When students return, campus at community center will be
open
As soon as the stragglers left the Gavilan College satellite
campus in Morgan Hill last week following final exams, work crews
began transferring office and classroom furnishings to the new site
adjacent the city’s resplendent community center uptown.
When students return, campus at community center will be open
As soon as the stragglers left the Gavilan College satellite campus in Morgan Hill last week following final exams, work crews began transferring office and classroom furnishings to the new site adjacent the city’s resplendent community center uptown.
It couldn’t happen too soon for Morgan Hill resident Belinda Phillips because the new, larger center will offer almost all the general education classes she needs, making it unnecessary to commute to the main campus in Gilroy.
“Time is very important to me because I’m a single mom and have a fulltime job. It takes a half-hour to drive to Gilroy and find parking, so that’s an hour out of my day that I could be doing something else,” Phillips said.
Gavilan officials refer to the expanded schedule as the 4-4-4 program – four general education classes, four days a week for a full load. All core subjects such as math, English, sociology, history, communications, psychology, science and philosophy would be offered, for example, Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon.
“A survey showed that Morgan Hill residents want to be able to take all their classes here if possible,” said site manager Lorraine Welk.
The new 10,000-square-foot building will make it possible, Welk said. In addition to administrative offices, it contains two computer labs and six classrooms, two of them with sound walls that allow various configurations.
“It’s wonderful to have a place with a more visible presence,” Welk said. “It also has more parking and is nearer to transportation, buses and the Caltrain station.”
Students enrolled in science classes requiring lab sessions, like Esther Lentz who’s taking biology, will have to travel to Gilroy.
Otherwise, Lentz, 43, a native of Peru, can finish requirements for her AA at the Morgan Hill campus. An elementary school teacher back home, Lentz had to start from scratch to meet requirements that she hopes leads to a degree in early childhood education.
“Our new campus is opening too late to help me with general education requirements because I only need three more. But I’ll be able to take (leisure time) art classes,” said Lentz, who teaches pre-kindergarten tots at Countryside Pre-School.
But Phillips, a 42-year-old Morgan Hill native, who worked for defunct KFAT radio and an electronics firm before returning to the classroom a couple of years ago, has a longer row to hoe. She likes the idea of being able to move easily between home, where she has twin 11-year-old sons to her fulltime job at the local library to the Gavilan campus.
“It’s so convenient. I can study in the morning or evening and parking is free, not like in Gilroy where you also have a hard time finding a space,” said Phillips, whose goal is a master’s degree in library science and a job as a children’s librarian.
The new campus will offer an expanded computer program, Welk said.
“It’s been very successful, so we’ll continue at the new campus, mainly evenings and Saturdays,” Welk said.
The new site also will house the Summer Theater Arts Repertory, a three-week program for middle school students who put on productions as test of their skills. The program is run by the Gavilan community education department.
The Morgan Hill campus is one of two satellite centers. The other is in downtown Hollister, and the college also has space at Hollister airport for its aviation courses.
