California Lutheran University partnered with four local high schools to host its inaugural “CVUSD High School Healthcare Summit” in Soiland Multipurpose Arena on Thursday, Oct. 23.
Over the course of the summit, Conejo Valley Unified School District students in attendance were privy to a keynote address from Phill Buttell, CEO of Los Robles Hospital, a panel of graduate-school professors from various universities, three workshop sessions and informational tables.
Sommer Barwick, community relations manager for University Advancement, said in an email interview that all four high schools in the CVUSD — Westlake, Conejo Valley, Thousand Oaks, and Newbury Park — were invited to the event.
“We had approximately 200 students registered who were interested in careers in health care attend, and 50 representatives from local healthcare businesses, private, public, and nonprofit, and approximately 20 educators and CVUSD School Board of Trustee members,” Barwick said.
Laurie Looker, career education coordinator for CVUSD and the organizer of the event, said all students in attendance are involved in a “health care or patient care pathway program” at their respective schools.
Looker said she centered the event around healthcare because, in her research, it was the field in Ventura County most in need of jobs, so she wanted to expose like-minded students to opportunities available to them.
“This was an idea that I had about a year ago. I did some research on what kind of jobs were needed in our region, in Ventura County, and health care comes up at the top of the list,” Looker said. “I really wanted to give high school students an opportunity to network and meet with professionals and learn about what opportunities are in Ventura County for them.”
Looker also serves as a senior adjunct professor in Cal Lutheran’s Graduate School of Education and as a member of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce. She said the three organizations “came together” to help plan the summit.
“[Cal Lutheran] now [has] high school outreach that they do,” Looker said. “We love to have our students get on the college campuses and really see what’s right here, and so that connection and that partnership is so important.”
Opening remarks of the event were made by Cal Lutheran’s Vice President for University Advancement Regina Biddings-Muro.
Biddings-Muro opened her speech by welcoming students and inviting them to the “front-row” of their lives, and said it is important for students to not only take advantage of opportunities in front of them, but to be engaged and get the most out of every conversation.
“You are at a place of opportunity like nobody’s business,” Biddings-Muro said. “There are individuals in this room who can help you verify and sort out what is right for you and what is next.”
Biddings-Muro also introduced Buttell, who assumed his position at Los Robles Hospital in April 2024. He called the opportunity to speak at the event “an honor.”
“It’s so fun to be with people who are interested in health care, because it’s what I love,” Buttell said.
Prior to coming to the Conejo Valley, Buttell worked for 15 years as an executive with various medical centers, with over 13 of those spent as the COO and CEO in the Hospital Corporation of America Midwest Health system, according to his LinkedIn.
Buttell used much of his address to share moments in his life when he felt inspired by health care workers.
The first story Buttell told was that of his nephew, who was born about three months too early and had to spend those first three months of his life in the hospital. Buttell also mentioned his goddaughter, who was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer when she was two. Buttell said they are both now healthy and thriving.
Additionally, Buttell told the story of his mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer and, later, terminal acute leukemia.
Buttell said she spent the last two-and-a-half months of her life in the hospital, and that, when she passed, they let his family hold a service for her in an empty conference room because of the size of his family and the amount of people that wanted to pay respects.
Buttell said he noticed, in the back of the room, that two of his mom’s nurses had sneaked into the service, and that was the moment when he realized how “special” the profession was.
“At the end of the line, I’m certain it’s because they snuck away on their lunch break, were two of the nurses that cared for my mom and our family those last two months of her life,” Buttell said. “What we do in health care is so special, because every day we have this opportunity to impact people’s lives.”
Buttell ended his address by sharing some personal principles he’s picked up over his time in healthcare, including the opportunity to make a difference, staying true to yourself, self-care and accountability.
“Healthcare, this is tough work. It will challenge you physically, it will challenge you spiritually, it will challenge you emotionally, and if you aren’t taking great care of yourself, guess what? You can’t take great care of our patients,” Buttell said.
Following Buttell’s address, professors from local universities spoke on a panel about post-graduate degree options for students. Programs represented on the panel included pre-health, nursing, and dental hygiene.
One of the panelists was Michele LeBlanc, Cal Lutheran’s Nena Amundson professor of biomechanics. LeBlanc currently serves as director of the pre-health program and founded the university’s Office for Undergraduate Research.
LeBlanc said she thought the university did a “really good job” including representatives from a wide range of healthcare fields in the panel.
LeBlanc said despite the deficit in health care workers both locally and nationwide, she believes Cal Lutheran is “positioned pretty well” to help mitigate the gap.
“It’s a national problem, but it’s certainly a local problem,” LeBlanc said. “I’ve got some amazing students that very specifically want to help people, in particular, underserved people.”
LeBlanc said the university’s smaller size is an advantage because it allows her and other faculty to develop personal relationships with each of their students. LeBlanc said she has labs with 12 students in them, allowing her to know each of them “very, very well.” She also said she thinks Cal Lutheran’s laboratories rival those of larger institutions.
“I actually would put our labs up against any other institutions’ undergraduate labs. The difference is, we will have professors working with those students and not graduate students working with those students,” LeBlanc said. “We’re able to have students be very well prepared because of our size and … the collaboration between faculty and students and the university.”
LeBlanc, who has been at Cal Lutheran for 23 years, said she thinks the university is good at helping students develop critical thinking skills and to be able to think rationally in fast-paced environments.
“You have to really use those critical thinking skills and be able to discern what you know and what you don’t know and, you know, make your best decisions,” LeBlanc said. “I feel like those are things that I want my health professionals to be good at. I think, you know, a school like Cal Lutheran can really do that well.”
Looker said the summit is expected to return next year, and that there are discussions to “replicate” the event with focuses in other fields.
“I feel like our job is to help students find that thing that they really want to do, and to equip them to not only be very good at that, but also have lots and lots of opportunities,” LeBlanc said.
