English Classes Help Boost Mission College Enrollment

Fall enrollment at Mission College is up 23% over last year, an increase that campus officials attribute to growing numbers of Spanish-speaking students taking English and citizenship classes at the northeast San Fernando Valley campus.

The two-year community college, which for 14 years has operated out of rented storefronts, had enrolled 5,620 students by Friday, campus officials said. About 20% of those students attend classes to learn English.

Mission President Lowell Erickson said part of the enrollment increase has come from students transferring from non-credit amnesty education classes to English classes offered for college credits. The recent immigration reform law requires those eligible for U. S. citizenship to complete 40 hours of non-credit classes in English, U. S. history and government.

Students Remain

About 2,000 of the 4,000 students who attended amnesty classes at Mission since the program began a year ago have remained at the school to take additional courses in English and other subjects, said Victoria Richart, Mission’s dean of academic affairs. Another 1,000 students are enrolled in amnesty classes this fall, she said.

The school has increased the number of English classes for foreign-speaking students from 16 last semester to 22 this fall, Richart said.

Students who sign up for beginning English classes at Mission are required to take a minimum of 12 units in reading, writing and conversation for a full school year. In past years, students who signed up for only one or two classes a semester would learn English at a very slow pace, Richart said.

Now, school officials say they hope that the intensive language requirement will enable students to begin taking academic classes in their second semester at Mission.

Word of the many English and amnesty classes at Mission has spread among neighborhoods throughout the eastern Valley and has helped spur enrollment from within the area’s large Latino population, school officials said.

‘Serve Community’

“We’re here to serve our community, and a lot of our students need language help,” Erickson said.

While the enrollment increases are welcome, Erickson said, “our biggest problem remains the number of available classrooms.”

A $20-million campus is expected to be finished on a 23-acre site in Sylmar by the fall of 1991, campus officials said. Classes are now held in rented buildings and elementary schools mostly in San Fernando.

Enrollment at Pierce and Valley colleges changed little this fall, officials said. Pierce College enrollment in Woodland Hills went up about 2% over last year, reaching 18,207 students. At Valley in Van Nuys, enrollment is up about 3% over last fall, to 17,890 students, officials said.