For the Media

The U.S. Department of Education has approved a five-year grant worth $1,309,430 for California Lutheran University to continue the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, which supports students from underrepresented segments of society who want to attain doctoral degrees.

The Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival is closing its 2022 season with one of the most performed tragedies in theater history, but under the guiding hand of a veteran director seeing the play in a new way.

The U.S. Department of Education awarded California Lutheran University more than $3.6 million to continue and expand its TRIO Traditional Upward Bound services for high school students in Oxnard, Hawthorne and Lawndale.

Twenty-five years after the first Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival was held, and following a two-year pandemic-caused hiatus, the event kicks off its joyous return to California Lutheran University’s Kingsmen Park with performances of one of the Bard’s most popular comedies.

The founding director of California Lutheran University’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program for prospective teachers is retiring with emeritus status on Tuesday.

A new position is rapidly becoming an important part of the organizational landscape: chief diversity officer. Companies, nonprofits and educational institutions have become increasingly cognizant of the need to address and support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) related to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, age, ability, religion and socioeconomic status in a comprehensive way.

The academic, spiritual and ceremonial events celebrating the inauguration of President Lori E. Varlotta, PhD — delayed by the pandemic — were opportunities to restate her vision for the campus.

Bits of your pants, shirts, socks and fleece jackets are polluting local waters. Cal Lutheran biology students have discovered this disturbing fashion dilemma as part of a scientific research project.

As the wind exhaled, it shook the grounds of Cal Lutheran. Midday in January at Kinsgmen Park, a few students pulled up their hoodies. But Kathy Willcuts and Steven Garcia, the latter wearing traditional handcrafted American Indian attire with a headdress fashioned as an eagle’s head, welcomed the wind as a living, breathing presence.

Nearly four years after joining the Cal Lutheran faculty as an assistant professor of psychology, Amanda ElBassiouny, PhD, likes to joke that she’s a senior. But ElBassiouny is in no rush to leave campus at the end of the academic year.

When Kathie (Schaap ’89) Hale met her husband Rich 23 years ago, she was only a casual runner. “The farthest I had ever run was 3 miles,” she said. “But he was doing these 50-mile epic adventures. That was one of the things that drew me to him.”

Being at Oxford University in England, speaking at Oxford Union Hall, was a once-in-a-lifetime, out-of-body experience. Yet there I was, a member of the “Oxford Round Table,” in 2005. Very little in my life could have allowed me to imagine that I would be in England at that time and place.

Seems fitting for me to write this column on the first day of spring. Just as the season is marked by the promise of renewal and hope, so are many of the projects and events we have undertaken this year.

Under normal circumstances, recipients of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America college scholarships for international women meet once a year in Chicago to network and share ideas. Everyone has a plan to help their home countries, said Naomi Mbise, a third-year Cal Lutheran student from Tanzania.

Members of Cal Lutheran’s first basketball team recently celebrated their 60th anniversary with a Jan. 29 reunion.

Alumna Holly Roepke ’14 has been named director of athletics at Cal Lutheran. A former soccer standout and member of the Alumni Association Athletic Hall of Fame, the Thousand Oaks resident returned to her alma mater in July as senior associate director of athletics, and began serving as interim director in October.

The largest Nordic festival in Southern California will return to California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks on June 4 and 5 after a two-year absence caused by the pandemic.

Community Scholars for Black Lives (CSBL) is a result of the current vice president of university advancement, Regina D. Biddings-Muro, EdD, and a former university staff member, Kelly D. Owens, PhD, who’s continued to lend her support. Thanks to the involvement of community and industry partners working to advance Black people in Ventura County, the program allows students to put their proposals for fighting systemic racism into action.

A criminology and criminal justice professor committed to helping students learn by serving the community has received California Lutheran University’s highest teaching honor.

California Lutheran University will hold its 2022 Traditional Undergraduate Commencement at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 14. 

California Lutheran University will hold its 2022 Graduate and Professionals Commencement at 9 a.m. Saturday, May 14. 

Shakespeare meets Green Day in an original musical parody of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" that will be performed April 28 through May 1 at California Lutheran University.

California Lutheran University received its largest National Science Foundation grant to date — $307,486 for a biologist and her students to study sexual selection in tiny Brazilian squirrel monkeys.

A recital of cello and piano music at California Lutheran University will consist entirely of works written by female composers.

Today, Angel City Football Club (ACFC) announced that California Lutheran University will serve as the inaugural training site for the National Women’s Soccer League team.

California Lutheran University is hosting an exhibit of eye-catching rock posters created by Zoltron, who started as a street artist and developed a worldwide fan base that includes rock stars and museum curators.

An online art exhibit and virtual conversation series organized when the COVID-19 pandemic kept people from connecting in person has become an in-person exhibit that examines the concept of community.

In the last four years, Cal Lutheran has welcomed young women from Palestine, Tanzania and Poland under the International Women Leaders (IWL) program. The Chicago-based organization identifies scholarship candidates through Lutheran churches in low-income countries.

California Lutheran University’s Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (PLTS) is offering new programs to prepare religious leaders and laypeople to work for social and environmental change with online options.

Anthony Lugo has been named head coach of the California Lutheran University football team after being in the interim role this past season.