Group Plans University in San Juan Capistrano : Education: Backed by local business leaders, the private school could open as early as September.

A group of prominent local business people hopes to launch a private, nondenominational college here called the University of San Juan Capistrano, possibly as early as September.

The group is led by the Rev. Ernest D. Sillers, an Episcopal minister, who has made a career of school start-up work. One committee member, San Juan Capistrano City Councilman Kenneth E. Friess, will unveil the plan to the City Council tonight.

Sillers, 81, of Coto de Caza, who now heads St. John’s School of Rancho Santa Margarita, said a steering committee is being set up this week with a fund-raising target of $16 million. The group anticipates classes could start as soon as September for what would eventually grow to be a 3,000- to 4,000-student university. The school would concentrate on training in health-care areas, as well as environmental and hotel management.

“We are in the process of incorporation now, but this is an idea that has been in the making for 15 years,” Sillers said. The group is negotiating with the University of California to buy its 357-acre Reed Ranch in the southwest area of the city as a site for a future campus.

Sillers said, however, that he expects to get classes started in quarters leased throughout the city before a physical plant would be built.

If classes do not commence this September, then the group will aim for September, 1993, Sillers said, to inaugurate a university that will be “unique; there’s nothing like it in the world.”

“It will be highly specialized. We want to accomplish things that are not being done in universities and colleges presently,” he said. “We want to meet a dire need of people trained to do the work that is now needed in our communities.”

Among the fields Sillers has targeted are geriatrics, waste management, hotel management, a health curriculum that will specialize in nursing, diet and hospice work, the fine arts, including a summer playhouse, and a business school with day and night classes.

“We have a lot of things on the fire,” said Sillers, who added that he has discussed the possibility of Los Angeles’ Loyola Marymount University locating an Orange County law school on his campus.

“We need to speed our flow to get accredited as soon as possible. In order to open for classes, we must set up a staff, a curriculum and a catalogue. We’re taking it step by step.”

The steering committee also includes Jeffrey C. Joy, an Irvine attorney and a trustee at St. John’s, and Don Woodrow of Crestline, who works for Ketchum Inc. and will coordinate the fund-raising drive.

The committee is now setting up a board of trustees in the hopes of immediately raising “about $2 million to $3 million,” Sillers said. Friess said the $16-million initial fund-raising target includes $6 million for the purchase of land.

While the task of launching a university is immense, one man who can do it is Sillers, said Friess. Sillers is the founder of the St. John’s School here, as well as St. Margaret’s School of San Juan Capistrano and St. John’s School of Downey. St. John’s of Rancho Santa Margarita, which opened three years ago, has 750 students enrolled in preschool through eighth grade.

“The guy has already done wonders here with St. Margaret’s School and St. John’s,” Friess said.

But even Sillers--who describes himself as “a builder”--has done nothing along the grand scale of the university he is planning, he said. The school will include a geriatric center that will employ “the retired doctors and business people in the community who need expression and something to do,” he said.

The fine arts and summer playhouse program “will bring some culture and improve the life of the people in this area so you don’t have to drive the freeway for it,” he said.

His hotel management program will link up with South County resorts and include 10-week internships for students. “We hope to meet the needs of businesses, corporations and hotels in getting employees trained,” he said.

Other planned areas of study include environmental fields, such as waste management, recycling and air quality. Sillers has enlisted the help of Doug Nash, a planetary research scientist and the founder of the San Juan Institute. At some point in the future, the institute and the new university would share campus space, said Nash, a former mayor of San Juan Capistrano.