Valley places focus on growth
By DARREN SIMON, Staff Writer
September 26, 2006
Printed courtesy of Imperial Valley Press, El Centro, CA
In the early 1990s there was a push in the Imperial Valley among educators, city officials and business leaders to attract a full four-year university to the area.
As well intentioned as those involved were, their efforts could not succeed as the Valley’s population fell far below what the state requires for opening new universities. Today, the Valley’s population still is about 100,000 shy of the 250,000 population requirement for a state university. But while there are no new efforts now to attract a full four-year university program, efforts still are under way to make higher education as accessible as possible, according to local educators. The things that have happened in the interim have been positive,” Barbara Macci, a member of the San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus advisory council, said. Macci, a longtime educator and former dean of vocational education at Imperial Valley College, was a member of the committee that was working to attract a four-year university.
MEETING THE NEED NOW
An important effort then and today, she added a four-year university is a worthwhile goal. But she said it is not a reality for now. “We’ve made the thrust as far as we can make it with our current population,” she said. Now, she said, the focus has to be on expanding higher education opportunities for Imperial Valley students, and she said that is what local schools, what IVC and the local SDSU campuses are doing. One critical change was the building of the San Diego State University campus in Brawley. The campus, an extension of the Calexico campus, came about after years of working to obtain funding for the project and the land upon which to build the project. In the end, a gift of land by Luckey Ranch, the company that owned the property where the Brawley campus is located, and support from the city of Brawley helped make that project possible. Macci also credited the work of former SDSU-IV Dean Khosrow Fatemi for his work to make the Brawley campus a reality. “What Khosrow Fatemi accomplished was pretty spectacular,” Macci said. “He just would not let the word no stop him.”
Now Dean Stephen Roeder has the reins of the Imperial Valley campuses, and Macci said he is pushing the campuses further to meet the local demands.
The SDSU Freshmen Scholar’s program has been a key change to higher education in the Valley as the local SDSU campus has opened its doors to deserving freshmen from throughout the Valley. The program enables students to achieve their full four-year education at the local campus, and while the program was nearly cut due to finances, it was given new life as local students voiced their desire to see the program continued. Imperial Valley College has expanded its programs and in the past two years has added on-line courses to help students achieve their academic goals. IVC officials have said their goal is to continue to expand the on-line program.
WORKING HARD
While there is no committee working to bring in a four-year university, there is a committee, the P-16 Council, working to ensure as many as students as possible have the opportunity to attend college.That committee is made up of local educators from the high schools, from IVC, SDSU, the University of California system and business leaders. “We are in much better shape than we have been,” said Macci, who added as much as opportunities have expanded, it still is not a perfect situation. The perfect situation would be the development of a four-year university. She said in time it could become a reality, but she said the right elements have to be in place. One of those elements has to be that the economic forces are in place to support such a university. In other words, there has to be jobs in the Imperial Valley that students, once they finish their programs, can get and that means the local economy has to continue to grow and diversify. Even if the Valley did get a four-year university, Macci said she would still like to see students have the chance to go outside the Valley for at least a semester.
She said if students never leave the Valley, “it can become terribly insulated. It’s important for students at some point to go out of their native area so they can mix with other ideas.”
>> Staff Writer Darren Simon can be contacted at dsimon@ivpressonline.com or at 337-3445.