{"slug": "west-valley-college-introduces-first-bachelors-degree-program", "title": "West Valley College introduces first bachelor’s degree program", "summary": "West Valley College in Saratoga introduces its first bachelor's degree program in land stewardship and sustainability, tuition-free, eliminating the need for students to transfer to a four-year university. The program builds on the college's Park Management Program and includes hands-on field instruction, internships, and coursework in natural resource management and environmental policy.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...#### Sustainable bachelor’s degree\n\nWest Valley College is now among a limited number of community colleges in the state that offer a bachelor’s degree. The Saratoga campus now offers a four-year degree in science for land stewardship and sustainability.\n\nThe degree program is tuition free, like other courses at West Valley College. Previously, students who pursued careers in land stewardship and sustainability had to transfer to a four-year university.\n\n“For the first time, students can earn a bachelor’s degree right here at West Valley College in a field they are passionate about, without the cost or disruption that often comes with transferring to a four-year university,” said WVC President Jennifer Taylor-Mendoza.\n\nThe program builds on WVC’s Park Management Program, which was founded in 1970. The new degree combines hands-on, field-based instruction with upper division coursework in natural resource management, fire ecology and fuels, environmental law and policy, traditional ecological knowledge, cultural resource management and sustainable land practices. The program is complete with a senior seminar and internship to prepare students for advanced and supervisory roles at every level of government.\n\n#### Robotics workshops\n\nA robotics team of middle and high school students from Saratoga, Los Gatos and Cupertino is running free summer workshops at Saratoga Library through July 25.\n\nTeam JavaJuice is a team organized for FIRST Tech Challenge, a program that tasks students and their mentors with a hands-on engineering challenge of building and programming competitive, classroom-scale robots for a game that is released annually in September. The team won the Sustain Award at the Qualifier 2 round for building a robot platform that is reusable across multiple seasons.\n\nEach workshop focuses on different projects that teach people about coding, robot mechanisms, assembly, motor control and other skills. Some of these projects include sensor design and coding and drawing bot.\n\nThe workshops are set for June 28, July 18 and July 25 from 1-3 p.m. in the Oak Room at Saratoga Library. For more information on the team, visit [https://javajuice31788.wixsite.com/javajuice](https://javajuice31788.wixsite.com/javajuice).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/west-valley-college-introduces-first-bachelors-degree-program", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/24/west-valley-college-introduces-first-bachelors-degree-program/", "published_at": "2026-06-24 14:56:36+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-24 15:12:39.726473+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["robotics"], "entities": ["West Valley College", "Jennifer Taylor-Mendoza", "Saratoga Library", "Team JavaJuice", "FIRST Tech Challenge"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/west-valley-college-introduces-first-bachelors-degree-program", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/west-valley-college-introduces-first-bachelors-degree-program.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/west-valley-college-introduces-first-bachelors-degree-program.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/west-valley-college-introduces-first-bachelors-degree-program.jsonld"}}