Some of the smaller colleges and universities in Orange County are increasing nonprofit work, ranging from research and study—already within the scope of a school—to local charitable efforts and global social change.
Educators involved say college-age students have always driven such change and that there’s always need to help others where people live, work and attend school.
New initiatives and ongoing efforts cross geographic and academic lines: The programs are often official projects of the schools and not limited to Orange County or directly to the degrees the institutions offer—though that’s sometimes the case, and an academic setting has its benefits.
“We want to leverage our expertise as educators,” said Dr. Sandra Morgan, director of the Global Center for Women and Justice based at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa.
The center conducts research and presents conferences on human trafficking that bring together students, local authorities and federal agencies.
One of Morgan’s former students is now a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent investigating human trafficking, Morgan said.
Others have interned at the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force, which tries to identify and protect human trafficking victims and to help promote the prosecution of perpetrators.
One of the Vanguard center’s conferences is called Ensure Justice, a one-unit course for students, though anyone can attend. The next conference is in March.
Morgan said labor trafficking touches the local community, with recent instances in Southern California of foreign nationals brought here against their will to work for others.
The United Nations considers human trafficking to include taking and transferring people by fraud or force to exploit them in some form of work. Morgan said it’s more than sex trafficking, which gets the most attention.
The work starts in Orange County but doesn’t stop here.
Until recently, the center has also been active in Northern Iraq, sending students on short-term trips to work with local communities.
Honor Roll
Even when a school’s work is local, it gets national attention.
Irvine-based Stanbridge College has made the national President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll each year since 2009.
“It’s the highest federal recognition a college or university can receive for a commitment to volunteering, service-learning and civic engagement,” said Victoria Sauer, Stanbridge assistant director of Media and Communications.
Last year, the school’s accrediting body, the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges, called Stanbridge out for its community service.
The school cofounded the Free Pantry Organization in 2013. Sauer said it has distributed 250,000 pounds of fresh produce and served 9,000 meals to homeless people.
Students and faculty raise about $1,500 a month to offer the food at Lighthouse Church in Costa Mesa.
The school is not affiliated with the church.
“There’s a deep concern that those in need should receive a free, fresh and nutritious meal,” Sauer said.
Each month, students also help clean Upper Newport Bay—more than 6,100 hours so far—and they raised $10,000 for new dental chairs at the Lestonnac Free Clinic, which serves the poor.
Much of the work doesn’t deal directly with what the college does as a business.
Stanbridge was founded in 1996 as an information technology training school and has moved into health sciences—but it doesn’t offer dental degrees or programs, for instance.
Everest College in Anaheim does.
Dental assistant students there have participated in Pulling from the Heart—a free dental clinic for low-income residents offered by the 7 Day Dental chain of dentist offices in Laguna Woods, Ladera Ranch and Anaheim.
Students assist with X-rays and one of two procedures offered: extractions and fillings, said Lakeysha Murphy, chair of the dental assistant program at the school’s Anaheim campus.
Murphy said 15 to 20 dentists treat 300 patients in one day and that about 75 students volunteer.
“We do it to raise awareness of the importance of good oral hygiene,” she said. “A lot of people are in pain, so these are efforts for better oral care.”
Everest is owned by Santa Ana-based Corinthian Colleges Inc., which is currently winding down its operations.
Corinthian’s local students in other teaching areas also volunteer in discipline-related efforts. Its massage therapy students, for instance, provide free massages each Friday and at annual events such as health fairs and a number of local running events.
Marshall B. Ketchum University in Fullerton also connects its teaching mission to its nonprofit work.
“Our big outreach for a long time has been vision care,” said Paul Stover, Ketchum’s vice president for university advancement.
The school was founded by Marshall B. Ketchum as the Los Angeles Medical School of Ophthalmology and Optometry in 1904 in Los Angeles and provided free vision care there. It still participates in health events in Los Angeles for underserved communities.
After moving to Orange County in 1972 and becoming the Southern California College of Optometry—which formed the core of its volunteer work in vision care—it established free eye-care clinics in Buena Park, at the Boys & Girls Club in Garden Grove, and at the Orange County Rescue Mission in Tustin. It also provides eye exams to elementary school students in Santa Ana and Fullerton.
Last year, Ketchum added a mobile clinic called the Eye Force One Vision Van.
Ketchum added a physician’s assistant program in April 2013, thereby becoming a university. The new program received 800 applicants for 26 available spaces.
Classes started this fall, and now the physician assistant students are also volunteering.
“Our PAs are already working with the screenings to take vital signs, blood pressure and so on,” Stover said.
Ketchum plans to add a pharmacy degree in the fall of 2016 and said it expects those students to contribute.
Global and Local
The volume of volunteering is growing, say local schools leaders.
Vanguard’s Morgan said colleges and universities are ideally positioned to work with businesses, government and other groups to provide services they only can give.
“We’re committed to using our platform for research and study, and then to share that information with students and the community,” she said. “Collaboration prevents wasted resources.”
She said schools can link local work to national and global efforts in order to expand on what others are doing.
“One thing people have been talking about is coordination, collaboration and capacity,” she said. “And as a Christian nonprofit, we can add the element of compassion.”
