times.”

The class schedule also came under review. The academic year included two semesters and a four-week Interterm, with classes meeting every day except Wednesday. Professors argued that this arrangement failed to provide large blocks of time for research and study.

Also, Interterm put a strain on faculty who had to prepare for classes outside their disciplines. So the faculty approved a new calendar that eliminated Interterm and created a three days/two days weekly schedule (sixty-five-minute classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and two-hour classes Tuesday and Thursday). In place of Interterm, they developed Mayterm, an optional six-week program at the end of the school year.

Faculty benefited from the new schedule, and so did students. As Professor Brendan Furnish noted, “If faculty have larger blocks of time, then students will also.” The 3-2 plan made better use of limited classroom facilities and allowed the college to offer more courses for the growing student body. Not only did students find it easier to get the classes they needed, but with school ending in May, they got a jump on the summer job market.

WESTMONT COLLEGE M S C  N  N F With the rise in enrollment, the campus had become crowded and less attractive to students. Westmont needed more dormitories, more classroom space and a bigger dining commons. So the college embarked on another decade of building in the 1980s.

With a gift from the Kerr family, the old dining commons became the Kerr Student Center, with more seating capacity, a snack bar, a lounge and student offices.

New Dorm (now Emerson Hall) took over Spring Sing Hill, and the college purchased the Ocean View apartments in Santa Barbara. The Whittier Science Building, a gift from the Whittier family, and the new Art Center (a renovated Deane School build-

39 ing) provided space for the natural sciences and visual arts. The former chemistry and biology buildings underwent renovation to house the physics and mathematics departments. Better facilities made it easier to attract new students.

Westmont also expanded its academic advising and orientation programs to help students adjust to life at college. At the same time, the Career and Life Planning Office offered more assistance in making the transition to graduate school or the work place.

All these changes strengthened Westmont’s program. Prospective students also needed to hear about the quality of education at Westmont. The admissions office began an aggressive marketing campaign, sending counselors out to spread the word

The evermore popular Spring Sing began to be held at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in 1977.

Here the residents of Clark Hall entertain in 1982.

40 about Westmont. Within a year, the pool of prospective students jumped from 3,700 to nearly 9,000, and the number of applications rose as a result.

In fall 1984, Westmont enrolled a record 1,109 students, including 570 new students. In just two years, enrollment increased exactly two hundred students.

The college did not admit everyone who applied; the admissions office never lowered standards. The qualifications of the new students remained as high as earlier classes.

Three years later, Westmont exceeded the limit set by Santa Barbara County with an enrollment of 1,217. The Horizon noted, “If you’ve experienced the line at the DC, the lack of convenient parking spaces, or an unexpected third person inhabiting your room, then you may have noticed—Westmont is packed!” The college had 28,000 students on its applicant list, and the admissions office was becoming more selective. The SAT scores and grade point averages of new students began to rise.

Once again, Westmont met one challenge only to confront another. With plenty of applicants, the college found it difficult to stay within the limit. To manage enrollment better and receive the income from 1,200 students each semester, Westmont asked for the flexibility to average enrollment. After three years of hearings and review, the county approved this request in 1991.

Fund raising became increasingly important to Westmont during the 1980s. As the college could no longer increase enrollment, only two sources of new income remained: increases in tuition and larger gifts.

To avoid huge hikes in tuition, college of-

NOTICIAS ficials put more effort into fund raising.

In 1982, Westmont completed a threeyear capital campaign that raised $8.6 million for buildings (such as Kerr Student Center), endowment and operating expenses. These funds supported financial aid programs to help close the gap between the cost of education and what students actually paid in tuition.

The college launched a second campaign for $16.28 million in 1988. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole delivered the keynote address at a dinner announcing the drive in 1989. Gifts to the campaign created endowed funds for faculty salaries, scholarships and loans, and supported academic programs and new facilities. Together, the two capital campaigns strengthened Westmont’s financial situation. Endowment alone grew from $768,557 in 1975 to $3,774,073 in 1985 and $7,346,514 in 1990. Today the endowment is $72 million.

Increasing enrollment to 1,200 students contributed to Westmont’s growing stature by allowing the college to expand its programs. New majors included art, communication studies, computer science, engineering physics, French, international studies, Spanish and theater arts. Both the sciences and the arts grew substantially.

The new Whittier Science building gave biology and chemistry majors greatly improved laboratories and new, state-of-theart equipment. The facility allowed Westmont to build one of the strongest science programs nationwide at a small college, where undergraduates have the opportunity to assist professors doing significant scientific research.

The Art Center, the restored Deane

WESTMONT COLLEGE School Junior Dormitory, provided a home for the growing visual arts program with a gallery, a lecture hall and two sky-lit art studios. The late artist, Corita Kent, helped Westmont dedicate the building in 1986 and exhibited her work in Reynolds Gallery, named for former Deane headmaster Hewitt Reynolds.

Westmont also renovated Deane Chapel. When the college purchased the Deane School in 1967, officials planned to tear down the buildings and erect new facilities.

Only two were in use, and the others sat empty and neglected, requiring major repairs. William Woollett, a retired architect with a passion for California’s architectural heritage, urged Westmont to restore the Deane School. His vision caught on, and in 1980, Santa Barbara County declared the buildings historical landmarks.

