South County\u2019s long quest to attract a major university received a small but significant lift Friday when San Diego State University said it will introduce a bachelor\u2019s degree program in a key field next year at Southwestern College, a community college in Chula Vista.<\/p>\n
The degree will be awarded in industrial and organizational psychology, which prepares students to work in such areas as human resources and workforce analytics, positions in high demand throughout Southern California.<\/p>\n
SDSU had previously announced that it will expand its bachelor\u2019s program in nursing to a new city building in Chula Vista next year. But the school had not publicly indicated that it would also add a psychology program at nearby Southwestern, which recently opened a center where outside universities can offer bachelor\u2019s degree courses.<\/p>\n
South County does not have a large, permanent, full-service university of its own.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy bringing SDSU programs directly to SWC, we are helping more South County students complete their degrees and prepare for meaningful careers without leaving their community,\u201d SDSU President Adela de la Torre said.<\/p>\n
Nearly half of Southwestern\u2019s transfer students choose SDSU to pursue their degrees, said Southwestern College Superintendent\/President Mark Sanchez.\u00a0This fall, SDSU enrolled 609 Southwestern transfer students.<\/p>\n
The new university center at Southwestern is attracting widespread interest. Beginning next year, Cal State San Marcos will use the spot as a hub for bachelor\u2019s degree programs in business administration, computer information systems, cybersecurity, human development and bilingual speech language pathology. And UC San Diego will offer a bachelor\u2019s program in public health.<\/p>\n
The surge has largely been engineered by South County Assemblymember David Alvarez, a member of the Legislature\u2019s Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance. He persuaded the state to provide the three schools with startup money to expand to South County.<\/p>\n
Over time, Southwestern could end up being the launch pad for something much bigger \u2014 the creation of a large campus on nearby land that is jointly occupied by SDSU, CSUSM and UCSD. Alvarez is among those who like the basic idea.<\/p>\n
De le la Torre already likes what\u2019s unfolding at Southwestern, saying Friday it would \u201cbe a natural connection for us to be present here \u2026 This is going to be the engine of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South County\u2019s long quest to attract a major university received a small but significant lift Friday when San…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,9974,15,181,23,100,74,84,76,75,3055,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-10535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-chula-vista","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-san-diego","15":"tag-san-diego-county","16":"tag-san-diego-headlines","17":"tag-san-diego-news","18":"tag-south-county","19":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}