Clark College history

On June 14, 1934, Clark Junior College honored its first – and only – graduate at its “first all-school banquet and dance” at Vancouver’s Castle Grill.

Enrollment grew so rapidly on the extension campus that in 1938 the trustees voted to move all operations to Oregon’s urban center.

While students on the South Atlanta campus fretted over final examinations in the winter of 1939, work was begun across town on an entirely new physical plant adjoining Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College.

After the Kaiser Shipyards boom of World War II, Clark College rapidly grew to meet the educational needs of the expanded population, the 1944 Serviceman's Readjustment Act and the baby boom.

In 1951, the Applied Arts Center became its first building at the current location (its sixth), when the college first offered evening classes.

He later founded the Worcester Foundation of Experimental Biology, which released the final version of the Pill to the public in 1960.

In 1965 the school merged with Lewis & Clark and was renamed Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College.

In 1966, almost 100 years after Albany Collegiate Institute was chartered, Lewis & Clark and the Synod of Oregon agreed to sever their formal bonds.

Alice Coonley Higgins became chair of the Board of Trustees in 1967, the first woman to assume this role at a private research university in the United States.

Founded in 1982, Clark’s AACSB-accredited School of Management, which today attracts students from around the world, provides business education with an emphasis on ethical conduct, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility.

In November 1987, after more than a year of discussion, the Boards of Trustees of Atlanta University and Clark College authorized an exploration of the potential advantages of closer working arrangements between the two institutions, including their consolidation into one university.

On June 24, 1988, the Boards of both Clark College and Atlanta University made the historic decision to consolidate the two institutions, creating Clark Atlanta University.

In 2000, Lewis & Clark purchased from the Sisters of Saint Francis an 18-acre estate immediately south of the undergraduate campus.

In 2014 the college established its first 4-year program, a baccalaureate in the medical field, and became recognized as a 4-year college.

Ronald A. Johnson, Ph.D. became the fourth President for Clark Atlanta University on July 1, 2015.