In 1985, the magazine, U.S. News & World Report, listed Westmont among the top ten regional liberal arts colleges in the nation. The Carnegie Commission subsequently moved the college to its Liberal Arts I category, which includes the best and most selective liberal arts colleges in the country. President Winter appeared on a list of the top one hundred college presidents, and Westmont was recognized in “Best Buys in College Education.” Parents of Teenagers magazine rated Westmont the No. 2 Christian college in the country.

The athletics program reached new heights in the 1980s. Women’s tennis and soccer teams won NAIA national championships (1982 and 1985), and men’s basketball reached the NAIA Final Four in 1984. Warrior teams consistently claimed NAIA District 3 championships and competed in national tournaments. Westmont

41 athletes also won honors for scholarship and sportsmanship.

B H  F In 1988, Westmont was committed to two major initiatives: raising $16 million for a capital campaign and seeking permission from Santa Barbara County to average enrollment at 1,200. As a trustee who chaired the building and grounds committee, David Eldred ’63 knew how crucial both efforts were.

He also recognized another need: providing affordable homes for faculty. “The cost of real estate was so high that only professors with inherited wealth could afford to come here,” he said. “We lost too many candidates because of housing.

At the same time, we tied up our endowment helping faculty buy homes, usually far from campus. We needed to end this costly equity sharing and get faculty closer to students.”

The idea of building homes on college land next to campus was not new, but the difficulty of obtaining water and the necessary permits seemed daunting. Then in 1989, the City of Santa Barbara held a lottery for affordable housing projects and offered water to the winners.

“Suddenly, we had an opportunity to get water for faculty homes, and I was convinced we needed to act immediately,” Eldred said. “I really threw a wrench into the college’s plans. Other trustees asked, ‘What about an academic building? What about enrollment averaging?’ But I didn’t think we could pass up the lottery.”

Thanks to his leadership and insistence, the college developed an affordable faculty

42

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WESTMONT COLLEGE

LEFT: Campus map from 1960-61 student handbook. ABOVE: 2012 campus map.

43

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44 housing proposal and entered the lottery.

Westmont was the first of the thirty-nine projects drawn. The lottery was only the beginning, and Eldred expected a challenge. “I knew it would take awhile, cost a lot of money and be a rough road,” he said.

“I saw my role as cheerleading behind the scenes, keeping everyone going. I’m not a quitter, but even I got depressed at times.

Still, I thought it was better to give it all we had and get turned down than not to do it and always wish we had.”

Throughout the grueling eight-year process and contentious public hearings, Eldred and his wife, Elizabeth, played a pivotal role. Their leadership, persistence and significant financial support made the difference. Westmont completed the first twenty homes in 1996, the second ten in 1999 and the last eleven in 2002.

W F  C  C In 1990, Westmont had reached its enrollment goals, and the additional students allowed the college to strengthen its academic program. Yet challenges remained: completing the campus, building the endowment and a stronger financial base, and attracting 1,200 qualified students each year.

In 1992, the college began a three-year review that culminated in the 1995 LongRange Plan. The planning committee raised many crucial questions, including: How can Westmont accommodate growth and change while remaining true to its heritage as a Christian liberal arts college?

How can Westmont justify the high cost of its education? Can the college restructure

the delivery of education to reduce cost and maximize value?

A campus-wide committee put together a series of recommendations in a detailed and visionary Long-Range Planning Report and submitted it to the board in October 1995. After reviewing their work, the trustees referred the proposals to appropriate faculty and staff committees for implementation. The report reaffirmed Westmont as an evangelical Christian liberal arts college that emphasized intellectual, spiritual and personal growth.

Another endeavor paralleled the development of the long-range plan: completing the campus. When Westmont received permission for 1,200 students in 1976, Santa Barbara County approved a master plan that authorized numerous new buildings. Enrollment reached the 1,200 limit in 1986, but Westmont added only two facilities in the 1980s, Whittier Science Building and Emerson Hall.

College officials set a goal of completing the campus core by 2020 and dusted off the 1976 master plan. Carl Johnson, an internationally known landscape architect and planner who had designed hundreds of campuses, consulted with a committee that examined the campus environment and existing needs for facilities. This group confirmed the best sites for building as well as the specific facilities needed to adequately educate 1,200 students. They recommended modifications in two areas: updating the plan to conform to current environmental standards and assigning square footage for each building, something not defined in the 1976 plan. They also identified the function of eleven new facilities: a residence hall, five academic buildings with

WESTMONT COLLEGE classrooms and faculty offices, an art center, a chapel/auditorium, a college center with a bookstore and post office, and two administrative buildings.

The visionary design located these facilities according to use. Placing classrooms and faculty offices near Voskuyl Library and Whittier Science Building created an academic complex close to the heart of campus. The new residence hall bordered two existing residence halls. Locating the college store and post office next to the dining commons provided a place for students to gather. Staff offices in two buildings near Kerrwood Hall kept administrative functions centered around the estate house. All these buildings fit in well with the gardens and landscaped areas on campus. The new design brought dispersed academic departments together, encouraging interdisciplinary dialog and endeavors.

