New Beginnings FAQ

New Beginnings is our name for the transition into the next chapter of our school’s history. In the spring of 2019, we began a series of steps designed to ensure a sustainable future for our beloved school. These steps included, but were not limited to, selling our building and moving to the campus of Mills College, leaving the GTU, and staff/faculty reductions.

The Starr King Board of Trustees voted to leave the GTU in the April 2020 meeting. This decision was a difficult one; there is a deep commitment at Starr King to what our late provost Ibrahim Farajaje named as “organic multireligiosity.” For many years, our membership in the GTU made this commitment easy to fulfill. Yet we had to face the reality that the cost of supporting consortial membership — $311,000 in the 2020-2021 school year alone — was frankly unsustainable. In addition, as much as our students value a multi-theological education, we also had to acknowledge that only a minority of our students take courses at other GTU schools; the total number of credits taken at the other schools amounts to less than 20% of total credits taken by our students. These two pieces of information were important drivers of our decision. Yet we remain committed to finding less expensive ways to provide education in a variety of religious traditions and practices, so that our graduates are fully prepared to embrace the multi-religious realities of the 21^st century.

The recent merger of Mills College with Northeastern University (effective July 1, 2022) will have some impact on the availability of student housing on the Mills campus. At the same time, the expense of living in Northern California has made a difference in the number of people willing to relocate to the area for any reason. We will continue to negotiate with Mills at Northeastern to identify possible housing for Starr King students.

Starr King is now a member institution of the Digital Theological Library 2 (DTL2), a co-owned online library for theology and graduate religious studies. DTL2 offers tens of thousands of journals and hundreds of thousands of books across multiple disciplines, extending beyond religious studies to include other fields in the humanities as well as the sciences. DTL provided the online access that our many distance learners required.

Additionally, Starr King students still have access to the GTU Library until April 1, 2022.

Maintaining our previous building was expensive; it cost $100,000 to run each year if nothing needed to be fixed. In addition, it was not fully accessible, and the space no longer worked for the number of staff and students we have. We’d hoped to lease the building, but there were no appropriate offers. Therefore, after much reflection, the Board of Trustees made the difficult decision to sell the property. 

Our former property is being transformed into new market-rate student housing. We know from personal experience that creating more student housing is very much needed in Berkeley. We are heartened that our campus will be used to fill this vital community need.

There are several reasons that this kind of collaboration made sense for us. One crucial reason is that Mills’ educational philosophy beautifully matches our own commitment to educating to counter oppressions.  At the time of our co-location, Mills enjoyed a reputation as  a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college for women and gender non-binary students, with graduate programs in business and education for all genders. Founded as the Young Ladies’ Seminary in 1852, Mills has been a leader in pioneering educational opportunities for women for more than century. It was the first women’s college to create a transgender admissions policy. And in 2017, Mills College qualified as a Hispanic serving institution, with Hispanic/Latinx students representing more than 25 percent of the student body.

Located on a beautiful, 135-acre campus in East Oakland, Mills is a perfect mix of state-of-the-art facilities and the natural world.  What’s more, we will be rooted in an Oakland community filled with opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to hone our skills in social justice and sacred social change. We are especially excited at the possibility of accessing traditional, on-campus student housing, reducing the financial burden for Starr King students who would otherwise have to find their own market-rate housing in a deeply competitive area. We also decided to co-locate at Mills because of the many collaborative opportunities we can develop there.

In October, Mills College agreed to a merger with Northeastern University in Boston, creating Mills at Northeastern.  Though Starr King has just begun its conversations with this new hybrid institution, we feel confident that there will be many opportunities for fruitful partnership.  Our decision to co-locate will free Starr King to more fully live into our mission.

Starr King is now located in the Vera Long Building on the campus of Mills College. You can watch a building tour at https://youtu.be/aeoXs1NTpXs. You can also take a virtual tour of the beautiful campus at www.mills.edu/#virtualtour. 

Simply put: No. Our New Beginnings process is designed help Starr King to grow stronger and more sustainable as we continue to prepare our students for the work of 21st century religious leadership. Each decision is just one part of a larger process. There are many more decisions to be made and more steps to take to reach our goals.

But as this process continues, we are committed to being transparent and accountable to our Starr King community. We will continue keeping you informed as we continue our work. And we are deeply appreciative of all the support and ideas we have received thus far.

Starr King remains steadfast in its values and our commitment to educating to counter oppressions {ECO}, and to create just and sustainable communities. One of our values is to teach by who we are and what we do. Throughout this process, we’ve aimed to model that value.

We are committed to keeping our ECO commitment at the heart of what we do, to retain our Unitarian Universalist identity while embracing our multi-religious character, and to keep the school going strong.

We will continue to be transparent about the decisions we make and what those decisions will mean for our community. 

Absolutely not! For the past 117 years, Starr King has been educating our students for the practical realities of progressive religious leadership. We have no intention of stopping now.

You can stay informed by checking our New Beginnings page for updates as news develops.

You can also email us with your ideas and suggestions at future@sksm.edu. We read every email and have received many engaging ideas from our community.