Oxnard College President Has High-Tech Hopes

A former farm worker who went on to become a top administrator in the Cal State University system, Oxnard College President Steven Arvizu knows what it’s like to struggle.

So as he makes plans to improve the youngest and smallest of Ventura County’s community colleges, Arvizu is drawing on the hustle that propelled him out of the fields and into fellowships.

Since coming to Oxnard from Cal State Monterey Bay last summer, Arvizu has lobbied leaders across the city for support. His goal: a high-tech curriculum built around computers--no small feat in a blue-collar city where most homes lack PCs and many residents never have sent or received e-mail.

In the next decade, Arvizu boldly predicts, enrollment at Oxnard College will double to 12,000, with students lured by strong job training and the campus’ close ties to the planned Cal State Channel Islands.

Such goals are ambitious, he concedes. But with evangelical intensity, Arvizu--himself a community college graduate--insists good things will happen.

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“Oxnard College, to me, is an institution that deserves a robust future because it’s had a rocky history,” says Arvizu, 55.

Founded in 1975, Oxnard College was hard-hit by the passage three years later of Proposition 13. The new law hampered school districts’ ability to raise money through property taxes.

School officials blame the landmark initiative for a half-empty campus still lacking a student union, theater and other planned buildings. Only eight of the 16 buildings in the campus master plan are up.

In recent years, the college has been torn by infighting. Accused of poor leadership, President Elise Schneider stepped down in 1996 for a new position: recruiting foreign students. Her departure triggered a lengthy struggle between Ventura County Community College District trustees, who searched nationwide for a replacement, and faculty members, who wanted an in-house successor.

The issue was resolved last spring when Arvizu, who had spent the previous four years forging a new CSU campus in Monterey Bay, took the $110,000-a-year job.

Arvizu stepped right into a bitter labor dispute. The district’s 1,200 teachers have been without a contract since last June, unable to secure the pay raises and increases in health benefits they seek.

Administrators say the district can’t afford the raises. Union members say that is hypocritical, pointing to pay increases received by several administrators.

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Arvizu recently joined the administration’s negotiating team. As a former union member, he said, he thinks he might help speed a resolution.

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to side with the union on all these issues,” he said. “The focus needs to be about serving our students. If it’s about serving teachers, I think it will be hurtful.”

Despite the turmoil, Arvizu has energized the campus with an optimistic, hard-charging approach, colleagues say. Carmen Guerrero-Calderon, a business teacher and president of the college’s Academic Senate, credits Arvizu with creating a “refreshing” campus environment.

The college needs to step out of the shadows, she said; Ventura and Moorpark colleges each have twice as many students and twice as much money as often-overlooked Oxnard.

Arvizu’s focus on technology gives everyone a rallying point, she said: “He’s a visionary. He’s bringing forth a wealth of ideas.”

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As provost at CSU Monterey Bay, Arvizu developed a curriculum heavy on computer training. He helped line up major corporate sponsorships, and companies such as Sun Microsystems have donated equipment to the fledgling campus at the former Fort Ord Army base.

At Oxnard College, Arvizu has fewer big companies to work with and a much smaller budget--about $15 million a year. Those limitations have not dampened his zeal.

Arvizu, who says he answers as many as 200 e-mail messages daily, talks enthusiastically about saving time for working students with televised lectures and reading assignments downloaded from the Internet.

He aims to dramatically boost the school’s technology courses, helping students get into hot industries such as programming and computer graphics. Now, he said, the college’s only computer degree program is in business information systems.

Such ideas might just sound like what a college president of the 1990s is expected to say, but Arvizu has impressed colleagues by getting some of his projects off the ground at minimal cost.

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Technology students recently built a fiber-optic cable network to link computers across the campus. Contractors would have charged $300,000, Arvizu said. The students did the job for only $100,000, gaining work experience and references at the same time.

Meanwhile, Arvizu has lobbied local companies. Sponsorship requests to GTE americast and other firms are pending. He has also formed a committee to start an Oxnard College alumni association, a fund-raising arm that previous presidents never got around to establishing.

To some, south Oxnard might seem a strange place for a technology hub. The college district estimates that only 30% of Oxnard College students have home computers, compared with 70% at Ventura College and 90% at Moorpark College.

But to Arvizu, that just means Oxnard’s students need the biggest boost.

“If I have anything to do with it, we’re going to over-invest in technology,” he said.

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Meanwhile, district officials expect Arvizu to tap the contacts he made in his nine years as an administrator at CSU Bakersfield and his four years at CSU Monterey Bay. Arvizu hopes to work out an agreement guaranteeing graduates of Oxnard College automatic admission to the county’s new four-year campus.

“He’s going to be real important with CSU,” district Chancellor Philip Westin said. “He knows the players. He’s the right person at the right time for the right job.”

Handel Evans, Cal State Channel Islands president, said that what most impresses him about Arvizu is the quiet pride he takes in his background: How many farm workers, after all, attend Bakersfield College, no less wind up with a doctorate in social science from Stanford?

“I don’t think he wears it on his sleeve, but an experience like that has got to drive someone,” Evans said.

Arvizu grew up in Arvin, a small town 25 miles southeast of Bakersfield.

He was the youngest of five children in a single-parent home. His mother ran a 15-room boarding house for field hands, a converted church Arvizu happily recalls as a “mini-community.”

Because he was an excellent student, Arvizu became something of a prodigy around the boarding house. His mother was so proud that she made him stand in front of the family after dinner, reciting his times-tables.

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He was mastering Spanish and English so rapidly, she assigned him to act as a translator for field workers. He went along with them to the hospital or courthouse, easing their fears about being unable to speak English.

The young boy loved the role, and came to view himself as a community leader.

“I became very adept at adapting,” Arvizu says. “I liked doing things that pleased those around me. I grew up being in the middle, making things work, and helping people solve problems. That’s what I do as an administrator.”

Even though he spent long hours picking vegetables, Arvizu had big dreams.

From Bakersfield College, he went on to get a bachelor’s degree at Cal State Fresno, then a master’s at Cal State Sacramento. He taught elementary school for a while, then went to Stanford, where he studied anthropology and got his doctorate.

For several years, he ran a Cal State Sacramento program aimed at helping local school districts teach non-English-speaking students. After that, he began his years as a CSU administrator.

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In ethnically diverse Oxnard, Arvizu says he feels right at home. He and his wife bought a home in River Ridge and hope to retire here. They have three grown children.

At the college’s commencement last spring, he addressed the crowd in both Spanish and English--to make himself understood to all, and as a sign of respect.

“Oxnard has the largest segment of the working-class community in the county,” he points out. “They’re people that come from low-income backgrounds and want to improve their circumstances. Oxnard College is a place for them to start on that road.”