Pacific Union College

Pacific Union College (PUC) is an institution of higher education located in Napa County, California, belonging to the Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. PUC offers associate, bachelor, and master’s degrees in a variety of health, humanities, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), and professional fields. The institution began operation as Healdsburg College in 1882 in nearby Sonoma County before permanently reestablishing itself in Napa County in 1909. It has been known as Pacific Union College since 1910.

The second-oldest institution of higher education in Adventism and the first to be accredited, PUC has deep links with the founding history of the denomination. Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White helped establish the original Healdsburg College in 1882. Later, she made her last home at Elmshaven, just down the road from PUC. She visited the college on a regular basis from its establishment until her death in 1915. Since 1882, Healdsburg or Pacific Union College students, faculty, and alumni have been active in denominational work across North America and around the world.

From Healdsburg to Angwin

Merritt Gardner Kellogg, older half-brother of William Keith and John Harvey of “corn flakes” and Battle Creek Sanitarium fame, was the first person to bring Seventh-day Adventism to California. He made his way to California shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. A lay evangelist, he attracted some converts to the Advent movement, before the arrival of the first denominationally-sponsored evangelists, Daniel T. Bordeau and John N. Loughborough, in 1868. At this time, California was still far away from the other populated states in the country, and Kellogg, Bordeau, and Loughborough had to start from scratch with little support from the denomination.¹

Merritt G. Kellogg did much of his work in California in the counties north of San Francisco Bay. He helped found the Rural Health Retreat in St. Helena (later the St. Helena Sanitarium) in 1878-1879, making the Upper Napa Valley an early center of Adventism. Later, after a long stint as medical missionary in the South Pacific, he settled in Healdsburg in Sonoma County in 1903.²

By then, Healdsburg had become another center of Adventism in northern California—albeit a temporary one—with the establishment of Healdsburg College in 1882. It was the first Adventist institution of higher learning in the West and only the second overall, after Battle Creek College in Michigan.³

The California Conference made the decision to establish a school in its territory during its annual camp meeting held on the banks of the American River near Sacramento in October 1881. By this time church membership in California had grown, thereby creating demand for higher-education for its members. However, Battle Creek College, the only Adventist higher-education institution yet established, was too far from California for many parents to consider sending their children there. Denominational co-founder Ellen G. White, who was present at the camp meeting, supported the idea of establishing an Adventist school in California. Not everyone was enthusiastic about the idea, though; Conference President Stephen N. Haskell argued that the organization should first pay off the debt it had incurred from building churches in San Francisco and Oakland before embarking on any new ventures. Despite this word of caution, a meeting of the conference committee voted in favor of establishing a school.⁴

To serve as president of the new institution, the conference recruited Sidney Brownsberger, who had earlier served as president of Battle Creek College and was now teaching public school in Sheboygan, Michigan. William C. White traveled from California to Michigan to recruit Brownsberger, who would serve as president until 1886. Meanwhile, a subcommittee explored options for where to situate the school. It focused on the towns north of San Francisco Bay where Adventists already had some presence, namely Napa and St. Helena in Napa County and Healdsburg, Petaluma, and Santa Rosa in Sonoma County. The subcommittee ultimately settled on Healdsburg, which had been home to an Adventist church since 1869. The conference bought the property of the defunct Healdsburg Institute for $3,750, to serve as the site of the new Adventist school. Ellen White moved to Healdsburg to help organize the college.⁵

Healdsburg Academy opened its doors for the first time on April 11, 1882, for a special eight-week term. The first full term began on July 29, 1882. Healdsburg Academy soon changed its name to Healdsburg College, because community members felt their town would be more prestigious if it hosted a college rather than an academy. Despite the name change, most of Healdsburg’s early students were elementary or secondary. The first college student did not enroll until 1884; the first graduate of a college program, Kate Bottomes, received her degree in the normal (education) program in 1889.⁶

At the college level, Healdsburg’s program offerings included a Biblical course, a science course, a classical course, and the normal (teacher training) program. Important faculty at Healdsburg included Alma McKibbin, Alonzo T. Jones, and Roderick S. Owen. Regardless of their program, students—as well as faculty—were required to work in the college industries, which included shoemaking, tentmaking, blacksmithing, animal husbandry (of cows and horses), and gardening. The industries were supposed to provide income for the college to help it stay financially solvent, but they often had the opposite effect. By undertaking so many different industries, the college overextended itself and plunged into debt.⁷

Healdsburg College had been built on the outskirts of town in 1882, but by the turn of the twentieth century, the town had grown up around it, bringing secular influences to the doorsteps of this religious institution. “While men slept,” Ellen White remarked,” the devil sowed houses.” The growth of Healdsburg town and the college’s ballooning debt prompted the relocation of the institution to the village of Angwin in Napa County. Healdsburg College—now called Pacific Union College—closed in 1908, after several years of financial losses, belt-tightening, and layoffs of faculty.⁸

Angwin, where the college relocated, was originally a health resort founded by Edwin Angwin from England. The resort was located on top of Howell Mountain, which rises on the east side of the upper Napa Valley above St. Helena. The first inhabitants of Howell Mountain were the Wappo, the indigenous people of the Napa area. In 1843, George Yount, the first Anglo settler in the Napa Valley, received a grant from the Mexican government of 4,453 acres on top of Howell Mountain, known as Rancho La Jota. Edwin Angwin bought 200 acres of the Rancho La Jota property in the early 1860s. He initially farmed there, but later set up a health resort to take advantage of Howell Mountain’s distinctive climate. The top of the mountain, some 1400 or 1500 feet above the valley floor, gets more sun and less fog than St. Helena. A long carriage road wound up the side of the mountain from St. Helena to Angwin, bringing vacationers to Angwin’s and other Howell Mountain resorts in the summer months.⁹

