Photo Courtesy of Miyamoto
SUN DEVILS ON THE WAY—Arizona State University is the first nationally ranked transfer school to sign up for the Southwestern College University Center, a facility to support online Bachelor’s degrees for place-bound students.
By Allan Vargas
Arizona State is likely the hottest university in America right now, and not because of its intemperate location in the Valley of the Sun. ASU is now the largest university in the United States with almost 75,000 students and home to nationally-ranked programs in business, psychology, biology and journalism. ASU claims to have nearly 146,000 students in online degree programs worldwide.
Southwestern College students may now earn an ASU Bachelor’s degree without breaking a sweat and enduing 115 degree temperatures. Starting in August, Southwestern students can study at ASU without leaving Chula Vista.
ASU has committed to Southwestern’s “University Center,” a brand new facility that will also house branches of San Diego State, Point Loma Nazarene and National universities.
Elected officials in Chula Vista have been working off and on since the late 1980s to lure a University of California or California State University campus to Chula Vista. The city even established a 383-acre “innovation district” near the Lower Otay Reservoir and has reserved land for a major university campus. UC and CSU have both rebuffed Chula Vista, arguing that the area is too close to UCSD and SDSU.
City leaders over the years have called on the leaders of both systems to adjust their thinking. Former Chula Vista City Councilmember Patricia Aguilar, an architect who helped to design UCSD, said Chula Vista is “no longer a sleepy border town” and “is now an international hub of commerce and technology” visible from the world’s business border crossing. Worthy South Bay students, she argued, are too often denied enrollment at SDSU and UCSD due to overcrowding and the sale of seats to foreign students who pay much higher tuition.
CV Mayor John McCann has been a long-time proponent of a UC or CSU Chula Vista and said is thinks a Southwestern College university center anchored by ASU is “a good start.”
Local students mostly said they were unaware of the ASU relationship with Southwestern, but thought it was a sound idea, including biology major Melissa Gomez.
“I think it’s great that Southwestern College students can transfer to a good university without having to move there,” she said. “A lot of us don’t have a lot of money or have to stay close to help our families. It’s great that we now have some other options.”
Ryan Jamison agreed.
“The (university center concept) seems like a good idea,” he said. “I’d kind of like to leave town for my Bachelor’s, but I can see where this might be a really good thing for some students. Plus you don’t have to live in Phoenix where it’s like a thousand degrees!”
