Westmont Magazine Gratitude for a Successful Strength for Today Campaign

Where Leadership and Learning Transform Lives

A Thankful President

Our generous community of alumni, parents and friends made Westmont’s Strength for Today campaign our most successful ever. We far surpassed our $75 million goal, raising more than $155 million. We’re blessed by this overwhelming support and thankful for God’s faithfulness and provision.

Strength for Today focused on three priorities: leadership, affordability and innovation. Thanks to the campaign, Westmont developed a world-class leadership program and facility to prepare new generations of ethical and effective leaders. Additional funding for scholarships makes our distinctive education available to even more students and families. Innovative new programs provide important experiences such as internships and off-campus programs while strengthening our nationally recognized science programs.

Thank you for your prayers and support during this campaign— and thank you for believing in our mission of cultivating thoughtful scholars, grateful servants and faithful leaders.

Gayle D. Beebe, Ph.D. President

Providing Leadership Programs

The beautifully designed Global Leadership Center features two residential buildings and the Leadership Center. Juniors, seniors and students returning from Westmont’s global programs learn to live and lead together as they form valuable relationships in the two halls. Spacious kitchens and common areas allow students to gather and participate in activities that help them grow intellectually and spiritually.

During the summer, executives participating in Westmont leadership conferences and seminars stay in these comfortable rooms. The five leadership institutes help students develop effective and transformational leadership skills with a global perspective. The center also hosts national conversations about ethical and moral leadership.

THE EATON CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION cultivates entrepreneurial and innovative attitudes, behaviors and programs in economics and business—and all disciplines—and prepares students to start and grow their own business or organization. This grounding in capital and social entrepreneurship inspires graduates to pursue lives of engagement, leadership and service and help change the world for the better. The center adapts innovative solutions from the for-profit world to solve enduring, real-life problems through understanding free-market economics. Rick Ifland, who directs the Eaton Center, takes students to Haiti each spring to launch small businesses using principles of microfinance and entrepreneurship.

THE HUGHES CENTER FOR NEUROSCIENCE AND LEADERSHIP offers cutting-
edge discoveries in applied neuroscience that hold promise for leadership development. The emerging field of emotional intelligence highlights the importance of making wise and discerning judgments in emotionally delicate situations. Greater understanding of the brain will help students nurture essential qualities such as empathy, human rapport and complex executive functioning. The center will use noninvasive imaging technologies to observe the brain during activities such as individual and group decision-making, consensus-building and executive decisions and offer personalized programs to help modify behavior.

THE MONTECITO INSTITUTE sponsors professional leadership conferences for executives that extend Westmont’s reach and influence to current leaders. Participants learn to apply values-driven insights from a range of disciplines and perspectives to leadership challenges, combining training in leadership skills with hands-on experience. Leadership students also participate. The first four Lead Where You Stand Conferences have featured David Brooks, Ron White, Doug McKenna, Meg Jay, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Lynda Weinman. This three-day conference offers key insights into an enduring challenge: How do we develop the capacity to respond in timely, principled ways to the multifaceted challenges and opportunities of effective leadership?

THE MOSHER CENTER equips students to become the moral and ethical leaders the world desperately needs. Students learn the importance of cultivating their God-given leadership abilities to embrace the responsibility to serve and lead effectively throughout the world. The center seeks to establish a national conversation on moral and ethical leadership by providing leadership training to executives and their teams. To date the college has hosted bestselling authors and leadership experts such as Jon Meacham, Henry Kissinger, Bob Woodward, David Gergin, Charles Duhigg and Guy Kawasaki.

THE GOBLE CENTER FOR GLOBAL LEARNING encourages all students to study abroad with a unique approach to global education: preparation before the trip, guidance while away and support upon returning. Students learn to navigate other cultures and work with people who are different. The center develops intercultural competencies such as flexibility, sensitivity, resilience, life-long learning and the ability to deal with ambiguity in complex environments. Students spend a semester studying the culture, politics, economy and religion of the destination while Westmont professors guide and teach. A re-entry seminar helps students embrace, apply and share their experiences. Westmont currently offers 15 programs around the world.