The church bought Angwin’s property on September 1, 1909, for $60,000, after the purchase of a similar property in Sonoma County fell through. The purchase included the site of Angwin’s resort with its buildings, and about 1,000 acres of forest-land. By the end of the month, the resort had reopened its doors as Pacific College, a truncated form of the name “Pacific Union College” that had first been adopted for the institution in Healdsburg in 1906. The full name was restored a year after the move to Angwin.¹⁰

The College on the Mountain

The reconstituted college on Howell Mountain was dedicated on September 29, 1909, just weeks after the purchase of Angwin’s resort. Over the following years, students and faculty of the college built the campus by hand using lumber felled on the college’s land. Initially, the college repurposed the original resort buildings. The dance hall served as the chapel. The bowling alley was partitioned into classrooms. Female students lived in the hotel, while male students lived in tents, barn lofts, or the cellar of the dance hall. The resort buildings had been built for summer use, and they proved drafty and cold during the rainy Howell Mountain winter.¹¹

The first building constructed for the college campus was South Hall, now known as Graf Hall, built to be the women’s dorm. When completed, female students moved into their rooms in the new building, and male students took the women’s place in the hotel. South Hall was built almost entirely of local lumber, with only the flooring being imported.¹²

The second new building was a combined administration-classroom-chapel building, eventually named Irwin Hall, after Charles Walter Irwin, the president who had moved the college to Angwin and guided it through its formative years from 1909 to 1921. The building was constructed on a site between the old hotel and South Hall, on a shelf of earth-fill scraped from the hillside and moved in mine cars from the nearby Aetna Springs mercury mine. Construction took place in two phases, the first in 1913 and the second in 1919, with further modifications following in the 1930s.¹³ The original sixteen classrooms, built in 1913, were constructed in an unusual fan shape, an arrangement that allowed an observer to look down all five hallways on either side of the classrooms at once. This permitted a college disciplinarian to monitor if any student was late for class. President Irwin conceived the idea for this arrangement and the multitalented, indefatigable professor Myron Wallace Newton and shop teacher George Carlson implemented it. As built, the classrooms lacked outside walls; skylights provided illumination, but these leaked profusely in the rainy winters. The classrooms also had separate doors for male and female students, as administrators monitored all fraternization between the sexes and strictly prohibited any dating in the early days of the college.¹⁴ The chapel, added in 1919, featured fine oak paneling and an elaborate ceiling designed by George Carlson. For over a half-century, Irwin Hall stood at the center of campus, and virtually every PUC student took classes and attended chapels within its walls.¹⁵

Located as it was at the top of a long road up from the valley, PUC started out isolated from Napa Valley and the world beyond. A trip down to St. Helena in the college surrey was a dusty, tedious two-hour ride in the best of conditions. As far as possible, the college had to be socially self-sufficient—if not economically so. The college organized picnics in its forest properties and game nights in the old resort buildings. Administration reluctantly allowed non-competitive baseball games at picnics. Eventually, the college would also host movie nights and travelogues in the Irwin Hall auditorium. PUC’s isolation was an intentional part of its educational plan. The church leadership did not want to repeat the experience of Healdsburg College, whose property had been swallowed up by a secular town. Accordingly, as George R. Knight memorably said, PUC was located “five miles away from the nearest known sin.”¹⁶

In its first decade on Howell Mountain, PUC had to contend with two major upheavals: World War I and the Influenza Pandemic. During the war, male students were drafted from the college to fight against the Central Powers, although President Irwin petitioned for draft exemptions for theology students. The college did its best to keep track of its students who had been drafted, and Irwin visited several military camps at the end of the war to encourage PUC students there to return to campus and resume their studies.¹⁷

PUC’s isolation was probably an asset during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Nevertheless, seventy students contracted influenza and had to go to a makeshift flu ward on the fourth floor of South Hall. Everyone in the college was quarantined for six weeks as per standard practice at the time. No one died of influenza at PUC, although the disease killed over 675,000 nationwide.¹⁸

Pacific Union College prospered in the 1920s, along with the rest of the United States economy. In this decade, the college launched the Campus Chronicle (student newspaper, 1925) and Diogenes Lantern (yearbook, 1927). Also at this time, the old Angwin hotel, known as North Hall, was demolished and a new purpose-built dormitory for male students was built on its site. The new dorm was named Grainger Hall, after William C. Grainger, the second president of Healdsburg College (1886-1894), who died in 1899 on mission to Japan. The men’s club Knights of North Hall became Men of Grainger (MOG) with the move to the new dorm.¹⁹

In the 1930s, PUC faced hard times during the Great Depression. To make up for lost revenue, the college cut faculty salaries and had to let some faculty members go. The college slowly recovered as the 1930s progressed; it was not until 1941 that faculty made the same wages that they had made in 1929.²⁰

Despite the hard times of the decade, the college was able to undertake some construction projects. A new Science Hall was built next to the Administration Building in 1930; it was later named Clark Hall, in honor of Harold W. Clark, a long-serving biology teacher at PUC and an influential early creationist. Paulin Hall, the first of two buildings to bear the name on campus, was built below Graf Hall in 1932. Initially the home of the Music Department, the building was ultimately taken over by the English Department and renamed Stauffer Hall, in honor of English professor J. Paul Stauffer. Meanwhile, the Administration Building got a substantial renovation in 1935. The classrooms with their leaky skylights were torn down. President Walter I. Smith (1934-1943) felt that the centralized surveillance of the fan-shaped hallways was outdated and unnecessary; these classrooms were replaced by a larger wing with two stories. The facade of the building was also renovated in a modern Art Deco style, designed by academy principal Richard Lewis. It was at this time that the building received the name Irwin Hall.²¹

