Fallbrook's Baumgart enters Southwestern College Hall of Fame

WINFIELD, KS — Southwestern College (SC) inducted three new members in its Educators Hall of Fame Saturday, April 14. The ceremony took place in the SC Memorial Library conference room. The new inductees included Elizabeth Baumgart of Fallbrook.

Elizabeth Baumgart, SC Class of 1960, entered Southwestern College expecting to study for an education in ministry but was instead equipped for what became a ministry in education. As a young teacher in Harlem, she experienced firsthand society’s abandonment of children. Later, in Los Angeles, she became principal of a troubled school in Watts.

In the 1970s Baumgart was chosen by the Los Angeles Board of Education to develop criteria for a magnet school and became its first principal. This school served as a model for more than 100 other magnet schools.

Baumgart has been designated a master teacher at the district and university levels, giving her the opportunity to teach other teachers. She has also run a Christian-oriented management consulting firm and a job-counseling business and has been a professor and adjunct professor at the university level. She received her PhD from the University of Southern California.