Engineering Chapman From the Sidings to the Fast Track

Not long ago, Chapman University was the kid snoozing in the lecture hall, unmotivated and without prospects.

If anyone outside Orange County had heard of Chapman, it was usually because of its World Campus Afloat, a cruise ship that used to take students on semester-long trips. But the ship was let go in the 1970s to help pay debts.

Without an academic reputation and little money in the bank, Chapman made what was probably the biggest decision of its life: It would aspire not just to survival, but to excellence.

The little college in the middle of the city of Orange embarked on a program of self-improvement so ambitious that it has surprised even itself. Guided by its business-minded president’s calculated, sometimes controversial plan, it worked through the ‘90s to make itself a school people would think of, if not first, then certainly not last.

Today it has $101 million in the bank, a half-dozen new buildings, 28 endowed faculty positions and course work including peace studies, entrepreneurship, and Holocaust studies, and attracts students for academics, not cruises.

Most of the credit, say observers inside and outside the university, goes to the leadership, public relations savvy and fund-raising ability generated by the partnership of two men: James Doti, Chapman’s president since 1991, and a loyal alumnus, Orange County multimillionaire developer George Argyros.

Doti, 54, who trained at the University of Chicago under Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman and George Stigler, took office with an economist’s analytical eye. He raised tuition so an education at Chapman would feel as if it were worth more. He took money used to attract athletes and, instead, used it to recruit brains. He pushed the school into specialty areas--film and law and, most recently, high tech--that would appeal to new students and donors.

While no one would confuse Chapman with Stanford, the University of California or the Claremont Colleges, it has gained a reputation it could only imagine a decade ago. Freshmen SAT scores have climbed each of the last nine years, and the college just established a joint engineering/math/chemistry program with UC Irvine, a rare partnership undergraduate effort between a UC campus and a private school.

“Our newer college presidents are sort of going to school on Jim Doti,” said Marty Hammer, who heads the Independent Colleges of Southern California, which includes Chapman among its 17 members. “They’re watching what he has done in the last several years and saying, ‘I wonder if I can do that here.’ Boy, they hold him in high regard.”

But improving a university, even a small one like Chapman, costs money--for faculty salaries, new buildings and financial aid. And that’s where Argyros, 63, came in. The former owner of AirCal and the Seattle Mariners baseball team, Argyros has been chairman of the board of trustees for the last 25 years.

Not only has he given Chapman tens of millions, he has cajoled friends in the Orange County business community, many of them prominent Republicans like himself, to donate millions.

Said Argyros: “We’re all here for one reason, for future generations and to continue to grow a private university in Orange County that is different from public institutions.”

Argyros brought in people like trustee Donald P. Kennedy, chairman of First American Financial Corp., who gave $10 million for the law school building named after him, and Doy Henley, former president of the politically conservative Lincoln Club, who has given Chapman close to that amount.

“George [Argyros] is our guiding light,” said Henley, vice chairman of the board of trustees. “George’s importance can’t be overstated.”

Chapman has grown up on the old campus of Orange High, where it moved in 1954 from Los Angeles. Today, it has 3,000 undergraduate and 1,100 graduate students. Founded as Hesperian College in 1861, Chapman is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), but only 5-10% of its students are members of the denomination.

In 1975, a year after Doti joined Chapman as an assistant professor, the college almost went under. The school built a debt of more than $4 million and couldn’t pay its taxes. To remain open, Chapman got rid of its ship, laid off more than 5% of its employees and cut everyone’s salary 10%.

“We thought the end was near,” Doti recalled in an interview in his first-floor office in the center of campus. “It was touch and go.”

While Chapman stabilized its finances, its student body remained a shipwreck. College counselor Cynthia Cooper remembers the school was so desperate in the mid-80s that students could turn in their applications a week after school started and still gain admittance.

“We’d bring in kids who maybe had the ability to pay but weren’t prepared for the rigor of the Chapman faculty,” said Mike Drummy, the university’s chief admissions officer and a Chapman alum. “So a lot were not making it.”

In 1991, the year Doti became president, the school changed its name from Chapman College to Chapman University. Attracting smarter students became the cornerstone of Doti’s plan to move the university up from mediocrity.

Standards, Tuition Up, Athletics Takes Fall

His first step was setting a minimum SAT score of 760, an admittedly dreadful score. That minimum is now 950--a middle range on the test that has 1,600 possible points.

Once Doti set a basement, he took aim at high achievers, borrowing a tactic from other colleges and universities. He began enticing bright students with four-year scholarships, not for financial need, but for good grades.

“We decided we’d be very aggressive,” said Drummy. “We’d pay for top students and make very attractive scholarship offers.”

Today, tuition at Chapman is $20,724 per year, plus room and board, not far off what many better-known schools charge. More than half of Chapman undergraduates receive merit scholarships--from $7,000 to $14,000 a year depending on high school grades and SAT scores.

Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges in Washington, D.C., said that while many educators oppose a move away from scholarships based on need, he called Chapman’s tactic “a very shrewd and sound strategy” to boost the quality of its students.

To help fund the merit scholarships, Doti took one of the most unpopular steps of his administration in 1992. He shifted the $1 million spent on athletic scholarships to fund the academic ones.

Doti said the most hostile reception he ever received was when he met with members of the baseball team and their parents to tell them the plan. It was Chapman’s only Division I team and some of its players had hoped to play professionally. “Mothers were crying,” he recalled. “Fathers were crying. People were yelling at me.”

To this day, he encounters alumni who tell him they won’t give Chapman money because of the lower athletic profile.

Doti also killed Chapman’s summer boot camp for students unprepared for college. The program was so successful, Doti said, high school counselors thought of Chapman as the place for students who couldn’t get admitted anywhere else, which wasn’t far from the truth.

That was exactly the image Doti was trying to change.

And, in a move that might seem counterintuitive, he increased tuition 25% over two years. The move was as much a public-relations ploy as anything else. “I felt people were using that low tuition to assess the quality of Chapman,” Doti said.

Meanwhile, much of the campus was rebuilt and expanded.

The decrepit student union was replaced with the $16-million Argyros Forum, which opened in 1992.

One 300-bed dorm opened in 1991 and another is being built.

Last year, Beckman Hall, home to the George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics, opened. So did the $25-million Donald P. Kennedy Hall, which houses the law school.

In all, close to $90 million in building has been undertaken under Doti’s watch.

In its most recent ranking of American colleges, U.S. News & World Report puts Chapman midway among top-tier regional universities in the West--behind Loyola Marymount and Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo but ahead of Humboldt State and Abilene Christian in Texas.

The average freshman SAT score, which stood at 997 when Doti took over, is now 1162. Sixty-two percent of those who applied to this year’s freshman class were accepted, and 44% of those enrolled.

Along the way, the school began recruiting better-qualified teachers. More had doctorates and more were conducting higher-quality research.

“The faculty we’re getting in the ‘90s is significantly different than the faculty we attracted in the ‘80s,” said Frank Frisch, chairman of the Division of Natural and Applied Sciences, who has taught at Chapman for 18 years. “I would not be hired at Chapman today.”

On Its Third Attempt, Law School Accredited

Chapman’s rise has not been without bumps--the roughest at the law school.

After opening in 1995, it twice failed to gain accreditation. Its founding dean resigned after two years on the job. When students were offered a tuition refund, nearly 50 took the offer, at a cost of $1.25 million to Chapman.

Other students filed a class-action lawsuit, saying they had received a useless education because of the accreditation problems. The case goes to trial in January. Despite the problems, Chapman pressed on. It improved the law library and instituted a tougher grading scale. In 1998, the American Bar Assn. accredited the law school.

Today it has 250 students. Last year’s entering class of 60 students had a median score on the law-school entrance exam in the top third of all law schools in the country. In the next 10 to 15 years, Doti envisions it being among the nation’s top 50 law schools.

The law school was an important step in Chapman’s growth as a university. It brought more graduate students to the campus and broadened the curriculum.

Teacher training continues to be one of the school’s biggest endeavors. In addition to classes on its main campus, it offers professional-development classes at 20 satellite centers in California, Arizona and Washington, geared to working adults. Chapman recommends more teachers for credentials than any other school in California.

At the school of business--the largest on campus--Doti maintains a high profile as an economist. It’s part of the public-relations offensive to press Chapman’s case. He’s on television regularly and each year issues a forecast of Orange County economic conditions. The forecasts are widely reported and announced at events attended by 700 business leaders.

“The fact I’m still giving forecast presentations and still involved in writing forecasts is an opportunity for me to showcase our school of business and research work to industry, so that is very important,” he said.

It may be Chapman’s film school, though, that will give its reputation the biggest bounce.

The university plans to spend $50 million to build a 9-acre facility, complete with a studio and commissary, 40 to 50 editing suites, a theater complex and an 18,000-square-foot sound stage that professional production companies could rent. Another building will hold five smaller sound stages.

A framed poster on Doti’s wall says, “Chapman Studios,” with the university’s panther mascot as its logo, to remind him of his dream.

“In 20 years, there has been a complete flip-flop in quality,” said Bob Bassett, dean of the film school, who has seen interest in the subject grow from five students to a school of nearly 800. “Even now, I can see the difference between our freshman and seniors.”

This year, for the first time, the school limited admissions--it drew 545 applicants for 180 openings. Doti’s goal for the film and TV school is especially ambitious: he wants to see it counted among the top five in the nation.

Meanwhile, Chapman is tapping into the high-tech industries that are increasingly shaping the region’s economy. Those companies, said the economist-turned-college-president, are facing a shortage of workers that Chapman can fill.