Two long-reaching changes of the Depression era were accreditation and the beginnings of graduate education. PUC was the first Adventist institution of higher learning to attain accreditation, first from the denomination’s own Board of Regents (1932) and subsequently by the Northwest Association of Secondary and Higher Schools (1933). By seeking accreditation, PUC and other Adventist colleges that followed its lead embraced Liberal Arts education and moved away from vocational or industrial training; in the following decades, college industries like the book bindery and dairy scaled down operations and ultimately closed. As for graduate education, PUC took the first steps in that direction by hosting the Advanced Bible School during the summers from 1934 to 1936, after which the program moved to Washington, DC, to become the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. In 1940, PUC inaugurated its first true graduate program, for education, which thrived in the postwar decades.²²

World War II, which began for the United States in 1941, had a profound influence on PUC, despite the college’s isolation. Angwin and neighboring communities held air raid and emergency evacuation drills. More than 400 PUC students and alumni served in the conflict, many of whom received preliminary training in first-aid, stretcher-bearing, and drilling in the Medical Cadet Corps on campus. Under Executive Order 9066, issei (Japanese immigrants) and nisei (American-born children of issei) in the West Coast states were interned in camps for the duration of the war, including fourteen PUC students. Some of these internees were members of the class of 1942, who were forced to leave campus immediately before their graduation. Most of the nisei PUC students who had not yet graduated were later able to leave the camps and attend PUC’s sister school, Union College, in Nebraska, which was well outside of the exclusion zone for people of Japanese origin.²³

Expansion and Consolidation

Pacific Union College reached its peak student enrollment in the decades after World War II. During the war years, enrollment had hovered slightly above 600 before dipping to 538 in the last year of the war. Then, as the war ended, enrollment exploded: 900 students in 1946-1947, 910 the following year, and over a thousand from 1948 to 1951. The size of the graduating class grew during this period as well, from 55 seniors in 1945 to 163 in 1950. This was a common trend experienced by many other institutions of higher education across the country: people who had put their lives on hold during the Great Depression and the war now found that they could continue with their education. In addition, young men who had served in the war took advantage of GI Bill funding from the federal government to complete their education. More than a million veterans attended colleges and universities nationwide in the years immediately after the war. Some of these veterans found their way to PUC.²⁴

To meet the increased demand, the college necessarily expanded campus facilities. Two new dorms housed the influx of students: Andre Hall, for women, was completed in 1949, and Newton Hall, for men, was built in 1951. Veteran Heights, an orderly village of Quonset huts located on a plateau above the main campus, housed veterans and their families. The college also acquired a few war-surplus buildings, including a gymnasium that was still in use in 2025. Originally from Army Camp Parks in the East Bay, the gymnasium was dismantled and rebuilt in a smaller size on the PUC campus.²⁵

During and immediately after World War II, presidents Henry J. Klooster (1943-1945) and Percy W. Christian (1945-1950) oversaw the professionalization of the faculty. Klooster advocated the granting of study leaves for professors to gain doctoral degrees in their subject areas, a policy that Christian continued. Faculty members who were hired with doctorates already in hand received a cash bonus, amortized over several years of employment. Some of the most notable faculty of the postwar era were Esther Ambs (home economics), Richard Fisher (industrial education), Paul Stauffer (English), and Walter Utt (history).²⁶

Pacific Union College experienced another spike in enrollment in the 1960s and 1970s as the baby boom generation reached college age. After dropping below 1,000 in the 1950s, enrollment reached 1,101 in the 1959-1960 academic year and 1,703 by 1967-1968. In addition to classes and social events, baby-boomer students went on study tours to Europe and served as student missionaries. PUC’s first student missionary, Dave Martin, went to West Pakistan for four months in 1964.²⁷

The growth of enrollment necessitated a further expansion of the campus and a series of major building programs, most of which coincided with the presidency of Floyd O. Rittenhouse (1963-1972). The county road into Angwin, which had run just below Irwin Hall and the other early campus buildings, was rerouted further down the hill, opening up more space for the campus. Extending down the hill from the front steps of Irwin Hall, a newly-developed campus mall was the next axis of expansion, with several buildings completed along its length in the 1950s and 1960s. A new library (now named Nelson Memorial Library) was dedicated in 1958, providing more space for stacks and study areas than the former location in Irwin Hall. Paulin Hall, a music and performing arts building with a grand modernist veranda, opened in 1967. After having met for years in the Irwin Hall Chapel, a separate sanctuary was finally constructed for the Pacific Union College church. The voluminous sanctuary featured a dramatic modernist interior, but the exterior looked more like a box—leading to its nickname, “The Escobarn,” named after the church pastor at the time of construction, Arthur Escobar. The congregation held its first service in the new sanctuary on January 6, 1968. Further construction in the 1970s added a chapel, Sabbath School rooms, and church offices.²⁸

Angwin and PUC were still isolated from the outside world, but the isolation was decreasing with technological and cultural changes. The widespread adoption of gas-powered automobiles and the construction of paved roads made PUC a good deal less isolated than it had been at its founding. Getting down to Napa Valley was now a scenic fifteen-minute drive rather than the two-hour odyssey it had been in the horse-drawn carriage days. After World War II, administration reluctantly began to allow students to have cars on campus. Initially only students with off-campus jobs were allowed cars. They were required to park in a designated location and leave their keys with a dean.²⁹

Computerization transformed higher education beginning in the 1950s, and PUC was an early adopter. The PUC campus purchased its first computer in 1955, a large analog machine produced by the Donner Scientific Company of Berkeley and located permanently in the Physics Department building (now West Hall Annex). Physics students used the computer for differential equations analysis. A second series of large computers resided in the Computer Center in the basement of the library, starting with a vacuum-tube Bendix G-15D installed in 1958. This computer and its successors performed administrative tasks for the college such as processing class schedules and recording attendance at required worships by scanning punch cards that had been turned in by students. Over the years the college came to rely on computers more and more for its daily operations.³⁰

