Victor Valley College

Victor Valley College is a public community college in Victorville, California. It is part of the California Community College System. The Victor Valley Community College district includes Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley, Phelan and Adelanto.

The college was created by a vote of the public in 1960 and the first classes were held in 1961 at Victor Valley High School in an unused building. The 253-acre (102 ha) campus started construction in 1963 and was opened to students in 1965.

During the 1990s and 2000s, the campus went through a number of improvements as the resident population of the High Desert increased, most notably an Adaptive Physical Education Building, Advanced Technology Building, Gymnasium, Library, an expanded Performing Arts Center, Planetarium, and the Student Activities Center.

On February 14, 2012, Victor Valley Community College District opened its first satellite campus in Apple Valley called the Regional Public Safety Training Center just northwest of the Apple Valley County Airport (nicknamed the Eastside Center in the Five-Year Plan.) The new center contains 46,000 sq. ft. of classrooms, conference rooms, laboratories, and lecture halls. Directly outside the center, a prop area called "CERT City" (named after County of San Bernardino Community Emergency Response Team) has large vehicles, a hazard tower and disaster areas for simulated exercises. Construction on the second satellite campus, the "Westside" Workforce Development Center in West Hesperia remains in the planning stages with hopes to complete the project before 2020.

The college provides nearly 40 major courses of study, with the most popular being Liberal Arts, Registered Nursing, and Business Management. As a junior college, VVC awards associate degrees. Thirty-three of these programs offer associate degrees in either Associate of Arts (A.A.) or Associates of Science (A.S.), along with California's Associates Transfer Degree (AA-T or AS-T) which guarantees admission to either Cal State University or University of California campuses that participate in the program. Offices are also present on-site from universities in partnership with VVC to allow distance education coursework in a handful of majors that provide students with bachelor's degrees.

There are also Certificates of Achievement or Certificates of Participation for 128 Vocational subjects including Administration of Justice, Fire Technology, Construction, Computer Networking and Repair, and Medical/Nursing.

Victor Valley College lies on the southern edge of the Mojave Desert. The college sits directly to the south of Spring Valley Lake (a planned unincorporated community in San Bernardino County). It is located at the confluence of Victorville, Hesperia, and Apple Valley. The property lies at the most southeastern point in the city of Victorville. Directly south of the campus is Hesperia and east of the campus past the Mojave River is the town of Apple Valley. The San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountain ranges lie approximately 15 miles to the south, southeast, and southwest of the college.

The Community College District boundaries are set east of Antelope Valley, south of Barstow, north of both San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga (both sharing a common border from Victorville), and northwest of Joshua Tree. The boundaries are mostly for planning and research only, as California Community College campuses statewide practice Open Enrollment policies; students are not restricted to attending any community college based on their residence status within the State of California.