A re-routed campus road improved circulation and made the center of campus free of traffic.

The committee also adopted architectural guidelines that reflected a human scale and avoided an institutional look. Fitting buildings into the hillsides and woodland areas captured the feel of a Montecito estate and preserved existing fields, gardens, woodlands and barrancas. Moving buildings closer to the heart of campus placed them away from neighbors, with fields and woodlands as buffer areas. A catalog of topographical features and botanical treasures on campus identified areas needing preservation. Old photographs of the original gardens and other work by the landscape architect guided the planners. More than eighty percent of the campus would remain open space.

45 T L P  U W’ M P After meeting extensively with neighbors to solicit their comments, Westmont submitted the updated plan to county officials in 1998. It proposed no changes to the number of parking spaces, student beds, and classroom, assembly and spectator seats specified in the 1976 document, and no increase in enrollment. While the location of new buildings differed slightly on the revised plan, the number remained the same.

“Westmont has a strong and effective academic and spiritual program and is highly regarded within the Christian community nationally,” President Winter said in 1998. “But there is a major block to gaining increased stature, and that is the inadequacy of our campus.” In fact, Westmont had about half the square footage per student of similar liberal arts colleges.

The committee identified the most pressing need: a building for the psychology, physics, and mathematics and computer science departments. Classroom space and laboratory was limited and crowded, especially for the psychology department in Bauder Hall, a charming old carriage house.

Professor Brenda Smith, who chaired the department, quoted a 1989 report from a team reviewing Westmont’s accreditation: “The facilities are deplorable, with respect to both space and equipment . . . [the psychology program needs] a major improvement in facilities.”

The physics program also needed additional lab space. “More students are taking labs, and we don’t have enough set-ups or space for them,” said Professor Ken Kihl-

46 strom, department chair. “Two students working together is ideal: one takes notes and the other does the experiment. Adding a third usually means someone isn’t involved in the project.”

The updated plan moved the art department into the academic complex, bringing the creative and performing arts together and making them more visible to students from all majors. A larger gallery provided space for more extensive exhibits. The chapel/auditorium allowed the entire campus to worship together and provided a venue for concerts by the music department.

After reviewing comments from county officials about the 1998 document, Westmont continued working with the college community, neighbors and county planners to refine the updated master plan. College officials held numerous meetings in local neighborhoods, noting neighbors’ suggestions and concerns. They reviewed the latest environmental and planning standards to make sure the plan met all requirements.

Westmont submitted its final updated master plan to the county in April 2000.

W R T EIR  T A C In 2002, Santa Barbara County planning officials determined that Westmont’s updated plan did not require an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) because it would not create significant environmental impacts. The county held the first public hearing on the plan July 23 in Montecito, and more than eighty people attended. A few people expressed concerns about impacts after county planners stated the college could mitigate them. To

NOTICIAS fully address these concerns, Westmont requested an EIR even though the county did not require it, a decision that cost the college a significant amount of money and time. The county selected a consultant, who started work on the EIR in October 2003. Planners presented the draft EIR at a well-attended public hearing in July 2004. The EIR found the updated master plan a better alternative for the environment than the 1976 plan, citing improved parking and traffic circulation through campus, preservation of eighty-one percent of the campus as landscaped and open space, and no change in enrollment, parking permits or the number of campus activities. A few people still criticized the plan, and Westmont volunteered to complete a second EIR. William M. Macfadyen, editor and publisher of the South Coast Beacon, praised Westmont’s forbearance. On Aug. 1, 2004, he wrote, “Westmont College has gone out of its way to be a solid citizen. Will it be enough? ‘A growing, huge ogre.’ ‘Frontier expansionism.’ A ‘horrific tragedy for one of the most unique and special residential areas in the world.’ No, that’s not part of the script from a new Michael Moore ‘documentary’ about Iraq.

Those are claims about an apparently far more sinister threat: Westmont College.

So, what’s the deal? Is Westmont trying to boost enrollment to 20,000 students, cut down all of its trees, add weekend rock concerts and build a NASCAR track? Actually, nothing of the sort.

“Facing nearly hysterical opposition from a few sources that bordered on the, well, hysterical, a stunned Westmont decided to undertake a complete environ-

WESTMONT COLLEGE mental impact report even though the county had determined none was needed.

While it took precious time off the calendar and cost an additional $250,000, the new report did reveal some interesting effects: The updated plan enhances campus biological resources, reduces fire hazards, upgrades emergency access, and improves both traffic circulation and parking. Those usually are considered good things. Westmont is to be commended for setting for itself a higher standard of accountability to, fairness with and concern for our community. On that point, we’re confident the larger Montecito and South Coast communities will agree and that county officials will move this project forward.”

Consultants completed the revised EIR in 2005, and hearings began later that year.

At this point, the effort to update the master plan had taken a decade and cost the college more than $2 million. The second EIR also cited environmental benefits of the updated plan: enhancing campus biological resources, reducing fire hazards and upgrading emergency access.

A small group of opponents continued to protest the project. College leaders agreed to delay several hearings to pursue mediation with these critics, but it was not successful. More than 240 neighbors living within half a mile of the college and more than one thousand Montecitans publicly expressed support for the updated plan as members of the Friends of Westmont.

