Students living in Placer County can now receive a break from their commute.

Sacramento State, in cooperation with Sierra College, is now offering four popular general education courses at the Sierra College Roseville Gateway Campus, located off Douglas Road.

Sac State is offering an upper-division GE course from Area C3, called Multicultural America, which also meets a race and ethnicity requirement. Students can also take Business Finance, Business Communications and Management of Contemporary Organizations, all upper-division core business courses.

These will be the first upper-division classes offered at this campus. Before, students were only able to take continuing education or master of business administration classes.

A planning committee consisting of various Sac State faculty and staff members met and researched in order to map this out for students. They conducted meetings and studies to decide if the Gateway campus would benefit students who live in Placer County.

“We wanted to see if it was a plausible idea for us to provide courses up there to make it easier for the students,” said Ming-Tung “Mike Lee, associate vice president and dean for Academic Affairs, who played a big role on the committee.

A recent student study of 4,600 students ?” conducted by the planning committee ?” studied course-taking patterns. The study determined the top 100 courses were for those students, and the four courses were chosen because they were found to be high in demand.

“We wanted to start small, and we felt it was reasonable to start with four because it will be easier for us to monitor the progress and success of the Gateway campus,” Lee said.

The university decided to have these classes at the Gateway campus because it would cost less since Sierra College already leases the space, and Lee said Sac State already has a lease agreement with the college.

The committee said it was imperative to find a nice facility for students and faculty.

“We knew students would want to go there; it was just a matter of finding faculty who want to teach there,” Lee said. “We thought this campus would be the easiest for everyone because it is near Interstate 80, and it’s easy to get to and from there.”

The classes at the Gateway campus can accommodate a maximum of 43 students each, but parking is limited. The limited parking is not seen as an immediate problem because they are planning to expand the idea of courses held on other campuses.

A full list of the new classes being offered at the Gateway campus can be found on the Sac State website, www.csus.edu.

The classes could be beneficial to a working student. Many students go to school part time and work in Placer County.

“I think that offering classes at the Gateway Campus is a good idea because it would save some student lots of time,” said Alex Bork, a junior business administration major who lives in Roseville. “Had I known about it earlier, I would have signed up for at least one of the classes to save me some commute time.”

Stefanie Segur can be reached at new [email protected]