Paul McEnroe (left) and Tina McEnroe (right) with students and a guest at the Reading Clinic during a recent Maker Faire.
Cal Poly awarded honorary doctorates to Paul and Tina Hansen McEnroe at its recent commencement ceremony. The McEnroes are the founders and major donors for the Tina Hansen McEnroe & Paul V. McEnroe Reading & Language Arts Clinic, which uses research-based and technology-enhanced assessment and intervention to improve reading and language skills. The Clinic offers the only University and research-based literacy and reading assessments and interventions on California’s Central Coast, bringing a special focus to children diagnosed with mild to moderate learning disabilities or at risk for learning disabilities. It offers a positive tutorial environment and continuity of learning experiences that nurture students to become life-long readers while helping develop their skills to meet increased reading demands in secondary school. The Clinic is housed in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, at UCSB.
Tina McEnroe, a longtime reading specialist at Vista de Las Cruces School in Gaviota, has earned multiple subject and reading specialist credentials, as well as a master’s degree in education, from UC Santa Barbara in 1989. Her numerous awards include the USDA’s National Excellence in Teaching About Agriculture, California’s Outstanding Educator of the Year from the California Foundations for Agriculture in the Classroom, Anti-Defamation League's Education Honoree, Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau’s GAATE Foundation Teacher Hall of Fame, Santa Barbara County Outstanding Educator, Junior League of Santa Barbara Woman of the Year, and the Distinguished Alumna from Santa Catalina School in Monterey. She volunteers her time at the clinic as the associate director and master teacher. She is working with Cal Poly to establish a second reading lab to serve the community’s challenged learners in need of language arts. She also was named the 2008 Distinguished Alumna from Cal Poly’s School of Education.
Paul McEnroe has served as a member of the Cal Poly President's Council of Advisors for 30 years. He has multiple electrical engineering degrees, a bachelor’s from the University of Dayton and a master’s earned at Purdue University. He also received the degree of engineer with special distinction in business administration from Stanford University.
In 23 years at IBM, he developed many new technologies including the retail industry’s magnetic code and stripe, the first commercial laser product (the barcode scanner) and the Token Ring local area network. As IBM’s group director of Systems Development and director of the corporation’s Raleigh laboratory, he was responsible for the development and business management of nearly all IBM communications products. In 1984, he became president of Trilogy, a wafer scale technology-based mainframe computer company. At Trilogy, he developed copper-polyimide multi-chip module technology. After merging the company with Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) and delivering the technology, he retired and began a new career in ranching. Today, he enjoys his lifelong dream of ranching, managing and just being a cowboy on Rancho La Purisima, a commercial horse breeding and cattle ranch he and his wife own in Santa Ynez Valley.
In addition to the reading clinic, Tina and Paul have relocated and restored an 1869 one-room schoolhouse onto Rancho La Purisima. It remains today as the oldest one-room wooden schoolhouse in Santa Barbara County. There Tina teaches a living history day curriculum, which she created, in the schoolhouse. Students from around the county come to the school dressed in period costumes, and interact with Tina as she teaches lessons written on slate boards.