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Pensacola State College history
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Pensacola Junior College held its first class there on September 13, 1948, with an enrollment of 136 students and James L. McCord as the first director.
September 13, 1948, was the official opening date of the College which began in the Aiken Boarding House on the corner of Palafox and Cervantes Streets with 136 students.
WJC was the first black junior college built in Florida and had served the black community since 1949.
Due to increasing enrollment, the College moved one block south on Palafox Street to the former Pensacola High School facility in June 1953.
Henry L. Ashmore became Pensacola Junior College’s first president in 1954.
The college faculty had expanded accordingly and the weekly employee newsletter, Green & White, was initiated in 1955 to facilitate internal communication.
The carillon was named for M.J. Menge, a 1956 PJC graduate and the College’s general counsel for thirty-one years.
The 23,389-square-foot facility will be home to cybersecurity, computer science, and mathematics. It replaced the 60-year-old Mary Ellison Baars building which was the first facility constructed on the Pensacola campus in 1956.
Students attended classes on the new 9th Avenue campus for the first time in September 1957.
He had served as dean of instruction at PJC since 1957.
In 1958, PJC began its second decade by introducing a two-year nursing program — the first of its kind in the Southeast.
Instructional television came to PJC in 1961.
PJC became one of three colleges in the state to establish a dental hygiene program in 1962.
In 1963, President Ashmore accepted the presidency at Armstrong State College in Savannah, Georgia.
The PJC Foundation was incorporated on November 1, 1965, with Crawford Rainwater as the first president.
The area’s first planetarium open to the public and a dental health clinic were included in an addition to the Mary Ellison Baars Science Building in 1965.
In September 1967,WSRE-TV Channel 23 went on the air open-circuit, beaming enrichment and college credit programs to the community.
The Triple G Club was founded in 1968.
In 1971, PJC’s Milton Center was created to better serve Santa Rosa County.
WSRE began broadcasting in color in 1971.
In 1973, PJC celebrated its silver anniversary and dedicated a new $1 million Career Development Center that provided free services to more than 22,000 people each year.
Women were welcomed to varsity sports in 1974, and Joy DeSensi was hired part-time to coach the Lady Pirates basketball team.
In 1975, a $1 million Learning Resources Center with state-of-the-art technology opened on the Pensacola campus.
A new campus in Warrington opened for classes on August 22, 1977.
In February 1980, President Harrison announced plans for retirement.
Following a national search, Horace “Ed” Hartsell became Pensacola Junior College’s third president in May 1980.
Doug Worley, Dean of Personnel Affairs, was selected as director of the Milton Center in 1980 and named provost later that year.
Carson had been selected as the first full-time coach for women’s basketball in 1980.
In 1981, PJC began an academic honors program, the first to feature small classes and challenging material.
Bailey had been softball coach since the Lady Pirates team formed in 1981.
From its beginning in 1981, the softball team had played all home games at the Milton Center.
A pristine eighty-acre site along Highway 90 was purchased for the new Milton Center in 1982.
In 1984, J.C. Thedford became the first provost of the Pensacola campus.
Designed to preserve its natural environment, the Milton Center opened for classes in January 1985 and offered new programs in horticulture and wildlife ecology.
In 1985, the Lady Pirates won the FCCAA State Basketball Championship, and Coach Vicki Carson was named FCCAA Coach of the Year.
The Academy of Teaching Excellence was established in 1986 by Charles Atwell, executive vice president.
Mark Whiten, a PSC student-athlete, who was a fifth-round pick for the Toronto Blue Jay in the 1986 Major League Baseball Draft.
In 1989, PJC opened a Downtown Center in the Blount Building, offering courses geared for working adults and the local business community.
PJC honored its first president by naming the extensively renovated Building 8 as the Henry L. Ashmore Fine Arts Center in May 1990.
The NISOD Excellence Awards were established in 1991 to provide NISOD-member colleges with an opportunity to recognize individuals doing extraordinary work.
In 1993, PJC sports enjoyed a banner year with the Pirates winning two national championships.
Delaino had served as Senior Vice President and Vice President of Planning and Administration at the College since 1993.
The Kugelman Center for Telecommunications opened in 1994 to house WSRE-TV. The $7 million, 43,000-square-foot facility is home to the area’s first digital television station.
