West Valley Campus: No Longer ‘If’

West Valley Campus No Longer Question of ‘If’ it Will Be Built

PALM DESERT — At his first official meeting, newly minted Superintendent/President Val Martinez Garcia had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help announce that a West Valley Campus is no longer a question of “if,” but “when.”

Joining him were Dr. Scott Adkins, Director, Education Centers; Dr. Neil Lingle, Acting Vice President of Instruction; and Donna Greene, Professor, Distance Education Coordinator.

This project has been in motion for a number of years now, and leaders are starting to move away from the program as far as the Palm Springs Development Project to what will happen once it’s built.

“A College of the Desert campus in Palm Springs has been a long dream by the college and the community. Now we’re seeing that dream take place kept alive by the vision for the future that began more than two decades ago, shaped by several team members who remain engaged today along with many, many others along the way,” Martinez Garcia said.

A campus for the West Valley has been a part of educational master plan for over two decades. The Palm Springs master plan was created in 2011. It called for a campus intended to be a living laboratory providing educational opportunities and general education as a whole through four targeted academic areas based on local economic and workforce drivers, hospitality and tourism, media and the arts, allied health, and sustainable technology.

The idea then and now is to create a campus that is student-centric and community focused. A campus that adapts and evolves to meet facility, technology, community, and workforce needs in an ever-changing world. These guiding principles have driven the development of the campus. Throughout the planning and design processes, there have been numerous initiatives designed to encourage, implement feedback from internal and external stakeholders.

“This campus will act as a proving ground for innovative programs that can be scaled and replicated elsewhere, according to designers,” Dr. Scott Adkins, the Director of West Valley Campuses, said. “It’s important to note that it is not only an incubator for innovation in industry and technology, but also an incubator for innovation in educational practices and pedagogies. With the rise of artificial intelligence and the changing nature of the work, especially for our leading industry sectors, including hospitality and digital media, the focus is going to be an evolving, responsive, retraining, and upskilling to deploy and redeploy workers across the local economy. Working together with local, civic and industry experts, we are actively seeking to make our Palm Springs campus an AI hub offering tools, skills training, and retraining.

“In addition to general education and traditional teaching and learning, we see this campus as a game changer with faculty, technology, and infrastructure, and location that will expand learning experiences and create partnerships to help activate and integrate the campus and the community” Adkins said. “It might be helpful to think more of campus signature programs as foundational rather than exclusive to certain areas and focus more on vision, strategic framework, and drivers for this campus and the things that this campus brings to life. Guiding principles like destination education, industry centric, digital technology, multi-use, response oriented, experiential learning tied to local jobs and employers, skill building, training,”

The West Valley will be an educational bonanza for students of all ages, Take a closer look: https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/cod/Board.nsf/files/DGQ2PD031FA0/$file/22.01%20BoT%20Study%20Session%20PS%20Campus%205.16.25.pptx.pdf