This broad-based group of Santa Barbara residents began in 1990 to support the college’s efforts to average enrollment and build homes for professors and their families. Members attended many hearings, spoke in favor of the college’s proposals

47 and wrote countless letters of support.

In 2006, Westmont asked for a break in the hearings to revise the updated master plan in response to suggestions by the Board of Architectural Review and county planners. Santa Barbara architects David VanHoy, Van Hoy Architects, and Ken Radtkey, Blackbird Architects, revised building designs and incorporated green elements. These changes reduced total construction by more than 20,000 square feet and preserved ninety acres of the campus as landscaping or open space.

T U M P R U S The Montecito Planning Commission unanimously approved Westmont’s updated master plan in November 2006. The college agreed to 116 conditions (up from 31), strictly regulating everything from the time construction began each day to campus lighting.

A few opponents appealed the decision to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. By the end of 2006, the college had held more than one hundred neighborhood meetings and spent sixty hours in eleven days of public hearings. In February 2007, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to uphold the favorable decision by the Montecito Planning Commission.

A small group filed a lawsuit against the county challenging the unanimous approval of Westmont’s updated master plan by the Montecito Planning Commission and the County Board of Supervisors. The court reviewed transcripts of all the hearings and EIRs, a massive amount of pa-

48 per that occupied twelve boxes. Superior Court Judge Thomas Anderle reaffirmed the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors’ vote, ruling that the analysis in the EIR was exhaustive and supported by substantial evidence and that the county properly found the project consistent with the Montecito Community Plan.

Opponents appealed this decision, but California’s Second District Court of Appeal unanimously supported Westmont’s plan in a decision released December 3, 2009. A three-judge panel issued their finding after hearing arguments October 22. In all, fourteen officials made five consecutive, unanimous decisions in favor of the updated master plan.

Eight years after submitting its plan to the county, Westmont broke ground on Adams Center for the Visual Arts and Winter Hall for Science and Mathematics. The college pulled permits for these buildings November 12, the day before the Tea Fire devastated campus. That meant construction and reconstruction occurred at the same time, and Adams Center and Winter Hall officially opened in time for the fall 2010 semester, with dedications occurring in May 2011. Other new facilities included the Westmont Observatory, the renovated Carr Field, the Westmont Track and Thorrington Field. The rerouted road, new parking areas and a central plant building completed the projects.

The U.S. Green Building Council certified four new Westmont buildings as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold: Winter Hall, Adams Center, the central plant and the observatory.

The award cited many spaces with natural ventilation and lighting, restoration of

NOTICIAS habitats, capture of storm water and reduction of light pollution and environmentally friendly carpets, paints and adhesives.

N L   N M The effort to update Westmont’s master plan involved three presidents. David Winter oversaw the development and submittal of the plan before retiring in 2001 after twenty-five years, the longest tenure of any Westmont president. Committed to making the institution an excellent liberal arts college, he helped strengthen the quality of faculty, students, facilities and student life programs. Sound fiscal policies allowed the college to balance its budget each year and build the endowment. Winter faithfully continued Westmont’s heritage as a Christian college, believing that educating the whole person produced healthy, wellrounded, competent people committed to making a difference in society. He reached out to the Santa Barbara community throughout his presidency, serving on many non-profit boards, and was widely recognized for his volunteer work. He embodies the servant leader who provides significant vision and direction while thinking first of the needs of others, and Westmont named an annual student award in his honor, the David K. Winter Servant Leadership Award. To recognize his contributions to the college, the trustees voted to name Winter Hall for Science and Mathematics after him. Winter inspired many when he lost his eyesight suddenly yet continued his work and service with graciousness and determination.

Stan Gaede, who had served as provost under Winter for five years, became the

WESTMONT COLLEGE

49 When Stan Gaede became Westmont’s seventh president in 2001, he became the first alumnus to hold the office.

During his five-year tenure he continued to work on the master plan while also focusing on fundraising. M. Bradley Elliott photograph.

college’s seventh president in 2001, the first alumnus to hold this office. He inherited the responsibility of updating the master plan and worked to increase fundraising, focusing especially on alumni giving and the endowment. During his tenure, student diversity also improved, rising to twenty percent in 2006 and twenty-six percent of North American ethnic minorities for the class of 2009. He stepped down after five years to return to Gordon College in Massachusetts, where he had taught for twentytwo years, to serve as scholar-in-residence at the Center for Christian Studies.

Gaede helped create the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont, recognizing that many people—even faculty at liberal arts colleges—struggle to define the liberal arts. Established in 2000, the institute (renamed the Gaede Institute in 2006) holds an annual Conversation on the Liberal Arts and publishes the proceedings in a journal. Themes included “Beyond Two Cultures: The Sciences as Liberal Arts” (2005), “Globalizing the Liberal Arts” (2006), “The Liberal Education of Students of Faith” (2010), and the upcoming “War and Peace and the Liberal Arts” (2013).

Christian Hoeckley directs the institute.

