Enrollment Rises at Cal State Dominguez Hills

Cal State Dominguez Hills is shedding its troubled image and building a reputation as a stable institution with quality programs, President John Brownell said last month in announcing a second year of enrollment growth.

He said enrollment at the Carson campus rose 3% this fall to 8,106 students, following a 5.5% increase a year ago. About 3,300 additional students are enrolled in a statewide nursing program that Dominguez administers, Brownell said.

“What we have to offer here is becoming much better known in the communities we serve,” he said. “We have made a well-planned effort to reach out to industry, business, the community colleges and high schools, and now we are beginning to see the first fruits of that effort.”

With the growth in enrollment, the budgetary pressures of a few years ago have eased and campus morale has improved, said Brownell, who took over in early 1987 after the death of President Richard Butwell.

W. Ann Reynolds, chancellor of the 19-campus state university system, also sees improvements at Dominguez Hills. “President Brownell took office at a difficult time and has done a masterful job of ensuring that the diverse elements on the campus” work together to bring about the improvements, she said.

Started Nursing Program

Besides leading the effort to increase enrollment, she said, Brownell instituted the nursing program, which offers classes throughout the state to nurses who want to earn bachelor’s or postgraduate degrees in their field.

She said Brownell also has helped plan a proposed math-science high school that would be located on the Dominguez Hills campus.

Judson Taylor, an 18-year veteran on the Carson campus who heads the school of education, called the Center for Quality Education, said teachers and administrators are confident that Brownell is leading the university in the right direction. He said he is particularly pleased with efforts to upgrade and expand programs for students who want to go into teaching.

Robert Dowling, chairman of the Academic Senate, said the “turbulent waters of the past are now relatively placid. There is a much greater degree of cooperation between the faculty and administration, a sense of things getting done.”

Patricia Allen, an Associated Students officer and a liberal arts major, said students also are happy about new trends at Dominguez Hills.

Upbeat Campus

“Sure, you still hear some complaints about the prices in the bookstore and in the cafeteria,” she said. “But most students really like it here--I mean, things like the friendly, laid-back atmosphere, the closeness of the campus to where people live and great rapport with the teachers.”

The upbeat portrayal is in sharp contrast to the campus situation a few years ago. Enrollment had steadily declined by about 300 students each year from a high of 8,340 in 1983. By 1986, the total had dropped to 7,335 full- and part-time students.

Teachers graduating from Dominguez Hills regularly ranked among the lowest for all colleges in the state on basic skills tests--results that further undermined the university’s credibility.

Butwell, a scholar of Southeast Asia who was appointed president in August, 1984, attempted to deal with the problems by reorganizing the staff, adding programs and converting from the quarter to the semester system.

The conversion brought the Dominguez Hills calendar in line with a nationwide trend to the semester system, which provides more time for in-depth study of college subjects. But the short-term effect was to drive enrollment even lower at the 25-year-old college because of the difficulties of prospective students in adjusting to a new academic year. State funding, which is based on attendance, shrank further, leading to cutbacks and threats of layoffs.

Butwell came under increasing pressure from the faculty, which contended that he made important decisions without conferring adequately with his teaching and administrative staff.

The crisis came to a head in early 1987, when Chancellor Reynolds suggested that Butwell find another job. Butwell died 2 weeks later of a heart attack.

Brownell, the campus academic vice president, was named acting president and later interim president after trustees noted his initial success in easing faculty discontent and inspiring support for new efforts to overcome the university’s problems.

In an interview, Brownell, 64, said his 2-year appointment as interim president will end with his retirement next summer. He said a nationwide search will be made to find his permanent replacement.

Brownell said he is confident that Dominguez Hills will continue to grow toward its 10,000-student capacity and beyond. He observed that California is becoming increasingly a state of minorities, a trend that fits the population at Dominguez Hills, where about 60% of the students are black, Latino or Asian.

“We are already a university of the future,” he said. “We have an inside track when it comes to educating California’s diverse population.”