In 1959, senior physics major Mailen Kootsey found a characteristically Adventist use for the original Bendix G-15D when he wrote a program to calculate sunset times on Fridays and Saturdays, hence determining the beginning and ending of the Sabbath. Kootsey’s program could calculate Friday and Saturday sunset times for any point on Earth up to the year 1968. It took the computer 45 seconds to run the calculations, and another four minutes to print out the sunset tables. PUC shared its sunset tables with churches around the country.³¹

PUC reached its highest-ever enrollment in the 1975-1976 academic year with 2,290 students.³² Yet as the 1970s ended and the 1980s began, the last of the baby boom generation graduated, and the era of growth came to an end, triggering a period of crisis. One sign of the change was the Desmond Ford controversy, which erupted at PUC in 1979 and came to rock the English-speaking Adventist world.³³ Another sign was the demolition of the front wing of Irwin Hall. By the 1970s, the earth-fill that the structure had been built on was settling and the building itself was showing its age. College President John W. Cassell, Jr. (1972-1983) started calling for the demolition of the building as early as 1975 on the grounds that it was unsafe and not up-to-code. Although the board sided with Cassell, the decision to demolish Irwin Hall was unpopular among students, faculty, and alumni. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1982, Cleveland Wrecking Co. of San Francisco tore the building down, mostly by hand, for a price tag of $38,000.³⁴

The college also doubtless suffered from bad press from its association with the Desmond Ford controversy. From a peak of 2,290 students in the 1975-1976 academic year, enrollment had fallen to 1,402 ten years later. The college had to contract and consolidate, focusing on key undergraduate programs and eliminating master’s degrees. As other institutions rebranded themselves as universities, Pacific Union College would remain an undergraduate college, at least for the time being. Nevertheless, there was no going back to the very small institution that PUC had been before the end of World War II. To continue to function atop Howell Mountain, PUC had to operate infrastructure such as water supply, sewage treatment system, and cogeneration power plant—which it would not have to do were it in a city. To keep this infrastructure running, PUC had to maintain a certain baseline level of enrollment.³⁵

After the enrollment slump of the early 1980s, student numbers began to rise again later in the decade. The college responded to changing times and shifting denominational culture by approving a competitive intercollegiate athletics program for the first time in 1989—what would become Pioneers Athletics. As another sign of changing times was the introduction of widespread internet connectivity to the PUC campus in 1994. By that time, the children of baby boomers had begun coming to college in large numbers. By decade’s end, college enrollment was 1,568–nearly back to baby-boom levels. This second-generation demographic bump boosted student numbers above 1,000 through the decade of the 2000s and into the 2010s.³⁶

Pacific Union College in the New Millennium

PUC ended the twentieth century—its first full century of existence—under the leadership of President D. Malcolm Maxwell. He was the first president of PUC who was also an alumnus, and his 18-year tenure (1983-2001) was the longest in the college’s history. When he took office, the college was still shaken by the Ford controversy and had suffered a serious drop in enrollment. Over the course of his long tenure, Maxwell guided the college from crisis to stability. When the author worked at PUC in the 2010s and 2020s, many of his colleagues who had worked under Maxwell seemed to look back on his presidency as a kind of golden age. Since Maxwell’s departure in 2001, PUC has had five presidents: Richard Osborn (2001-2009), Heather Knight (the college’s first female and first Black president, 2009-2016), Eric Anderson (2017), Robert Cushman (2017-2021), and Ralph Trecartin (2021-present).³⁷

Pacific Union College in recent decades has faced a series of challenges, some of which are common to small colleges and universities, while others are more particular to the institution’s location in Northern California. As with many other small colleges, PUC has seen declining enrollment in recent years. Institutions that grew to meet the demand of the era of postwar booms now face the reality of a competitive market for a smaller pool of students. For PUC, declining enrollment has meant, at turns, lower revenue, ballooning debt, multiple rounds of layoffs of faculty and staff, and elimination of academic programs.³⁸

The difficult financial situation of PUC is further exacerbated by its geographical location. The tech boom of the Bay Area and the Napa Valley wine boom have inflated prices and made it difficult to continue operating the college and paying employees at denominational rates. Northern California, it would seem, is a victim of its own success.³⁹

A contentious issue that arose early in the new century was the question of whether to sell the college’s land. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, PUC still owned 1,500 acres of forest along the east side of Howell Mountain overlooking Pope Valley. The PUC Forest had been a part of the school’s property and identity since the move to Angwin in 1909. It had been a destination for picnics and socials and a source of lumber for the college’s early buildings. Even so, proposals surfaced from time to time to sell the land to enlarge the college’s endowment or to take care of its growing debt. One plan, proposed by Richard Osborn during his tenure as president, was to develop a portion of the land into an “eco-village” with as many as several hundred housing units. This proposal met strenuous opposition from a community group called Save Rural Angwin, which feared that the development would increase traffic and put undue stress on water resources atop Howell Mountain.⁴⁰

The college withdrew the eco-village plan in 2010, the year after Heather Knight succeeded Osborn as president. Nevertheless, the Knight administration subsequently tried to sell off 1,500 acres of college land to earn money for the endowment. Save Rural Angwin opposed this move as well on the grounds that the sale could lead to the land being developed anyway. Save Rural Angwin sponsored a countywide ballot initiative in 2012, Measure U, which would have changed the zoning of three parcels of college land to block further development. PUC spent $100,000 on an anti-Measure U campaign, and the initiative failed on election day.⁴¹

