No Team, but Plenty of Spirit

There are no sports teams, no dorm rooms and only the start of a student union.

But to be part of the inaugural class at Cal State Channel Islands, Katie Schuberg, 19, is willing to overlook those shortcomings.

“Just being part of the first class, being able to pave the way, is really exciting,” said Schuberg, an English major and Moorpark College graduate who turned down a slot at UC Santa Barbara to attend the new campus, 15 minutes from her Camarillo home.

“I’ll be able to look back and say I had a part in starting that school,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for good experiences and lots of firsts.”

Those same opportunities will be available to more than 700 students who will make up the first class at Cal State Channel Islands, pioneers who have hitched a ride at the end of a long, hard journey to deliver a four-year public university to Ventura County.

Set in a series of renovated, 1930s-era buildings at the former Camarillo State Hospital complex, the campus opens today, after an Aug. 16 grand opening ceremony attended by Gov. Gray Davis, state and local officials and hundreds of university boosters.

But it will be no ordinary first day of school.

For many, it will culminate a decades-long campaign to create a Cal State campus in a region where generations of students have had no choice but to leave if they wanted a state college degree.

Ventura County has long been the largest county in California without such an institution. And despite its relative affluence and top-caliber high schools, the county has lagged behind counties of comparable size and wealth when it comes to sending students to a four-year college.

Educators and university boosters blame the lack of a Cal State campus for that lag, saying local students have had limited options after graduating from high school or community college.

“I’m excited that students who work so hard at the junior colleges now don’t have to travel so far to continue their education,” said Julie Stoneburg, 24, of Oxnard. “We have really needed something closer.”

Stoneburg’s story is typical.

After graduating from Simi Valley High School in 1995, she waited a few years before pursuing a college degree. She started at Ventura College in 2000 and graduated last spring.

While at Ventura College, counselors began talking to her about Channel Islands. She was hooked once she visited the site, deciding that the sprawling campus snuggled at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains was where she wanted to spend the next three years earning her liberal studies degree and teaching credential.

“I was just in awe,” Stoneburg said of the place dominated by Spanish-style buildings crowned with red-tile roofs.

“I went onto the [Cal State] campus at Northridge, and it was so crowded and so busy I was nothing but a number,” she said. “I love the feeling I get on the Channel Islands campus. It feels like home and it’s just my size.”

More than 1,100 students applied to be part of the inaugural class, and by the second week of August, 716 had been accepted. The university’s target enrollment for the first year was about 750 full-and part-time students.

More students applied for the liberal studies major than any other. The business degree was next most popular, followed by the teacher credential program.

The inaugural class was only open to upper-division transfer students, and most were on track to make up the university’s first graduating class in 2004.

Hundreds of those students took part this summer in six orientation sessions, where they met with academic advisors, registered for classes and picked up parking passes and ID cards.

At one orientation last month, those students included Simi Valley resident Terry Jenkins, 23, a business major transferring from Moorpark College.

“This place appealed to me because it was a new campus, but it does take some getting used to,” said Jenkins, referring to the university’s former life as a state mental hospital. “It’s a little eerie at first, but I don’t mind it.”

Nanette Tobin, 24, had her hands full during orientation. With 6-month-old daughter Madison in one arm and registration materials in the other, the Santa Barbara native juggled a full load during the daylong session.

Tobin earned her associate’s degree from Santa Barbara City College and after a few years off, planned to resume her college career at UC Santa Barbara. But she set her sights on Channel Islands after learning that the liberal arts major at the Santa Barbara school was full and she wouldn’t be able to go there until next year.

“I heard about this school and I said, ‘I’m coming,’ ” said Tobin, who is hoping to join other students with children to launch a child-care club at the Camarillo campus. “I want to teach, and this will make my wait shorter.”

Greg Sawyer, Channel Islands’ vice president for student affairs, said one of the best things about the university is that students like Tobin will be able to launch clubs and campus organizations to meet the needs not only of the inaugural class but future students.

“These guys really have something that is truly exceptional,” Sawyer said. “They have an opportunity to help us shape the future of this university.”

That’s why Katie Schuberg can live with the idea that there are not yet any sports teams or dorms at Cal State Channel Islands. She attended orientation with her mother, Mary Schuberg. And both could see that today’s opening is no ordinary first day of school, but history in the making.

“They took pictures of all the first students,” said Mary Schuberg, a Camarillo resident who is sending her fifth and youngest child into the state college system. “Years from now, when they look back in the history books at the beginning of this college, they will be able to realize the importance of what they have done.”

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Times staff writer Jessica Blanchard contributed to this report.