A Matter of Trust

View of a Pitzer townhall meeting taking place in 1965. — Community engagement starts at home. The living room of old Sanborn Hall—not to be confused with the residence hall that today is homebase for all first-year students—was a meeting hotspot in Pitzer’s earliest years. It was a place where regular town hall meetings like this one on Nov. 1, 1965, gave faculty and students a chance to meet face-to-face and discuss the College’s future together. Though that old hall was demolished in 2008, the spirit of community engagement that filled its living room lives on today in Pitzer’s many programs connecting students and faculty with outside organizations. This photo can be found in *Arthur Dubinsky: The Life and Times of Pitzer College*, a collection of photos featured in a past exhibition and book published by Pitzer College Art Galleries.

Dear Pitzer Community,

There are a number of rankings and surveys that higher education institutions anticipate every year: Princeton Review, U.S. News & World Report, and Times Higher Education, among many others.

In light of the community engagement theme of this issue of Participant, though, there’s another that interests me more: A 2023 Gallup survey about public confidence in higher education.

The results were not what anyone in higher education wanted. According to that survey, just 36% of Americans expressed confidence in higher education. That number has been declining for years—Gallup reported a confidence level of 57% in 2015 and 48% in 2018.

Gallup cites a number of factors behind that decline. They include the fact that colleges and universities have been swept up in broader public dissatisfaction and mistrust of American institutions, including the Supreme Court, Congress, and the presidency, among others, as well as the concomitant rise in social and political polarization, manifested in recent turmoil across college campuses since the Gaza conflict began.

How can colleges and universities respond to this challenge? As this issue illustrates, community engagement offers one answer. Partnering with surrounding local governments and organizations is one way to create real, meaningful relationships between schools and communities—and perhaps help reverse the decline noted by the Gallup survey. It also enables our students to develop the tools they will take out into the world to make it a better place.

Pitzer is uniquely positioned in this regard. As we learn in this issue from Tricia Morgan ’08, the managing director of our Community Engagement Center (CEC), Pitzer doesn’t have one community engagement focus, but many. In fact, Pitzer’s belief in the power of community dates back to the College’s earliest days, as this archival photo by Arthur Dubinsky illustrates.

And yet, our College has wrestled with the challenges of putting this belief into action. Back in the 1990s, Pitzer was stuck with an unsatisfying model of community engagement that most higher education institutions were following. In typical Pitzer fashion, we broke away from the rest to explore something new thanks to the vision and persistence of several members of our campus community.

In this issue, you’ll learn more about those early days, the formation of the CEC and CASA Pitzer (Critical Action & Social Advocacy), and how the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability, Justice Education Initiative, and other programs have joined them through the years. You will also find inspiring stories about our students, faculty, and alumni who are involved in community work locally and globally.

Most important of all, I hope this issue of Participant will serve as a reminder that, although the College may be small in physical size and acreage, our intellectual and activist footprints are large.

Provida Futuri,

portrait of Strom Thacker wearing a red and white collared shirt and black jacket

Strom C. Thacker
President
Pitzer College