Irvine : UCI Extension Finds a Home in 2 New Buildings

After about a dozen moves in the last 15 years, UC Irvine’s extension program finally has a permanent home.

Housed in a pair of one-story buildings completed recently on the sprawling Irvine campus, the university extension now has about 13,000 square feet of elbow room for classes and offices.

Jay Schlicting, manager of promotions and information systems at UCI extension, said the department previously was based wherever room could be found.

“We’re sort of the stepchild of the university,” he said. “We were moved about 12 times in the last 15 years.”

Most recently, he said, extension was headquartered in a rented office near John Wayne Airport.

Sort of like a university without formal admission requirements, the extension program offers virtually everything from English, philosophy and other traditional courses to yoga, computer training and various career-related classes.

Between 20,000 and 25,000 adults a year register for the courses in the self-supporting program.

Although the two new buildings, designed by UCLA architecture professor Charles Moore, are on university property, they didn’t cost the university a cent, Schlicting said.

Both structures were paid for entirely out of extension funds, he said.

Although ground breaking for the buildings took place just a year ago, Schlicting said the $1.3-million project was more than four years in the making, requiring approval by the University of California Board of Regents.