Honors Tutorial College recognizes San Rafael resident for helping start college decades ago
Up until recently, few knew that San Rafael's Bruce Burtch had a part in conceiving the only degree-granting college in the United States that incorporates all the essential features of the English tutorial system while he was a student at the university.
For 50 years, students have come through the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, learning and growing as they left campus.
Up until recently, few knew that San Rafael’s Bruce Burtch had a part in conceiving the only degree-granting college in the United States that incorporates all the essential features of the English tutorial system while he was a student at the university. And for the first time since he graduated, he returned to the campus to celebrate its anniversary.
Since retiring in 2015, he’s founded the nonprofit Social Impact Productions, which produced the Youth Poster Contest, providing a platform for Marin County students to reflect on important issues.
Q How did your mantra “do well by doing good” come to be?
A I was hired by the Olympic committee to be public relations and special events director for the 1980 games. I went to a meeting in an executive suite, pitching the importance of the Olympics as a way of promoting not just sports but youth getting involved in sports. Halfway through the conversation, the president of a prominent Los Angeles-based foundation stops and says, “What do you want to do with your life?” I said, “I want to do well by doing good.” He leaned back and started to laugh and said, “I have not seen anybody do that before.” That’s been my life philosophy.
Q Where does your drive to help others come from?
A My dad. My dad was an up-from-his-boot-straps kind of guy. He didn’t grow up poor, but very low income, and as my dad got more successful in life in the steel manufacturing business he was always contributing to nonprofits. I saw this guy who worked his rear end off but always had time to help somebody else. From my first job, working at an amusement park in Ohio, I had in my psyche this desire to work hard, make money, but also try to help people. My hot-button issue is kids at risk. I just feel like I have had some advantages that other people have not because of my dad and how hard he worked to give us a good life.
Q What inspired starting Social Impact Productions in your retirement?
A In 2017 it was the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love and I was looking back on what was I doing at the time, what was I feeling? The Vietnam War was going on and I was a protestor against it and I wondered what kids in our community here were thinking about, what social causes were they passionate about. The Youth Poster Contest kept growing and I wanted to create Social Impact Productions to be the parent nonprofit for that.
Q How’d you get involved with the Honors Tutorial College?
A I got a scholarship to go to Trinity College at Oxford for one semester. I didn’t participate in the full tutorial system because that’s not enough time, but I said there’s something here that might work at Ohio University. I was part of the Honors College as a sophomore and came back and talked to the dean of that college, Ellery Golos. He arranged for me to get the Ohio University Fellowship Grant and it paid for me to go back to England, live in London for three months, where I went libraries, talked to people, studied the system at Oxford and Cambridge, and came back. Golos pitched it and the professors loved the idea. It hit a nerve and the first students started in the fall of 1973.
Q How did it feel being recognized?
A Being invited back for the 50th anniversary was a real thrill. It was remarkable. I never got any credit for it, and they had a new dean come in to college, Donal Skinner. I wrote him a letter around two years and said, “I don’t know if you know the origination of the college,” and he said, “No, tell me more.” He researched it and found in the original proposal a paragraph where Ellery Golos credited me as having done thorough research and bringing it back. I had never seen it before that. When I went to the party, Skinner had me stand up, and he called me the “foundational rock upon which this college was founded.” I am kind of choking up because it was 48 years and no one knew.