“A liberal arts education provides students with highly developed, transferable skills such as critical thinking, effective communication and creative problem solving,” he says. “The curriculum encourages students to develop character and become active and informed citizens. The liberal arts bring intellectual, social, recreational and spiritual considerations into one context. At the same time, they are communal, encouraging learning among people in a residential community.”

Professors at liberal arts focus on teach-

50 ing students. They engage in research in their field, but their primary goal is helping students develop the critical skills needed to succeed in a rapidly changing society.

Employers want to hire people who can think clearly, adapt in a rapidly changing environment and transfer skills and information from one situation to another that is completely different—liberal arts graduates possess these skills.

The Gaede Institute also reaches out to underserved students—those from low income backgrounds, underrepresented ethnic groups or families who haven’t attended college—to demonstrate how a liberal arts education benefits them. Westmont appoints current students as Liberal Arts Ambassadors to speak to junior high and high school students and advise them.

David Winter returned in 2006 to serve as chancellor for a year while Westmont conducted a presidential search. Gayle D. Beebe became Westmont’s eighth president July 1, 2007, after serving as president of Spring Arbor University in Michigan for seven years. He faced unexpected challenges the next year with the global financial meltdown and the destructive Tea Fire, and he led the college capably through both crises. He launched an effective strategic planning process that has created two three-year strategic maps, and he directed the successful Bright Hope for Tomorrow campaign to raise money for new facilities. An active scholar, Beebe has co-authored two books in recent years: Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion with Richard Foster in 2009 and The Shaping of an Effective Leader: Eight Formative Principles of Leadership in 2011. Under his leadership, six new members have joined

NOTICIAS the Westmont Board of Trustees, making the board younger, more diverse and broader-based. Five are Westmont graduates who deeply understand and appreciate the college’s mission.

Beebe set a goal of establishing institutes for all five of Westmont’s distinctive features: liberal arts, Christian, global, undergraduate and residential. In 2010, he announced a $3 million gift to found the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and the Dallas Willard Center for Spiritual Formation. “The purpose of the Willard Center is preparing a new generation of Christian leaders to articulate the philosophical, theological and biblical rationale for developing an interactive relationship with Christ,” said Westmont Trustee Patty Martin, who funded the institute with her husband, Eff. “Our Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts has focused new attention on the value of a liberal arts education, and we expect the Martin Institute and the Willard Center to also draw leading scholars nationwide to its conferences and conversations,” Beebe said.

S T   S B C Since 1995, Westmont has awarded the Westmont Medal to individuals who provide exceptional leadership in the Santa Barbara community. These men and women embody the principles associated with the college’s Judeo-Christian character and serve as role models for students. Larry Crandell, one of the founders of the Friends of Westmont, was the first recipient, and honorees have included Penny Jenkins,

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51 Gayle D. Beebe, Westmont’s eighth president, took the campus reins in 2007 and has emphasized strategic planning as the college moves into the 21st century. M. Bradley Elliott photograph.

Lord and Lady Ridley-Tree, Gerd Jordano, Robert Bryant, Robert and Christine Emmons, Paul and Natalie Orfalea, Michael Towbes, Walter and Darlene Hansen, and Chad and Gini Dreier.

Ten Santa Barbara community leaders served as founding members of the Westmont Foundation in 1997. This board provides leadership in four areas: promoting and supporting the college and its program; strengthening the natural link between Westmont and the Montecito and Santa Barbara communities; raising private financial support for Westmont; and enabling the college to improve the quality of its campus. Its programs include the Westmont Downtown lecture series, the annual President’s Breakfast and the Westmont Foundation Scholarships given to four local students each year.

The President’s Breakfast began in 2006 with American historian David Mc-

Cullough as speaker and quickly became an event that sells out each year. Speakers have included Robert Gates, former secretary of defense; Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state; Vicente Fox, former president of Mexico; Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and former chairman and CEO of CNN; Fareed Zakaria, host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN; and Thomas Friedman, author and New York Times columnist.

The Westmont Board of Advisors held its inaugural meeting in 1998. These prominent Christian business leaders and professionals meet twice a year to advise the president on curricular and related issues, meet with professors and students and serve as guest lecturers and consultants.

They work on projects to strengthen college programs, such as the economics and business department and the Career and Life Planning office.

Once a month, Westmont invites the public to campus to view the heavens through the Keck Telescope. Installed in 2007, the twenty-four-inch reflector telescope, an F/8 Cassegrain instrument with Ritchey-Chretien optics, is one of the most powerful on the Central Coast. Westmont serves as one of the observing sites for the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit (S.B.A.U.), which participates in the public viewings.

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52 T T F I C The sharp smell of smoke arrived ahead of the fire. Students began to notice it after 5:45 p.m., November 13, 2008. Within minutes, flames appeared at the Tea Gardens, the abandoned arches on a hillside above campus. When students saw the fire, they knew what to do - go to the gym.

“In the back of my mind, I recalled the many moments when we saw ‘In case of wildfire’ slides displayed in chapel,” William Hochberger ’11 said. “By the time we reached the observatory, we were in a sea of people frantically attempting to get to the safety of Murchison. I turned to gaze at the fire, and I couldn’t believe what I saw. It had easily tripled in the time it had taken me to get that far, and it seemed to be spreading at an exponential rate.”