The $5 million LIFE Center sports complex at the Milton Center was dedicated in 1995.
President Hartsell and the District Board of Trustees began a program in 1995 to acquire land adjacent to the Pensacola campus for College expansion and growth.
Continued growth prompted the move to a permanent, four-story facility on West Garden Street in 1996.
PJC’s Milton Center became the site for the University of Florida’s West Florida Research and Education Center in 1996.
In 1997, President Hartsell and the District Board of Trustees announced plans for an eighty-foot bell tower on the Pensacola campus as part of PJC’s fiftieth anniversary celebration.
His inauguration coincided with PJC’s fiftieth anniversary on September 8, 1998.
In December 1998, the PJC Foundation launched the College’s first capital campaign.
Women’s volleyball began in fall 1998 with Kim Hollon coaching.
PJC’s first Endowed Teaching Chair, named in honor of Margaret Moore Nickelsen, was awarded to Lou Fazio, dental health professor, in 1999.
He has served as the College’s athletic director since 1999.
The first Anna Lamar Switzer Endowed Teaching Chair was awarded to photography professor Warren Thompson in 2000.
Construction for the Warrington campus Health Sciences Complex and the Anna Lamar Switzer Center for Visual Arts began in January 2001.The first Anna Lamar Switzer Endowed Teaching Chair was awarded to photography professor Warren Thompson.
On July 3, 2001, WSRE became the second public broadcaster in Florida to air a digital signal.
Between 2001-02 the Lady Pirates enjoyed great success.
The station initiated a capital campaign in 2002 with a goal of $2 million to complete the digital conversion.
The 2002 Pirates baseball team enjoyed renovated facilities and placed third in the State Baseball Tournament, setting a team record of 39 wins.
For the first time, the Foundation presented Governor Emeritus awards to Wayne Peacock and Jim Stolhanske in 2002.
President Atwell announced plans for retirement in 2002.
In 2002, paramedic faculty member Joe Diamond was awarded the Margaret Moore Nickelson Endowed Teaching Chair.
In 2003, Gael Frazer became the College’s first associate vice president for Institutional Diversity.
In 2003, Gael Frazer became the College’s first Associate Vice President for Institutional Diversity.
In fall 2003, ceramics professor Bill Clover was awarded the Anna Lamar Switzer Endowed Teaching Chair.
The Pirate baseball team won the State Championship, and Coach Bill Hamilton was named Coach of the Year in May 2004.
Category Three Hurricane Ivan devastated the area in September 2004, leaving more than $10 million in damage to the College’s three campuses, Downtown Center, and NAS Center.
Lady Pirates’ basketball coach Vicki Carson won her five-hundredth game in January 2005.
In March 2005, the 16,257 square-foot Jean and Paul Amos Performance Studio was dedicated with several Public Broadcasting celebrities attending the weekend event at WSRE.
A new student literary magazine, Issue, debuted in June 2005 with Marzia Accardo as the first editor.
Beginning August 2005, PJC’s academic calendar changed to three full semesters — fall, spring, and summer — with each offering four sessions with different starting and ending dates.
David Sutton served as NAS Center director from its inception through 2005.
In fall 2005, sculpture faculty member Michael Boles was awarded the Anna Lamar Switzer Endowed Teaching Chair.
Partnering with Habitat for Humanity, the College began a carpentry program in May 2006, giving students experience by building local Habitat homes.
The 2006 FCCAA Hall of Fame inducted Ken McAferty, the college’s Brain Bowl coach for twenty-three years, and Vicki Carson, women’s basketball coach for twenty-five years.
In 2006, phlebotomy faculty member Wilma Duncans-Burnett was awarded the Mary Ekdahl Smart Endowed Teaching Chair.
All-College Day was launched February 2, 2007, with all faculty and staff participating in professional development workshops.
Retired President Ed Hartsell was honored with the dedication of the newly renovated Hartsell Basketball Arena on February 21, 2007.
Harvard University medical faculty conducted a three-day seminar at PJC’s Mary Ekdahl Smart Center for Patient Simulation Training and Research on the Warrington campus in May 2007.
The Hobbs Center, created through a $1 million gift in October 2007, benefits Adult High School and Secondary Education students as well as students taking college-credit classes to become teachers.
The Corsair student newspaper won the national Pacemaker Award for the first time for its online version, eCorsair, in 2007.
