[Editor's note: Read  "California Master Plan is alive and well," an op-ed written by UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi and Los Rios Community College District Chancellor Brice Harris and carried in the June 14 Sacramento Bee.]

Sacramento City College and UC Davis officials joined today at a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new Sacramento City College Davis Center at UC Davis West Village. The Davis Center will be the first community college extension built on a University of California campus.

The center will be a permanent home for Sacramento City College, which has offered classes in leased space in the city of Davis for more than a decade. The new center will open its doors to more than 2,000 students in spring 2012.

"We are working on making the journey between community college and the University of California seamless, so that those students with a goal of attending the university find bridges and not barriers," said UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi. "This new education center is emblematic of a new spirit in higher education: one that recognizes the very real and great challenges we face; that forges a more promising path toward the future; and that reflects our common interests and goals in providing higher education to the people of the state of California, efficiently, effectively and resourcefully."

Fantastic opportunity for transfer students

Said Don Palm, dean of the Sacramento City College Davis Center: “We are very excited to be part of this innovative partnership in higher education. This will be a fantastic opportunity for students who aspire to transfer to a UC or a four-year university. They will be immersed in an environment that will allow them to see how degrees and certificates from SCC blend with the programs and activities at a university.” 

Designed to be LEED Silver-certified, the two-story Sacramento City College Davis Center will house 11 classrooms, a computer lab, an art studio, a career technology center, administrative offices and counseling space in its first phase. Construction of the $12.4 million center is funded by the Los Rios Community College District with Measure A bond proceeds, as approved by Sacramento voters in the 2002 election. Los Rios has rights to the land through a 65-year ground lease with the university.

Completion of Phase II and III, which would bring the Sacramento City College Davis Center to a total of approximately 60,000 square feet, will be contingent on state bond funding and continued enrollment growth.

Part of a 'net zero energy' community

The Sacramento City College Davis Center is part of UC Davis West Village, a 205-acre development planned as one of the world's first large-scale "net zero energy" communities.

This means that the community, which will include student apartments, below-market housing for faculty and staff, recreational facilities and commercial space, will produce as much energy as it uses on an annual basis. Construction is scheduled to begin this month on the first 300 student housing units, a recreation building and the village square, and the apartment units and village square are scheduled to be ready for occupancy in August 2011.

“We are so pleased to break ground on the third of five planned educational centers,” said  Brice Harris, chancellor of the Los Rios Community College District, to which Sacramento City College belongs. “Building these centers close to where people live and work truly is allowing more students access to higher education in our community.”

50th anniversary of the California Master Plan

The center's groundbreaking coincides with the 50th anniversary of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, a 1960 document that outlined the state's current three-tiered higher education system and offered a framework that made a high-quality college education accessible to all.

The center represents another milestone in a long partnership between the Los Rios district and UC Davis. That partnership has pioneered programs that have become models for other UC campuses, including a transfer program that gives qualified community college transfer applicants written guarantees of admission to UC Davis.

About 220 students transfer from Sacramento City College to UC Davis each year, more than from any other single institution. More than one-third of undergraduates enrolling at UC Davis this fall will be transfer students, and most of them will come from community colleges. The campus expects to enroll between 420 and 450 students from the Los Rios Community College District toward a total of 2,510 new transfer students.

About UC Davis

For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000 students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.