Current Vol. 5 No. 2

President's Message:

Welcome to our latest edition of Current- our means of telling you of the activities at your new public university here in Ventura County. For those of you who have followed our story, you will detect a significant shift in emphasis with this edition of Current. I refer to our ability to now speak to the next chapter in our development, that being the design and implementation of the essence of a university - its academic program. The last four years have been exciting and rewarding. We have attained all of the goals we set out to achieve, and then some. When I first came to the county in January of 1996, our resources were a 260acre lemon grove on Central Avenue, a significant amount of enthusiasm, no money, but a pledge from then Chancellor Barry Munitz that Ventura County would get its university. We set about designing a university that, while meeting the educational needs of the community, would by necessity be selffunding for most of its capital construction. A daunting task and many of you heard me speak to that issue in our early days.