Chapman University President Matt Parlow said his first month on the job has been “everything I could hope for and more,” as the private university in the heart of Orange marked his formal investiture Friday, Oct. 10.
The ceremony, held at Chapman’s Musco Center for the Arts, drew two former university presidents, dozens of delegates from sister institutions, and a packed crowd of faculty, students, alumni and community leaders.
Under former presidents Jim Doti and Daniele Struppa, “the university has grown in reputation, impact and scope,” Chapman Board of Trustees Chair James Burra told the audience. “And now, Matt, the torch is passing to you.”
Parlow took over the presidency on Sept. 2 after Struppa stepped down to return to the faculty. He used his inaugural address to deliver what he called a “full-throated defense of higher education.”
“It is an interesting time to be becoming a university president,” Parlow told the audience. “Higher education is under great scrutiny, and there’s doubt and skepticism in the public narrative around the value and wisdom of a college degree. But I couldn’t be more optimistic about Chapman’s future.”
That optimism comes directly from his family’s own story.
Parlow, a Los Angeles native and Yale-educated lawyer, previously served as the university’s law school dean and chief fundraiser. He now leads a campus of more than 10,000 students with an endowment topping $800 million. Chapman employs more than 2,000 faculty and staff across 11 schools and colleges, including nationally recognized programs in film, law, business and health sciences.
But for all the power and prestige of his position, Parlow’s own story has far more modest beginnings.
Both sets of Parlow’s grandparents immigrated to the United States about 100 years ago “to pursue opportunities unavailable to them in their home countries,” he said.
But those dreams didn’t materialize. Parlow said they became so destitute they had to give up his parents — his mother to a foster home, his father to a Jewish orphanage.
His parents clawed their way to college degrees and became public school teachers in Los Angeles, instilling in their children, he said, “a reverence for education and what it can mean for a family’s future.”
“What is the difference between growing up in an orphanage or a foster home and becoming president of Chapman University? One generation, and an education,” Parlow said, quoting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
His family story, he said, underpins his focus on making Chapman more accessible.
In an interview prior to his investiture, Parlow said he began his presidency with what he called a listening tour of students, faculty, staff and community members to set priorities for the years ahead.
“The beauty of the long transition time that we had,” he said, “really helped inform how I was thinking and allowed me the space to go have those conversations about where are we, what are our goals, what are our aspirations.”
He said he identified five key areas of focus based on those conversations: deepening Chapman’s student-centered mission, continuing its academic trajectory, supporting free speech and civil discourse and expanding interdisciplinary initiatives and “bridge building” across programs and with outside partners.
Affordability, he said, is central to that mission.
“As we’ve been building our endowment, a super majority of it is focused on support for student financial aid,” Parlow said, pointing to new programs that aim to make Chapman more accessible to students from lower-income backgrounds.
That includes a new partnership with the nonprofit Marymount Education Foundation, which will bring the Marymount Scholars Program to Chapman. The initiative, created to continue the legacy of Marymount California University after its 2022 closure, offers financial aid and mentorship for lower-income and first-generation students, connecting them with Chapman’s “Promising Futures” program for professional development, graduate school prep and peer and faculty mentoring.
Parlow said Chapman is also increasing aid through its budget, “not just proportional to increase in tuition, but increasing it even above that so that the best and brightest students from all over Southern California and beyond” can attend. The university is also working with donors to provide housing support for students who receive aid, but may not be able to afford to live on campus, he said.
“My family’s story illustrates the importance of higher education in providing meaningful opportunity, the most meaningful opportunity for social mobility,” Parlow said in his address Friday. “Indeed, it is my family’s experience that inspired me to devote my career to higher education.”
He also pointed to potential growth at Chapman’s Graduate Health Sciences Campus in Irvine, which houses the pharmacy school, physician’s assistant program and physical therapy program. He believes the school is well-positioned to meet the region’s healthcare workforce needs.
“I could see growing the PA program,” Parlow said of the highly competitive program. “We’ve got the space, we’ve got the talent, we’ve got the synergy. So it’ll be exploring which ones make the most sense for us. But I’m very optimistic on that over time.”
A recent partnership with the city of Orange will also be a focus, he said. The city and Chapman announced the collaboration to “explore innovative ways that the two entities can work together to create a thriving, equitable, and sustainable college town that all residents can take pride in and enjoy,” according to a city news release.
Parlow said the new partnership with the city opens the door to “a lot of opportunities” for collaboration that would benefit both students and the city, including internship programs that could give students real-world experience and lead to local hiring.
The partnership was suggested by consultants from Grant Thornton, hired to evaluate the city’s finances as it stares down a potential $46 million deficit by 2031 if current spending and revenue trends continue. They pointed to the city’s strengths, including potential partnerships with Chapman, as an opportunity that could help Orange get back on track.
“One example for us on our side, we have some really talented economics faculty, real estate faculty that might be able to be helpful as they’re thinking about a larger plan around economic development for the city,” Parlow said.
Asked about challenges ahead, Parlow pointed to shifting demographics in higher education. He alluded to projections showing the number of 18-year-old high school graduates will peak this year at about 3.9 million, then drop steadily over the next 15 years. By 2041, that number is expected to shrink by roughly 13%, or nearly half a million students nationwide.
“Higher ed is headed into interesting times, particularly around the demographics of high school graduating, college-bound cohorts going down and being less affluent,” he said. “So the socioeconomic constitution of them is going to look a little different.”
Parlow said he is confident that, even with some “hiccups and bumps along the road,” Chapman is well positioned to keep growing.
“We have strong programs. We’ve got decades of transformational growth and momentum that I think will continue to take us higher and to stronger places,” he said.
The university announced last month that Chapman jumped 11 spots in the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, placing it in the top quarter of national universities. Officials attributed the rise to improved graduation and retention rates, as well as stronger social mobility outcomes for lower-income students.
Parlow described his favorite part of the job as spending time with students and being part of the campus community.
“Honestly, it’s those day-to-day interactions and feeling a part of a community, the special ecosystem, and seeing the results of that ecosystem really help students, faculty, staff flourish, alumni partners, all that,” he said. “It’s why I get up in the morning. I really enjoy that.”
His family, Parlow said, has embraced this new chapter, though he added with a laugh that he doesn’t think his teenage daughters “fully grasp what it means to be a college president.”
During Friday’s ceremony, his older daughter, Maya, read an excerpt from Sweezy v. New Hampshire, a landmark case on academic freedom.
“They’re really excited. And they love being a part of Chapman events. My daughters will join me sometimes for our masterclasses in (the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts), especially if there’s an actor or actress they really like,” he said.
On Friday, 40 years of combined presidential experience and a deep well of scholarship filled the Musco Center stage, joined by former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who lightened the pageantry with baseball metaphors. Garcetti attended the ceremony as a representative of Parlow’s hometown, Los Angeles.
“In baseball terms … it feels like the bottom of the 11th, with the game on the line, with all that is at stake in the world today, Chapman could not have chosen a better closer, as opposed to the Phillies,” Garcetti said, alluding to the Philadelphia team that lost to the Dodgers the night before.
A lifelong Dodgers fan, Parlow smiled as Garcetti’s line drew laughter from the crowd.