Coastline Community College

College & Education

North America, United States, Orange County

Coastline Community College is a community college with three mini-campuses and an administration building in Fountain Valley, California. The college offers Associate in Arts degrees, Associate in Science degrees, courses to prepare students to transfer to a 4-year college or university, and career and technical courses that can lead to career advancement and/or an occupational certificate. The college was founded in 1976, and is part of the Coast Community College District. Its sister colleges are Orange Coast College (in Costa Mesa) and Golden West College (in Huntington Beach). The college is part of the California Community College system, which includes a total of 112 community colleges statewide. Every community college has the same tuition rate (currently $26/unit for CA residents), but it is set by the state legislature and subject to change. The Coast Community College District serves the following seven California cities: Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Newport beach, Seal Beach (includes Sunset Beach), and Westminster. Coastline's mini-campuses are located in Garden Grove, Costa Mesa and Westminster. In 2012, the college will close it's Costa Mesa campus and relocate to a new campus they are currently building at 1515 Monrovia in Newport Beach. This campus will be Newport Beach's first community college. The Westminster Center is formally called the "Le-Jao Center" in honor of the Le family (owners of Lee's Sandwiches) and the Jao family (owners of the Asian Garden Mall and Bridgecreek Development) who contributed substantially to the college's endowment. Originally started by the Coast Community College District as the Distance Learning college (it would serve the DL needs of Coast District Residents while Orange Coast College and Golden West College would serve the on-campus needs), Coastline has now evolved to boast an expansive distance learning program as well as on-campus (on-site) classes available at these three mini-campus sites. In addition to these campus sites and the administration building in Fountain Valley, the college opened an off-site art gallery--The Coastline Art Gallery--in Huntington Beach in 2006. The art gallery will move to the Newport Beach campus when the college opens it in 2012. Coastline offers distance education, including telecourses and the use of Pocket PC and personal digital assistants. Coastline's Distance Learning department has created an open source course management system (CMS) called Seaport which is similar to the products of Blackboard and WebCT. Its Military Outreach program delivers courses to every branch of the U.S. Armed Services. Coastline is also the first college to ever offer a complete degree available through content designed for distribution via a Pocket PC or other mobile learning device (cell phone, iPod, etc.).