FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Navy Enlists College’s Help to Teach Sailors

Coastline Community College’s televised courses are proving popular with the Navy.

Fifty-five submarines and surface ships offer the so-called “telecourses” to Navy personnel seeking to upgrade their skills, college officials said.

More than 2,000 sailors have completed Coastline telecourses, officials added.

“Coastline’s media-based, independent study telecourses are ideal for meeting the needs of the sailors as well as the conditions of the Navy,” said Marilyn Kelly, associate dean for instructional television at Coastline.

Coastline officials said the college is a subcontractor for a Navy educational system called PACE, Program for Afloat College Education. PACE offers education programs to land-based sailors at stations in Antarctica.

There are 46 Navy personnel taking college courses while stationed in Antarctica, Coastline officials said.

“We packed up a ship headed for Antarctica several weeks ago,” said Phil King, coordinator of Coastline’s computer-aided telecourses. King said he sent the sailors “the tapes, books and other materials they will need to complete the course in Antarctica.”

Suzanne Wiggin, a Navy educational services specialist in San Diego, called the courses “an excellent way to uncover new fields of interest.”

Gail Jones, the college’s public information officer, said the partnership with the Navy works well for Coastline too.

“It fits the college’s mission of bringing education to students using non-traditional delivery systems, whether they live in Orange County or halfway around the world,” Jones said.