Marymount College in Lake County short on students

LUCERNE - The lighted windows of the elegant, 1920s-era former hotel beckoned through the gloom of a recent rainy night in Lake County. Inside the castle-like building were four students in an undergraduate abnormal psychology course at what is a satellite campus of Marymount California University.

The students, in their mid- to late-20s, work during the day. Most have young children. All are determined to complete their college degrees as quickly as possible.

While the campus' students are hardworking and enthusiastic, they are few. The college has just 26 undergraduate students, raising questions about its long-term viability.

“There's no question we continue to subsidize” the Lucerne campus, said Ariane Schauer, provost and executive vice president of Marymount California University, a private, not-for-profit college. It's affiliated with, but receives no funding from, the Catholic Church. The county also is subsidizing the college by waiving its rent for the first five years.

Schauer said it's up to the university's board of trustees to determine whether a campus is viable and it has not made any decisions. The college also has not determined how many students it needs to be sustainable, she said. Marymount formally opened the Lucerne campus in 2014 with 17 undergraduate students. There were 27 undergraduates in 2015.

Marymount altogether has about 1,000 students at its three campuses, most of them taking four-year courses at the main campus in Palos Verdes, Schauer said. The third campus is a satellite facility with shuttle service to the main campus, five miles away.

The Lake County campus offers area residents an opportunity to earn bachelor's degrees in liberal arts, business and psychology without moving away from home or commuting to Sonoma County. The program is geared toward students who have completed two years at a local community college, like Mendocino or Yuba.

Marymount also offers a master's degree in community psychology.

The college does not publicly divulge campus budgets, Schauer said. But the three-campus college's total revenue in 2015 was $43 million with expenses of $41 million, according to Guide Star. Its net assets were $31 million. Most of the college's revenue is from student tuition, Schauer said.

Marymount has at least two years of financial leeway to decide whether the campus stays or goes. The county, which owns the building, is charging it just $1 a year in rent for the first five years. Beginning in July 2019, the lease agreement calls for payments of 50 percent of the Lucerne campus' net revenue or a minimum of $85,000 a year, not to exceed $250,000 annually. But the deadline is open to negotiations, according to the lease agreement.

The agreement also allows Marymount to shed its responsibility for a majority of the three-story building and its utilities. The county pays 80 percent of the electrical and propane costs and 17 percent of water and sewer bills for the estimated 50,000-square-foot building. Marymount uses only 8,000 square feet of it.

The county can rent out the building's vacant portions and use the massive lobby and one-time dining area, which is now considered shared space.

The Lucerne campus has been shifting toward offering more online courses, a move Schauer said is in response to student needs, not a cost-saving measure.

Next semester, more than half of the 23 courses offered will be online. Ten will be hybrid classes that typically meet in person every other week, said Kathy Windrem, the campus enrollment coordinator, a change that doesn't sit well with some students.

“That is quite frustrating,” said Chelsea McMilin, 26, of Ukiah, a psychology major who works with special needs students. “I'm taking five classes next semester (and) only one is in person. That's not what I signed up for,” adding she could have taken courses at any number of colleges if she wanted to study online.

But she's staying put until she graduates in 2018, because she likes the college's small size, which ensures she doesn't get lost in a crowd.

“It's more intimate,” said McMilin.

And having a local campus also avoids uprooting students' children and spouses, providing support, and the school's tuition is competitive. Each unit costs about $450, “a special rate for the Lakeside students,” according to Schauer, using Marymount's term for the Lucerne campus.

County officials were thrilled to recruit Marymount as a tenant for the former Lucerne Hotel and continue to hold onto hope the arrangement will succeed.

The county invested a significant amount of redevelopment funds on the hotel, hoping it would become an economic boon to the county. It purchased the building in 2010 for $1.35 million and spent more than $3 million to prepare it for tenants. Improvements included replacing the roof, plumbing and electrical work, installation of an elevator and making the building disability accessible.

Marymount spent about $1 million on creating and updating classrooms and bathrooms in the section it occupies, Schauer said.

But a majority of the rooms, which the county had expressed hope might eventually be used for student dormitories, remain untouched and empty. Schauer said she's unaware of any past or future plans for dormitories at the facility.

Envisioned as part of a grand resort and housing development in the 1920s, the building has yet to live up to expectations. The early vision died in the Depression and the property went through multiple changes in ownership before the Lucerne Hotel finally opened in 1938, only to close the next year. In 1968 it was purchased by the San Francisco Baptist Theological Seminary, which used the property for Christian retreats and youth camps. It sold to the county in 2010 because the economic downturn led to a decline in the number of church organizations renting the facility, church officials said at the time.

When the county purchased the building, officials said it needed to have multiple uses and stakeholders to be viable, something the county still hopes to accomplish.

County officials said they have had discussions with potential tenants for space in the building but nothing has materialized.

Meanwhile, Marymount said it's beefing up its student recruitment. It is holding several open houses at the Lucerne campus and visiting area community college campuses to reach out to potential students and meet with counselors. It regularly sends out press releases and plans to launch radio ads, Windrem said.

“Our hope is that we will be growing our enrollments,” said Schauer.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 707-462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com.