A brand new campus, for 64 lucky students, has opened just a few steps past the library annex. Opened for the first time on Jan 28, the Children's Campus has currently enrolled 34 kids, ranging from infants to 5-year-olds.

The child care center is brightly colored, with furniture built to fancy a child's imagination.

"I don't know any place quite like this," said Byron Sigal, director of the facility.

"This is going to be a very exciting place," said Sigal, who earned his teaching credential and an MA at SF State years before and previously worked at UCSF.

The facility is not at full capacity yet, having chosen to slowly ramp up to its maximum capacity.

Unlike the Children's Center run by Associated Students, Inc., the Children's Campus is an unsubsidized childcare service, mostly for faculty members, which emphasizes research and development.

Both child care centers work based on a play- based curriculum for the development for the children. Play-based curriculums rely on communication during everyday events and games to develop the children mentally, physically and socially.

The teachers talk to the children about everything they are doing using adult vocabulary. So, no baby talk for these kids.

The rooms are equipped with two-way mirrors and are bugged for sound to monitor the children.

Sigal said the protocol for allowing researchers is still being developed.

"This is also a training center for the future workers of the childcare profession," Sigal said.

"It s very important that [interns] have that firsthand experience," said Nodelyn Abayan, a full-time teacher at the facility, who earned her masters in child development at SF State.

Abayan, a native Filipina, said she believes so passionately in what the Children's Campus does that she hopes to start one just like it at a university in the Philippines. She pursued a position at the facility because she enjoyed her time as an intern at the Child Studies Center, the facility that once stood where the Children's Campus is today.

The Children's Campus currently has six interns from the child and adolescent development department. They hope to have 20 total when at full capacity, said Kelly Dotson, the programs manager. Dotson also co teaches the internship class with Professor Julie Law.

Shenna Rodeo, a graduating child and adolescent development major is one of the first six interns at the Children's Campus.

Concentrating on young child and family in her schooling, Rodeo works in one of the two rooms designated for infants with an associate teacher.

Rodeo, who was randomly placed at the childcare facility via Dotson's internship class, said she appreciates the education she gets from working at the facility.

"I'm discovering my own teaching style and forming my learning philosophy," she said.

She credited this development to the patience and dedication of the teachers, many of whom have doctorate and masters degrees.

"They teach me actual skills and give explanations for everything they do."

Though the interns are new to childcare and the research done will mean that professionals will be studying the development of the children, Sigal is sure of the children's safety.

"Nothing could happen here that would harm a child," Sigal said.

Rodeo said she agreed, adding that the research and the interns are not the focus of the facility.

"The first person we value here is the child," she said.