Stately structure up at Vanguard

Jeff Benson

Vanguard University christened the first of four proposed structures

Thursday in its 10-year Vision 2010 build-out plan, when the Heath

Academic Center for Business and Religion officially opened for staff

members and students.

The 36,000-square-foot, two-story rectangular building will serve

up to 600 students per class hour on the bottom floor and contains 36

staff offices on the top floor. Eight classrooms can accommodate 50

students at a time, and its two lecture halls can each seat 100

students. Each of the classrooms are equipped with surround sound and

house docking stations for laptops, Vanguard President Murray

Dempster said.

Dempster and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher dedicated the new building and

recognized its donors in an opening ceremony Thursday.

Vanguard alumni Paul and Barbara Heath donated $1.2 million of the

$5.2 million used for the building’s construction, while other donors

raised as much as $700,000 toward the Vision 2010 plan, Dempster

said.

“What really attracted the Heaths was that religion merged with

the business side,” Dempster said. “The building will help emphasize

ethics for business leaders and competent management skills for

church leaders. Our goal is to make sure of that.”

The university has also raised $7.2 million toward construction of

three additional buildings expected to open in the next six years --

the Townsend Center for Science and Technology, a new student union

and a music and humanities building that hasn’t been named. Dempster

said the university also expects to raise $10 million for an

education endowment fund to coincide with Vision 2010.

Dempster said the Heath Academic Center for Business and Religion

will lessen overcrowding in other university buildings. Business,

with 457 students, and theology, with 338 students, are the most

popular majors on the campus, he said. The campus serves more than

2,100 students.

“Before, we were at a 95% classroom-occupancy rate, which meant we

were bottlenecked,” Dempster said. “Now, that has been reduced to

67%. We’ve basically maintained a 16-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio.

We’ve opened up classes and kept class size small.”