Danielle Willard ’11 got to Murchison

at 6:07 p.m. “Thankfully, I went to the wildfire drill last year, so I was able to reassure the girls that the gym was safe and give them reasons why we should be there and not trying to get all eight hundred or more of us down the mountain,” she said.

Chris Call, vice president for administration, was getting into his car to go home when he noticed the fire. He headed back up to his office to collect his laptop before reporting to the Emergency Operation Center (EOC), where he served as the incident commander.

About 140 prospective students arrived on campus November 13 for Preview Days to attend classes and stay overnight in the residence halls. They too evacuated to the gym and unexpectedly witnessed how Westmont handles a crisis. Many of those students decided to enroll at Westmont.

Troy Harris, director of risk manage-

The night of November 13, 2008, became an unforgettable one when the Tea Fire raced through campus. Ray Ford photograph.

WESTMONT COLLEGE ment, developed the college’s wildfire plan in 2003 and organized drills for students and staff. At the request of fire officials, the plan included sheltering students and neighbors in the gym, a fireproof structure, rather than evacuating 1200 students over narrow Montecito roads. More than ten agencies involved in emergency response knew about and supported this approach, and many participated in Westmont’s drills.

Although the Tea Fire came close to the gym, students and neighbors were safe inside, and the plan worked as expected. Fire officials later said the shelter saved lives.

Daniel Clapp, resident director at Emerson, managed the shelter in the gym and organized it quickly. He assigned each residence hall an area in the gym and set up locations for faculty, staff and neighbors.

One of the first tasks was retrieving water and blankets from storage.

President Beebe was driving to the Los Angeles area when he heard about the fire.

He turned around at once, and fire officials escorted him to campus, where he remained throughout the night, monitoring the EOC and making periodic announcements to students in the gym.

Tom Beveridge, director of physical plant, was working in his office when Public Safety Officer Karen Huggins told him about the fire. “I immediately called our public safety staff and trades staff,” he said.

They made their way to campus quickly.

“There was fire everywhere at 6:30 p.m.,” said Hugo Franco, trades manager. Ray Gonzales and Aleksandr Vertsekha began to hook up the generator to the gym; when the campus lost power at 7:12 p.m., it was ready to go, and the students suffered only a momentary blackout. Beveridge, Ariel

53 Palomares and Viktor Markov grabbed hoses and fire extinguishers and began attacking the flames in strategic spots: the generator, the parking lot west of the gym and the prayer chapel. Their actions saved these areas and many vehicles.

“The wind was so strong, you had to turn your face,” Markov said. Firefighters were busy evacuating the neighborhood and could not get to Westmont in time to save Bauder Hall, the physics building, the Quonset huts and the old math building.

But strike teams from Los Angeles kept the losses in Clark Halls, a student residence, to just three structures.

Nearby in Las Barrancas, where the college built forty-one homes for faculty and their families, the fire was spreading rapidly. By the end of the night, fourteen homes had been destroyed. Residents who saw the quickly moving blaze had little time to grab possessions and flee.

Inside Murchison, students could only imagine the scene outside. “Great prayer circles began to form throughout the gym,” Kylie Culver ’11 said. “I found myself putting my hands on the shoulders of people I had never met. The evening was heartwrenching, but knowing God was in control was comforting.”

“The night spent in the gym was one of the most unforgettable events of my life,” Ravyn Cervantes ’11 said. “It was amazing and confounding to witness the juxtaposition of people’s persistently chipper attitudes contrasted with the steady, ominous, rising smoke inside the building.”

A classroom next to the gym became the EOC, and the Situation Readiness and Response Team (SRT) met there throughout the night and kept the campus and

54

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community informed through updates to an emergency phone line and the colleges’ website. In the days that followed, the website became the primary source of news, and the college also communicated by the emergency phone line, conference calls with parents, a phone bank and mass email messages.

The wind began to die down between 9:30-10 p.m. and quit completely around midnight. The firestorm subsided and

The media showed up as soon as the fire began, and a helicopter from a Los Angeles television station hovered over Montecito, broadcasting images of burning buildings.

Media crews began filming the destruction on the ground as soon as the sun rose, and they covered Westmont’s fire story for the next few weeks. Accounts appeared in the New York Times, on CNN and Fox News and on many television and radio stations across the country.

never threatened campus again, although spot fires smoldered for days. Since the danger had lessened, the SRT began to let students leave campus. Those who had cars close by and a place to go were the first to leave. Reality Church in Carpinteria sent a bus and picked up one hundred students. By 2 p.m. on Friday, all students had left the gym and found a place to stay.

More than four hundred people in Santa Barbara opened their homes to students and staff displaced by the fire. In the light of day, officials surveyed the damage to the grounds. The fire destroyed eight buildings and vegetation on a third of the campus, consuming many trees.

President Beebe met with his executive team November 14 and throughout the weekend to begin the recovery. They faced many questions: How soon can classes restart? When will power, water and gas be restored? What will it take to make the campus safe for students, faculty and staff?

