Pacific Union College


Pacific Union College is a private Seventh-day Adventist liberal arts college in Angwin, California. It is the only four-year college in Napa County, and the twelfth oldest institution of higher education in California. As a coeducational residential college with an almost exclusively undergraduate student body, most of those who attend the college are four-year students living on campus.
PUC is accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission and maintains various programmatic accreditation for specific programs. Enrollment at Pacific Union College is roughly 825. The college offers about 60 undergraduate majors and three master's programs organized in 25 academic departments, with its health science degrees the largest number of those sought out by students. The campus occupies of the college's in property.

History

Early years (1882–1908)

Pacific Union College was founded as Healdsburg Academy in Healdsburg, California, in northern Sonoma County, in 1882. The creation of schools in the state was urged by Ellen G. White and other church leaders in an effort to accommodate the Adventist Church's growing membership on the West Coast and to train young Adventists for its work. The academy officially opened on April 11 of that year. It was the twelfth institution of higher education founded in California, and is the second founded by the Adventist Church, the first west of the Mississippi River.
Sidney Brownsberger served as its first President. Under his term, the academy focused on both conventional study of standard subjects as well as practical skills, such as dressmaking, blacksmithing, carpentry, and cooking, in line with White's desire for the college. The lengthy tenure of William C. Grainger saw the heyday of the Academy's early years, but with the turn of the century, poor financial management led to increasing debt that eventually forced the academy to close in July 1908.

Move to Angwin (1909–1921)

Despite this failure, many church leaders – including White herself – continued to push for expanded Adventist schooling, and efforts were begun in the 1900s to find a new location to rebuild the college. Many sites were scouted out in the Central Valley and elsewhere within the state, but none came to the satisfaction of the searchers.
Eventually, in 1909, the Pacific Union Conference announced that it had found an opening to purchase the 1,636 acres of the Angwin Resort on Howell Mountain in neighboring Napa County. The property had been found through the church's St. Helena Sanitarium, and White visited the site in September in 1909. Satisfied with the condition of its facilities and living quarters and the ease with which they could be adapted for teaching purposes, its abundant resources in springs and lumber, and the healthful living its geography would provide, White approved the location. The property was bought in the same month for $60,000, and opened its doors September 29. The name of the college was finalized as Pacific Union College in 1910 to reflect change in location, even as it had changed names a few times before.
PUC's first president at Angwin was Charles W. Irwin, who served from the opening of the new location until 1921. Irwin's term was marked by self-sufficiency as the college adapted to its new location, with both the faculty and student body working to expand the campus through the area's available natural resources.

Early 20th century (1922–1943)

In the 1920s and 1930s, PUC expanded its educational programs with the goal of receiving educational accreditation. Driven by suggestions from the college's board, PUC required that professors have postgraduate degrees to teach, created lower and upper divisions, introduced major and minor degrees, and necessitated the completion of senior theses for graduation. The college also extended funds to pay for faculty members' graduate studies. With these changes, PUC became the first Adventist college to become accredited when it was awarded accreditation by the Northwest Association of Secondary and Higher Schools in 1933.
This era also saw further expansion of the campus community through the construction of more facilities – including new men's dormitories and its current gymnasium – as well as through the creation of the college's first student association, the Associated Students of Pacific Union College, in January 1935. The college's student newspaper, the Campus Chronicle, published its first issue in 1925 after being adapted from the previous Mountain Echo, while the Diogenes Lantern, PUC's current yearbook, was first published in 1938.
With the United States' entry into World War II, over 400 male students and alumni were eventually drafted into military service.

Other history (1943–2023)

In 2006 the faculty, administration, and Board of Trustees underscored PUC's commitment to undergraduate education by making a formal decision to remain a college and not change its name to university, as other small private colleges had done.
In 2006, PUC's Board of Trustees made plans to transform the area into an ecovillage of several hundred settlements, in partnership with Triad Development, a Seattle-based construction firm. Although the college downscaled its original plans due to community opposition – primarily by Save Rural Angwin, a local NIMBY group – the board voted in October 2010 to sever its contract with Triad and cancel the project.
Pacific Union College has had a total of twenty-four presidents. The first eight of these served while the school was still in Healdsburg. In 1983, Malcolm Maxwell became the first alumnus to lead PUC, serving for a record 18 years. Ralph Trecartin, the current president, took office in July 2021 after serving as the associate provost and dean of the College of Professionals for Andrews University.

Academics

Pacific Union College is the only four-year college located in Napa County, California. It offers around 60 undergraduate majors in various fields, along with other types of programs. Health science, business, and education are the leading fields in which students seek out degrees, and their degree programs are accredited by their respective accreditation bodies.

Curriculum

Pacific Union College offers 44 bachelor's degree programs, 10 associate degree programs, and three master's degree programs, in addition to minors, credential programs, pre-professional tracks, and an honors program. These are all organized throughout 25 academic departments. The school operates on a quarter-based academic calendar.
Though the range of its offerings is quite broad, PUC's most prominent programs are those in the health sciences, which are sought out by a considerable number of those who attend. In the 2020–2021 school year, two-thirds of all undergraduate degrees awarded were in the medical field, and 96% of the associate's degrees awarded were for nursing.
PUC maintains an especially close connection to Loma Linda University School of Medicine, another Adventist institution, and most of the college's pre-professional programs are meant specifically for admission into Loma Linda. The college has sent a steady stream of students to the university for several decades; visiting from Loma Linda in 1925, John H. Kellogg noted that PUC was "the college that sends the largest number of medical students from any one place." Degrees in business and education follow behind as the second two most sought after.
Similar to its emphasis on manual labor and physical health in its Healdsburg days, PUC necessitates that students takes fitness classes as part of its general education requirements. Offerings in the past have included fencing, trikke, pickleball, swimming, water aerobics, polo, canoeing, skiing, snowboarding, soccer, dance, and yoga, though some of these have since been discontinued.
Similar to other Adventist schools, PUC offers study-abroad programs through Adventist Colleges Abroad, primarily in Europe and Latin America. Most of these programs were designed for those seeking degrees from the college's World Languages Department, though non-language majors often study abroad through the ACA as well. PUC also organizes mission trips independently of ACA.

Rankings

At the start of the 2023–2024, the U.S. News & World Report ranked Pacific Union College the 13th best regional college in the Western United States, the 12th top performer in social mobility, and the second Best Value School. In the same year, the New York Times ranked PUC the 8th most economically diverse college in the U.S. Niche gives the college an overall B− score, and ranks it the 24th most diverse college in California, with its diversity graded A+. It also ranks PUC as the 14th best nursing college in California.
In 2024, Washington Monthly ranked Pacific Union College 35th among 223 colleges that award almost exclusively bachelor's degrees in the U.S. based on its contribution to the public good, as measured by social mobility, research, and promoting public service.

Accreditation

Pacific Union College has been accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission or its predecessor since 1951. In February 2020, however, the commission issued a formal Notice of Concern regarding the college's accreditation, citing PUC's dwindling financial resources and dramatic drops in enrollment as areas that needed improvement. Though in the years following PUC noted moderate increases in enrollment and dismissed a number of its employees in response to WSCUC's recommendations, the commission has not withdrawn its Notice of Concern. PUC is also accredited by the Adventist Church's own Adventist Accrediting Association.
In addition to these two institution-wide accreditations, many of PUC's programs and departments are accredited or approved by their respective programmatic accreditation bodies, including: