Cal State Fullerton Plans Saddleback Branch in ’88

Cal State Fullerton officials confirmed Tuesday that the university has decided to open a satellite campus at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo next fall.

University President Jewel Plummer Cobb, in a memo to the faculty this month, said: “Saddleback College has invited CSUF to locate our satellite on its campus, and we have accepted.”

San Diego or Fullerton

Until now, community college graduates living in south Orange County who wanted to pursue a bachelor’s degree in the California State University system would commute to San Diego, Long Beach or Fullerton, 35 miles north of Saddleback College.

The satellite will offer junior- and senior-level courses and is expected to attract about 300 students the first year. Growth to 2,500 students is projected over the next five years.

Saddleback has about 20,000 students, and most of those who transfer to a four-year university already choose Cal State Fullerton, Saddleback College President Constance Carroll said.

Cobb said the satellite’s first-year cost would be about $596,000, which will be requested from Sacramento in the next fiscal year. Formal approval of the Saddleback Community College District Board of Trustees also is necessary, but the board has actively supported the idea.

According to the California Postsecondary Education Commission in Sacramento, few of the state’s 106 community colleges have four-year university satellites on their campuses.

Bruce Hamlett, the commission’s director of legislative affairs, praised the decision Tuesday.

“We like it for three reasons,” he said. “First, it provides access to community college students to higher division programs. Second, it promotes cooperation we like to see between four-year universities and colleges and community colleges. And third, it is cost-effective” because Saddleback already has a library and major support services that the Cal State Fullerton students can use.

Richard Sneed, chancellor of the Saddleback Community College District, also said state taxpayers benefit from “not having to build things twice, such as cafeterias and libraries and things that our campus will provide.”

Cal State Fullerton, with more than 24,000 students of its own, has long proposed a branch in rapidly growing south Orange County, and last winter, the Academic Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of such a move. The California State University system board of trustees subsequently gave the proposal its support.

A sticking point has been the location. Proposed sites initially ranged from Irvine in the north to San Clemente in the south. The Chet Holifield Federal Building (nicknamed the Ziggurat) in Laguna Niguel also was once mentioned as a possible location.

In February, Cal State Fullerton officials visited the Saddleback campus. The community college offered to rent the older, existing buildings on 22 acres of its lower-elevation campus. Because of new buildings on Saddleback’s upper-elevation campus, the older buildings were vacant, officials said. The rental agreement still is being worked out.

Chancellor Sneed said the buildings will be remodeled by the fall for the satellite campus. “In the future,” he said, “as the satellite grows, we would be thinking of finding ways to build new structures for the satellite and renting or leasing them.”

Patrick Wegner, an associate vice president at Cal State Fullerton, said the initial courses offered at the satellite will be in business, teacher-education and credentialing, and general education. He estimated that about 20 teachers will work there.

“Our ultimate goal at the satellite is to make it possible for a student to be able to graduate (with a bachelor’s degree) without having to come to the Fullerton campus,” Wegner said. “This will not be possible for a few years, but that is our goal.”

President Carroll of Saddleback College said Tuesday that the new satellite will be “a much-needed service for our community.”

While UC Irvine is relatively close to most south Orange County students, the stiffer entrance requirements exclude many high school graduates. UC campuses, by state law, can admit only the top 12 1/2% of the state’s high school graduates. The Cal State system can admit those in the upper 33% of their high school graduating classes.