PUC never did sell its land. When he became president in 2017, Robert Cushman articulated a new policy for the land: PUC would stop trying to sell its land and instead embrace its identity as a land-owning school. Rather than developing the land, PUC converted the forest into a conservation easement, in collaboration with the Land Trust of Napa County, the Wildlife Conservation Board, and CalFire. Save Rural Angwin supported the move. Under the conservation easement, the forest can never be developed or used for agricultural purposes, and the college is obligated to maintain the land in a natural state in perpetuity. The first phase of the conservation easement, which took effect in 2018, covered 864 acres of forest and netted the college $7.1 million. The protected forest land was located between two other protected areas, Las Posadas State Forest and a Napa Valley Land Trust property. As protected land, the PUC Demonstration and Experimental Forest, affectionately called the “Back 40,” remains a favorite destination for hikers, mountain bikers, and picnickers from the college and the wider community.⁴²

In addition to financial problems, another challenge PUC faces—along with Angwin as a whole—is environmental. Northern California has always had a Mediterranean climate, with rainy winters and hot, dry summers, and wildfires have been a recurring threat to the PUC campus and the town of Angwin. In May 1931, a fire burned through Las Posadas Forest and Conn Valley on Howell Mountain; PUC students joined in the effort to contain the blaze. In more recent years, several large fires have forced the evacuation of Angwin, disrupting college operations. In October 2017, the Tubbs Fire in Napa and Sonoma Counties did not threaten the campus directly, but it put so much smoke into the air that the college voluntarily suspended classes and evacuated the campus until conditions improved. Three years later, two large fires forced the evacuation of the campus during the 2020 fire season. The second of these, Glass Fire, started at the bottom of Howell Mountain and burned up to the very edge of Angwin. The fire began early in the morning of September 27, and the campus and the town had to be evacuated before dawn.⁴³

The college, in collaboration with CalFire and other agencies, has taken steps to reduce the vulnerability of Angwin to future large fires. From the combined effects of the 2020 fires, a burn scar almost completely encircled Angwin, providing protection against future blazes. One area that remains vulnerable is the thickly-forested eastern side of Howell Mountain, which is partly owned by the college. Controlled burns and clearing operations have reduced fuel loads on that part of Howell Mountain, so the risk of catastrophic fire is much lower overall than it was before 2020.⁴⁴

During the COVID-19 pandemic, which began just before finals in winter quarter 2020, PUC quickly shifted to online instruction to limit the spread of the virus. Unlike in the Influenza Pandemic a century earlier, students did not stay in Angwin to ride out the pandemic; the dorms closed and most students went home. Spring quarter 2020 classes were completely online. The PUC campus reopened partially in the 2020-2021 academic year, but continuing high case-counts in California kept most classes online. The dorms reopened and some students returned to them, while others stayed home and never once set foot on campus all year. Students who tested positive for COVID-19 were required to isolate in the off-campus Brookside apartments, while those who had been contact-traced to known cases but had not tested positive themselves quarantined in their rooms for twenty-four hours.⁴⁵

PUC finally returned to in-person instruction in fall quarter 2021, but certain restrictions such as the wearing of face masks in classrooms and other public areas remained in place. The masking requirement was lifted on March 12, 2022, when declining case counts in California indicated that the pandemic might finally be on the wane. In the final count, PUC recorded some 400 COVID-19 cases among its students and employees, all of which led to recovery.⁴⁶

Looking Forward

As the second quarter of the twenty-first century begins, PUC’s challenges cannot be ignored—especially its high debt and low enrollment—but neither can its strengths. Academics continue to be one of those strengths. Nursing is PUC’s largest program, representing half of the student body. The nursing degree programs are accredited and well-regarded; on April 24, 2025, the college announced that the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program had received full accreditation for the next eight years from the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing. The nursing and health sciences programs are balanced by a range of programs in the humanities, STEM, and professional fields, including aviation, biology, business, chemistry, education, history, honors, psychology, social work, and theology.⁴⁷

Facing the future, PUC must find ways to use its inherent strengths to grow, both on its mountaintop home and in new markets. In the latter category, PUC has begun offering Associate of Science in Nursing degrees at satellite locations hosted by Adventist Health. Students in these programs, who are Adventist Health employees or community members, can do most of their coursework and their clinicals outside of Napa County, at a lower overall cost than the Angwin campus program. The first two such programs are the North Coast program (in Lake and Mendocino Counties) and the Sonora Program (in Tuolumne County).⁴⁸

In 2023, the academic programs were reorganized into three schools: the School of Nursing and Health Sciences; the School of Arts, Humanities, and Professions; and the School of Sciences. Administration also considered shifting the school year from academic quarters to semesters and changing the institution’s name to university—a change that an earlier generation of college leaders had decided not to make.⁴⁹

In the fall of 2024, at the beginning of the fourth year of Ralph Trecartin’s presidency of the college, PUC reported a student headcount of 1000, compared with 930 the previous year. This was a diverse group of students, with no racial or ethnic group in the majority. PUC has received recognition from U.S. News & World Report for being the most ethnically diverse National Liberal Arts College in the country. This is a reflection of PUC’s racially inclusive policies; the college has never excluded any racial or ethnic group of students (except when forced to by the federal government during World War II). It also reflects the diversity of the Adventist Church in California, where the vast majority of the students originate. More than 140 years after its institutional beginnings, Pacific Union College was still fulfilling its original mandate of providing higher education for the Adventist population of the West Coast.⁵⁰

Presidents

Healdsburg College (1882-1908): Sidney Brownsberger (1882-1886), William C. Grainger (1886-1894), Frank W. Howe (1894-1897), Roderick S. Owen (1897-1899), Marion E. Cady (1899-1903), Elton D. Sharpe (1903-1904), Warren E. Howell (1904-1906), Lucas A. Reed (1906-1908).

