In his shell-toe sneakers, he darted toward his mother, waving a brown sheet of construction paper with a bouquet of chartreuse flowers pasted on it.

It was nearly 5 p.m. and 4-year-old Andy Rogell was the last child at the Child Development Center to be picked up by his mom.

“They’re green because they’re like zombies for you,” he said to his mom, Amanda Rogell, 30, who had just come from the Nursing Program classes across campus.

Taking 13 units this semester and working 16 hours per week at a retail store, Amanda Rogell said that sending her son to the Child Development Center makes being a full-time student possible.

“Before he could come here, I could only go part-time,” Rogell said. “I would stay with him during the day and take classes in the evening, so it was taking me forever.”

Built on the south side of EC in 1993, one of the Child Development Center’s aims is to help students, like Rogell, to pursue a college education, Sandy Parvis, director of the Child Development Center, said.

While the Child Development Center is open to the community, 25 to 30 percent of its children have parents who are EC students and many of these students help pay for their childrens’  fee-based preschool using government subsidized programs, Parvis said.

“With the CCAMPIS (Child Care Access Means Parents In School) federal grant program that pays for child care, parents are able to get the full day,” she added.

In addition to providing EC student parents with childcare, the preschool works with the California Early Childhood Mentor program to give classroom experience to EC students hoping to become teachers.

Parvis said that each of the Child Development Center’s Mentors spends more than nine hours each week supervising practicum students majoring in childhood education at EC.

“Before our teachers become Mentors, they have to go through a rigorous process that includes other staff members coming in and grading them,” Parvis said.

Having successfully completed this process, Charmaine Mutuc, an EC graduate who is a mentor, said she decided to apply for a full-time teaching position at the Child Development Center because she enjoyed her experience as a student-teacher there.

“The child development philosophy taught at EC is practiced here,” Mutuc said, “I like that we are child-centered.”

Better known as “Miss Charmaine” to Andy Rogell and her other students, Mutuc also said that she’s so inspired by working with children at the Child Development Center; she plans to continue her own education.

“When I get my master’s, I plan to teach child development at a community college,” Mutuc said.