How quickly can crews clean up debris and remove smoke and ash from surviving buildings? An evacuation order for the campus remained in effect until the evening of November 16, which complicated matters. By November 17 it became obvious the college could not reopen for at least a week. With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, Beebe and the faculty decided to resume classes December 1; by that time the campus would be clean and safe. Students were allowed to return for half an hour November 18 or 19 to collect clothing and class materials.

The Tea Fire caused some $15 million in damage to the Westmont campus. Shown above are the remains of the math building. M. Bradley Elliott photograph.

WESTMONT COLLEGE The men’s soccer team had been scheduled to host a playoff game against No. 5 Azusa Pacific University November 15 to determine the winner of the Golden State Athletic Conference. The fire forced the cancellation of this match, and Coach Dave Wolf, his wife and their five children lost their home in the fire as did one of his athletes. Westmont would have had to forfeit, but Azusa Pacific’s coach, who is Wolf ’s brother, asked that the game be rescheduled on their campus. The Warriors arrived in Azusa November 17 smoky but determined to overcome the disaster.

Hundreds of students traveled from their homes throughout Southern California to support their team. In a storybook ending, beautifully told by Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke, the Warriors won the championship 2-0. They defeated two more teams to reach the quarterfinals of the NAIA National Tournament, where they lost 1-0. UC Santa Barbara offered the Warriors free use of Harder Stadium for one of these games, and thousands of Santa Barbara fans attended the match.

One of the staff ’s primary concerns was supporting the sixty-two students who lost rooms in the fire. The student life office appointed an advocate for each damaged room to assist students and their families in dealing with insurance issues, replacing lost items and completing class work. The trustees also named advocates for the fifteen faculty families left homeless in the wake of the fire to make sure they received advice, support and assistance.

Alumni, parents, friends and people unfamiliar with the college but touched by its plight, contributed to the Wildfire Relief Fund or offered clothing, household goods

55 or gift cards. After two weeks of hard work, the campus was ready for students to return November 29.

The college invited Montecito firefighters, trustees, parents and alumni to chapel December 1 for a “Service of Hope and Renewal.” President Beebe’s praise for firefighters received a thunderous standing ovation from the crowd of more than two thousand. Following the poignant service, people walked to Voskuyl Prayer Chapel, which survived even though trees burned all around it, to sing the college hymn, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” an echo from 1964 when the Westmont community sang the same hymn after the Coyote Fire.

The Tea Fire left its mark, causing $15 million in damages. Time has restored the beauty of the campus. Westmont finished reconstruction of all fourteen faculty homes and three Clark Hall buildings before the one-year anniversary of the fire. Three of the burned buildings were scheduled for demolition, and the college opted not to rebuild the other two.

W B  L  C- T In the late 1990s, Westmont worked to improve its computer infrastructure and received two grants to develop existing systems, pursue new technologies and increase bandwidth. The college wired the campus with fiber optic cable and outfitted three classrooms with multimedia learning tools.

Westmont went wireless in 2006, installing access points at most residence halls, the Voskuyl Library and Kerr Student Center.

To further strengthen technology on campus, Beebe appointed Reed Sheard as

56 vice president for information technology and chief information officer in 2008. The next year, Westmont emerged as a leader in wireless technology, becoming the only school in the country to completely move to an 802.11n wireless network that creates a wireless cloud over the entire campus. “Until now we haven’t had the same level of excellence in our technology infrastructure that we’ve accomplished in our academic program,” Sheard said.

Predicting that Internet-enabled mobile devices would become the most common way to access information on the Web, he saw that Westmont could become a pioneer in this area.

In 2010, a prestigious information technology list recognized Westmont for its leadership in cloud-based technology.

The annual InfoWorld 100 Awards chose the college as one of one hundred information technology organizations that have “implemented and integrated technologies in innovative ways in pursuit of concrete business goals.” The same year, Westmont released an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch with easily accessible information about the college and developed a native iPad application for the Westmont magazine in 2011. A renovation of the library in 2010 created a learning commons featuring two rooms equipped with collaborative tables integrated with technology and an open lab area with twenty-seven computers and a library instruction lab with another twenty-four computers. Under Sheard’s direction, the college began publishing high quality videos on the Internet easily accessible on computers and mobile devices through YouTube and iTunesU.

NOTICIAS The magazine eCampus News chose Westmont from nearly 4,500 colleges and universities as the eCampus of the Month for January 2012. The publication, which boasts a readership of more than 51,000 higher education leaders, says Westmont has “implemented predictive modeling and cloud-computing programs to save money and spend budgets efficiently, becoming a model for small schools looking for ways to survive the slumping economy.” Rather than increase the budget or add personnel, Westmont’s IT department actually cut its budget.

W C  R  N R By 2011, Westmont had tied for 90th among the leading liberal arts colleges listed in U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges, 2012 Edition.” It was the third straight year Westmont ranked in the top one hundred. Beginning as a regional liberal arts college in 1986, Westmont moved into the fourth tier of the national liberal arts category in 1991, reached the third tier in 2000, the second in 2003 and the top in 2005.

