By DEXTER DUGGAN
ESCONDIDO, Calif. — If John Paul the Great Catholic University here believed in setting aside “safe spaces” for students, as one hears of at various other campuses, this Southern California school wouldn’t have a reason to exist.
Sometimes called JP Catholic, the school (jpcatholic.edu) grapples with the challenges of contemporary culture instead of seeking protection from them.
Mentioning an upcoming project, school president Derry Connolly, Ph.D., told The Wanderer, “We’re not afraid of addressing the issues that culture faces.”
He had just been chatting during a July 17 interview about the number of short films that students at the media-oriented school produce each year when he said a team plans to go to Ireland in September to do a film project on suicide.
Connolly said students take topics up that young people face, “things that cripple our culture.”
The Wanderer began the interview by asking if “safe spaces” were being sought at this campus. “No, we don’t” get requests for them, Connolly replied, adding, “That’s not an indulgence we would give to students.”
With a background in high technology and education, Connolly has been JP Catholic president since its inception as an idea in 2003. It opened its doors to 30 students in 2006 in 4,400 square feet of space in an office building in northern San Diego’s Scripps Ranch neighborhood, then expanded to 13,000 square feet before moving north to suburban Escondido in 2013.
About 320 students were attending the current summer quarter under way at 40,000 square feet of campus, Connolly said, adding that an additional 40,000 square feet have been acquired in reserve.
Founded to impact culture for Christ, JP Catholic began by offering two majors, a BS in communications media with a concentration in entertainment media, and a BS in business with concentration in entrepreneurial business — creating expertise in entertainment production, and the business acumen to back it up.
Its academic offerings and facilities have expanded considerably since then, with a few buildings on each side of Grand Avenue, which goes through downtown Escondido, a city of more than 150,000 people about 18 miles east of the Pacific Ocean, in California’s coastal hills.
There’s a new degree program in humanities, he said, offering an emphasis in either creative writing and screenwriting or theology and philosophy.
The communications media program already had screenwriting, Connolly said, but it also had work with cameras, while the new offering allows more of a focus on literature.
Walking across Grand Avenue from his office to point out the nearby two-story building purchased free and clear to become the school’s St. Teresa of Calcutta Chapel, Connolly told The Wanderer, “We need God to send us 4 or 5 million dollars, would be good,” to convert the nearly 100-year-old Mediterranean Revival-style structure for worship.
“God always sends us what we need when we need it,” Connolly added. “So, if He hasn’t sent it yet, we don’t need it.”
It’s a familiar expression of trust that The Wanderer has heard from Connolly over a decade, since this newspaper first visited the previous Scripps Ranch campus in early 2007.
Daily Mass is celebrated on campus, along with other devotions including morning prayer, eucharistic adoration, and the rosary. As for a large sound stage for academic activities, “We use it for everything,” Connolly said.
The school’s first-year budget was $700,000 to $800,000, Connolly recalled, while now it’s about $7 million.
Another project in the works is providing more student housing by demolishing a commercial building then constructing a dorm for freshmen and sophomores, he said, while juniors and seniors are to continue to live at the nearby Latitude 33 apartment complex.
“We don’t care where married students live,” Connolly added, estimating them at 5 percent to 10 percent of students.
Asked about movie projects, Connolly said, “We’re always producing short films.” During 10 years, he said, the school produced only two full-length movies because students prefer the greater involvement they have in short productions. “Are they a small cog in a big wheel or a big cog in a small wheel?” They prefer the latter, he said.
Students produce “probably 60 or 70” short films a year, “both . . . for classes and for fun,” he said, and simply post them at YouTube rather than having to market them.
Young people facing the future are “another army ready to take on the battle, even readier than we are,” he said.
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