Wednesday, April 19, 2000

New U. of California Campus Is Taking Classes to Its Students By DAN CARNEVALE Because students can't always afford to come to its campuses, the University of California is designing its newest branch to go where the students are. The university's new campus at Merced, set to open in 2004, is already using distance-education technology to offer courses at "distributed-learning centers" intended to bring top-quality education to residents of central California. Eventually, centers will be located in Fresno, Bakersfield, and Modesto. With Merced, the cities with the centers form a line down the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, which runs 250 miles through the state. University officials say that the valley's residents are poorer and more spread out than that state's population as a whole, and that a single campus wouldn't serve them adequately. The distributed-learning centers rely on technology to make available the same university-calibre courses that are available on the main campus, so students will be able to take some of their courses while living at home -- and will only have to pay for room and board for a portion of the time it takes to earn a degree at Merced. The institution is being planned as a full-scale research university. Carol Tomlinson-Keasley, the new campus's chancellor, says that using distance education to allow students to complete some of their courses will make it easier on residents of the San Joaquin Valley, who traditionally have less access to University of California campuses than do residents from other parts of the state. "It's seen as an alternate path that will give students flexibility," Ms. Tomlinson-Keasley says. Using space borrowed from local colleges in Merced and Fresno, students have been able to take some University of California courses for the past three years. Centers in Bakersfield and Modesto will start offering for-credit courses in the summer of 2001. When the new campus does open, it is expected to have an enrollment of about 1,000 students, Ms. Tomlinson-Keasley says, including both the students at the main campus and those at the distributed-learning centers. Enrollment should increase to about 6,000 students by 2010, she says. Joseph I. Castro, director of academic programs for the new institution, says the courses that have been offered so far have been a complete success. "Many folks thought there wasn't a market here in this region," he says. "But we found that there was a market." The new university will cost about $250-million to build, not counting what it will cost to operate, Ms. Tomlinson-Keasley says. Charles McFadden, a spokesman for the university system, said the Merced campus is being planned as an institution that takes advantage of instructional technology to provide better access to education. "This is supposed to be the most advanced, electronically connected research university on the planet," he says. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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