Forbes magazine recognized Westmont in its 2012 America’s Top Colleges list, which includes only 650 institutions nationwide. Westmont ranks 76th, up from 81st in 2011. In January 2011, Forbes selected Westmont as the second-best college for minorities to earn a degree in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine ranked Westmont in the top one hundred liberal arts colleges in its Best Values in

WESTMONT COLLEGE Private Colleges list in 2012. The report, which named Westmont No. 88, ranked the schools based on outstanding academics and great economic value.

In September 2011, the Department of Education released figures that showed Westmont students were repaying their federal student loans despite a steep increase in borrowers defaulting. Cohort default rates increased for all sectors from 6 to 7.2 percent for public institutions and from 4 to 4.6 percent for private institutions, but Westmont’s decreased from 1.3 percent to .9 percent.

The impressive academic credentials of Westmont students have helped the college rise in the rankings. The class of 2015 includes four National Merit Scholars and 275 students who earned academic merit scholarships, including three Monroe Scholars, who receive full tuition scholarships. The admissions office received a record number of applications and enrolled a class with an average SAT score of 1780 and average grade point average of 3.86.

The presence of nationally known scholars and teachers at Westmont contributes to the college’s academic distinction. More than ninety-five percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty have earned terminal degrees in their fields. Making affordable faculty homes available in Las Barrancas has helped the college recruit and retain the best faculty. Westmont seeks professors committed to teaching undergraduates, doing scholarly research, mentoring students and exploring faith-related issues within and outside the classroom. In the past fifteen years, Westmont has established eight endowed faculty chairs, presti-

57 gious positions that provide resources for a professor’s salary and research. These chairs have helped Westmont recruit nationally known, established scholars in fields such as Old Testament, philosophy, music and art history.

A B H  T  W In 2009, Westmont kicked off a nationwide campaign, Bright Hope for Tomorrow, to help fund facilities approved in the updated master plan. The first phase of construction, which occurred between 2008 and 2010, cost $102 million.

Montecito resident Lady Leslie RidleyTree pledged $5 million to the campaign, and the college named the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art in Adams Center in her honor. In fifteen months, Westmont held twelve large regional dinners and forty-three smaller lunches, dinners and gatherings to present the campaign to more than two thousand people interested in supporting the college. Gifts to the Bright Hope for Tomorrow campaign propelled Westmont to its best fundraising period ever.

“Our new buildings and fields have transformed the physical appearance of the campus,” President Beebe says. “Students and faculty in our computer science, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, psychology and visual arts programs benefit from state-of-the-art facilities in Winter Hall and Adams Center. These facilities provide essential tools for transforming students and carrying out our mission of blending rigorous academics with a deep love of God.”

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58 T T A: W  Like all his predecessors, President Beebe is committed to Westmont’s mission as an undergraduate, residential, Christian, liberal arts community serving God’s kingdom by cultivating thoughtful scholars, grateful servants and faithful leaders for global engagement with the academy, church and world.

Looking ahead, he will focus on completing the campus master plan, building a strong financial base for the 21st century and continuing the strategic planning pro-

cess he initiated. His ambitious goals for 2020 include growing the endowment to $150 million to provide more scholarship assistance for students, increasing the number of faculty chairs from eight to nineteen and creating effective programs to help Westmont meet the challenges that lie ahead. He plans to establish three more institutes at Westmont in the following areas: global studies, effective undergraduate education and the value of a residential college experience. To accomplish these goals, Beebe will seek to increase expectancies from wills and estate plans to $250 million in the next eight years.

Commencement ceremonies, 1944.

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59

“I’m excited about the future,” Beebe says.

“Watching the class of 2012 walk across the stage at Commencement inspires me. I see all that great talent and ability and believe that these men and women cannot only command respect with their character, but accomplish great things through their intellect.

“At Westmont, God isn’t just preparing people to serve in every sphere of society. He’s preparing people to lead in every sphere of society. God has been faithful to Westmont. This is our moment; this is the time we respond in faithfulness to Him.”

Commencement 2012.

M. Bradley Elliott photograph

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AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This article draws heavily on the work of Professor Emeritus Paul Wilt. When he retired after teaching history at Westmont for thirty-six years (1958-1994), he devoted ten years to organizing Westmont’s archives. He continues to volunteer there one morning a week with his wife, Doris, who has also given much of her time. For years, Paul has conducted oral history interviews with people instrumental in founding Westmont and those involved in its early years. He and his student interns have written histories of all the buildings and many people who shaped Westmont.

Professor Emeritus John Sider has also done notable historical work, focusing on the history of the liberal arts at Westmont and conducting many oral history interviews. Archivist Corey Thomas (2005-2008) completely organized and inventoried all the historical materials, making them more accessible. Diane Ziliotto has continued her good work, serving as the college archivist since 2008. She supplied the photographs that illustrate this article. Chris Call, vice president for administration, Paul Wilt, John Sider, and Diane Ziliotto all served on the advisory committee for this history of Westmont and provided valuable assistance.

anta a a a isto ical se m 2012 oa o stees Marlene R. Miller Robin Schutte Lawrence T. Hammett William S. Burtness David R. Martin

President First Vice President Second Vice President Treasurer Secretary

George L. Burtness Randall Fox Sheila Bourke McGinity P. A. Weber III Eleanor Van Cott Trustee Emeritus

Douglas A. Diller Executive Director

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