Michael Bowen, the new campus supervisor, found his way to Foothill after experiencing what it was like to be a coach, lifelong athlete and student. His love for sports and education bore his path to Foothill.
Snowboarding, surfing, basketball, football, water polo and baseball led Bowen to being a coach, which he still is now for JV baseball and Frosh/Soph baseball. This and his desire to help out in the Ventura Unified School District brought him, “to this point which I started about seven years ago,” Bowen said.
What ultimately influenced his decision to take this new role was his family. He has two daughters and he, “thought it would be pretty neat to see their dad coach and I’d like to have the same amount of time off that they did cause they’re mi vidas, they’re my everything,” Bowen commented.
Now that he’s at Foothill, he hopes to provide another source of balance; to keep and help the school push forward in the direction it’s heading.
“It has such a great view from the outside, the general public and I can tell that the staff has such a great direction for it and you guys as students have such a great direction,” Bowen expressed.
His job as campus supervisor is to act as a “liaison between the student body and the faculty, but we’re all working together, almost like a medium,” he described. Doing this allows him to provide balance and “gather the pulse of the student populus on campus,” Bowen said.
His job is focused around communication. It wouldn’t be possible without interacting and listening to the students.
“If I’m hearing those things then I can pass those things on to the administration and then they know where you guys feel [and] where you guys are heading,” Bowen said.
It’s his job to look out for the safety and well being of the campus, but also be a companion, someone you can go up to and talk with like a friend and express things such as what you did over the weekend or what’s happening in your classes.
He hopes students will see him as things he always aspires to be: “I just want to be a good father, a good husband, a good friend [and] a good brother.”
Though he knows “respect is earned, it’s not given.”
“I can only hope that how I’ve been raised, and how I’ve learned, and my experiences, and my friends and my education comes off in a way that you guys feel comfortable and feel comfortable about coming to us as a staff and administration and faculty with any of your concerns, ideas or thoughts. I think that’s important, to be approachable,” Bowen said.
As a parent, he gauges how he should treat the students by comparing how he would want his own daughters to be treated. “If I’m treating you like I treat them, then you guys are getting the best from me,” he said.
Dana Eaton, the previous campus supervisor, was beloved and respected on campus and in the community. Bowen hopes, “to honor and do what he did all the while trying to find a path of my own.”
“It’s really humbling, to follow something like that. I don’t take it lightly at all and it’s important to me to just honor it and try to put my know values and input into it,” he said.
Being the campus supervisor is really important to him because, “you guys are the generation that’s going to take care of my generation and even more, you’re the generation that’s going to be the trendsetters for my children and that’s such a beautiful thing,” Bowen said.
