Renaissance Boy : 13-Year-Old to Become Moorpark College’s Youngest Alumnus

Jaime McEnnan is used to strange looks and prying questions.

But he’s getting tired of being compared to Doogie Howser, television’s teen-age physician.

“I’ll just be walking through campus and people say, ‘Doo-gie!,’ ” said Jaime, who enrolled at Moorpark College two years ago--at the age of 11.

In two weeks, Jaime (pronounced Jamie) will graduate with honors. At age 13, he is the youngest graduate in the history of the school and probably the youngest at any of the Ventura County community colleges, according to a veteran college district official.

The Agoura Hills resident plans to go on to either UCLA or the University of Redlands, both of which have accepted him as a junior.

Although Jaime doesn’t want to be compared to a TV character, he’s something of a star himself.

Since he was 3, Jaime has appeared in more than 100 commercials, had a part for a year on “General Hospital” and has acted on other shows such as “Who’s the Boss?” He recently starred in a children’s film called “Munchie II” that is to be released on video later this year.

Jaime has also traveled around the world performing with Peace Child International, an issues-oriented children’s theater group.

Some adult actors would be proud of such a resume.

But “it’s a hobby” for Jaime, who became involved in acting on the coattails of his sister, Mindy, who graduated from Moorpark College last year when she was 16 and is now a theater arts major at UCLA.

Jaime takes his painting more seriously. He does mainly landscapes and seascapes and, when he was 7, one of his works sold at a show for $3,000, his mother said.

At college, he has taken mainly science and math classes, from chemistry to calculus. And he said he’s made all A’s and Bs, except for one C in a math class during a semester when he was off performing for several weeks.

But he’s decided to major in cultural anthropology. “I’m really interested in how the arts are related to religion in different cultures,” he said.

And, although he hasn’t settled on a career, he knows his eventual goal: “I’d like to change the real world as much as possible,” Jaime said.

He knows people may scoff at such ambitions from a 13-year-old boy, but he has experienced such skepticism all his life.

“A lot of people don’t believe me when I say I’m in college,” he said. Even on campus, people assume the freckled teen-ager, who at 4 feet, 9 inches tall is short for his age, is the child of a student.

“At the beginning of every semester, everybody always asks me where my mom is, what classes my mom is taking,” said Jaime, who has tutored illiterate adults since he was 8.

And he’s constantly asked about his IQ, a question he won’t answer. “It really annoys me,” he said.

His mother, Stacey McEnnan, said his IQ, first measured when he was 4 or 5, is extremely high. But she also won’t disclose the score, saying the “genius” label can damage a child.

Except for his being at least five years younger than most other college students and half a foot shorter, Jaime fits in, his classmates and teachers said.

On a recent class day, he wore in his hair two tiny ribbons, one red and one blue, that matched his woven, Guatemalan-style vest.

As he ambled into his Survey of World Religions class, Jaime talked and joked with classmates.

“He fits in,” said classmate Robin Broad, 19. “He’s on the same intellectual level as us.”

Jaime hasn’t always experienced such support from teachers and classmates.

His father, James, is a research physicist at Hughes Aircraft and his mother is a former Fulbright Scholar.

Stacey McEnnan said she knew Jaime was gifted when he brought her a book and began reading it at age 2. But the family took him out of a local private school after third grade and began teaching him at home when teachers insisted on keeping him with children his age.

Both she and Jaime dispute the common wisdom that children may be damaged emotionally or socially by advancing faster than their peers.

“The only social interaction he got in school was negative,” Stacey McEnnan said.

She said Jaime chose to attend college rather than continue home schooling, partly to have interaction with teachers and other students.

One of Jaime’s better friends at the school has been Catherine Beven, 43.

“There is hope, more than anything else, in Jaime’s presence on campus,” said Beven, a native of violence-wracked Northern Ireland.

There’s another reason she’ll miss him when he graduates.

“He helps me with my math,” Beven said, smiling.