Board approves LMC’s Brentwood Center

EDITOR's NOTE: This article originally published in The Advocate on March 21, 2012. To view original post, visit AccentAdvocate.com.

With the approval of the California’s Board of Governors, Los Medanos College’s Brentwood satellite campus will be an official education center starting with the 2012-13 academic year and will begin construction plans for a permanent facility by 2015.

LMC and Contra Costa Community College District leaders met with the 17-member panel, which writes policy for the state’s 72 community college districts, in Sacramento on March 5 for the approval that will increase annual allocations to the district by $1.1 million.

Education centers are off-campus locations offering college courses. The Brentwood Center is the second official center in the district; Diablo Valley College has an education center in San Ramon. Contra Costa College does not have a center, but it has outreach programs in El Cerrito and Hercules.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to get the campus on a permanent, district-owned facility,” district Governing Board Trustee John Nejedly said. “It allows us greater stability and control over the location. We can design a facility specifically for our needs rather than the converted space we’re in now.”

The current location of the Brentwood Education Center on Sand Creek Road, 12.6 miles east of LMC’s main campus in Pittsburg, is in an old Lucky Supermarket shopping center.

“Now it’s a community college shopping center,” Nejedly, who represents Southeastern Contra Costa County, said after a laugh.

LMC Interim President Richard Livingston, who has been at the college for more than three decades, said the Brentwood Education Center was founded 14 years ago and moved to its current location 10 years ago. The process for finding a new location, he said, began two years ago.

The center has 11 classrooms and a computer lab, which Livingston said are always occupied and over-enrolled.

To be a state-approved center, campuses need to be planned to continue at least 10 more years, generate at least 500 Full-Time Equivalent Students (FTES), have an on-site administrator and offer programs leading to certificates or degrees through the parent institution.

FTES is the total units taken by all students on a campus, divided by 12. It is the formula used to allocate funding to community colleges.

Tim Leong, district public information officer, said the Brentwood Education Center consistently generated over 500 FTES since the 2002-03 academic year. He said projected enrollment could reach 1,900 FTES by the 2017-18 academic year.

To accommodate so many more students, district officials want to construct a 17-acre facility by the Vineyards at Marsh Creek on the south side of Brentwood by 2015.

The construction would need additional funding through the state, a voter-approved bond or a long-term loan, district Chief Facilities Planner Ray Pyle said.

The building, Livingston said, would have all courses, lab space and equipment required to transfer to a four-year university following an Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC) education plan.

For Brentwood residents to take a bulk of those required courses at LMC, they have to drive down Highway 4, which bottlenecks from four lanes to two in Pittsburg, causing traffic congestion.

Pyle said, “It’s a real pain to have to drive on Highway 4.”