San Diego CE Breaks Ground on New Campus

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Continuing Education (CE) program continues to flourish as new campuses develop throughout the city. The program recently welcomed the future César E. Chávez Campus into the Barrio Logan neighborhood with a groundbreaking ceremony on Sept. 25.
The CE program, which dates back to 1914, is “one of the largest separately accredited noncredit programs in the nation, offering no- and low-cost classes throughout San Diego,” according to Ursula Kroemer, program manager and director of communications at Gafcon Inc. The goal of the program is to give San Diegans the chance to develop career skills and continue learning throughout their lives.
With increasing enrollment rates, the program sees students with diverse educational goals, from career advancement and preparation for college to general enrichment. There are six continuing education campuses, all of which help students move toward any of the three credit institutions in the district: City College, Mesa College and Miramar College, Kroemer said.
“The mission remains unchanged with the construction of the new [César E. Chávez Campus],” Kroemer stated. “The new facility simply strengthens our ability to fulfill this mission and transform lives through education.”
The new campus will be a 67,924-square-foot facility with 22 classrooms, a multipurpose room, administrative offices and a Small Business Incubator. The facility will conduct classes on topics such as vocational training, English as a Second Language (ESL), Adult Basic Education (ABE), preparing for the General Education Diploma (GED), Business Information Technology (BIT), Parent Education and Emeritus programs for students over the age of 55.
Building a new campus provided CE an opportunity to consolidate two preexisting campuses — the Centre City Campus and the existing César Chávez Campus. The old Centre City Campus was 15,645 assignable square feet and dated back to the 1920s. The existing César Chávez Campus was even smaller, at 7,271 assignable square feet, and occupied space the CE leased from the city of San Diego.
Constructing new campus will not only give the CE the opportunity to expand the campus’s size, but also allow them to expand the programs offered at each. The two outdated facilities were no longer able to keep up with the increased demand placed on the programs and the expanding nature of the CE and its mission.
“The new campus allows us…to create a new, state-of-the-art and technology-rich campus in the Barrio Logan neighborhood, allowing us to better serve what has historically been an underserved community,” Kroemer explained. The campus will also be located close to public transportation, which will greatly increase convenience for students commuting to class. Newly constructed bicycle storage and changing rooms will also help accommodate students cycling to the campus. An underground parking lot will hold 149 parking spots, with reserved parking for carpooling vehicles and high efficiency vehicles.
Robin Carvajal, dean of Allied Health and Community Education for San Diego CE, also commented on the project’s benefits to students, saying “A new facility will provide us with the room to grow our Allied Health Career programs. We will be expanding from one classroom to eight classrooms devoted to Health Career Training. We currently train 200 certified nurse assistants per year. The new facilities will allow us to expand our classes to meet labor market demand, especially in high growth areas such as home health care, acute care and rehabilitative care.”
The building itself will also feature several notable elements of design. The campus is being designed to comply with LEED Silver certification, and will exceed California state building efficiency standards by 14 percent.
In order to achieve this, the project team will install low-flow and waterless plumbing fixtures that will allow the building to use 40 percent less water than standard buildings. The team will also construct modular wetland structures near storm drains that will recycle and filter storm water through vegetation, further conserving the building’s water consumption. Additional efficient irrigation will also cut back water use from landscaping by 50 percent.
The project team includes a range of talented local firms, including Martinez + Cutri as the architect and Rudolph & Sletten as the construction manager. Other notable team members include Flores Lund Consultants Inc., LSW Engineers Inc., Merrick & Associates, Parterre Landscape Architecture, Gafcon Inc. and Scott Ellis URS Corp.
The project is estimated to cost $50 million. Construction began on July 13, 2013 and is set to be completed in April 2015. The project team anticipates accommodating 350 to 500 students each day in the new facility.