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By Jim Trageser
This week we finish up our tour of local college and university Web sites with a visit to the local community colleges.
The San Diego Community College District includes San Diego City College, Mesa College and Miramar College.
In order to get specific information about any of the campuses, you have to do some snooping, as it's not available off the main menu. Instead, click on the "10 great reasons" to choose a community college link; from there (at the very bottom of that page), you can get to each of the three campuses, as well as a course catalog that breaks out class offerings by campus.
The three campuses each have a simple home page with a map, list of features and politically correct breakdown of gender and ethnicity on their faculties.
Oddly, while none of the three campuses nor the Center for Applied Competitive Technologies (located at City College) is on the main menu, you will find KSDS-FM, Jazz 88, the student-run radio station on the City College campus. Here you can find the program guide to San Diego's only legitimate jazz station, telling you when the various specialized shows (Latin jazz, the blues, vocalists, percussion) air during the week.
MiraCosta College serves the inland North County area, with campuses in Oceanside and Cardiff. The main menu is nicely laid out, with hot links to much of the information students or potential students might want: library, campus directories, student info. But finding the class schedules, the catalog, or admissions info takes some hunting (it's all under the "Student Information" link on the main menu). Still, if you look around, you can find almost everything you might want to know.
Southwestern College is located in Chula Vista, and serves the South Bay region. The Web page is pretty low-tech; more a nod to the necessity of having an Internet presence than a serious source of information. The only really useful area on this site is the arts calendar, which lists all the upcoming performances and shows on campus.
Palomar College, located in San Marcos, was recently recognized as one of the best two-year institutions in the land. That quality is reflected in this Web site, which is on a par with those of the local universities. It's well-designed and comprehensive, and even includes faculty and student Web pages.
There are class schedules and a catalog available right from the main menu, admissions info, job listings, campus library and counseling services.
And as with City College's KSDS, Palomar's alternative KKSM-AM has a Web page right off the main menu, with a list of its specialty shows.
East County's community colleges are Grossmont and Cuyamaca, both in the same district and both sharing a common Web site, albeit with their own pages.
Cuyamaca's pages are well laid-out; a set of four links is at the top of most pages, allowing you to go directly to the home, to academic affairs, to student services or to the campus directory. The usual info is here: admissions procedures and policies, catalog, class schedules (not yet posted for the spring as of Dec. 30), faculty directory.
The content is a little rough; the Health Services page, for instance, still has a paragraph that was obviously intended as suggested text for the staff building the page – pretty embarrassing. And there are some pages that aren't up yet, although the links for them are.
Grossmont's pages are more complete, if not as slick in appearance. There's a nice map of campus, a list of student services, an academic calendar and campus directory. There are not, however, course schedules or a catalog. But at least if a page is listed, you know it exists.