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 a slew of
engineering classes out of 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 a slew of engineering classes out of next year’s course offerings.
Martin Johnson, Gavilan’s vice president of instruction, announced Tuesday that the school would reinstate 10 second-year courses they believed were too expensive to offer in these tight budget times.
Johnson and engineering department staff hammered out last week a way to fund the courses, after students hoping to use the community college as a springboard into a four-year university engineering program complained they were being shortchanged.
“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 be able to 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 in the midst of reducing spending by $1.2 million this year and around $1 million next school year, due to the state’s roughly $35 billion revenue shortfall.
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.
Gavilan College rekindled its engineering program last year after a multi-year hiatus. Roughly 30 students are projected to be in engineering courses next school year. However, 12 second-year engineering students would have potentially left the school to take their remaining courses elsewhere had the cuts been carried out.
Students have argued that the status of having a full-fledged engineering program on campus 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.