President Tom Delaino was honored for outstanding leadership in the community with the PACE Pioneer Award in February 2008.
NASA astronaut and PJC alum Alan Poindexter took a specially minted, gold PJC medallion with him on a 5.3 million-mile Atlantis space shuttle mission in February 2008.
The Practical Nursing Program ranked number one out of all 1,036 programs across the nation for the period of April through September 2008.
In April 2009, the Milton Center entry road was renamed Worley Boulevard in honor of Douglas Worley, the Center’s first provost.
During the September 2009 investiture ceremony for President Ed Meadows, the District Board of Trustees named all previous Pensacola Junior College presidents as Presidents Emeriti: Henry L. Ashmore,T. Felton Harrison, Horace “Ed” Hartsell, Charles A. Atwell, and G.Thomas Delaino.
In fall 2009, photography faculty member Mark Francis was awarded the Anna Lamar Switzer Endowed Teaching Chair.
On July 1, 2010, the College name officially changed from Pensacola Junior College to Pensacola State College to reflect its expanded mission.
The College broke ground in July 2010 for its $9.4 million South Santa Rosa Center, becoming the first College building to be constructed as a certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building.
WSRE, PBS for the Gulf Coast, won a Bronze Telly Award and a People’s Telly Award in 2010 for its original documentary, “Gulf Islands National Seashore: The Treasure of the Gulf Coast,” narrated by renowned documentarian Ken Burns.
In January 2011, inaugural classes began for Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) and Bachelor of Applied Science in Administration and Supervision (BAS) programs .
For the first time in the college’s history, bachelor’s degrees were awarded at the December 2011 graduation.
The Lady Pirates basketball players made history in March 2012 as the college’s first athletic team to win back-to-back FCSAA State Championships.
Pensacola State College received the first annual Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine in November 2012.
In September 2013, PSC celebrated its 65th anniversary as the oldest college in the area and launched a new Alumni Affairs office to better serve the college's more than 96,000 graduates.
In June 2014, PSC and the University of West Florida launched the PSC2UWF partnership to better facilitate students who complete an associate degree from PSC and transfer to UWF to complete a bachelor's degree.
McGuire Martin also donated $25,000 to the scholarship fund named for his late wife, Molly McGuire, who died in 2014.
Ralph Ruyle, a former Pensacola State math instructor, died in 2014.
In January 2015, PSC and the University of West Florida entered a partnership to admit select students from PSC’s Bachelor of Applied Science degree program into UWF’s Master of Business Administration or Master of Science in Administration, Health Care Administration Track.
Visual Arts Professor Bill Clover began his 50th year teaching at the College in August 2015.
The scholarship donation is a continuation of the credit union’s support of PSC. In November 2016, Pen Air gifted PSC with a $100,000 contribution to establish the Pen Air Federal Credit Union Endowed Scholarship.
At the 2016 national ADDY awards, Pensacola State College students Amber Sidner and Zach Blessing each won silver awards.
In February 2017, Visual Arts students won 52 of 94 ADDY Awards in the regional college and university competition, including 19 gold, 30 silver, and three Judges’ Choice awards.
Renovations started in 2017 with the repainting of the 40-foot diameter dome.
In August 2018, the late Carl Duke, former head of Pensacola State’s Visual Arts department, bequeathed a sizable portion of his art collection to the College.
In October 2018, Pensacola State College became part of Pathway USA, a collaborative program between the University of South Alabama and select community and state colleges to create a seamless transition to USA for transfer students who earn an associate’s degree.
In November 2018, ground was broken for the $13 million east wing of Pensacola State College’s new STEM building.
In December 2018, Pensacola State President Ed Meadows was tapped to join the Governor-elect Ron DeSantis and Lt.
In the “Best Colleges 2018 Edition”, Pensacola State tied for 4th in Top Public Schools-Regional Colleges-South – the highest ranked college in Florida.
Demolished in January 2019, the Mary Ellison Baars Building was 60 years old and the College’s oldest structure.
In February 2019, 10 of Pensacola State’s most-accomplished Pirates were inducted into the College’s Athletics Hall of Fame.
In July 2019, Pensacola State College’s RN to BSN program was ranked at No.
In September 2019, the College started a Commercial Vehicle Driver Career Certificate Program.
