noticias - Santa Barbara Historical Museum

NOTIC IAS
Journal Of The Santa Barbara Historical Museum
Vol. LIV
No. 1
75 Y EARS
Santa Barbara Historical Museum
2012 Board of Trustees
Marlene R. Miller
Robin Schutte
Lawrence T. Hammett
President
William S. Burtness
David R. Martin
President
First Vice President
Second Vice
Treasurer
Secretary
Eric H. Boehm
George L. Burtness
Randall Fox
Sheila McGinity
Eleanor Van Cott
Trustee Emeritus
Douglas A. Diller
Executive Director
≤
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.
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 (19581994), 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 (20052008) 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. All images are from the archives of Westmont College unless noted otherwise. The
Latin phrase on the front cover may be translated, “Holding Christ Preeminent.” 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.
WESTMONT COLLEGE
75
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.
Westmont Begins with
an Enduring Vision
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,
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.”
The College Struggles to Survive
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-
NOTICIAS
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
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
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.
Westmont Continues
Throughout World War 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,
‘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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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.
The Trustees Search
for a New Campus
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.
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.
Westmont Finds a New Home in
Santa Barbara
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.
10
NOTICIAS
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.
WESTMONT COLLEGE
11
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.’”
Westmont’s Musical Heritage
Dates to Its Earliest Days
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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14
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-
WESTMONT COLLEGE
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.
Roger Voskuyl Plays a
Pivotal Role as President
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
16
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.
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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.
The Westmont Campus Takes Shape
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 of 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.
The Voskuyls Suffe
a Personal Tragedy
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.
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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 both Nancy and 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 Vibrant Residential Community
Develops on Campus
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.
In the aftermath of the tragic 1959 death of President Voskuyl’s daughter, Nancy, in an automobile accident was 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 weren’t 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.
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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.”
Growth Continues in the 1960s
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.
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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.
Westmont’s Oldest Student
Tradition Spans Fifty-One Years
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 longtime
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
The Coyote Fire Threatens Campus
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
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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.”
The College Moves a Library
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.
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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.
The Voskuyl Era Ends
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. The building
was badly damaged, but much of its contents were
saved, due to the quick action of staff and students.
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 Fire in Kerrwood Hall
Inspires Heroic Action
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.
Professor Robert Gundry had been get-
NOTICIAS
ting 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
almost all the furnishings and important re-
WESTMONT COLLEGE
cords and no one was hurt, the fire did mostly structural damage. The building reopened
in time for the fall 1970 quarter.
Westmont Professor Becomes
the New President
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. At thirty-seven, he was the youngest man to become
31
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, especially with a wonderful
Lyle Hillegas became president
of Westmont in 1971. Under
his watch, the student code of
behavior was revised, as he
continued to wrestle with the
school’s economic concerns.
32
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.
Off-Campus Programs Help
Students Develop a
Global Perspective
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.
Westmont Receives Permission
for 1,200 Students
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-yielding
annual income.
NOTICIAS
A Growing Concern
for Christian Service
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.
NOTICIAS
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.
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 Traffic Accident in Ensenada
Claims Three Lives
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.
Westmont Builds Its Enrollment
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
More Students Create
a Need for New Facilities
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
Potter’s Clay, a self-directed student ministry, The ever-more 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.
Building Homes for Faculty
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
NOTICIAS
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.
Westmont Focuses o
Completing the Campus
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
The Long Process of Updating
Westmont’s Master Plan
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.
Westmont Requests Two EIRs to
Thoroughly Address Concerns
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.
The Updated Master Plan
Receives Unanimous Support
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 Dec. 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.
New Leaders for a New Millennium
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 primarily 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
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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.
Strengthening Ties with the
Santa Barbara Community
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,
WESTMONT COLLEGE
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
The Tea Fire Invades Campus
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 Murchi-
son 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
NOTICIAS
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
e-mail messages.
The wind began to die down between
9:30-10 p.m. and quit completely around
midnight. The firestorm subsided and nev-
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.
er 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 play-off 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
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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.
Westmont Becomes a Leader in
Cloud-based Technology
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
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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 twentyseven 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.
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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.
Westmont Continues to Rise
in National Rankings
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, prestigious positions that provide resources for a
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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 Bright Hope for Tomorrow
at Westmont
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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The Territory Ahead:
Westmont 2020
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.
WESTMONT COLLEGE
“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.”
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Commencement 2012.
M. Bradley Elliott photograph
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NOTICIAS