Arguing that an unfettered engineering program brought status
and indirect funding to Gavilan College, students successfully
lobbied against school officials who were planning to cut
engineering classes from next year’s course offerings.
GILROY – Arguing that an unfettered engineering program brought status and indirect funding to Gavilan College, students successfully lobbied against school officials who were planning to cut engineering classes from next year’s course offerings.
Martin Johnson, Gavilan’s vice president of instruction, announced Tuesday that the school would reinstate 10 second-year courses believed too expensive to offer in these tight budget times.
Johnson and engineering department staff hammered out a way to fund the courses last week after students hoping to use the community college as a springboard into a four-year university engineering program complained they were being short-changed.
“I’m absolutely pleased with the news,” engineering teacher Russell Lee said. “This makes Gavilan College a legitimate step in a student’s path to a four-year degree in any field of engineering.”
Johnson made the announcement at Tuesday’s monthly school board meeting. He said a federal grant the school received would fund the engineering courses, saving the school’s general fund from further depletion.
“The faculty is being very creative in finding ways to reduce the impact to the general fund,” Johnson said.
The school is reducing spending by $1.2 million this year and about $1 million next year because of the state’s budget shortfall of some $35 billion.
Gavilan President Steve Kinsella encouraged other departments to look for similar alternative sources of funding. However, not all departments figure to be as fortunate because the federal grant Gavilan is using to pay for the continued courses specifies engineering classes can receive funding.
The college rekindled its engineering program last year after a multi-year hiatus. Roughly 30 students are projected to be in engineering courses in the next school year. However, 12 second-year engineering students would potentially have left the school to take their remaining courses elsewhere had the cuts been implemented.
Students have argued that the status of having a full-fledged engineering program adds to the prestige of the college. They also stress that engineering students take more than just engineering classes, enrolling in prerequisite courses such as math and physics which bring further revenue into the school.
Lee said two of Gavilan’s engineering students have been accepted into Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo’s civil engineering program.
