Life’s Lessons Served Him Well in Education : Profile: Philip W. Borst saw many changes in 37 years at Fullerton College. He retired as president of the school he once attended.

Toward the end of the Great Depression, while other boys were playing ball, 9-year-old Philip W. Borst sat in on his father’s English lectures at what was then Fullerton Junior College.

He learned this: Education is no glamour job.

“I’d sit in back and think it was terribly boring,” said Borst, now 66, whose father was chairman of the humanities department.

So the younger Borst, with an eye for detail and order, went on to Fullerton Junior College and Stanford University planning to study electrical engineering.

That is, until he realized he liked working with people more than working a slide rule. Teaching and research, which once seemed so dull, drew him back to academia.

Nearly five decades later, he is closing the door on his teaching career. Thirty-seven of those years were spent at Fullerton College (it dropped the “Junior” in 1973). Borst retired as the college’s president June 30 after 17 years. During that time, Orange County grew more urbanized, computers altered the nature of education and budget cuts forced educators to streamline schools as if they were businesses.

Educating the county’s students was simpler when he started as a fresh-faced history teacher at the college in 1957, Borst said. Young adults studied home economics and math and walked to class from their homes in tidy neighborhoods.

By the time Borst rose to the ranks of administrator in the 1970s, college life had changed radically. Students in bell-bottom pants were protesting the Vietnam War. Military veterans were returning to school to get their degrees. And entering students were much older. The average student age in the 1960s, 22, rose to 29 in the late 1970s, Borst said. Many students had jobs and families.

The ‘80s and ‘90s brought more changes. Constricting budgets ended the California dream of a tuition-free community college education for all, and increasing diversity among the county’s young adults threw a spotlight on ethnic studies.

Borst evokes the words “committed” and “professional” from administrators, faculty members and students. Many praise his earthy approach as president, and few remember him making waves by trying to force dramatic changes at the college.

“I’ve seen him as really caring for the students, as much more than an administrator,” said Student Body President James Thomas, 19. “He wanted to stay a step ahead of the students--he would want to accommodate their needs.”

Bob Gates, retired vice president of administrative services, added, “He’s low-key, quiet, unassuming, and he was effective in working behind the scenes.”

On his final day of work, Borst sat behind his clean desk, folding and unfolding his fingers as he reviewed his career.

He could have climbed the academic ladder and moved to a major research university, he said, but he’s glad he stayed in Fullerton.

“Although there’s a value to basic research, student learning is the most important thing,” he said. “That’s what a community college provides.”

Borst grew up in Fullerton when it was a quiet burg of orchards. He attended the Fullerton college at the end of World War II. He got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science at Stanford University, but returned to Fullerton after getting a teaching credential at UC Berkeley and spending a few years working at a Bay Area high school.

He remembers an “exciting” Fullerton college campus in the late 1960s, when protest brewed over the Vietnam War.

“I believe in student involvement and student ideas--regardless of ideology,” Borst said. Protagonists of that involvement included Students for a Democratic Society, radicals who stood against the war, whom Borst often would debate in the quad.

Just as it rose, interest in politics on campus slowly ebbed, Borst said. Guitar-strumming protest singers faded without a war to rally against.

Now students most often complain about not being able to get the classes they want, and dissent centers on ethnic diversity and discrimination.

Last September, about 300 high school and college students marched near Fullerton College. They demanded commitment to more Chicano studies classes and the hiring of Latino teachers at local schools. Six were arrested.

Borst urged patience on hiring minority teachers and increasing classes in ethnic studies. That elicited criticism from people who wanted the college to be in the vanguard of multicultural education.

“We were really looking at the presidency as a place of leadership,” said Adela Lopez, coordinator of the Ethnic Studies program at Fullerton College, but Borst “is a product of his time and his place. . . . He avoids controversy.”

