Fledgling University to Offer Its 1st Course

They may not yet have a campus, but officials at Ventura County’s fledgling Cal State University are preparing to offer their inaugural course, their first crack at crafting a curriculum to meet the community’s needs.

Starting this fall, Cal State University Channel Islands will begin offering a master’s degree in social work, using two-way audio and video hookups to pipe in the three-year program from Cal State Long Beach.

The course will be limited to 25 students and initially will be offered at the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge. It eventually will move to the former Camarillo State Hospital site, which is set to become the 23rd campus in the Cal State system.

“This reflects what we’ve been trying to do from the outset, which is to meet the educational needs in this county,” said Handel Evans, president of the Channel Islands campus. “I see this as a test run on a whole number of levels, including our ability to bring in courses from other institutions to meet those needs.”

Indeed, the master’s program is in keeping with the basic strategy of planners laying the academic foundation for the budding university.

They have been scouring the county for months, identifying educational shortcomings and finding ways to shore them up. The need for graduate-level training in social work became apparent early on, especially instruction with a bilingual and bicultural emphasis.

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“We would love to have 100% of our social workers and 100% of our mental health staff be able to hold master’s degrees,” said Barbara Fitzgerald, director of the county’s Human Services Agency. “Unfortunately, those courses aren’t readily available, and recruitment and retention of those people are very difficult.”

That’s where the new program comes in.

Launched at Cal State Long Beach in 1985, the nationally acclaimed master’s program seeks to expand theoretical knowledge, and put that knowledge to practical use for social workers.

The program currently has 640 students and is offered via video hookups at Cal State campuses in Humboldt and Chico. This fall, Channel Islands and Bakersfield will be added to the long-distance-learning mix.

Candidates for the program must hold bachelor’s degrees reflecting a broad liberal arts education and have at least a 2.5 grade-point average. In addition, they must take the Graduate Record Exam and complete prerequisite courses in human biology, statistics and computers.

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Those courses should be available this summer at local community colleges, Cal State officials said.

The three-year master’s program will be offered Saturdays, beginning Aug. 29. The first year will focus on course work, while the second and third years will include internships aimed at putting that classroom experience to use.

The course could fill up in a hurry, since 120 people recently attended two orientation meetings held to explain more about the program.

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When the first wave of students graduates in three years, they will hold a master’s degree from Cal State Long Beach.

But Cal State officials said attending through the Channel Islands campus is a significant first step in transforming the shuttered Camarillo hospital into a full-fledged university.

“This is a demonstration of what this whole effort is all about,” said Robert Peyton, who as senior academic planner for the Channel Islands campus was the driving force behind bringing the master’s program to Ventura County.

“These environmental studies, all these leasing deals, they’re all about responding to the needs of the community and providing academic programs for students here,” he said. “This is important, because it’s brokering in something that was needed in this region and bringing in a program that nobody was doing before we got here.”

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FYI

Applications are being accepted for a master’s program in social work offered by Cal State Long Beach at the CSU Channel Islands campus. The three-year program will be held on Saturdays, starting Aug. 29. For information, call the Channel Islands campus at 383-8425.