Established | 1965 |
---|---|
Endowment | $5,127,981 |
President | Sheila Edwards Lange |
Students | 16,814 |
Location | Seattle, Washington |
Campus | Urban, 15 acres |
Language | English |
Seattle Central College is a state college located in Seattle, Washington, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. It is one of the three colleges that comprise the Seattle Colleges District. Its programs include Information Technologies, Business Administration, Healthcare, Apparel Design, Cosmetology, Culinary Arts, Graphic Design, and other programs. The college has been called one of the nation's most diverse colleges. There is a substantial international student population served by the International Education Programs division as well as many immigrant and refugee students taking ESL courses through the Basic and Transitional Studies division. Seattle Central College also encompasses the Wood Construction Center and Seattle Maritime Academy, which are on separate campuses in order to house the very specific tools and workspaces needed.
Seattle Central's origins can be traced to 1902, with the opening of Broadway High School. It operated as a traditional high school until the end of World War II, when it was converted to a vocational and adult education institution for the benefit of veterans who wanted to finish high school. As a result, in 1946, its high school students were all transferred to Lincoln High School, and the Edison Technical School (which already shared a campus with Broadway High) was expanded to fill the entire facility.
Edison started offering college-level courses when it was reconstituted as Seattle Community College in September 1966. North Seattle Community College and South Seattle Community College opened their doors in 1970, whereupon Seattle Community College was renamed Seattle Central Community College.
In March 2014, the Seattle Community Colleges District Board of Trustees voted unanimously to change the name of the District to Seattle Colleges and to change the names of the colleges to Seattle Central College, North Seattle College and South Seattle College. The decision followed similar decisions by nine other Washington state community colleges that had recently started to offer baccalaureate degrees.
Seattle Central College is an urban campus on Seattle's Capitol Hill, located along its main thoroughfare, Broadway, and west of Cal Anderson Park. The college occupies 13 buildings. Its main structure is the five-story Broadway-Edison Building, which stands south of the four-story Science and Math Building, west of the four-story Mitchell Activity Center and the Bookstore, and north of the three-story Broadway Performance Hall, the South Plaza, and the five-story Fine Arts Building. Other structures in the southern part of the campus include a three-story South Annex, Erickson Theater, and Siegal Center (the Seattle Colleges District headquarters), which contains the School of Cosmetology. There is also a four-story parking garage.