San Diego Mesa College hosted a Chancellors Forum to discuss issues and future plans for the district. The San Diego Community College District is California’s second- largest community college district with 50,000 students enrolled in credit colleges. The SDCCD is home to three credit colleges, City, Mesa and Miramar. The district also has 90,000 students enrolled in their eight-continuing/adult education campuses.

Dr. Constance M. Carroll, Chancellor for the SDCCD, spoke about the future plans Mesa College and the rest of the community colleges will come upon on. In 2014, the SDCCD will hire 30 full- time faculties, positions that have been vacant since January 2013. The increase of full-time faculty is not only beneficial for its employees, but for its students. The hiring of faculty will finally increase the number of classes. Having full-time faculty will be beneficial for students to engage more with their professors.By summer 2014, the SDCCD, plans to offer 500 additional class sections.A third increase from the 3,173 class reduction in 2008.

Today, the SDCCD offers students 29 associate degrees for transfer and 4 degrees are still waiting approval at City College by the State Chancellor’s office. Out of those 29 associate degrees, Mesa is home to 14. Mesa offers associate degrees from Business Administration to Communication Studies to Theater Arts amongst others.The district also plans to offer a Baccalaureate Degree for students. This means, students interested in vocational careers such as Nursing or Automotive Technology will have the opportunity to receive their college Bachelor’s degree from a SDCCD campus.

The college district is also undergoing major building construction with the bond measures authorized by Proposition “N” in 2006. This will allow SDCCD to have more than 80 projects, from top of the line learning facilities to renovations and modernizations. In the upcoming year, Mesa will welcome a state of the art Social and Behavioral Sciences building, Cafeteria, Bookstore and LRC center. Future projects such as a Fine Arts and Dramatic Arts and Fitness center are planned to begin construction late 2015, early 2016. The presentation taken place on Sept. 23, 2013 was followed by a quick 15 minute Q&A.

Despite the hardships SDCCD went through for years, the future finally looks brighter for the district, faculty and students.