By Pamela Brice
For The Herald
The University of Washington at Bothell and Cascadia Community College, which share a campus in Bothell, have seen enrollment jump from last year, college officials said.
It has almost doubled at the community college.
With "our interdisciplinary arts and sciences program, which brings a lot of disciplines together, we are now at 121 percent enrollment," said Cynthia Scanlon, spokeswoman for UW-Bothell.
That means about 550 students.
Scanlon said the undergraduate nursing and teacher certification programs are filled, as is the evening master’s in business administration program, which is in its first year. The nursing program has 72 students, the teaching course has 75 and the MBA program has 100.
College officials expect even higher enrollments in the future because of recent layoffs at Boeing and elsewhere.
"Our programs were filled long before the economic dip and long before the terrorist attacks," Scanlon said.
UW-Bothell has grown from about 1,400 to more than 1,650 students. Cascadia Community College also is seeing a large turnout of students, which it can feed into UW-Bothell programs after two years.
"We are seeing record numbers and are bursting at the seams," said Suzanne Ames, director of communications at Cascadia.
The Oct. 12 head count — on the 10th day of classes — showed that Cascadia almost doubled in enrollment from 1,472 students to 2,757.
Ames said the increase was due to several factors.
"There is a lot of excitement with a new college, and last year was the first year. A lot of folks were interested in the college but wanted to sit back and see how we operate. Now they have enrolled," she said.
"Also, we deliberately decided that 80 percent of our core classes would be transferable," so students who enroll in Cascadia can easily transfer to UW-Bothell.
The university and college celebrated the opening of two newly constructed buildings last month, which will help with the rising number of students.
The campus has a new Media Center and University Book Store, as well as a second UW-Bothell building that will provide additional classroom space, science research labs, faculty offices and a common area for students.
Pam Brice is a staff writer for The Enterprise weekly newspapers. You can call her at 425-673-6522
or send e-mail to brice@heraldnet.com.
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