Automatic Writing

Orange County Business Journal

Piano Man

By Sherri Cruz - 3/19/2007

Orange County Business Journal Staff

They’d sit at the bar and put bread in his jar, but making a living as a piano man was a struggle for Ralph Opacic.

“I floundered,” said Opacic, founder and head of Orange County High School of the Arts in Santa Ana.

Opacic was honored at the annual Excellence in Entrepreneurship luncheon put on by the Business Journal on March 8.

To make ends meet, the Virginia boy who sought fame and fortune in Southern California began teaching singing classes at Los Alamitos High School. Opacic, in his 20s then, discovered he liked teaching.

“It became equally, if not more of my passion,” he said.

Teaching also stirred Opacic’s entrepreneurial spirit. He co-authored and won a three-year state Department of Education grant for $750,000 to start a public charter arts school. The grant funded the school with $250,000 a year for three years, contingent on results at the end of each year.

Six months after receiving the grant in 1987, Opacic opened Orange County High School of the Arts in Los Alamitos with 110 students. It moved to Santa Ana in 2000.

As the school got under way, Opacic went back to college to learn what he didn’t know—how to run a school. He finished with a doctoral degree in education from the University of Southern California in 1994.

Opacic modeled the High School of the Arts after other arts schools, such as the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, made famous by the movie and TV series “Fame.”

The school now is full with 1,350 students. Collectively, they have a 3.2 GPA and more than 90% go on to a conservatory or college.

Students take standard academic classes from 7:45 a.m. to 2 p.m. Then they stay for three hours taking arts classes, including opera, guitar and dance. Musical theater and visual arts are the two largest programs.

“That’s what’s really unique and special about OCHSA,” he said.

Students audition to get into the school. About 1,000 have applied this year, Opacic said. The school typically accepts about 300 new students each year. They come from 92 different cities. Some come by bus and train.

Its yearly operating budget is $12 million, about 75% from the state. About $4 million comes from corporate and personal donations.

The school has a $20 million lease in which it’ll own its building after 30 years. Rent is about $1.2 million a year. It also leases another building next door.

The school has drawn corporate support because businesses want people who can think creatively, write and do math, Opacic said.

Supporters include Irvine-based Allergan Inc., Santa Ana-based First American Corp. and Walt Disney Co.

Disneyland Resort in Anaheim hires parade performers from the school, which has an edge because it’s close to Disneyland.

Retired auto dealer Lewis Webb and wife Margaret have been longtime supporters. Webb owned dealerships in Los Angeles and Orange counties before he sold them to AutoNation Inc. for an estimated $100 million.

The school began raising funds by reaching out to parents, then arts supporters.

This year’s recent annual fund-raising gala brought in $709,000, up $80,000 from the prior year. A who’s who of OC helped make that happen. Front and center is Mike Harrah, the Santa Ana developer who is also a musician. He’s long been a supporter of the school.

Opacic recently created an advisory board to accomplish six goals including teacher development and meeting long-term financial needs. Board members include Bob Bassett, head of the film school at Chapman University, Paul Folino, Emulex Corp.’s executive chairman, Raj Bhathal, chief executive of Raj Manufacturing Inc., Sandra Segerstrom Daniels, Susan Samueli and Julia Argyros.

Plenty of the school’s students have gone on to have successful arts careers and have even experienced fame.

Most recently, 1997 graduate Chad Doreck was one of the final contenders on NBC’s show “Grease: You’re the One That I Want.” Doreck didn’t win the lead role but Opacic said he and others might get cast in supporting roles for the Broadway production of “Grease.”

Opacic said he doesn’t pine for fame anymore.

“I haven’t had my moment on my Broadway stage,” he said.

He still performs, though. Usually, it’s related to a school event. But Opacic said he’s content watching his students succeed.

Carlson School program gives real-life business experience

By SHERRI CRUZ

1049 words

22 December 2002

Associated Press Newswires

English

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Northwest Airlines Cargo's business was losing money, so President Jim Friedel hired a consultant to figure out where and how often.

Luigi Caceres and his colleagues evaluated Northwest Cargo's business processes and identified several areas within the company where it wasn't collecting all of its revenue. Caceres and his team made suggestions and Northwest designed the solutions, which will be implemented.

And that wrapped up the three-month "revenue enhancement" case by the student consultants at the University of Minnesota's Carlson Consulting Enterprise, a student-run business that also is an MBA class.

