On the shores of Lake Tye, nestled between a Subway, a clothing store and a chiropractic office, in an industrial building lies the EvCC East County Campus. Right off of Highway 2 in Monroe, the campus sits in a somewhat industrial area of town. From the outside, the campus does not look like the normal representation of a college.

It takes an elevator ride to the third floor and a walk down a long hall to reach the EvCC section of the building. But, once inside the walls covered in bulletin boards and artwork create the feeling of walking through any structure on the EvCC main campus. The only difference, there are currently a total of three classrooms, one conference room, and one office for the whole campus.

While the East County Campus is technically a satellite campus, it functions as a branch campus, and is expanding in to more of the complex it is housed in this spring. This will allow for more classroom space, as the campus has been growing in student population over the past few years. In fact, three years ago there were approximately 150 students who attended classes at the campus in Monroe; this past fall, there were 700 students enrolled for classes there.

The types of classes at the East County Campus are centered on students studying for business and accounting, IT and healthcare foundations, and most importantly their two year transfer degrees. Many running start students attend the Monroe campus as well. According to Rob Prosch, the director of the campus, more than half of the Running Start students from Monroe attend classes at the East County Campus. The campus population is about 1/3 running start students, 1/3 students working for some type of transfer degree, and 1/3 students who are attending school for some type of work training

Tristan Smith, a running start student in his second quarter at EvCC who lives in Monroe, says that he attends classes there because “It’s close and accessible. It’s a fifteen minute drive versus a drive in to Everett, which is a lot longer.” This tends to be the case; students who attend the East County Campus are usually “place bound,’ meaning that they are unable to reach the Everett Campus, so instead they can stay local in Monroe. According to Prosch, EvCC’s President Beyer chose Monroe for the campus’s location so that EvCC would be easily accessible to students central in the county, as well as east in the county. Prosch says students from places far away from Everett, like the town of Sultan, are able to get the same quality of education that they would on the main campus, without as far of a drive. EvCC student Shane Martin, who lives in Snohomish, attends classes at the Everett campus as well as one math class in Monroe. He does this because Monroe and Everett are about the same distance from Snohomish, and the time slot of his math class at Monroe fits into his schedule better.

Chalae Winston, a student who attends the East County Campus said that the classes there tend to feel more personal, because of the smaller amount of people present. She also added on the fact that at the East County Campus, she doesn’t have to pay for parking. That’s right, in Monroe students don’t have to pay $30-$45 per quarter to park.

So what does the future of EvCC’s East County Campus look like? By next year, they are planning on increasing by 85 full time students, for a total of over 800 students. They are also looking to expand their class load to offer more variety to students planning on attending EvCC in Monroe. With their expansion this spring, EvCC East County will have a new testing center, where they will continue to provide more job qualifying tests than any other EvCC Campus, for tests such as medical or IT certification.

One thing can be taken away from the East County Campus: it’s a smaller, almost completely self-sufficient, and growing, version of EvCC’s main campus, with the addition of a breathtaking view of the Cascade Mountains on a sunny day.