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With construction ending in fall 2024, Gavilan College’s new Hollister campus is on track to open its doors in spring 2025.
Gavilan College hosted a San Benito County Campus Community Forum at the Community Foundation Epicenter on Nov. 13 to update the community on the construction progress, the academic plan and student services for the new Hollister campus.
Classes are planned to begin spring 2025, Noah Lystrup, the dean of student learning, equity, and success for arts, humanities and social sciences, said at the event.
“As you may remember, construction is expected to be finished in the fall. But we want to give a little bit of leeway in terms of our first classes we actually schedule,” he said.
Within the next 60 days, installation of the underground utilities should be completed, said Director of Capital Projects for Gavilan College Serafin Fernandez. The steel that frames the building will arrive by the end of November, which will be raised by December, he said.
Other construction projects include the installation of underground power lines by PG&E and a sewer connection resulting from an agreement between the city of Hollister and Sunnyslope County Water District.
The new campus will house six classrooms, two science labs and one computer lab, Lystrup said. General education classes will be offered at the Hollister campus.
Additionally, there will be two gender-neutral bathrooms on campus, Fernandez said.
Along with general courses, a health program is also coming to the new campus. In partnership with Allied Health, the college will have dedicated classrooms for health programs including nursing and phlebotomy, Lystrup said.
As of Nov. 13, Gavilan administrators have yet to determine which career education programs to include at the new campus.
“We also want to make sure that we work in terms of getting some surveys out with the high schools and then also working with our residents here to determine what kind of programming they really want to see,” he said.
Lystrup said that the next Gavilan forum will be hosted in May, when they will be looking for feedback about possible career education programs.
Student services will be expanded at the new campus, which will offer a full-time counselor to help students with their academic planning and career counseling, said Assistant Superintendent Reneé Craig-Marius.
The peer mentor program, academic and tutoring services and additional outreach will also be expanded.
A question from the audience prompted Gavilan Superintendent and President Pedro Avila to talk about Phase Two, a plan that would expand the campus in response to increased demand.
Out of the 9,000 students Gavilan serves, 2,000 of those are from Hollister, Avila said.
“We want to be careful,” Avila said. “We want to be responsible with the taxpayers’ money. So I think what we have right now is adequate to meet the demands of those 2,000 students, plus more.”
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