Less than a month after introducing a new bill centered on postsecondary education, Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara) withdrew from pushing it forward. Without reaching a single hearing, the proposal itself helped solve the problem the bill aimed to fix, Allan Hancock College President Kevin Walthers said.
On March 17, Walthers shared a stage with Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong at Boyd Concert Hall in Santa Maria to announce a new bachelor’s degree program in business administration—with classes taught by Cal Poly professors on Hancock’s Santa Maria campus—to start in 2026.
“The purpose of all of this … is to provide an educational opportunity for those students who can’t travel and need to stay at home to support their family, and work, and still get an education that gives them an opportunity at a better life,” Hart told the Sun.
“There’s no reason to have the legislation now that we’ve got the program in place,” Hart said. “I think that the [CSU] system would rather solve the problem that way than to have a legislative fix, and that’s fine for me in this circumstance. I want to solve the problem. I’m not worried about the vehicle. And in this instance, having the colleges come together and create a win-win solution is the best of all outcomes.”
AB 1462 was specifically tailored to allow Hancock to offer one new baccalaureate degree program for students to complete on campus in Santa Maria, but the alternative arrangement between Hancock and Cal Poly led to a stronger resolution, “better than the outcome that would have come about with legislation,” Hart said.
Along with the new business degree offering, Cal Poly announced a commitment to launch two additional bachelor’s degrees programs at Hancock in 2028 and 2030, respectively. The additional degrees haven’t been determined yet, but “there’s conversation about expanding the program to [Hancock’s] Lompoc campus and potentially having a degree that involves the space industry, which is a natural partner in that community,” Hart said.
At the March 17 conference, Cal Poly President Armstrong described the existing bachelor’s degree in sociology program at Hancock, enacted in 2024 with a cohort of 25 students, as “a good step. … But it was not enough.”
“Our citizens deserve educational opportunities, especially those who aren’t able to commute or relocate to the main campus in San Luis Obispo, let alone any other CSU, UC, or other universities in the state,” Armstrong said. “We as the university are committed to enhancing our impact on the region. We’re committed to being better stewards.”
Hancock President Walthers described Hart’s AB 1462 proposal as a crucial precursor to the new arrangement between Hancock and Cal Poly.
“We can’t underestimate Assemblymember Hart taking the ball across the finish line, because he really did,” Walthers said. “That bill that he filed was huge, and getting [the CSU system] to take notice [and say], ‘Oh, we can’t just kind of keep pushing this down the road anymore.”
This article appears in Mar 20-30, 2025.
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