Improving Access and Affordability

Colleges face increasing pressure to make the cost of a high-quality education affordable. Westmont seeks to make its distinctive education available to all students and families by growing scholarship endowments and raising funds for annual assistance through the Westmont Fund.

Gifts to the Westmont Fund provide resources that directly benefit student scholarships. The Strength for Today Campaign raised $15 million for the Westmont Fund, offering financial assistance to a broad range of students.

Each year, 60 of our most qualified applicants receive the AUGUSTINIAN SCHOLARSHIPthanks to extraordinary gifts from two generous donors. This award provides 85 percent of full tuition for four years of study with the Augustinian Honors Program. Through this scholarship, Westmont seeks to educate a new generation of people like Augustine, capable of engaging every sphere of society with skill, savvy and competence while making a spirited defense for the love and hope they possess through Jesus Christ.

Thanks to more than a dozen committed alums and friends of the college and the college’s Augustinian Scholarship program, theBRIDGE 2 RWANDA SCHOLARSHIPS provide three Rwandan students tuition-plus scholarships to attend Westmont.

MICHAELHOUSE FELLOWS SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM provides a fully-funded, four-year Westmont education to black South African students and prepares them to return as leaders to serve others in their native country. Each year, two students who graduate from Michaelhouse, a Christian boarding school for boys in KwaZulu-Natal, will receive scholarships.

Westmont’s first president developed the vision for academic rigor and Christ-centered education that still guides the college. Wallace Emerson devoted all his energy to this seminal idea and established Westmont’s mission.THE WALLACE EMERSON SOCIETY advances this legacy by honoring friends who embrace it and give generously through a planned gift or provision in their will or estate plan. More than 750 members are helping Westmont build its endowment and its future.

Advancing Innovation

Westmont seeks to launch students for life, preparing them to successfully navigate the uncertain future. Recognizing the value of academic study and hands-on experiences, the college encourages all students to participate in internships and apply what they’ve learned in class. Westmont also answers the call for more STEM graduates by augmenting its strong science program with summer research programs and renovated, up-to-date laboratories.

WESTMONT DOWNTOWN brings students into the center of Santa Barbara for a semester of internships and engagement with local businesses and organizations. The program seeks to equip students to become social innovators and entrepreneurs who seek the global good. Internship options include social enterprises, start-ups, non-profits, policymaking organizations and businesses. Students generate ideas for social change and then act on them. Rachel Winslow, Ph.D., who has a strong background in non-profit leadership and community development, directs the program.

STEM EDUCATION AT WESTMONT: A $750,000 Fletcher Jones Foundation grant funded a significant renovation of Westmont’s biology and chemistry teaching labs in Whittier Hall. The college has built a strong science program with significant opportunities for student research and a high acceptance rate to top medical and graduate schools. The renovation grew out of the college’s commitment to providing facilities and equipment as outstanding as its talented faculty. Westmont raised $500,000 of matching funds to complete a challenge grant from the John Stauffer Charitable Trust, endowing the chemistry department’s Summer Research Program. Income from the $1 million endowment will provide a fellowship stipend each year for eight to 10 students to work with chemistry faculty members doing full-time research during the summer.

Westmont received a large grant to establish TRAILHEAD: SEEKING GOD’S CALL, a high school youth theology institute. Part of Lilly Endowment Inc.’s High School Youth Theology Institutes initiative, Trailhead seeks to encourage young people to explore theological traditions, ask questions about the moral dimensions of contemporary issues, and examine how their faith calls them to lives of service. Four two-day modules form the heart of the two-week summer residential program; each module addresses a critical social concern and a fundamental theological theme. Workshops on leadership, spiritual formation, and vocational discernment, as well as opportunities for rest, reflection and recreation, augment these core experiences.