Dreams of a University Take Form : Education: A Cal State official is on a special assignment to champion plans to build a high-tech ‘academic village in the fields.’

For years, David Leveille has been Cal State University’s point man to bring a campus to Ventura County.

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But he has been distracted by other projects: opening Cal State San Marcos in northern San Diego County or converting Fort Ord into the university system’s newest school, Cal State Monterey Bay.

Now, at the direction of Chancellor Barry Munitz, Leveille is concentrating his efforts, moving his office here to champion a promise that has eluded Ventura County for decades: a permanent, four-year public university.

“My assignment, and I volunteered for it, is to try to help the dream come to reality here,” Leveille said.

Working out of the back of his Volvo station wagon, Leveille has been brainstorming with local educators, business leaders and government officials about innovative ways to fashion a permanent Ventura County campus that has yet to be given a name.

On Friday, he gave the first public address on the emerging vision of a high-tech campus that educators hope will spring from a 260-acre lemon grove near Camarillo Cal State purchased earlier this year.

At a meeting of the county’s World Affairs Council in Camarillo, Leveille said the proposed campus cannot be a cookie-cutter duplicate of the university’s other 22 campuses if it is to attract the funding it needs.

“We will get money if we are bold in imagination and vision,” Leveille told the gathering of business leaders and civic-minded residents.

Initial discussions are wide-ranging, he said. They cover everything from preparing workers for the shuttle’s Space Port at Vandenberg Air Force Base to bringing an experimental elementary school on campus as a working laboratory for teachers in training.

Common themes are beginning to emerge, he said, showing new interdisciplinary approaches to education and an emphasis on polytechnic training.

Most importantly, he wants the campus to plunge ahead with new computer and video technology that can link student to teacher and classrooms to other universities around the globe.

“We are looking at global inter-activity with China, with Scandinavia, with Mexico,” he said. “That’s why we have had consultations with [educators in] Sweden and Norway and Baja California.”

The university has also begun plans for the more concrete endeavors.

Preliminary sketches of the master plan show a cluster of buildings in a semicircle of development that is nestled amid orchards on the site in the county’s agricultural greenbelt between Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura.

“To create the feel of an ‘academic village in the fields,’ the existing hedgerows will be maintained and enhanced,” according to a stand-up display set up for viewing Friday. “Orchard-like planting will be used as a buffer to the roadways and will also be used to screen parking.”

Leveille estimated it will take between $550 million to $600 million to complete the campus for 15,000 full-time students over a period of about 30 years. If everything goes right, the campus could hold classes as soon as fall of the year 2000.

Leveille is hoping a “virtual university” could begin to offer classes three years earlier, by sharing facilities with community colleges, and employing the latest computer and video technology.

“We could enroll you, if you have a computer in your home or your business, or have access to cable television or a satellite link,” he said.

As for the new university’s name, Leveille said he hopes to have a recommendation to the Cal State trustees for final approval by the year’s end.

The front runners, he said, are Cal State Channel Islands and Cal State Ventura. He stressed that Ventura in the name would refer to the region, rather than the city--a comment that reflected those city boosters who want Oxnard and Camarillo in the university’s title.

“I’m concerned that the name is going to be divisive,” Leveille said. Since The Times ran an article about potential names, Leveille has received 69 phone calls. Some offered helpful suggestions, others shared passionate arguments and even threats of withheld support.

In his remarks, Leveille likened himself more to a technocrat than inspirational speaker as he sets off on a multi-year task to launch a new university.

“I’m not a great talker, as you can tell,” he said. “I’m somebody who can move the talk along and get it done.”