Palomar Superintendent/President Star Rivera-Lacey PhD and
Director Ryan Williams discussed the Fallbrook Education Center.
Last week two representatives from Palomar College gave an interesting presentation to the Fallbrook Village Rotary at their Tuesday meeting. The speakers were Dr. Star Rivera-Lacey, Superintendent and President of Palomar College, and Ryan Williams, Manager of the Palomar College Fallbrook Education Center.
Palomar College has a big service area covering 2500 square miles and has been operating for 77 years. The flagship campus is in San Marcos with classes extending from Ramona to Camp Pendleton including classes at the Vista Detention Facility. Lately a lot of students are not transitioning from high school to college. So Palomar College has an Early College Program where high school students can get college credits while in high school so when they are ready to transition, they see themselves already as college students. The college offers 250 certifications and degrees and short term trade, career and technical classes focusing on new industries with livable wages. The Palomar Comet program allows a first time college student free tuition for the first two years.
Our local Palomar Fallbrook Education Center offers many academic programs including:
Associate Degree for Transfer in Psychology
Certificate of Proficiency in EMT Basic
Coursework in Public Safety
Core Prep in Biology, Nursing, and Chemistry.
Our Fallbrook campus received about 21% of the proposition M bond money from which a 40,000 square foot permanent building will be built to expand essential services and facilities with groundbreaking likely this August. (Note: Rotarian Sandy Maruca created the above write-up for the Village News)
The Infamous English Class
During the Q&A, there was a suggestion for a conversational Spanish class. Palomar has Conversation 1 for the English as a Second Language course, and they could do that for Spanish.
Mike, who is from the UK, was sitting next to Jonathan from South Africa. Jonathan said, “Is there a class to teach Americans English?” Someone called Jonathan 'trouble!' All the Rotarians laughed!
Upon finding out that Mike and John not American, Dr. Star Rivera-Lacey said that we had international Rotarians, and they sat together to protect themselves.
Prez Jen said, “Do you mean we are hard to understand?” Jonathan announced, “You totally are!” Mike agreed. Rotarians broke into laughter, once again.
Our Rotary meetings are never dull!
Excited to see Star Rivera-Lacey, PhD's post about our club on LinkedIn afterwards!