Pacific Union College (1909-): C. Walter Irwin (1909-1921), William E. Nelson (1921-1934), Walter I. Smith (1934-1943), Henry J. Klooster (1943-1945), Percy W. Christian (1945-1950), John E. Weaver (1950-1954), Henry L. Sonnenberg (1954-1955), Ray W. Fowler (1955-1963), Floyd O. Rittenhouse (1963-1972), John W. Cassell, Jr. (1972-1983), D. Malcolm Maxwell (1983-2001), Richard C. Osborn (2001-2009), Heather J. Knight (2009-2016), Eric D. Anderson (2017), Robert A. Cushman, Jr. (2017-2021), Ralph R. Trecartin (2021-).

Sources

“$50,000 Computer Arrives on Campus.” Campus Chronicle. December 11, 1958.

Anderson, Eric. “PUC Since 1982.” Afterword in A Mountain, a Pickax, a College: Walter Utt’s History of Pacific Union College, 169-177. 3^rd ed. N. p. [Angwin, CA]: Pacific Union College, 1996.

“Angwin Has Practice Air Raid.” Campus Chronicle. February 12, 1942.

“Associate of Science in Nursing with Adventist Health.” Pacific Union College. Accessed April 24, 2025. https://www.puc.edu/academics/departments/nursing-health-sciences/adventist-health.

“Board of Trustees Plans Revision of PUC Campus.” Campus Chronicle. February 24, 1949.

Bolander, Kirstin. “Angwin Residents Try to Top Winery from Opening.” Campus Chronicle. September 29, 1985.

Brandon, Sheann. “PUC Continues Building Fire Resilience Across Forest Property Through Successful 13 Acre Planned Burn.” Pacific Union College. June 4, 2024. Accessed May 11, 2025. https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2024/puc-continues-building-fire-resilience-across-forest-property-through-successful-13-acre-planned-burn.

Cedeno, Sherban. “PUC to Consider Semester System, Name Change.” Campus Chronicle, February 8, 2024.

“Church Builds Again.” Campus Chronicle. October 18, 1973.

Church, Larissa. “PUC Ranked #1 in the Nation for Ethnic Diversity by U.S. News & World Report.” Pacific Union College. September 27, 2016. Accessed May 11, 2025. https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2016/puc-ranked-1-in-the-nation-for-ethnic-diversity-by-u.s.-news-And-world-report.

“College Board Votes Acceptance of $430,000 War Surplus Gymnasium.” Campus Chronicle. November 18, 1948.

“Conn Valley is in Path of Hot Fire Fanned by Wind: Men are Unable to Check Rush of Flames". Napa Valley Register. May 19, 1931.

Courtney, Kevin. “Wildfires Rage Over Rural Napa.” Napa Valley Register. August 19, 2020.

“Data-processing Center at PUC: Bendix Computer Installed in Nelson Memorial Library.” Alumni News. December 1958.

“DPL Offers New Service: Computer Program by Kootsey Figures Sunset Tables.” Campus Chronicle. October 14, 1959.

Eberling, Barry. “County Trying to Resolve Angwin Land-use Issues.” The Weekly Calistogan. November 3, 2016.

Gang, Laura. “Pacific Union College Announces Deans for New Three-School Model.” Pacific Union College. April 4, 2023. Accessed May 11, 2025. https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2023/pacific-union-college-announces-deans-for-new-three-school-model.

Gang, Laura. “Pacific Union College records steady enrollment growth for new academic year.” Pacific Union College. October 31, 2024. Accessed May 11, 2025. https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2024/pacific-union-college-records-steady-enrollment-growth-for-new-academic-year.

Gang, Laura. “PUC and Adventist Health expand nursing program to Lake and Mendocino Counties.” Pacific Union College. May 17, 2023. Accessed May 11, 2025. https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2023/puc-and-adventist-health-expand-nursing-program-to-lake-and-mendocino-counties.

Gang, Laura. “PUC Gains Approval to Expand Nursing Program to Sonora.” Pacific Union College. March 4, 2024. May 11, 2025. https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2024/puc-gains-approval-to-expand-nursing-program-to-sonora.

Hardcastle, Donald H. “Ready to Serve.” Signs of the Times. May 11, 1943.

Hillinger, Charles. “Wineries Encroach on Seventh-day Adventist Community: ‘Holy Hill’ Fears the Grapes of Wrath.” Los Angeles Times. June 23, 1985.

“Irwin Hall is Razed.” Campus Chronicle. September 30, 1982.

“Japanese Students Leave.” Campus Chronicle. May 14, 1942.

Jensen, Peter. “Land war erupts in Angwin: Measure U Pits Neighbors Against One Another.” Napa Valley Register. October 14, 2012.

Kattic, Kurt. “Internet – Affordable at 25 Cents a Month.” Campus Chronicle. January 26, 1995.

Kellogg, M. G. “Health Retreat.” Signs of the Times. June 13, 1878, 184.

Kindler, Dorsey. “PUC Produces Power.” St. Helena Star. February 10, 2005.

McFarland, Ken. “Martin’s Mission to Asia a Success.” Campus Chronicle. September 30, 1964.

“New Mall to Connect Irwin with Church.” Campus Chronicle. May 17, 1967.

O’Farrell, Jasper. “Diseño del Rancho La Jota.” March 4, 1848. Accessed May 11, 2025. Berkeley Library Digital Collections. https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/79004?ln=en&v=uv#?xywh=-337%2C0%2C2172%2C1125.

“Our View: Taking the Neighbors Seriously.” Napa Valley Register. August 26, 2007.

“Pacific Union College Sells Forest Land for Conservation Easement.” The Weekly Calistogan. December 27, 2018.

Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

“Physics Dept. Gets Electronic Computer.” Campus Chronicle. April 20, 1955.