The Carlson School of Management developed hands-on programs such as the Consulting Enterprise to give students an edge in the job market, attract international and national students and, ultimately, to distinguish itself from the competition.

The student-run business competes with professional consulting firms. Since the program's inception last summer, it has generated $100,000 in revenue. So far, they have finished several projects for five public and private companies, including Northwest Cargo and Guidant Corp.

"We've compared ourselves to other schools," and Carlson's program is richer, said Philip Miller, professional director for the program. Other colleges have field experience classes but many don't have an advisory board whose 13 members serve as mentors or real projects where students interact with high-level executives.

Carlson Consulting Enterprise usually accepts contracts that can be completed in three months because students have only 10 to 20 hours a week to work on projects. The contracts are usually priced between $25,000 to $50,000, but the program's goal is to take on $100,000 projects, Miller said. The student business charges half what their professional counterparts do because it's also a learning environment.

The Carlson School also operates two other student-run businesses - Carlson Funds Enterprise, which manages two funds, and Carlson Ventures Enterprise, which helps startups develop their business. A fourth and yet-to-be named business that will focus on helping companies build their brands will be launched next year.

Students are selected for the class through an interview process that begins in the spring for the fall. Only 17 of the 30 students who applied were chosen for the six-credit, 18-month class.

The process will remain selective, but as the program progresses, the college wants to be able to accept 40 students, Miller said. Students attend class Tuesdays, and on Thursdays if there is a speaker. They aren't graded. The classes are a mix of Miller's lectures and student presentations of case studies in which they share their on-the-job lessons.

One thing Ana Ponguta has learned is that sometimes projects aren't as straightforward as they appear. On a recent project she was supposed to analyze data for a Fortune 500 company but the data were a mess, so first she had to clean it up. "That really pushed us to do new things," she said. In the end, they knew more about the data than the client did, Miller said.

The students also learned business realities. Just as the student consultants were about to sign a contract to work on a Web strategy project for PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company put it on hold, saying its budget had been frozen. A few weeks later, the students learned what had happened: IBM had purchased the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Next up for the student-run business is a 12-week project for a Fortune 500 company and another project involving logistics and Six Sigma, the quality control method best known for its effectiveness at General Electric. Two of the student consultants have had Six Sigma training, Miller said. The students also are beginning work on two marketing studies for Northwest Cargo, including a Korean market study to help Northwest Cargo prepare for the launch of its direct freight service there next summer.

In a tough job market, participating in the class also gives the students an edge in landing a job. In better economic times, many students would have been cherry-picked by consulting firms, Miller said. Now, rather than hiring three students from the Carlson School of Management, the consultants are saying they might hire one student.

But when the interviewer says something such as "tell me a story" or "what was your greatest challenge," the students have real experience to draw on, he said.

In addition to saving money, Northwest Cargo's Friedel likes working with Carlson Consulting Enterprise because he gets to see the students in action for spring hiring. His company hires three to six people with MBAs a year, not all from Carlson. While Northwest Cargo doesn't need consultants, it needs the management skills that consultants have, Friedel said, including the ability to break down complex problems into bite-sized pieces and then communicate that to people.

Recently some of the students gathered in the newly finished university "office" on the lower level of the Carlson School of Management, which includes a large conference table, laptops and plenty of whiteboard. The consensus among the students is that consulting skills are valuable for any of their future endeavors.

About half of the students taking the course want to be consultants, Miller said. But Caceres has plans to head to Europe and get into business development.

Ponguta wants to work in marketing, and through an internship, she is one of the few students offered a job before graduating in May. She will be a marketing manager for Ecolab. Colombian-born Ponguta is an example of the kind of student Carlson wants to attract - an international student who wants to stay and work in Minnesota. She went back to Colombia after attending the University of Iowa on a scholarship but wanted to return to the Midwest.

"I love the people here," she said. She also thought there would be more job opportunities here because fewer people would want to live in the cold weather.

But before graduating, the students face perhaps their biggest challenge - balancing this class with other course work and a personal life. The class is motivating, Ponguta said. But it's not easy, she said. "It's the real thing."

Capella gets $7.5 million cash infusion ; Investment from Seattle venture capital firm

Sherri Cruz; Staff Writer

808 words

24 January 2003

Star Tribune (Mpls.-St. Paul) Newspaper of the Twin Cities

METRO

1D

Starbucks to eBay to Capella University may not seem like a logical progression, but it is to Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks Coffee Co.

