Women’s Center Opens Doors to Job Success : Careers: The UC Irvine program is expanding to help women and minorities find their niche in a changing workplace.

Workers at the Women’s Opportunity Center at UC Irvine have seen more than a few hard-luck stories in the past 22 years.

One woman left the Midwest after a nasty divorce and drove to Orange County with two children, a beat-up station wagon and $80. Today, she is supporting her family as a medical technologist. She credits a job seekers’ clinic at the center with helping her get back on her feet.

Another woman walked into the center with no high school diploma, a broken marriage and a couple of bit parts in movies to her credit. Counselors encouraged her to finish her diploma, and today she manages a restaurant in Los Angeles.

The center offers counseling, vocational testing, resume writing tips, job leads and classes in marketing, sales, computers and assertiveness training.

Others who have used the center’s services now own consulting businesses, work as lawyers and accountants and hold senior management positions in major corporations. Some are officers in civic and community groups.

With many success stories behind it, the center has been able to raise more than half the cost of a new $1.2-million building through donations from those it has helped. The new building, scheduled to open by the end of the year, will be staffed by the center’s first full-time director.

The center opened in 1969 to help the increasing number of women moving into the workplace. The time was ripe: marriages were failing in record numbers, and layoffs in the defense industry were throwing many people--often men who were their families’ sole breadwinners--out of work. Meanwhile, the women’s movement was beginning to call for equal work and equal wages.

The center started as a table and folding chairs in the lobby of one of the university’s buildings. It offered counseling services, resume writing tips and, eventually, classes.

“We assumed (the need for the center) would be relatively short-lived, that women would achieve parity and wouldn’t need something special and separate,” said Sylvia Lenhoff, a founder.

Many of the centers first visitors were divorced women with children who were without a college degree.

More than 100,000 women and men--men make up about 5% of the clientele--have used the center, which will be able to serve three times as many people after its move to larger quarters.

A satellite center is planned for North Orange County to reach out to minority women.

“It was impossible to see 20 years ago that the center, with a slight change in focus, would still be needed,” said Melvin Hall, dean of UCI’s University Extension, which oversees the center.

“New needs are defined as different immigrant groups show up in Orange County and as people change careers more frequently and feel less secure in a field. These were issues we hadn’t dreamed of 20 years ago.”

The center’s new director is Linda White, who comes from Pepperdine University, where she administered the executive MBA program. Past directors have come from the center’s ranks of about 80 volunteer secretaries, counselors and teachers. A graduate of Pepperdine’s two-year MBA program, she speaks the language of business.

Since she was hired in May, she has expanded the reference library and job postings at the center. She has seen that the center’s course offerings are no longer listed in the “women’s programs” section of the UCI course catalogue, but instead in the “career development” and “business” categories

She has also made it a priority to visit Orange County business people.

“We’ve had calls from corporations and other organizations sending in job openings,” White said. “They’re talking about promoting women and minorities, about what to do to prepare those individuals to move up the ladder.

“By the year 2000, white males will be in the minority in the work force,” she added. “Businesses are aware that their populations are changing. Some are planning ahead.”

She plans to invite more business leaders to speak at the center, to keep the exchange of ideas going.

“If you’re providing a service, you have to look out there and see what the needs are,” White said. “We have to stay attuned to what’s happening in business.”