“PUC Resumes Classes after Wildfire Concerns.” Pacific Union College. October 17, 2017. Accessed May 11, 2025. https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2017/puc-resumes-classes-after-wildfire-concerns.

Reed, H. W. “Dr. M. G. Kellogg.” ARH. February 19, 1922.

Saxby, W.H. “The Opening of the Work in California.” Pacific Union Recorder. August 17, 1916.

“The Camp-Meeting.” Signs of the Times. October 27, 1881.

“The Flu Pandemic of 1918.” National Archives News. Updated April 11, 2024. Accessed May 16, 2025. https://www.archives.gov/news/topics/flu-pandemic-1918.

Tyner, Jennifer. “Pacific Union College and Save Rural Angwin mend relationship for conservation easement.” Pacific Union College. October 3, 2017. Accessed May 11, 2025. https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2017/pacific-union-college-and-save-rural-angwin-mend-relationship-for-conservation-easement.

Utt, Walter C. A Mountain, a Pickax, a College: Walter Utt’s History of Pacific Union College. 3^rd ed. N. p. [Angwin, CA]: Pacific Union College, 1996.

Van Arsdale, Katharine. Angwin and Howell Mountain. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2021.

Wood, Sarah. “See the Most Diverse Colleges.” U.S. News & World Report. January 9, 2024. Accessed May 8, 2025. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/slideshows/see-the-most-diverse-national-universities?slide=22.

Notes

1. H. W. Reed, “Dr. M. G. Kellogg,” ARH, February 9, 1922, 22; W. H. Saxby, “The Opening of the Work in California,” Pacific Union Recorder, August 17, 1916, 2.↩

2. Reed, “Dr. M. G. Kellogg,” 22; M.G. Kellogg, “Health Retreat,” Signs of the Times, June 13, 1878, 184.↩

3. Walter C. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College: Walter Utt’s History of Pacific Union College, 3^rd ed. (N. p. [Angwin, CA]: Pacific Union College, 1996), 1. Battle Creek College is the predecessor of Andrews University.↩

4. “The Camp-Meeting,” Signs of the Times, October 27, 1881, 474; Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 2.↩

5. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 2.↩

6. Ibid., 3, 6.↩

7. Ibid., 6-7, 13, 22, 24.↩

8. Ibid., 23-26, 28.↩

9. Ibid., 36; Katharine Van Arsdale, Angwin and Howell Mountain (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing), 9-14; Jasper O’Farrell, “Diseño del Rancho La Jota,” March 4, 1848, accessed May 11, 2025, Berkeley Library Digital Collections, https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/79004?ln=en&v=uv#?xywh=-337%2C0%2C2172%2C1125.↩

10. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 28, 39-41.↩

11. Ibid., 51-53.↩

12. Ibid., 53.↩

13. Ibid., 55-56, 90.↩

14. Ibid., 56-57.↩

15. Ibid., 56.↩

16. Ibid., 40, 60. The author remembers George Knight using the “nearest known sin” line during a visit he made to Pacific Union College in autumn 2018.↩

17. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 73.↩

18. Ibid.; “The Flu Pandemic of 1918,” National Archives News, updated April 11, 2024, accessed May 16, 2025, https://www.archives.gov/news/topics/flu-pandemic-1918.↩

19. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 10, 16, 73, 88, 101, 104, 106.↩

20. Ibid., 83.↩

21. Ibid., 89, 90.↩

22. Ibid., 85, 87, 136-37, 183-84.↩

23. Ibid., 109; “Angwin Has Practice Air Raid,” Campus Chronicle, February 12, 1942; Donald H. Hardcastle, “Ready to Serve,” Signs of the Times, May 11, 1943, 8-9; “Japanese Students Leave,” Campus Chronicle, May 14, 1942; Brenden Bliss, “Lived Conflict: Japanese-American Adventists during World War II” (paper presentation, Association of Seventh-day Adventist Historians Triennial Conference, Southern Adventist University, Friday, April 14, 2023).↩

24. Susi Mundy, “History of Regular Enrollment at PUC,” February 27, 2009, collection of Eric Anderson; Patrick Brenner, email to author, April 30, 2025; James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 14; Eric Anderson, “PUC Since 1982,” in Walter C. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College: Walter Utt’s History of Pacific Union College, 3^rd ed. (N.p. [Angwin, CA]: Pacific Union College, 1996), 170. The enrollment numbers cited here are official headcount from the third-semester census date of the fall term.↩

25. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 119; “College Board Votes Acceptance of $430,000 War Surplus Gymnasium,” Campus Chronicle, November 18, 1948; “Board of Trustees Plans Revision of PUC Campus,” Campus Chronicle, February 24, 1949. The original structure at Camp Parks had a footprint of 340 ft x 132 ft; the rebuilt structure on the PUC campus measured 220 ft x 100 ft.↩

26. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 113-14, 132.↩

27. Susi Mundy, “History of Regular Enrollment at PUC,” February 27, 2009, collection of Eric Anderson; Anderson, “PUC Since 1982,” 170; Ken McFarland, “Martin’s Mission to Asia a Success,” Campus Chronicle, September 30, 1964.↩

28. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 123-24; “New Mall to Connect Irwin with Church,” Campus Chronicle, May 17, 1967; “Church builds again,” Campus Chronicle, October 18, 1973.↩

29. Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 161.↩

30. “Physics Dept. gets electronic computer,” Campus Chronicle, April 20, 1955; “$50,000 Computer Arrives on Campus,” Campus Chronicle, December 11, 1958; “Data-Processing Center at PUC: Bendix Computer Installed in Nelson Memorial Library,” Alumni News, December 1958, 1-2; Utt, A Mountain, a Pickax, a College, 155.↩

31. “DPL offers new service: Computer program by Kootsey figures sunset tables,” Campus Chronicle, October 14, 1959.↩