Schultz's Seattle-based venture capital firm, Maveron, said Thursday it has invested $7.5 million in Capella, a Minneapolis- based online university. Maveron will have a minority stake in Capella, and Maveron's Jody Miller will be a "board observer," a nonvoting member participating in board meetings and contributing to the direction of the company.

Capella joins Maveron's $400 million investment portfolio of companies that includes eBay, its first investment; Drugstore.com, a Bellevue, Wash.-based online drugstore; a Chicago-based sandwich shop, and a Portland, Ore.-based women's athletic clothing store.

Capella's goal is to be recognized as a leading, nationally known university in five years, CEO Stephen Shank said. So for Shank, Maveron's expertise was more important to Capella than the dollar investment. Schultz said Capella has what it takes to be a national brand.

Capella, founded in 1993, is the second-largest private university in Minnesota and employs 350 people in the Twin Cities and 400 faculty worldwide. It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission - the same institution that accredits brick-and-mortar schools - and offers degreed programs to 7,000 students in the United States and in 40 countries.

Maveron chose to invest in Capella in part because of the high satisfaction rate that students have had with the university, Schultz said. He also said he liked combining "profitability and benevolence," enhancing people's lives through education.

"It really struck an emotional chord with me," he said.

Schultz, who co-founded Maveron in 1998 with former investment banker Dan Levitan, will be a resource for Capella, leveraging his marketing and brand-building experience.

"Great brands establish and maintain an emotional relationship with their customer," Schultz said.

Schultz specializes in taking a commodity, such as coffee, and transforming the marketplace not just by selling coffee but by creating an experience. Schultz joined Starbucks as director of operations and marketing in 1982, when it had only four stores. He built the company by developing a precise method of brewing and making coffee drinks - from the length of time espresso sits in a shot glass to the order in which the ingredients are "called" by the cashier to the barista, the person who makes the drinks.

While online learning isn't coffee, there are similarities in the uniformity and quality of delivery and an emphasis on the consumer.

Online learning is in an embryonic stage, Schultz said, but it is on the verge of taking off.

Learning online is not meant to replace the socialization required by students who are 18 to 22 years old, Shank said. Capella's students typically are 25 to 55 years of age, work full time and have an aspiration, Shank said. "It's how people learn best in their mature years," he said.

But online learning still has drawbacks, such as bandwidth - not everyone has a high-speed Internet connection. For the first 10 years of Capella's existence, the class presentations were geared for a 56k dial-up Internet connection, Shank said. The gradual shift from dial-up to broadband has helped improve the education experience by allowing more video, audio and graphic presentations.

Although Maveron doesn't quickly turn its investments into public companies, an initial public offering is a way for investors to make money. Shank said he couldn't comment on an IPO but added that Capella is "turning the corner to profitability." Capella had $50 million in revenue last year, and its enrollment has increased by more than 85 percent annually since 1998.

Part of Capella's transformation into a nationally recognized university will include building more relationships with community colleges. So far, Capella has made it easier to transfer from 100 community colleges to Capella. For example, a student transferring from a community college would know upfront what credits would be accepted by Capella.

"In education, people talk about quality, so it's a big mushy thing," Shank said. But to Shank it means making the learning experience relevant to students' current jobs and making the outcome meaningful, so they can get ahead professionally.

Shank knows a bit about branding himself. "Branding begins and ends with the students' experience," Shank said. So if the students get what they want, they will tell others, he said.

- Sherri Cruz is at scruz@startribune.com.

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Capella University

Founded: 1993

Based: Minneapolis

Business: Degree programs and certificates in business, technology, education, human services and psychology

CEO/Chancellor: Stephen Shank

Employees: 350 in the Twin Cities, plus 400 faculty worldwide

Revenue: $50 million in 2002.

Web site: http://www.capella.edu

MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL STAR TRIBUNE

952 words

18 November 2001

The Star-Ledger Newark, NJ

Hayim Herring wanted to go back to school but his daily schedule was squeezed.

Herring, 43, a rabbi, is the father of two college-bound children, a husband and the assistant executive director of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, where he works 50 to 60 hours a week.

He solved his back-to-school problem by taking classes online, on his own time over four years, earning a doctorate in organization and management in May 2000 from Capella University in Minneapolis.