In September 2019, Sandy Sansing Universal Scholars were announced.
In November 2019, The Corsair student newspaper placed second in the General Excellence category and won several other awards at the 2019 Florida College System Publications Awards Conference.
During fall 2019, new Pensacola State College digital signs were installed at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Underwood Street on the Pensacola campus and on United States 98 on the Warrington campus.
In 2019, the Usrys donated $100,000 to the College to establish the Dona and Milton Usry Endowed Accounting Scholarship.
The 2020 event was canceled because of COVID-19. It was the first Lumberjack Festival since 2019.
In January 2020, United States News and World Report’s “Best Online Bachelor’s Programs 2020 Edition” ranked the College’s online BSN program as third among Florida College System institutions.
In February 2020, five legends were inducted into the Pensacola State College’s Athletics Hall of Fame.
In April 2020, Pensacola State student Julie Riser was one of three national winners of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development’s (NISOD) Student Essay Contest.
In September 2020, the College received a second $5,000 donation from Veterans National Homecare for first-generation-in-college scholarships.
In September 2020, TRIO-Student Support Services received a five-year $1.89 million grant while TRIO-Veterans Student Support Services received a five-year $1.25 million grant.
In October 2020, more than $90,000 was raised at PSC’s 12th annual Day of Clays held at the Santa Rosa Shooting Center in Pace.
In November 2020, McGuire’s Irish Pub and members of the Irish Politicians Club donated $50,350 to the Molly McGuire Culinary Arts Endowed Scholarship Fund.
The Phase 2 implementation began in Fall 2020 and started the process of replacing the Student Records System.
In midyear 2020, Pensacola State College’s SkillsUSA chapter was named a 2020 Gold Medal Chapter of Distinction.
14, 2020, PSC honored the Valentinos by naming a lecture hall in Building 10 on the Pensacola campus in their honor.
Throughout 2020, the Lou Ross Center and Hartsell Arena received facelifts in 2020 and much-needed updates.
The Change Makers program was created in 2020 by Jo-Ann and Michael Price, who had hosted the College’s annual Holiday Experience.
In April 2021, Pensacola State College unveiled its new state-of-the-art Baars Technology Building during a ribbon cutting ceremony.
In April 2021, the College’s SkillsUSA chapter won four gold, two silver and four bronze medals at the organization’s Florida 2021 Virtual State Leadership and Skills Conference.
On April 28, 2021, the Cantonment Rotary Club awarded scholarships to 18 PSC students.
On May 7, 2021, the 15th Annual Big Break Golf Classic raised more than $27,500 to support the College’s greatest needs.
In Summer 2021, the Margie and Alan Moore Endowed Scholarship was established as part of the College’s Your Community, Your Legacy campaign.
In Summer 2021, Pensacola State College was ranked No.
In Fall 2021, WSRE’s documentary, “Hank Locklin: Country Music’s Timeless Tenor,’’ was nominated for a 2021 Suncoast Regional Emmy in the “Documentary Cultural” category.
9, 2021, four Pirates were inducted into the Pensacola State College Athletics Hall of Fame.
10, 2021, the College honored donors who helped students earn an education at the second annual Change Makers – Expanding Possibilities reception.
In January 2022, Pensacola State College announced that a women’s soccer team will join the Athletics Department in the fall.
The proposed opening date for the Pensacola State College Charter School is August 2022.
United States News and World Report also ranked the College 32nd in the 2022 Best Online Bachelor’s Program for Veterans category.
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| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Florida State College at Jacksonville | 1965 | $182.8M | 2,097 | - |
| Daytona State College | 1957 | $53.3M | 1,304 | 8 |
| Miami Dade College | 1960 | $67.4M | 10 | 466 |
| Indian River State College | 1960 | $10.6M | 1,456 | 132 |
| Northwest Florida State College | 1963 | $8.7M | 500 | 82 |
| Santa Fe College | 1966 | $2.4M | 1,271 | 110 |
| College Of San Mateo | - | $8.1M | 711 | - |
| Tyler Junior College | 1926 | $16.0M | 959 | 1 |
| Flagler College | 1968 | $55.0M | 721 | 16 |
| Motlow State Community College | 1969 | $16.6M | 200 | - |
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Pensacola State College may also be known as or be related to Pensacola Junior College Milton and Pensacola State College.