32. Anderson, “PUC Since 1982,” 170.↩

33. See Gilbert M. Valentine, “Glacier View Sanctuary Review Conference (1980),” Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, January 29, 2020, https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=79CV.↩

34. “Irwin Hall is razed,” Campus Chronicle, September 30, 1982, 3; Anderson, “PUC Since 1982,” 173-74↩

35. Anderson, “PUC Since 1982,” 170; Dorsey Kindler, “PUC Produces Power,” St. Helena Star, February 10, 2005; William Logan, personal experience from working at PUC 2018-2023.↩

36. Anderson, “PUC Since 1982,” 170, 184; Kurt Kattic, “Internet – Affordable at 25 Cents a Month,” Campus Chronicle, January 26, 1995.↩

37. Anderson, “PUC Since 1982,” 174-176; William Logan, personal knowledge from working at PUC 2018-2023; Pacific Union College, General Catalog 2025-2027, https://www.puc.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/211896/Catalog-2025-2027.pdf?v=0.1.7.↩

38. William Logan, personal experience from working at PUC 2018-2023.↩

39. The wine boom has also put PUC in an awkward position culturally. Despite resistance by church members, vineyards have colonized prime grape-growing land within sight of the PUC campus. See Charles Hillinger, “Wineries Encroach on Seventh-day Adventist Community: ‘Holy Hill’ Fears the Grapes of Wrath,” Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1985; Kirstin Bolander, “Angwin residentstry to stop winery from opening,” Campus Chronicle, September 29, 1985.↩

40. “Our View: Taking the Neighbors Seriously,” Napa Valley Register, August 26, 2007.↩

41. Peter Jensen, “Land War Erupts in Angwin: Measure U Pits Neighbors Against One Another,” Napa Valley Register, October 14, 2012; Barry Eberling, “County Trying to Resolve Angwin Land-Use Issues,” The Weekly Calistogan, November 3, 2016.↩

42. Jennifer Tyner, “Pacific Union College and Save Rural Angwin Mend Relationship for Conservation Easement,” Pacific Union College, October 3, 2017, accessed May 16, 2025, https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2017/pacific-union-college-and-save-rural-angwin-mend-relationship-for-conservation-easement; “Pacific Union College Sells Forest Land for Conservation Easement,” The Weekly Calistogan, December 27, 2018.↩

43. “Conn Valley is in Path of Hot Fire Fanned by Wind: Men are Unable to Check Rush of Flames,” Napa Valley Register, May 19, 1931; “PUC Resumes Classes After Wildfire Concerns,” Pacific Union College, October 17, 2017, accessed May 11, 2025, https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2017/puc-resumes-classes-after-wildfire-concerns; Kevin Courtney, “Wildfires Rage Over Rural Napa,” Napa Valley Register, August 19, 2020.↩

44. Sheann Brandon, “PUC Continues Building Fire Resilience Across Forest Property Through Successful 13 Acre Planned Burn,” Pacific Union College, June 4, 2024, accessed May 11, 2025, https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2024/puc-continues-building-fire-resilience-across-forest-property-through-successful-13-acre-planned-burn.↩

45. Milbert Mariano, “Academic Preparation for COVID19,” email to PUC faculty, March 12, 2020. This and the following paragraph are based on the author’s personal experience teaching at PUC during the pandemic. Espen Scarbrough and Sherban Cedeno, both students on-campus during the 2020-2021 academic year, shared details with the author about quarantining and isolation policies for dorm students.↩

46. PUC Public Relations, “Update to Campus Mask Policy,” email to PUC students, faculty, and staff, March 4, 2022; PUC Public Relations, “Covid-19 update,” email to PUC faculty and staff, March 10, 2023.↩

47. Kimberly Dunker, email to author, May 16, 2025.↩

48. Laura Gang, “PUC Gains Approval to Expand Nursing Program to Sonora,” Pacific Union College, March 4, 2024, https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2024/puc-gains-approval-to-expand-nursing-program-to-sonora; Laura Gang, “PUC and Adventist Health Expand Nursing Program to Lake and Mendocino Counties,” Pacific Union College, May 17, 2023, https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2023/puc-and-adventist-health-expand-nursing-program-to-lake-and-mendocino-counties; “Associate of Science in Nursing with Adventist Health,” Pacific Union College, accessed April 24, 2025, https://www.puc.edu/academics/departments/nursing-health-sciences/adventist-health.↩

49. Laura Gang, “Pacific Union College Announces Deans for New Three-School Model,” Pacific Union College, April 4, 2023, https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2023/pacific-union-college-announces-deans-for-new-three-school-model; Sherban Cedeno, “PUC to Consider Semester System, Name Change,” Campus Chronicle, February 8, 2024.↩

50. Laura Gang, “Pacific Union College Records Steady Enrollment Growth for New Academic Year,” Pacific Union College, October 31, 2024, accessed May 8, 2025, https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2024/pacific-union-college-records-steady-enrollment-growth-for-new-academic-year; Larissa Church, “PUC Ranked #1 in the Nation for Ethnic Diversity by U.S. News & World Report,” Pacific Union College, September 27, 2016, accessed May 8, 2025, https://www.puc.edu/news/archives/2016/puc-ranked-1-in-the-nation-for-ethnic-diversity-by-u.s.-news-And-world-report. In 2024, PUC tied at 13^th place in diversity for Regional Colleges West. The reported demographics were 30 percent Hispanic, 25 percent Asian, 20 percent white, 9 percent multiracial, 6 percent Black, and 1 percent Pacific Islander. Sarah Wood, “See the Most Diverse Colleges,” U.S. News & World Report, January 9, 2024, accessed May 8, 2025, https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/slideshows/see-the-most-diverse-national-universities?slide=22.↩