FULLERTON COLLEGE CENTENNIAL
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STAFF STORIES: ANN PERALTA
ANN PERALTA
Fullerton College Counselor, 1983-1998
During your 100-year history, I was honored to have played a part for fourteen years from 1983 - 1998 when I was a member of the Counseling Department, specializing in career and life planning and adult reentry along with colleagues Dr. Lola Coxford Brown, Dr. Brian Couron and Sandy Gabel all under the leadership of Dr. Jeanne Hamilton, Dr. Ronald Steinke and Dr. Richard DeVecchio.
In addition to teaching sections of Career and Life Planning and Academic Success, I spent many satisfying hours in the Career and Life Planning Center advising students in journalism, radio, television and film as well as students undecided about direction and major. In preparation for our regular advising appointments, we spent countless hours each year developing, checking and rechecking the general education and college major lists that were produced by the department under the able leadership of Articulation Officer, Kathy Baker. An important part of our mission was to be sure that accurate information for both transfer and non-transfer programs was always available to students...and to meet the deadlines of the campus print shop!
Each year we presented a week-long Career Week with the generous cooperation of all divisions on campus. For many years, we worked with Darlene Jensen in Student Activities to provide an informative day on campus for high school seniors as potential Fullerton College students.
A project that I especially enjoyed was being the designated counselor to the accelerated associate degree and transfer program for adults employed by Pacific Bell. Under the aegis of Dr. Ron Krimper and Marilouise Carlisle, we took lower-division courses to their work sites scheduled for after-work hours. At least four cohorts earned their associate degrees and completed transfer programs to the University of Redlands and the University of La Verne. The universities then brought upper-division courses to the work sites for completion of bachelor’s degrees. I will always admire the commitment, determination and tenacity of these full-time employees studying in a full-time and also accelerated academic program.
Back on campus, a time-consuming yet rewarding assignment was being a member of the Curriculum Committee of the Academic Senate. Twice a month there were large bundles of proposed curriculum and curriculum changes delivered to us in preparation for the meetings at which course proposals and revisions were presented. The committee was tasked with assuring that the new and revised courses met requirements for the associate degree and/or transfer courses for the University of California and California State University systems. Fullerton College faculty are creative and conscientious, characteristics which were demonstrated at meeting after meeting of the committee throughout the year.
Also time-consuming and yet rewarding in very different ways was being a Counseling and Student Services representative on the United Faculty Board of Directors. Getting to “yes” in negotiations was always an important and challenging goal of that Board.
My own career path has taken me through a variety of educational settings, ending happily at Fullerton College where working with students, faculty and staff was an honor and a very great pleasure.
I attended Chaffey College in 1956-57 and then transferred to Pomona College in Claremont where I graduated in 1960 with a B.A. Degree in Music. For five years I taught fifth and sixth grades in the Etiwanda, Berkeley Unified and San Dimas School Districts while my then-spouse was in graduate school. He became part of the founding faculty at UC Irvine where we have had the pleasure of watching the campus develop from a few buildings on a hill on the Irvine Ranch to the major campus that it is today. Experiencing the growth of Orange County during that same time has been nothing short of phenomenal.
During this time I was a substitute music teacher for elementary through high school grades in the Newport-Mesa and Irvine Unified School Districts. Returning from a faculty-exchange year in Scotland at the University of Stirling which was the newest university in Great Britain at the time and exactly the same young age as UCI, I joined the volunteer staff of the Women’s Opportunity Center at UCI and from there was hired as the first coordinator of the Women’s Opportunities Center at Santa Ana College in the mid-1970s. At that time I became a reentry student myself and earned my M.S. Degree in Counseling Psychology at CSU Fullerton. After nine years at Santa Ana College, I joined the counseling faculty at Fullerton College and remained here for fourteen years until retirement in 1998.
As part of the career/life planning process, and following a rewarding career in education, it was important to have something to retire to and I have found, among other activities, great pleasure in the programs offered by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) program at CSU Fullerton. I am currently trying to hone my duplicate bridge skills along with other emeritus faculty members Alan Carter and Joyce Mason. Dr. Dar Frederickson, Dr. Martin Hebeling, Kathy Baker, Jane Armstrong and Dr. Philip Borst also are and were some of the other avid life long learners from Fullerton College! While still at Fullerton College, my husband and I enjoyed several wonderful adventures with Dr. John Collins to the lands of native Americans and with Bill Glassman to hear opera in Los Angeles, Santa Fe and New York City. What fun! Serving as Chairman and Newsletter Editor of the Con Brio Chapter and as a member of the Crescendo Chapter, I have been very active with the Guilds of the Orange Performing Arts Center now the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts. Another engrossing activity of many years has been as a member of the Orange County California Genealogical Society. My studies of family and local history have taken me to many states and several countries of origin.
I will always be grateful for the opportunity to work with the students, faculty, staff and administration at Fullerton College. The campus has evolved from lovely to stunning, a learning environment that all students and alumni can be proud to claim as their own.
Congratulations on your 100th Anniversary!