Azusa Rated Among Best Small Colleges

Behind the rubble of construction and across the street from rows of shopping malls and hamburger takeouts in the southeast corner of Azusa, an obscure little Christian college appears to be nudging into the big time.

Azusa Pacific University was included this fall in a listing of the country’s 25 best small comprehensive colleges that was compiled by U.S. News and World Report.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is expected to produce more accolades in a report to be released this month, according to hints from the foundation’s president, Ernest Boyer.

Azusa Pacific University “has fallen into the inner circle” of top-rated schools, Boyer said at a faculty meeting on campus earlier this month. Boyer was formerly chancellor of State University of New York and United States Commissioner of Education.

“Azusa Pacific represents an interesting type of institution in America--the small private college with a religious tradition as part of its heritage that I think is redefining its mission,” Boyer said. “It is finding ways to hold to deep traditions while accommodating changed circumstances. It comes as close as an example of deep-running currents of American higher education in its uniqueness as anything I know.”

Temporary Quarters

In makeshift president’s headquarters where he is surrounded by 27 other temporary buildings usually referred to as “trailers,” Azusa Pacific President Paul Sago basked in the pleasure of hard-won honors.

“We’re so much better than we’re recognized to be,” he said.

Azusa Pacific will become more recognizable next year, when a new complex of music and theology schools, a chapel, recital hall and administrative offices opens at the corner of Citrus and Alosta avenues. Administrators hope the buildings under construction will give more identity to a school that now looks more like a collection of temporary structures.

The university gained notoriety of a sort when it sold its hillside campus in the foothills above Glendora to the Church of the Open Door in 1986 for $6 million. Although the church immediately began using a former gym for Sunday services, it took 2 years for Azusa Pacific to get its money because of a complicated legal dispute.

Despite the construction, Azusa Pacific probably will remain overshadowed by Citrus Community College next door, which has eight times as many students, and the nearby Claremont Colleges, which are better endowed and more famous.

Unrecognized for Years

Sago believes Azusa Pacific has excelled even though generally unrecognized for many years. He says the school suffers from the same “20-year time lag” that he thinks falsely perpetuates reputations, both good and bad, of many colleges.

With students from about 30 countries joining those from 40 states, Sago said, “We are probably better known in Korea or in the educational community of Hong Kong than we are in certain parts of the Los Angeles basin.”

Sago calls Azusa Pacific “a college in transition,” explaining that the transition has been going on for 90 years.

The school traces its roots to 1899 in Whittier, where, with 12 students, it began as the Training School for Christian Workers.

Merging several times with other small Protestant schools, by 1963 it had 237 students and was settled on its present 70-acre site.

Today Azusa Pacific University has 1,500 full-time undergraduates--most of whom live on campus--and 500 to 1,000 graduate students seeking master’s degrees in 13 programs. It has schools of liberal arts, sciences, music, nursing, business and management, education and behavioral studies, and theology.

Sister Schools

During his 13-year tenure as president, Sago has established “sister school” ties with 18 colleges and preparatory schools in 11 countries and is working on 10 similar affiliations to join in exchange programs.

As with most private colleges, more than half of the students receive financial aid. Tuition, room and board total about $10,440 a year.

The U.S. News and World Report ranking was based on several factors, including rating the quality of students according to their high school records, strength of the faculty and teaching, student-teacher ratios, ability to retain students and the schools’ reputations for excellence. Small comprehensive colleges were those with fewer than 2,500 students.

Azusa Pacific administrators said most incoming freshmen this year were in the top 25% of their high school classes. Half of the 120 faculty have doctoral degrees, and the ratio is 17 students for each teacher. While 55% of the students complete four years at Azusa Pacific, a spokesman said that most dropouts in all colleges occur in the first year and that the school retains 75% of its students from then on.

Other Southern California schools on the U.S. News and World Report’s list of best small comprehensive colleges were Whittier College and California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

Two San Gabriel Valley schools, Pomona College and Claremont McKenna College, were on the list of 25 best “small but superb” liberal arts colleges that draw students from 50 states.

Evangelical Context

The magazine noted that Azusa Pacific offers “training in an evangelical context,” requiring undergraduates and staff to attend chapel three times a week.

Although the school is ecumenical and has no formal church ties, it has a “statement of faith” that employees are asked to abide by. It is similar to Protestant creeds that avow belief in the Bible as the word of God, the Holy Trinity and Jesus’ resurrection.

To graduate, students must earn “ministries points” by serving impoverished people. Best known of the programs are twice-a-year trips to Mexicali in which more than 4,000 volunteers from churches and schools throughout the San Gabriel Valley join Azusa Pacific students to teach, feed and provide other services for the poor.

Despite such Christian-inspired activities, there are no obvious religious symbols on the tidy campus. And although construction and temporary structures abound, there also are a number of modern buildings, including a library, science building and gym.

Most of the campus is occupied by parking lots, athletic fields and student apartments that were installed 20 years ago as “temporary” housing. Centered in a cluster of classroom buildings is a student lounge so small it would fit in the foyers of student centers of most California state colleges.

“I don’t think this school has the pull that USC has, when it comes to getting into grad school,” said senior Vicki Koopman, as she relaxed in the student lounge. A former Arcadia resident whose family now lives in Iowa, Koopman said, “I wanted to go to USC for the name, but I know I’m getting a better education here. Teachers know me and help me.”