ITT Technical Institute’s Sylmar campus has more than doubled its size from a year ago after school officials decided to expand the campus due to an increasing student population. This month, the college’s officials joined local government officials and the Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce to celebrate the expansion. The construction project, which cost more than $1 million, started last October and was completed in July. The project adds five classrooms, a new computer lab, a student learning resource center and a student lounge, adding about 36,000 square feet to the 30,000-square-foot campus building, said Dana Martin, the school’s college director. The project also included renovations to existing classrooms and offices, as well as a redesign of the school’s parking lot. “(Before) we were just completely impacted and out of space,” Martin said. “We could not expand out class offerings to our students to provide multiple choices on some classes. … There just wasn’t anywhere to put anybody.” The school’s student population has grown dramatically since it relocated to the Sylmar site from Van Nuys in 1996. The campus had a fall enrollment of 498 students in 1996, which increased to a fall enrollment of 927 students in 2008, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which tracks enrollment for postsecondary education institutions. Martin said the school now has more than 1,000 students. The campus also recently added new programs such as those in health information technology and paralegal services, which Martin expects to bring more female students to the campus that is predominantly made up of male students. Martin said that with the additional space, the school is considering adding more programs in the future that would be needed in the community. Nancy Hoffman Vanyek, the Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce’s CEO, said she expects the campus’ growth to positively impact the local economy. “Their expansion means that they’ll probably employ more individuals and be able to provide education to more students, and hopefully those students will turn into our future workforce,” she said. “In this economy, a lot of people aren’t expanding, so just by their expansion alone, they’ve already created jobs from construction.”
