College gives students a view of the harbor and their future

By REBEKAH DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Views from the Whidbey campus of Skagit Valley College provide some of the most park-like vistas in town.

The eight-acre community college is on former Navy property on the hill above the harbor, and some of its 2,000 students were born in the old Navy hospital where they now attend class.

The student body is non-traditional in some ways, dean Mick Donahue says, with some 60 percent connected to the military, whether active duty, retired, dependents or civilian employees.

More than 100 high school students take classes at the college through the Running Start program, and the college also works closely with the base and the senior center.

It also works collaboratively with the city, with the Oak Harbor library sharing a building with the college library.

Perhaps the most unusual facet of the college is its marine maintenance technology program, one of just a few in the nation. Students at the separate facility near the base learn every facet of boat repair, from rigging to engines to body work, says co-instructor Larry Determan.

Most students are retired military seeking a new career, others are displaced workers such as loggers, others come out of high school seeking the high-demand jobs.

Student Kevin O'Harrow, 45, enrolled when he was laid off after 16 years as a commercial fisherman in Alaska.

The program "kind of keeps me close to the water," he says, and gives him the skills to go about anywhere. "There are boats all over the world."

His lab partner, 61-year-old Air Force veteran Richard Mallchok, moved to Oak Harbor from Ohio specifically to enroll.

Mallchok says he loved the freedom to "putz around" for his second career, and the prospect of staying outdoors rather than taking a desk job where the walls would close him in.

He planned to use his new skills to help manage the marina a friend is building in the Caribbean, but says it might be a tough choice between there and the beauty of Oak Harbor.

"I've died," he says, "and gone to heaven."