Time for Tassels at Local Colleges

Nearly 1,000 students are expected to participate in graduation ceremonies at Ventura County’s three community colleges this week, with hundreds more students earning degrees from the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge later this month.

Ventura College will host its graduation ceremony at 1:30 p.m. Thursday in the large gymnasium.

Both Oxnard and Moorpark colleges will conduct graduation ceremonies Friday.

The Oxnard celebration is scheduled for 1 p.m. in the new physical education facility, which opened last October. It will be catered by students enrolled in the school’s hotel and restaurant management program.

Moorpark’s ceremony will be held at 5 p.m. in the campus quad. More than 750 students are eligible for the graduation, but fewer than half are expected to attend.

“We’ll have over 300 graduates in the ceremony,” said Linda Ekback, a student services assistant at Moorpark College. “We have quite a few more who are graduating but choose not to participate.”

Graduates of the Cal State Northridge-Ventura program will receive their degrees at a ceremony scheduled for 10 a.m. May 26. Because the satellite campus has no facility to host the proceeding, it will be held at Ventura College.

State university officials last week celebrated the closing of escrow on 260 acres outside Camarillo that will eventually be the site of the county’s first public university.