Check out the Seminole Campus history which is detailed on their website....
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From the SPC News Room - Media Kit website....
History of SPC
In the 1920s, community leaders in St. Petersburg, Fla., realized that the area needed an institution of higher learning that could provide job skills to residents of modest means. At the time, higher education was only available to those families that could afford it.
As a result, a number of business and political leaders got together and conceived of a two-year college that, in 1927, would begin operations in an unused section of the then-new St. Petersburg High School. Initial enrollment was 102 students. The name of the new school: St. Petersburg Junior College.
The new community college soon moved to a former public school building overlooking Mirror Lake in downtown St. Petersburg.
From those modest beginnings more than 80 years ago, St. Petersburg College (the “Junior” was dropped in 2002, when the school began offering four-year degrees) has grown into a multi-campus, two-year/four-year public institution with 10 learning sites throughout Pinellas County. More than 63,000 students a year are served by SPC, including students in residence from many countries. Learning sites are in St. Petersburg (four), Clearwater, Tarpon Springs, Pinellas Park, Largo and Seminole.
The Seminole Campus includes the C.W. Bill Young University Partnership Center (UPC), which opened in 1999 with a half-dozen Florida four-year institutions in collaboration. The UPC enables students to earn various baccalaureate and graduate degrees from partner institutions without leaving Pinellas County, and its partnerships total 16 and include three out-of-state institutions: Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University, both in Ohio, and Indiana University.
SPC's courses also are offered in various community facilities throughout the county via the Lifelong Learning program. Others — including entire programs — are transmitted to students by way of the Internet. Since early 2001, the College has offered more online programs than any other community college in the state, and more than most of Florida's universities.
It was announced in January 2000 that SPC was one of eight two-year colleges nationwide to receive a $255,000 E-Commerce grant from Microsoft Corp. SPC became partners with Microsoft in creating a groundbreaking Associate in Science degree in E-Commerce, plus eight certificate programs, to meet the needs of the corporate and industrial community in the Tampa Bay area.
By the start of the 2006-07 school year, SPC’s baccalaureate programs had expanded to 15: six in Education, plus Nursing, Technology Management, Orthotics & Prosthetics, Dental Hygiene, Public Safety Administration, Veterinary Technology, International Business, Paralegal Studies, and the baccalaureate in Banking that began in August 2006.
More than 70 years of tradition took a slight turn in October 2001 as the Board of Trustees, following up on the dropping of “Junior” from the college’s name, chose a new SPC mascot, logo and seal. The team name of “Trojans” was dropped in favor of “Titans,” while the logo was overhauled to reflect that change in double-gender fashion (silhouettes of a male and female Titan). The College seal was altered only slightly, the major change being the absence of “Junior” across the top of the circular emblem. That same month, the College’s Web address also changed – from www.spjc.edu to www.spcollege.edu.
St. Petersburg College faces the future with confidence and with a sense of excitement about what is yet to come. It continues to attract students from Pinellas County and all of West Central Florida as it attracts thousands more from throughout the nation and world who conduct their studies via the Internet. It continues to add programs and courses of study that respond to the needs of the business community. And it extends its reach around the globe through educational programs and partnerships of all kinds.
The people who founded St. Petersburg Junior College more than 80 years ago would be astounded by the college’s steady development and growth.