Freshmen Give College a Fresh Start

The first-day-of-school jitters never go away. Just ask C.B. Claiborne, who took a long walk Monday to his first class at Cal State Channel Islands with butterflies bouncing around in his belly.

After more than two decades of teaching college back East, the Virginia transplant launched into his first lecture midmorning at the campus, but not until overcoming a last-minute obstacle: He couldn’t get into his classroom and was left standing in the hallway with nearly three dozen marketing students until an administrator arrived to let everyone in.

After that, however, it didn’t take him long to get rolling.

“You are all innovators for coming here,” Claiborne said, using a marketing term for pioneers who take risks and often see great rewards as a result. “This is a very auspicious moment, and congratulations to you for taking part. This is going to be a great university.”

Monday marked the start of the second year for California’s newest college campus, a four-year university in the heart of Ventura County, which was nearly four decades in the making.

The campus opened to upper-division students last fall and this year added its first class of freshmen.

There are now about 2,300 full- and part-time students on campus, 250 of them freshmen.

All were welcomed Monday at Student Appreciation Day, an event featuring free pizza and professional shoulder massages in one of the college’s sun-splashed courtyards. The event was part of a larger effort to get students involved early and often in campus activities.

“Research shows that the first six weeks of school will determine whether students are interested in staying,” said Greg Sawyer, Channel Islands’ vice president for student affairs.

“Our hope is that students will find something in those weeks that they really like and that they will really lock into. They are not going to have an opportunity to fail,” said Sawyer.

That message is particularly aimed at the university’s first freshmen, many of whom have come to Channel Islands from high schools across the state.

The group includes Perla Zuniga, 18, of Oxnard, who forged a relationship with the campus three years ago as a member of the university’s inaugural Summer College program -- a five-week academic boot camp designed to interest area high school students in college careers.

The Rio Mesa High School graduate earned admission to four universities. But she said she decided on Channel Islands because of the earlier connection and because it will allow her to stay close to home and keep her full-time job.

“It’s a brand-new school, so I think I’ll be able to get the attention of a private college while paying [tuition] for a public college,” said Zuniga, a Mexican immigrant and the first in her family to attend college.

“I just want to work and go to school and not have anything distract me from reaching my goals,” she said.

Junior Karen Bartnick feels the same way. The 61-year-old Camarillo resident returned to college full time on Monday after a nearly four-decade hiatus. She last attended college in 1964 at the University of Minnesota.

With her children grown, and fresh off a divorce, Bartnick said she decided it was time to pursue a lifelong dream.

“I’m starting a new life, and this is part of it,” said Bartnick, after dropping $237 on a stack of books at the university’s bustling bookstore. “This is something I wanted to do all of my life, so I’m doing it.”

In some ways, Claiborne also is pursuing a dream. Formerly a professor at James Madison University in Virginia, he wasn’t looking for a new job when this opportunity arose.

In fact, it was his longtime companion, who was then director of James Madison’s school of accounting, who stumbled on the job posting while searching to fill some of her own teaching vacancies.

Both Claiborne and partner, Cathy, applied for jobs at Channel Islands late last year and learned in March that they had beaten out hundreds of other applicants for the jobs. A month later, they were married on the beach in Ventura.

They are among two couples who belong to the 48-member faculty at Channel Islands and recently moved into new faculty housing east of the campus.

“We are so fortunate; this is such a great opportunity,” said Cathy Claiborne, an associate professor of business and accounting.

She teaches her first class today and, like her husband, is starting to feel the first-day jitters. “They never go away, and I hope they don’t,” she said. “The day they go away will be the time for me to quit teaching.”