Shortly after the protest, administrators made ethnic studies a major at the college, with courses such as “The Chicano in Contemporary Society.” Borst said the demonstration heightened awareness but did not cause the change.

“I do believe that I see some changes, although very, very slow, coming into existence here,” Lopez said. Among the “older generation of administrators, there’s still some degree of hesitancy. . . . Most people see ethnic studies as controversial, instead of a logical, evolutionary development.”

Borst called the shifting demographics--an influx of Latinos and other ethnic groups into the North Orange County Community College District--a major event of his term. He said he welcomes ethnic student activism and the desire of some students to improve life for people in their communities.

In 1969, Latino students led a project at the Fullerton campus to tutor minority students, Borst said. It became a model for a statewide program. He said he was also one of the administrators who started ethnic studies courses in the early 1970s.

Another highlight of his presidency: improving academic standards at the college.

One of his first acts as president was to reinstitute rules requiring each student to take a math and an English class. “It made the degree more meaningful,” he said.

Another achievement, he said, was requiring assessment of all students’ reading, writing and math skills after their first semester so that counselors could better recommend courses. The policy later became a requirement at all community colleges statewide.

Other administrators praised Borst’s “shared governance” plan. Under shared governance, Borst invited a committee of teachers, staff members and students to meet to make decisions on college issues instead of simply mandating policy himself. The committees decided how to meet college goals, how to reduce the budget and what campus services to eliminate.

State budget cuts for education were one of Borst’s challenges.

Tight economic times sent campuses into a “crisis situation of drastically reducing classes,” Borst said. When that happens, “you have to make some decisions that people don’t like.”

Instructional divisions were cut from 11 to eight in 1991-92, and courses were transferred to other departments.

In 1992, about 22,500 people attended the college, Borst said; attendance fell to 19,600 in 1993. Fees increased, and more than 500 class sections were eliminated in the past two years, he said.

“From a student point of view, this is a disaster,” Borst said. “We’ve had to reduce the number of classes to fit the amount the state is giving us. That forces us to turn away students.”

Attorney Paul Shepard, president of the college’s alumni association, said Borst “made good decisions in focusing the college in a time of budgetary cutbacks.”

Acting college President Jane Armstrong also praised Borst. He added a television studio and cable channel during his administration, Armstrong said, as well as a student transfer center and about 10 new academic concentrations, such as computer graphics.

Borst plans to retire to his family’s home in Placentia. He will travel and pursue his favorite hobby, tinkering with antique clocks.

As a firm believer in the power of education, though, Borst can’t pull himself away from it completely: He plans to be a consultant to community colleges.

“Students in this country have the greatest educational opportunities of any students in the world,” Borst said. “If they don’t make use of that, they’re wasting the most important thing they ever could have.”

The Borst Era

* 1957: Philip W. Borst hired as history professor.

* 1969: Members of Students for a Democratic Society, a militant protest organization, debate unsuccessfully with then-President H. Lynn Sheller to get official recognition for group.

* 1970: Borst becomes assistant dean of instruction.

* 1971: Student climbs atop pole depicting school mascot and vows to remain until nuclear tests end at Alaska’s Amchitka Island. Borst becomes associate dean of instruction.

* 1972: Ethnic studies program formed.

* 1973: Borst named vice president of instruction. School football team ranked first in nation among junior colleges. Fullerton Junior College renamed Fullerton College.

* 1977: Borst becomes president. Gerald Uejima, a 22-year-old student, goes on a shooting spree, wounding a teacher’s aide and killing himself.

* 1980: Gay and Lesbian Student Education Union sues to force board of trustees to recognize the group as campus club.

* 1988: Fullerton College celebrates 75th anniversary.

* 1993: About 300 high school and college students clash with police at a demonstration demanding more Chicano studies classes.

* 1994: Fullerton College student Jennifer Hanson crowned Miss California. Borst retires.

Sources: Times news reports, Fullerton College

Researched by ALICIA DI RADO / Los Angeles Times