Pen People Mar 2018

ut both committed to public service.
“The firm has a rich tradition of
civic-minded lawyers from both
sides of the political spectrum. The
question there was ‘Where will
you serve as a lawyer, and how will
you provide benefit to your community?’
What prepared me for
what I’m doing now was pro bono
work. I represented indigent defendants
at criminal trials, tenants
in landlord disputes, and dealt with
domestic violence cases. I also represented
public education, particularly
K-12 school districts. The
interactions with educators led me
to decide to teach, so I taught in
the Business school at Claremont
Graduate School and then taught
law at Chapman, and that caused
me to discover how much I loved
post-secondary education.”
Legal work and teaching filled
his life for 30 years. Then Virjee
read a book, Halftime by Bob Buford.
The book is about mid-career
professionals moving, in the words
of the cover blurb, “from success to
significance.” Virjee decided to
leave the legal profession and
move to Africa.
And then things changed again,
thanks to a call from the chairman
of the Board of Trustees at the Cal
State University system. Might he
be interested in being their new
General Counsel? No, he explained,
he was getting ready to
move to Africa. Okay, might he be
willing to meet with the Chancellor
and give him advice about how
to fill the position?
“I met with Tim White, the chancellor
for the 23-campus system,
and we had a great conversation. I
told him all about Rwanda, he told
me about the CSU. I shared my
thoughts for how he might reorganize
the General Counsel’s office,
he gave suggestions for how
we could improve the organization
of the nonprofit, and we shook
hands and went our separate
ways.”
Virjee and Julie went to Rwanda
and started working on a series of
projects, among them a school for
the deaf, a community center and
library, an art school, and a project
to provide eggs for student meals
so that children weren’t too hungry
to focus on their studies. And
then the call came on his cellphone
from a job recruiter with an offer:
not the expected job of general
counsel, but executive vice-chancellor
of the state university system.
“I told him, I’m in Rwanda,
Fram Virjees at Cal State University Fullerton. Photo courtesy of CSUF
that’s not going to happen. He said,
‘We’ll wait, talk with us the next
time you’re back in California.’ The
next thing I knew I was meeting
trustees and talking to people.
What put me over the top was
when the chancellor said, ‘I want
you to think about vision and strategic
planning. We have this 23 campus
system with almost 500,000
students – how can we break down
barriers, improve communication,
and increase access for students
while improving the quality?’ And
I thought, oh my gosh, here I am,
about to move to Africa, where I
feel this connection and have this
calling, and at the same time there’s
a need in my own community, and
I’m being called to help. He had
me, I was hooked.”
Fram and Julie came up with a
plan to keep their charity in
Rwanda going. Julie took the lead in
running the organization, an ironic
twist given that she originally set
the whole thing up as a project for
Fram. As he explains it, “My wife
Julie is the primary driver of Yambi
Rwanda. In our hearts this is a joint
effort but she is the leader of it. My
focus is the university, but my heart
is in what we’re doing. She goes
there once or twice a year, and she
spends four to six weeks each time.
She is the love of my life and center
of my universe, but I give her up
because I know the work that we
do is impactful.”
Fram Virjee’s university office
was in Long Beach. But, as he saw
it, he wasn’t hired to sit in an office.
He needed to visit each of the 23
campuses and learn what was going
on. This is not the way a Vice-Chancellor
usually does their job. All the
same, he had loved teaching and
having day-to-day relationships
with the people that the whole enterprise
was supposed to be focused
upon.
“That’s what was missing for me,
the students. The energy, the vitality,
the promise you get when you
walk onto a college campus is palpable.
So when the chancellor
called me and offered me the
chance to be president at Cal State
Fullerton I just about jumped out of
my skin. It was an amazing opportunity
and even more in line with
my desire to directly affect the lives
of students in the state of California.”
Virjee became Cal State Fullerton’s
president in January, and is
still marveling at the enormity of
the job and the difficulty of doing it
the way he believes it needs to be
done.
“We have 40,000 students at Cal
State Fullerton, the largest university
in California. I could sit in my
office and have everyone come to
me, but when I meet with deans,
faculty, or anyone else I schedule
them so I can see where they live
and work. The first thing I did
when I got here was meet with the
custodial staff and maintenance
crews. They are the front line of the
university, the ones who meet our
students where they are every day.
I carve out time to spend with students
where they’re learning.
That’s the best part of my job. I
want every decision to be influenced
by what I know about my
students, faculty, and staff. I want a
collaborative process with them,
and the only way that will happen
is if I go to talk to them.”
Though partisans of online learning
sometimes claim that it will
make the classical campus obsolete
except for courses that require special
tools, Fram Virjee defends traditional
learning methods.
“Online learning does create access
for students who might not
otherwise have it. It is an amazing
tool, and we will use it. On the
other side of the coin, it isn’t a replacement
for the academy, the
learning you get in the physical
presence, or a panacea for issues of
infrastructure and access for students.
You have to understand
what the purpose of a post-secondary
education is, at least from
my perspective. It is very important
that we prepare our students,
both from a knowledge-based perspective
and a problem-solving
perspective, to get out in the world
for purposes of professional development
and career. But if we stop
there, which is what online learning
does, we would be doing a disservice.
The purpose of a
university education is also to create
citizens for the state of California,
the United States, and the
world, who are civic-minded, engaged,
and caring about their communities.
They need to be able to
interact and collaborate to move
the communities, the state, and the
nation forward. In order to be that
kind of multi-dimensional learners
and participants in democracy, the
best way for them to do that is live
at our campus. We bring our students,
our community, and our faculty
to this place so they learn to
interact and collaborate, and we
haven’t figured out how to do that
online.”
While Fram Virjee spends an increasing
amount of time with his
work in Fullerton, he still is part of
the community on the Peninsula.
“All three of our sons went to PV
schools, just like I did. My social
net is there, and the people who
shaped me and support me are
there. Of course my parents
shaped me, but they decided that
that’s where I would grow up. The
Palos Verdes Peninsula is our family,
and anything I do, anywhere I
go, I do on behalf of, in the name
of, and with the imprint of my
community. I love Fullerton, but I
want people to know about the
support PV provided to me and to
generations going forward.”
To learn more about Yambi
Rwanda, visit YambiRwanda.org.
They host occasional sales of art
created by students at their school.
See their Facebook page for upcoming
shows. PEN
30 Peninsula • March 2018