Valencia debuts its campus in Poinciana
College’s sixth campus years in the making
POINCIANA — Jovan Fernandez-Mestre describes himself as “a person who likes to be on time.”
The recent Poinciana High School graduate was dreading the commute this fall to Valencia College’s Osceola County campus in Kissimmee, a good 30-minute drive from his home. He imagined himself sitting in traffic, wasting time.
Fernandez-Mestre said he was relieved to learn that Valencia’s $27 million Poinciana campus, a 10-minute drive away, will be open for the first day of fall semester on Aug. 28.
“Instead of being in a rush, I could just easily be right there,” Fernandez-Mestre said. “I won’t be late, I won’t miss anything.”
The new $27 million campus is on Pleasant Hill Road, just east of the Polk County border. Instead of going to the Kissimmee campus, students will be able to earn their associate of arts degrees, which allow them to transfer to a fouryear institution, in Poinciana. The Poinciana campus won’t have any bachelor’s degree programs initially but could in the future.
The new campus also will offer associate of science degrees in areas such as culinary management, hospitality management, information technology and criminal justice technology, as well as continuing education courses in English. Valencia will offer shortterm construction training programs at the new $3 million Center for Accelerated Training next door.
The new campus includes a dozen general-use classrooms, a 30-station science laboratory for biology and chemistry courses, a
library that’s designed to look like a treehouse, a cafeteria, and a culinary arts classroom with stove burners that cool down instantly when a pot is removed. A multipurpose room will serve as a bookstore during the start of classes and be available for community groups to use at other times of the year.
Valencia is among several Central Florida higher education institutions opening for the fall semester in the coming days.
At the University of Central Florida, where classes start Monday, enrollment is expected to top 66,000 for the first time this year, up from 64,335 last fall.
This fall’s freshman class has an average weighted high school GPA of 4.05, also a record, according to the university. Incoming students had an average SAT of 1318.
Over the past three years, the school has hired 673 new faculty members, including 135 who will start this fall.
Construction also is underway on UCF’s downtown Orlando campus, which is expected to open in 2019. UCF students will be able to study digital media, communication, health-care information technology, legal studies, social work and health-care administration there.
Classes also start Monday at Seminole State College, which will open a new student services building at the college’s Sanford/Lake Mary campus in January. The $24 million building will house admissions and recruitment; enrollment services and registrar; assessment and testing and a student life suite that includes the office of student life, first-generation freshmen and the intramural & recreational sports offices.
In the past, students in Poinciana endured commutes of an hour each way or more, if they rode the bus to Valencia.
College leaders say they anticipate about 1,200 students will attend classes in Poinciana this fall, and that number may grow to as many as 5,000 in the future. To sweeten the deal, the college offered $500 scholarships to students who enrolled full-time at the new campus this fall.
“We know this will be a gamechanger for students who live in the Poinciana area,” said Kathleen Plinske, president of Valencia’s Osceola and Lake Nona campuses.
The college’s sixth campus has been years in the making.
More than 70,000 people live in the Poinciana area, and less than half of adults ages 25 and older have completed any college courses, according to the U.S. Census bureau. Less than one in five has a bachelor’s degree in Poinciana, compared with about a third nationwide.
Debra Pace, superintendent of the Osceola County school district, said she first started talking with Valencia about adding another campus more than a decade ago, while she was the principal of Poinciana High.
“We saw the need was so great,” Pace said. “We really wanted to open the door to college both to our students and to the adults in the community.“
Many Poinciana students are the first in their families to attend or graduate from college, so the high schools try to help them understand it’s an option. Students from Liberty and Poinciana high schools who are enrolled in dual enrollment programs will now use the Poinciana campus. Before, they endured long rides to Kissimmee.
Fernandez-Mestre, who was the first student to enroll at the new campus, plans to become an American Sign Language interpreter — fulfilling a promise he made to his mom, who is deaf. The 19-year-old said he knows some sign language, but his skills are “a little rusty.”
“I also told her my goal is once I graduate, if I have kids, to be able to teach them and communicate with them in sign language,” he said.
Additions at Valencia’s other campuses this fall include the new Film, Sound and Music Technology building at the college’s east campus on Econlockhatchee Trail.
The $15 million building will provide space and equipment for the Film Production Technology and Sound and Music Technology programs.