CSUN Ventura Adds Nursing, Education Degrees

Continuing to expand public university courses, the satellite campus of Cal State Northridge this fall will begin offering a new bachelor’s degree in nursing and a master’s degree in early-childhood education.

Both programs have nearly reached capacity for fall enrollment, showing the demand for college courses in the largest county in California lacking its own public university.

“We try to meet the needs of the community,” said Joyce M. Kennedy, director of the satellite campus that offers about 20 degree programs. “We have traditionally given the greatest attention to those programs with the greatest interest.”

Kennedy said the Ventura satellite is now the largest off-campus center in the state with about 1,400 students, most of them part time. Its swelling enrollment just eclipsed that of a similar off-campus center offered by Cal State Hayward in Contra Costa County.

The master’s program in early-childhood education will bring as many as 30 additional students to the Ventura campus, drawing mostly from the ranks of working schoolteachers and administrators who want to further their educations.

“There has been a great sigh of relief that we are starting the program,” said Janet E. Fish, a Cal State Northridge professor and the master’s program coordinator. “We are very excited about moving up to the Ventura campus.”

Early-childhood education focuses on the development of children up to 8 years old and related issues, such as family dynamics.

Although normally a two-year degree program, the course load in Ventura will be spread over three years to accommodate people juggling careers and families while pursuing the advanced degree.

The bachelor’s degree in nursing was designed for registered nurses in Ventura County who want to complete their college degrees. So far, the program has accepted 20 students and will soon be selecting another five from the pool of applicants for the fall semester.

The two-year program will be stretched over three years to accommodate the schedules of working nurses, said Ellen McFadden, director of the bachelor of nursing program at Cal State Northridge.

“Our students are not the traditional student,” McFadden said. “They are working nurses and many of them have families. We build on their work experience.”

Both degree programs will dispatch professors to the Ventura campus and conduct classes using interactive video, with cameras and TV monitors in classrooms at Northridge and Ventura.

J. Handel Evans, the acting president of the yet-to-be-built Ventura County campus, said he is delighted by the growth of the satellite, its new degree programs and its increasing use of technology to bring courses to Ventura County students.

At some point, he said, the courses and students at the satellite campus will become the building blocks of an independent university that he is beginning to cobble together.

Evans noted that the satellite campus, while small by California standards, has a larger enrollment than many small, liberal-arts colleges elsewhere in the nation.