Allan Hancock College carries the name of Capt. G. Allan Hancock, the sea captain, aviator, and farmer who shaped the Santa Maria Valley a century ago.
Hancock built an experimental irrigation operation on the land east of Santa Maria that grew into a working laboratory for the region’s agriculture.
He also built an aeronautics school on a Santa Maria airfield that trained thousands of pilots during World War II.
Agriculture and aviation weren’t side interests for Hancock — they were his bet on what the Santa Maria Valley could become.
One hundred yeats later, that bet is paying off, and it’s exactly what’s at stake in Measure H.
On Nov. 3, voters in the Allan Hancock Joint Community College District will decide the fate of the $290 million facilities bond.
The bond will upgrade facilities across the campus at 800 S. College Drive, and one of the projects will fortify efforts to bring four-year degrees close to home for North County students.
For years, AHC President Kevin Walthers and faculty, staff and trustees have pushed to secure the community college’s ability to offer bachelor’s degrees locally, working through layers of state approval that rarely favor such colleges.
That effort has already produced real four-year degree pathways. Measure H is what finally gives those programs a proper home: a University Center on the Santa Maria campus, built to support bachelor’s degrees in fields like nursing and business through partnerships with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo.
We don’t have a California State University within short distance of the North County. For a lot of families here, especially the many Latino families who make up much of Hancock’s student body, that distance is more than an inconvenience.
Close-knit households often need older kids nearby to help with younger siblings or contribute to the family’s income. Asking a promising student to move away for a four-year degree isn’t a small ask — for some families, it’s not realistic at all.
A university center that lets a student finish a bachelor’s degree without leaving home is the difference between a degree completed and a degree deferred indefinitely.
This is also about who fills the good jobs coming to the North County — and here, too, Capt. Allan Hancock’s roots point the way.
The same agricultural land he once irrigated by hand is now home to a fast-growing ag-tech sector, running on precision irrigation, drone monitoring and automation.
The same airfield he built into a pilot-training school sits minutes from Vandenberg Space Force Base, one of the fastest-growing aerospace hubs in the nation.
Hancock College’s leadership team spends its time sitting down with employers in these industries and others to understand what skills they need now and will need in the years ahead, and building Hancock’s coursework, certificates and degrees around these job needs.
If we don’t prepare our own residents for those jobs, someone else will move in to take them, and the people who have lived here for generations will be left watching from the sidelines.
A stronger, better-equipped Hancock is how we make sure the workforce the North County needs is built from the people who already call it home.
Capt. Allan Hancock planted the roots. The team leading Hancock today — under Walthers’ leadership — has spent years growing them into real opportunity for North County students and families.
This November, we’re asking voters to invest in that same vision by voting yes on Measure H.
F.Y.I.
Allan Hancock College boundaries include Santa Maria, Orcutt, the Santa Ynez Valley, Cuyama Valley, and the Lompoc Valley and Vandenberg Space Force Base.