Though Herring raves about the Internet learning environment, he emphasizes it's not as easy as it might seem. "I've never worked so hard in my life," he said. "You really have to be in charge of your own learning."

Depending on who you are, that's a plus or a minus.

While online learning isn't for everyone, it's becoming more popular as the curricula improve and the technologies that deliver the courses get better.

Capella joined the online learning field in 1992. Since then, enrollment at the university has soared; Capella now has about 4,000 students taking its online graduate and undergraduate degree programs. This year enrollment is up 90 percent, said Stephen Shank, chancellor and founder of Capella.

Although Capella is strictly an online university, hybrid schools exist. Private and public colleges and universities, high schools, trade schools and even businesses provide online learning. Barnes and Noble University, for example, offers free online courses in a variety of subjects.

Age also is a factor in online education. At Capella, most students are 25 or older.

"They don't have a primary need for socialization," Shank said. But the media-savvy generation, 18- to 20-year-olds, will eventually demand more online opportunities. "They're going to be forcing colleges and universities to put more technology into the learning program," Shank said.

Online learning is still growing up. "A wine before its time" is how Craig Anderson of St. Paul Technical College describes online courseware in general.

The curricula are developed several ways: in-house by faculty or purchased through businesses that develop their courses through consultants, authors or field experts. And there are even more ways of presenting and delivering an online learning environment, with tools called "learning management systems."

One of the biggest deterrents to online learning is that much of the courseware on the market is bland: Read a page, click, next, take a quiz. "Page turners" is what Amy Sitze, editor of Online Learning magazine, calls the curricula.

Online learning's biggest limiting factor is bandwidth. As soon as the majority of people have access to high-speed Internet access, which will spur the development of audio, graphic and video-rich course- ware, online learning will become much more attractive, most people in the industry say.

"I think it's really going to take off," Sitze said.

Another important issue that needs to be worked out, according to St. Paul Technical College's Anderson, is who owns the curricula - the professor or the school? St. Paul Technical College also offers online courses, usually as part of corporate training programs but individuals can sign up for the classes, too. The college buys most of its course materials from Education To Go, a California company.

Many online courses exist as part of a school's distance-learning program, which consists mostly of studying via printed materials and submission by mail.

At the University of Minnesota, Continuing Education's Independent and Distance Learning has put about 20 of its 150 classes online. Last year, 6,800 students were in the distance-learning program. About half of those students take an online course because it fits their schedule better, said Deborah Hillengass, director of IDL, which began in 1909. Some of the print-based courses are Web-enhanced, offering Internet resources as another way to study.

Most of the students taking the online learning courses are admitted university students but there are others: mothers with young children, incarcerated or homebound people, traveling business people, and high school students. Hillengass has been with the program since 1972 and has noticed the evolution.

"When I started there weren't any online courses," she said. She worked with radio and TV to deliver weekly courses over the radio and public-access TV . . . The advent of the VCR put an end to radio and TV delivery. Now the biggest trend is online learning. "It really has changed the world dramatically."

Contrary to what some might think, online learning requires discipline and is highly interactive, with regular feedback and interaction with professors and peers. For example, at Capella, class participation is required and is accomplished through a variety of means, including online bulletin boards, where students post their comments to a "thread" of discussion.

"In a regular classroom you can shrivel up and hide in the corner," Herring said. "You can't do that online." Capella's teacher-to-student ratio is 1-to-12.

While online learning is poised to break out, most in the profession agree, it will never replace face- to-face learning or experiential learning.

For instance, Northwest Technical College has an online nursing program. But you can't stick a needle and draw blood from your computer, so a portion of the learning must be experiential. To achieve that, schools such as Capella let the students connect their course work to their daily work.

Herring said that philosophy has improved his job performance. "The work that I do has gone up in quality," Herring said. "It's a complementary way to learn."

TECH@WORK

BUSINESS

Making a connection ; One woman's path to an engineering career can take her almost anywhere, blending work, school, and a passion for technology.

Sherri Cruz; Staff Writer

1122 words

29 April 2002

Star-Tribune Newspaper of the Twin Cities Mpls.-St. Paul

METRO

You've probably seen the Verizon Wireless commercial: "Can you hear me now? Good. . . . Can you hear me now? Good." The Verizon Wireless guy travels around checking the quality of the phone call.

