ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Hundreds of college students toured their new campus at Lake Nona on Monday before classes start next week.
The facility is Valencia College's fifth campus in Central Florida with an emphasis on technology.
School officials are promising high-paying jobs for graduates. The sterling, $22 million, three-story building sprawls over 83,000 feet and features the latest in interactive technology.
WFTV was there as teachers trained on touch screen white boards.
There won't be many books because everything is digital.
"Oh it's beautiful. I watched it be built, and they put it up pretty quickly, and I was so excited to come in," said freshman Camila Sacco.
Sacco will start classes next week along with 1,500 who make up the first class at the Lake Nona campus.
She'll be learning from the likes of Ada Kane, a Harvard-educated research associate who studies diabetes at the nearby Sanford-Burnham Institute.
Collaboration with the burgeoning Medical City is a major focus for Valencia's new campus.
"Students will really get to use some of the high-tech instruments that we use in a research facility," said Kane.
With just a two-year associate's in science degree from Valencia, students have a 95 percent success rate for landing a job in their field. The average starting pay is $43,000.
"Lab technicians or lab assistants, they'll be working on the high equipment and preparing the lab samples that they'll be using in their labs," said Mike Bosley, dean of the Valencia Lake Nona campus.
This campus will offer both two- and four-year degrees.
The plan is to feed employees to Medical City as it grows to a projected workforce of 30,000 over the next five years.