skip to side navigation | skip to main content The college's name is pronounced: oh low knee.
Ohlone College home page.


Ohlone College Information Center (510) 659-6000
About Ohlone College, Maps & Directions
Architect rendering of Student Services Building under construction on Ohlone's Fremont Campus.

About the Ohlone Community College District

Ohlone College Campuses

Ohlone College Fremont Campus

Ohlone College
43600 Mission Boulevard
Fremont, CA 94539-0390

Ohlone College Newark Center

Ohlone College Newark Center for Health Sciences and Technology
39399 Cherry Street
Newark, CA 94560-4902

Use our Comments and Questions Contact Form to contact the appropriate department to respond to your needs.

Learn more about Ohlone College

Vision Statement

Ohlone College will be known throughout California for our inclusiveness, innovation, and superior rates of student success.

Mission Statement

The mission of Ohlone College is to serve the community by offering instruction for basic skills, career entry, university transfer, economic development, and personal enrichment for all who can benefit from our instruction in an environment where student learning success is highly valued, supported, and continually assessed.

Core Values

  • We provide life long learning opportunities for students, college personnel, and the community.
  • We open access to higher education and actively reach out to underserved populations.
  • We promote diversity, inclusiveness, and openness to differing viewpoints.
  • We maintain high standards in our constant pursuit of excellence.
  • We value trust, respect, and integrity.
  • We promote teamwork and open communication.
  • We practice innovation and actively encourage risk-taking and entrepreneurship.
  • We demonstrate stewardship for our human, financial, physical, and environmental resources.

College Goals

  1. Promote appreciation for and understanding of diverse races and culture by expanding the diversity of college personnel, international education offerings and exchanges, cross-cultural curricula, and ethnic/cultural events.
  2. Develop across the curriculum the Learning College Model, utilizing methods and technologies that hold the most promise for improving student course and program completion success rates.
  3. Develop strategies to increase the proportion of full-time students including learning communities, cohort groups, enhanced facilities, and improved course availability.
  4. Provide continuous learning for all personnel associated with the District and promote an organizational structure that is adaptable, collegial, and supportive of the Learning College Model.
  5. Promote the health, environmental, cultural, and economic vitality of the communities served by the District through programs of outreach, community services, and partnership ventures.
  6. Promote and maintain an accessible, clean, safe, and healthy college environment through continuous engagement of students and college personnel in campus preparedness, wellness, beautification, and environmental sustainability.
  7. Increase public and private funds for educational programs, equipment, and facilities through entrepreneurial activities, grants, and the college foundation.
  8. Develop and implement a District-wide facilities plan which encompasses the design, construction (including furnishings and equipment), renovation and major scheduled maintenance of facilities that support programs and enhance student and employee success.

Facts About Ohlone College

  • Ohlone enrolls 18,000 students per year at our Fremont and Newark campuses and online.
  • Ohlone offers 184 degrees and academic programs.
  • Every year more than 500 students transfer to four-year colleges and universities.
  • More than 760 students graduate with degrees or earn vocational certificates every year.
  • Ohlone College employs about 415 part-time and full-time faculty and 215 support and management personnel.

[From the 2007-2008 Ohlone College Catalog.]

Accreditation

Ohlone College is accredited by the national Accrediting Commision for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), an institutional accrediting body recognized by the Commission on Recognition of Postsecondary Acceditation and the U.S. Department of Education. Ohlone has been accredited since 1970. Accreditation visits are made every six years by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (a division of ACCJC) [10 Commercial Blvd., Suite 204, Novato, CA 94949 (415) 506-0234]. The last visit was in 2001; the next visit will be in 2008. Learn more about the Accreditation Self Study Report.

History of Ohlone College

Ohlone Community College District serves the cities of Newark, Fremont, and part of Union City in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay area (Campus and Area Maps). Classes began at the College in the Fall of 1967, serving approximately 1,300 students. Initially classes were held at a temporary site in the former Serra Center Home for Girls on Washington Boulevard in Fremont until a new campus was constructed at the present Fremont site, which opened in September 1974.

