COLLEGE TO ADD FACULTY BUDGET INCREASE WILL ALLOW MOORPARK CAMPUS TO GROW.

Byline: Paul O'Donoghue Staff Writer

MOORPARK - Moorpark College expects to hire 10 new professors, add extra support staff and spend $400,000 on designs for a satellite campus in Thousand Oaks with a $3.5 million increase in its budget for fiscal 2000-01.

The Ventura County Community College District Board of Trustees approved a $33.2 million General Fund budget for Moorpark College on Tuesday - an increase over the fiscal 1999-00 allocation of $29.7 million.

``We're very happy to get the extra dollars,'' said Moorpark College President Jim Walker.

``We believe we have a tremendous resource here for the community and are very proud of it and interested in maintaining its quality. And the dollars allow us to do that by hiring full-time faculty and a lot of support staff.''

The growth in Moorpark's budget was based in part on expected enrollment increases - the college expects enrollment to jump from 13,000 to 13,500 by fall - and a 5 percent cost-of-living increase for employees, Walker said.

New full-time faculty in English, geography, speech and counseling will be hired by the fall semester. Those teaching interior design, physical education, child development, math, nursing and computer systems will be hired in the spring, Walker said.

The new professor positions are upgrades of those now filled by part- time teachers and will allow better service to students, he said.

``We have always believed in college professors performing services full time because, not only do they teach class, but they also have office hours in which to help students, and they also participate in curriculum development and new program development, and they participate in campus activities,'' Walker said.

``Without our part-timers, we couldn't exist. But on the other hand there's more to college than just teaching classes - there's curriculum development and committee work, and all the stuff that keeps the place what it is. And we depend on our full-timers for that.''

In addition to the new professors, the college will also hire eight new support staff members, from a gardener to a computer maintenance technician.

It also will spend $400,000 for planning and design work for a new satellite campus that will be operated jointly with the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

The Community College District will pay $4 million of the $12 million cost of the joint project, which will include six classrooms and a computer lab for Moorpark College students, and a continuation high school for Conejo Valley Unified.

Conejo Valley Unified will pay the balance of cost of the project on Janss Road just east of the Moorpark Freeway, which is slated to be opened in 2002.

Of the district's three colleges, Moorpark College's $33.2 million budget allocation is the largest, equivalent to 32 percent of the district's $102.3 million general fund budget. Moorpark has more students that the Oxnard or Ventura campuses.