West Coast University Expands, Upgrades Space

Dan Holestine, vice president of marketing for West Coast University, says that, historically, "Little money was invested in the adult education environment." Holestine says that West Coast believes that it can improve student retention and recruitment by providing "a premier campus experience" via the facilities that SAA is creating.

West Coast first worked with SAA to renovate its Anaheim campus. At its North Hollywood campus, which is the university's newest, it is renovating an existing building in a project that will help to revitalize a whole city block in an older section of North Hollywood, notes Dan Ringler, SAA's director of corporate services. The North Hollywood campus will feature cafés, plug-and-play Internet areas, a quad where students can meet and talk with teachers in an informal non-classroom setting, as well as a greater overall attention to each facility's aesthetics, branding and design, according to Ringler.

SAA's second campus for West Coast University is a 64,000-square-foot facility in Ontario. The building includes classrooms, labs, a student atrium, admissions and career services departments all under one roof. 

David Pyle, president and CEO of West Coast University, says that the goal in creating the Ontario campus was to make it the "cathedral of nursing schools." Upon the opening of the new building in 2008, executive officer Teresa Bello-Jones of the California Bureau of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians said that the campus would raise the bar for healthcare training facilities in the state.

The expansion and redesign at West Coast comes at a time when universities, trade and technical schools are among the few users of commercial building space who are expanding despite the recession, which has driven many users of office and industrial space to downsize. In the world of education, however, the recession is driving up enrollment at many institutions, prompting expansions of their facilities.

Today, West Coast is the only private, proprietary, post-secondary institution in the state approved by the Board of Registered Nursing to offer a bachelor of science degree in Nursing. In early 2005, it became only the second college to be granted approval for the LVN-to-RN Bridge Program, and earlier this year it was granted approval by the Commission on Dental Accreditation to launch the first and only bachelor of science degree in dental hygiene program in Orange County at its Anaheim campus.