The newly renovated MiraCosta College Community Learning Center opened to the public on October 25. The Patch took an exclusive tour of the new campus with John Makevich, Dean of Continuing and Community Education and Kristen J. Huyck, Director, Public & Governmental Relations, Marketing & Communications.

The redesigned campus is now home to three buildings including the newly constructed 10,770 square foot Student Services Building that is highly energy-efficient.

The building includes a feature along the base of the entry wall with the word "welcome" cast into concrete in various global languages, representing the diversity of MiraCosta College's students.

The Student Services Building serves as the home for essential student support services, including Admissions and Records, Counseling, Testing Services, CARE, and the Student Success and Support Programs.

Mitra De Souza is the new Director of Student Services, a new position for the college and Mitra's role is designed to evolve based upon CLC needs. One of the new roles Mitra took on was the launching of the Food Pantry for students. Since opening the pantry the number of students continues to grow every week, illustrating the need for the expanded community services being offered at MiraCosta.

The new building, along with a dramatic new monument sign at the entrance to the campus, provides a welcoming new gateway for the Community Learning Center.

The student gathering area opens to a plaza within a quad, providing a physical connection between the new building and the existing facilities to help unify the campus. The quad will allow for large events and includes bike racks, a seat wall, tables, and a campus information kiosk.

The other two buildings at the Community Learning Center Campus include the renovation of the A and B buildings, (now known as the 100 and 200 buildings), and a site improvement project. Buildings 100 and 200 comprise nearly 39,000 square feet and will house the campus library, tutoring services, the California Adult Education program, classroom space, and faculty offices.

The original building underwent a complete ground-up renovation and is now Building 100 the Instruction and Learning Support Center with a lot more space to serve students.

The Instruction and Learning Support Building contains the Dean and Faculty Offices, Classrooms, Computer Labs, Community rooms, Tutoring Center and Student Lounge.

The Community Learning Center campus offers a variety of tuition-free Continuing Education classes and programs including:

The timing of the renovations at MiraCosta happened around the same time that COVID shut down in-person classes. If that coincidence wasn't enough the first day on the job for John Makevich as the new Dean of Continuing and Community Education was April 6, 2020. Which makes this opening especially noteworthy for the staff and students to return to class in the new facilities.

"Now that the campus has opened I think there's gonna be a lot of people out here and there's going to be activities and events and I look forward to that." said Makevich, "We're going to start doing more on-campus events, particularly in the Spring. We're really trying to get a pulse back to this campus and share it with the community for everyone to know about it."

While most of the renovations are complete there are a few more plans in store for the Community Learning Center. The site work project also includes demolition of the former Building C to create space for critically-needed parking and improved landscaped areas for campus use. This project is in the design phase currently, with construction planned for the summer and fall of 2022.

Detailed information about all of the District's Capital Improvement projects is available for public review through the Capital Improvement Dashboard at miracosta.edu/measuremm.

Learn more about MiraCosta College Continuing and Community Education.  See the original article.