It turns out there really is a can-you-hear-me-now guy - or in this case, gal.

Fay Huling, who works for Verizon in Plymouth, is one of 60 people nationwide who drives around checking for weak spots in Verizon's wireless coverage. While she's at it, she monitors the competition.

Driving around the rural Midwest and the Twin Cities, Huling and her $280,000 of phone equipment log about 2,100 miles a month in the company's sport-utility vehicle. The reports she produces are sent to Verizon's head honchos in New Jersey. Reports also go to the network department where she works. The engineers in her group fix the problems that she finds.

Someday, however, she'd like to do the fixing instead of the driving. She's learning on the job and is seven classes away from an engineering degree from the University of Minnesota.

A careful plan

In Huling's SUV, eight wireless phones sit in the rear cargo area, programmed to call computers back at the office. The phones act as imitation customers, playing two and a half minute pre- recorded tapes. Huling turns up the volume on the test phones and then talks about the course of her own career.

Her course has been deliberate, down to targeting an employer that would pay for college: Verizon pays for her classes and 80 percent of the cost of her books. It is an investment for Verizon, because Huling is planning to stick around. Verizon has plans for her, too.

"Our plan is for her to be an engineer," said Scott Grosz, executive director of the network department. Every year Verizon discusses career goals with its employees, then lines them up with the right combination of education and on-the-job training, he said.

That's one big reason Huling likes working at Verizon: She's always learning. "I had training last week. I had training the week before," she says. Also, the workplace is laid back, she says, which matches her easy-going personality.

At school, she's already taken all of her humanities classes and has only hard courses left. That's one thing she'd do over if she could: get the hard courses out of the way.

Right now, she's studying linear circuits - online. This is the first online class she's ever taken, she says, unfolding her laptop perched between the driver's seat and the passenger seat of the SUV. Online learning might sound easy, but it's not; it requires more discipline, Huling says.

"I have to set a schedule for myself," she says, studying at least 2 hours a night, a bit on Saturday and nothing on Sunday. But after a day of driving, it's sort of nice to just plug into the computer, she says.

Acronym city

Huling is a long way from the Queens borough of New York City, where she grew up. She moved to Seattle in 1985 and studied civil engineering at the University of Washington and interned with the city of Seattle. She learned that she liked the drafting that she used on the job, but not the civil engineering. She was looking for something meatier, like electrical engineering.

The test phones drone on in the back, and on this short drive neither Verizon nor the competition are having problems with calls. A glance at the laptop screen - filled with with bars, squiggly lines and acronyms - assures Huling of that. There are FERs, PNs, RSSIs and RFs to look after. But Huling knows what it all means and apologizes for speaking in acronyms. It's not meant to impress; they're just embedded in her brain.

A career starts

After three years of study in Seattle, her college fund ran out and she declined another student loan, opting to work as a controller at Nordstrom's. "I just didn't want to do any more school loans," she says.

Then she saw that U S West Cellular paid for school. (The company was later sold to AirTouch, which then became AirTouch Vodaphone and finally Verizon.)

The first thing, she thought, was to get her foot in the door. So she did. She couldn't get into engineering, so she worked in customer service and business service. Then she was asked to do some training in Minneapolis and that's where she saw the driving job, officially called "baseline technician." After a grueling interview process that tested her technical know-how, she started her current position in 1999.

That technical know-how is still being tested today. Her computer screen is divided into eight sections because she's keeping track of Verizon and seven competitors.

She can see if any calls have been "dropped." That's when someone is talking on the phone and then loses the connection. She explains why that could happen: A call might drop due to an unsuccessful handoff from one cellular tower to the next. That could mean another tower needs to be built for a better handoff.

Wireless has at least one more trouble spot - reorders. That's when a caller gets a fast-busy signal and has to hang up and try again, she says. If there is a problem with one of the phone calls, she will be notified visually on the laptop as well as hear what the trouble is and which company had the problem.

She also monitors interference - when the call breaks up. So what can interfere with a wireless call? "Oh lots of things," she says, such as cordless phones and lightning.

"Everybody has their good spots and their bad spots," she says. Wireless companies can do two things to fix that: add more towers or more carriers, which is the equipment that carries phone traffic, she says. That's the point of her reports, so that the higher-ups can see where to invest more money.

On this day, Verizon and the competition haven't dropped any calls or caused any reorders. When she's done driving, she'll head home.