Winter rains had soaked Southern California to its core,
and maybe that was the surest sign of a donation downpour for Cal State
San Bernardino’s Palm Desert Campus. In late January, the cities
of Rancho Mirage and Indio, as well as the Desert Healthcare District
in the Coachella Valley, announced contributions that totaled $2.75 million
toward a new health sciences building. The three gifts came within a two-week
period.
Rancho Mirage pledged $1 million in multi-year installments
and Indio contributed $750,000. The Desert Healthcare District, a multi-city
agency, voted to earmark another $1 million for the construction. The
new structure, which will complete the initial three-building phase of
the campus, will be devoted primarily to nurses’ training, but will
also be used to prepare students in other allied health professions. “We
are seeing a shortage of nurses locally and statewide, and nurses’
training programs will help keep capable healthcare professionals here
in the valley, where they are needed,” said Fred Jandt, dean of
the Palm Desert Campus.
“Indio is the city where the greatest number of
our Palm Desert Campus students and alumni live, and it’s great
to see the city stepping forward to support its young citizens in their
pursuit of higher education,” Jandt said. “And we’re
pleased that Rancho Mirage and the Desert Healthcare District have stepped
up to the plate to support our public university.”
A laboratory in the health sciences structure will be
named for the city of Indio in recognition of its gift, and other areas
will recognize the Rancho Mirage and Desert Healthcare District gifts.
Grassroots Commitment
When students keep pushing for a four-year university,
when private citizens band together to raise millions to build a public
facility, when a U.S. Supreme Court justice travels across the country
to dedicate a building, you know that whatever else is happening in the
world, this, too, must harbor some significance. To Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy, education was a tool for freedom. “Democracy must be taught
if it is to be preserved,” he said during the dedication of the
Palm Desert Campus’s Annenberg Wing, located in the new Indian Wells
Center for Educational Excellence. Invited by PDC capital campaign co-chair
Betty Barker as well as a friend of Leonore Annenberg, Kennedy was particularly
moved by the vim and determination residents of the Coachella Valley showed
in making a permanent campus a reality in the desert. It is said that
the Palm Desert Campus is the first privately-funded state university
site in the nation.
Artful Entrances
On approaching the Indian Wells Center for Educational
Excellence at the Palm Desert Campus, you first walk through the Betty
Barker Sculpture Garden. With pieces by Erwin Binder, Yehiel Shemi, Michael
Todd, John Buck, Veryl Goodnight, Betty Gold and Jesus Bautista Moroles,
the sculptures create a path of beauty to the center. The garden was dedicated
in honor of Coachella Valley philanthropist Betty Barker, who has been
instrumental in the highly successful fundraising efforts and as a donor
for the construction of the campus.
Along with former Indian Wells Mayor Dick Oliphant, Barker
is co-chair of the campus’s capital fundraising campaign that seeks
to raise $31 million for the three-building “Phase I” of the
campus on Cook Street in Palm Desert.
In addition to her work for the Palm Desert Campus, Barker
is also a longtime fund-raiser for the Children’s Museum and the
Palm Springs Desert Museum, among her many philanthropic endeavors. She
has worked with the Desert Museum’s executive director, Janice Lyle,
to bring long-term loan sculptures to the new garden and other campus
areas.
Design that Loves Landscape
The Mary Stuart Rogers Gateway Building looked so good
to the American Institute of Architects’ Inland California Chapter
that the organization couldn’t help but say something. So it gave
the building’s architect, Lee, Burkhart, Liu, Inc. of Marina del
Rey, its 2004 Citation Award. The building’s “bold forms,”
said AIA, blended well with the desert’s dramatic landscape. The
Rogers Gateway building opened in 2002.
