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Rossier School of Education |
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 arbara and Roger Rossier’s $20 million commitment to USC’s School of Education may be the largest gift ever received by an American school of education, but it is by no means the only contribution that the Orange County entrepreneurs have made to the institution that now bears their name.
While juggling the demands of several businesses, including a school for children with delays in academic, social and emotional development, the former school counselors have thrown themselves behind their alma mater.
From offering financial advice to alerting the administration about new trends in education to stuffing invitations to alumni events and opening their Tustin home to prospective students, the Rossiers have proven to be among the most active and selfless volunteers in the history of USC’s Barbara J. and Roger W. Rossier School of Education, say school officials.
In fact, Barbara Rossier recently retired as director of the couple’s Rossier School and plans to devote even more time to USC’s Building on Excellence Campaign.
“Barbara and Roger are vastly more active than any volunteers we’ve had at the School of Education,” says Guilbert C. Hentschke, dean of the Rossier School of Education. “As substantial as their financial commitment is, it is rivaled by their gift of time and energy in support of the school.”
AT THE DEAN'S REQUEST, Barbara Rossier has served since 1990 as chair of the school’s Board of Councilors, a 20-person advisory board that provides advice in charting new directions for the school and solving pressing problems.
“She’s updated and revitalized the board and made it a much more active body,” Hentschke says. “I’ve asked her to stay on as long as I’m dean.”
In addition to serving on the board of councilors, Barbara Rossier is founder and chair of USC’s Orange County Educational Development Committee, a School of Education alumni group that hosts twice-annual lectures on educational trends while recruiting students and raising funds in Orange County.
She also co-chairs USC’s Orange County Advisory Council, a larger group of USC alumni who hail from a range of schools. In the past, Rossier has served on the Board of Directors of the USC Associates, the university’s premier support group, and as a member of the USC Alumni Association’s Board of Governors, which directs the affairs of the group that represents more than 240,000 USC alumni worldwide.
Roger Rossier has been active in USC’s SCions Scholarship Committee, which raises funds for students who are related to USC alumni, and has served as a mentor through the USC School of Education placement office for graduates going into vocational training. He also has been active in recruitment efforts.
“We both feel that we have the responsibility to make sure that others have the opportunity that was afforded us,” Roger Rossier says.
The $20 million gift is only the latest expression of the Rossiers’ generosity. In 1991, they established a scholarship fund for Orange County residents pursuing graduate studies in educational counseling. Then in 1996, they launched the Rossier Annual Gift Challenge, a matching grant program that by July 31 had netted 21 substantial contributions to the school. They also are Presidential Associates, the highest rank within the USC Associates.
THE ROSSIERS ASCRIBE their unusual dedication to the efforts of such USC faculty as Clive Grafton, a former associate dean who helped the couple to get involved. Among other things, Grafton asked Barbara Rossier to join the school’s Board of Councilors and enlisted both of the Rossiers in the school’s former overseas program.
But it didn’t hurt that the Rossiers are alumni twice over. Barbara Sharp and Roger Rossier studied under the same professors but never met when they attended the School of Education in the early ’60s. She was a junior high school teacher who had just become a school counselor. He was a former GI who was working as a driver’s education and geography teacher at Santa Ana Valley High School. By 1963, they both had earned master’s degrees in educational guidance. They didn’t come to know each other until the following year at Westmin-ster High School, where they were both school counselors.
“I liked her style,” Roger Rossier says.
When the Rossiers returned to USC in the late 1960s, it was as a married couple with two growing boys. While working as an educational psychologist in the Santa Ana School District, Barbara embarked in 1969 on a doctoral program at the School of Education. Roger, meanwhile, served as dean of guidance at Pacifica High School in Garden Grove and then as a counselor at Cypress College, a community college in north Orange County, while working on his doctorate in higher education.
Barbara completed her Ed.D. in 1971; Roger followed in 1972. When asked how they managed two children, two careers and two doctorates, they both shrug.
“It meant being sensitive to each other and being organized, and we worked together and shared responsibilities, but I don’t think we had any particular problems at all,” he says.
“You just do it,” she adds.
HOWEVER NONCHALANT they are about it today, the Rossiers had established the prodigious pace that would eventually allow them to make the record-setting gift to USC: While holding down full-time counseling jobs, each almost always found the drive and discipline to pursue something else – whether another job or a consulting or business opportunity.
While working as an assistant professor of educational psychology at Cal State Los Angeles, Barbara Rossier launched a private practice specializing in pyschodiagnostic evaluation of children and adults with developmental delays, learning disabilities, social and emotional disabilities and mental retardation.
The Rossiers say they’d never planned on running a school themselves until they received a call in 1980 from the director of special education for an Orange County school district. A small private school that taught 40 emotionally and learning-disabled children was up for sale.
Why didn’t they buy it, the director asked. Between Barbara’s background with emotionally, learning- and mentally challenged children and Roger’s background in vocational training, they had the right stuff.
“So we got it,” Barbara says. “It was just that simple. It was not as though either of us had started out to have a private school.”
Now 18 years later, school districts in Los Angeles and Orange County send 190 children annually to the Rossier School, which has a reputation for high academic standards and a top-flight vocational program.
“In our program, children follow the curriculum, as outlined by the state, that they would have followed at their level in their public school,” Barbara says of the school that is split between campuses in Garden Grove (K-6) and Fountain Valley (7-12). “We want the children to feel they’re making the same progress as their neighbor.”
While Barbara Rossier took over the school reins in 1980, Roger continued working at Cypress College, where his responsibilities included helping foreign students to adjust to their new surroundings. Meanwhile, he oversaw the Rossier School’s bus transportation system and vocational training program.
DESPITE THEIR MANY commitments, the Rossiers have long placed a premium on volunteer activities.
“Running a school is more than a full-time job,” Barbara admits. “It’s a lot of responsibility. It’s very demanding, especially with special education children. But I felt it was very important to have balance in my life. I felt there was a real purpose to work for the university and specifically for the School of Education.”
With another volunteer, Barbara Rossier instituted Dean Hentschke’s annual “State of the School Address,” a much-anticipated event among school alumni. By all accounts, Rossier has breathed new life into the school’s Board of Councilors, which now includes such educational entrepreneurs as Doug Becker, founder and executive director of Sylvan Learning, a private company specializing in tutoring, and Dan Hunter, an affordable housing developer whose projects include tutoring services.
BECAUSE OF THEIR EXPERIENCES, the Rossiers have been strong advocates of reinstating credentialed degree programs for school counselors and psychologists. They have also urged the School of Education to offer more courses that teach basic business skills to future educators.
“Over the years, I’ve been very outspoken about some programs that I think the school needs to have,” Barbara Rossier says. “I’ve also worked closely with the dean to help institute improvements.”
At the same time, the Rossiers are not above rolling up their sleeves and pitching in on less prestigious projects.
“We’re there to advise and support and help provide the funds and labor to relieve the full-time staff and faculty,” Barbara Rossier says. “It’s like doing the dishes ... and letting someone else do the cooking.”
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