Last month, Chapman received $1.5 million from Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli to start a program in integrated circuits and embedded systems for broadband telecommunications, the only undergraduate program of its type in the country, Doti said. The gift followed nearly two years of effort by Doti to interest the high-tech executive in Chapman.

“One of the principal purposes of the grant was to get them to start a program that matched our needs for graduates,” Samueli said. “They, of course, were excited to do that.”

Next month, Doti is hosting about 30 Orange County high-tech executives and will try to persuade them to donate money for this new specialization.

“The high-tech community is testing us,” Doti said, “and they should be. We hope to show in the next four years we’re producing the kinds of graduates they need.”

It is essential Doti strategy: Put the laws of supply and demand to work for Chapman University.

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A Changing Campus

Since it first moved to Orange County in 1954, Chapman University has changed its profile bydeemphasizing sports and remedial programs and promoting higher school scores and business partnerships. Campus additions--such as the new student forum and new law and business schools--reflect the college’s growth in the last decade.

1. Parking Structure

2. Student Administrative Services

3. Kennedy School of Law

4. Publications

5. Beckman Hall

6. Cecil B. DeMille Hall

7. Reeves Hall

8. Roosevelt Hall

9. Memorial Hall

10. Smith Hall

11. Wilkinson Hall

12. Thurmond Clarke Memorial Library

13. Bertea Hall

14. Offices

15. Existing chapel

16. Moulton Center

17. Hashinger Hall

18. Argyros Forum

19. Pralle-Sodaro Hall

20. Children’s Center

21. Cheverton Hall

22. Morlan Hall

23. Harris Apartments

24. David apartments/Davis Center

25. Braden Hall

26. Hutton Sports Center

27. Stadium

27. Administrative computing

28. Athletic Offices

29. Student Employment

30. Human Resources

31. Alumni House

32. International Student Center

33. Wellness Center

CHRONOLOGY

1861: Hesperian College founded in the Northern California town of Woodland. Ten students begin class in a local church on the day and hour Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated.

1921: First building is constructed at 766 N. Vermont St. in Los Angeles, across the street from the University of California’s Southern Branch, which moved to Westwood and became UCLA. California School of Christianity students take liberal arts courses at UC and courses in religion, drama, music, fine arts and public speaking at their own campus.

1922: Changes name to California Christian College.

1934: Trustees change name to Chapman College, after board chairman and and principal benefactor Charles C. Chapman, a wealthy Placentia citrus grower and businessman.

1942: With World War II, the student body dwindles to less than 80 part-time students. The Navy needs the campus for an engineering school, so Chapman College moves its classes to Whittier College. The schools share facilities until war’s end, when Chapman moves back to Vermont Avenue.

1954: Chapman buys the old Orange High campus and becomes and becomes the first four-year accredited college in Orange County.

1965: Chapman launches World Campus Afloat, in which students take classes while traveling the world on an ocean liner.

1975: The college falls more than $4 million into debt and can’t pay its taxes. Five percent of the staff lose their jobs and everyone else takes a 10% pay cut. Because it is so expensive to operate, Chapman gives up the World Campus Afloat, which now is run out of the University of Pittsburgh.

1988: Smith resigns as president, having brought financial stability to the school.

1989: Allen E. Koenig named president after an 18-month search. Koenig had been president of Emerson College in Boston, where faculty opposed his plans to move the school.

1991: Koenig offers a plan that could cut faculty by 20%, increase class size, strengthen professional programs and de-emphasize liberal arts. Faculty oppose the plan. In April, Koenig and the trustees adopt a faculty plan and change the name to Chapman University. Koenig resigns in June and James Doti, dean of the business school, is named 12th president.

1992: Chapman increases tuition for new students by 15%--to $14,936--its largest hike in eight years. The school also sets a minimum combined SAT score for new students at 760

1995: Chapman’s School of Law opens in Anaheim.

1997: American Bar Assn. twice denies the law school accreditation. About 50 students take offers of tuition refunds, costing the university $1.25 million. Another group of students files a class action lawsuit.

1998: After Chapman toughens its grading and improves its library, the ABA gives the law school provisional accreditation.

1999: The law school moves into its new $25-million building on campus. The school is named for Donald P. Kennedy, chairman of the board of American Financial Corp., a Chapman trustee who gave the law school $10 million.

2000: In a rare joint undergraduate academic effort between a University of California campus and a private school, UC Irvine and Chapman University offer a five-year program with two bachelor’s degrees--in engineering and in math or chemistry. Students begin their studies at Chapman and finish at UCI.

2000: Henry Samueli, co-founder of Broadcom, gives Chapman $1.5 million to start an undergraduate program in integrated circuits and embedded systems. Chapman officials hope this will lead to a closer connection with high tech businesses in Orange County.