The Fremont campus is located on Mission Boulevard off Highway 680 on a beautiful 534-acre hillside site just south of historical Mission San Jose. The new Ohlone College Newark Center for Health Sciences and Technology broke ground in May 2005 and classes will begin January 28, 2008.

Officially named Ohlone College on June 18, 1967, the institution honors the early Ohlone Indians of the Costanoan tribe, who inhabited the Fremont and Newark area. Long before the local Indians were named Costanoans by the Spanish priests, they were known by a neighboring Miwuk tribe as the Ohlones or “people of the West.” Distinguished by peaceful pursuits, especially in agriculture, they held profound reverence for the earth, believing it was theirs for living and not for the taking. They aided the Franciscan Fathers in building the Mission San Jose de Guadalupe in the late 18th century and prospered until 1806-1833 when a series of epidemics virtually destroyed the tribe. Some descendants, however, still reside in the Fremont-Newark area.

In January of 2005, the College introduced a new logo to more fully represent the Ohlone heritage of our name. The new logo represents two eagle feathers suspended from the sun. The rays shooting off from the sun look like arrowhead points aimed in the four compass directions, a traditional Native American symbol. The white band around the sun represents the “O” in Ohlone. The two feathers, another traditional symbol, also serve as a reminder of the Native American traditions that Ohlone has emulated with their goals of being more environmentally aware in our building and our practices and celebrating and promoting cultural diversity.

In its third year the college developed a Deaf Studies program to serve the deaf population in this area.  Gallaudet University later opened a Regional Center at the college. Ohlone now has one of the largest higher education programs for the deaf in the United States.

The 2007-2008 academic year marks the 40th anniversary of serving the tri-cities community with higher education opportunities. The College is one of 109 community colleges in the State of California, which offer the associate degree or the first two years of study toward a bachelor's degree. Many students then transfer to complete their four-year degree at an institution in the California State University or University of California systems or at other public or private universities.

Ohlone College is an accredited college, accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Ohlone College is also authorized by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services to enroll non-immigrant students.

Located above the northern reaches of Silicon Valley and the southern border of San Francisco Bay, Ohlone’s Fremont campus is removed from industrial areas - but still convenient to food and retail services, residential areas, and major transportation corridors.

With 300 acres reserved for open space, the Fremont campus offers a peaceful and aesthetically pleasing learning environment. Natural features - black oak, chaparral, and seasonal streams - dominate the landscape and welcome wildlife along with academic life. Human-made structures are modeled on the early California missions, with red-tiled roofs, adobe-like walls, and numerous open walkways. Designed to complement the hillside surroundings and to make getting around easy, campus buildings are arranged in clusters (see Fremont Campus Map).

At the center is the nine-building Academic Village, composed of classroom buildings dedicated to music, chemistry, computer studies, physics, art, business administration, allied health, and biology; two fully equipped lecture halls; the Hochler Student Center; Epler Gymnasium; and an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Ward Blanchard Center (Building 1), at the core of the Academic Village, houses the Library / Learning Resources Center, Admissions and Records, Counseling, Student Services, Academic Affairs, Administrative Services, Human Resources, the Student Success Center, and the President / Superintendent's Office.

Surrounding this center cluster are other College facilities, including the Gary Soren Smith Center for Fine and Performing Arts, the Morris and Alvirda Hyman Center for Business and Technology, the Early Childhood Studies Lab, Gallaudet University Regional Center, the Student Health Center, other faculty and business offices, and the Athletics fields and facilities.

Since the 1980s the City of Newark worked to have a college presence in Newark.  For several years, a rented facility served as the Ohlone College Newark Center.  In 2002 the Measure A Bond was passed allocating $100,000,000 towards constructing a campus on the present 81-acre site on Cherry Street in Newark.  As part of the design process, it was agreed through the existing shared governance process to build an environmentally sustainable building.  The Ohlone College Newark Center for Health Sciences and Technology will hold it's first semester of classes beginning January 28, 2008.

Getting To and Around Ohlone

Administration / President's Staff

People and Places