Foothill College - History

History

In July 1956, Henry M. Gunn, superintendent of the Palo Alto School District, called a meeting of local school superintendents that led to the creation of Foothill College. Calvin Flint, then President of Monterey Peninsula College was hired as the first District Superintendent and President; he started work on March 1, 1958.

Candidates for the new college's name, besides Foothill, were Peninsula, Junipero Serra, Mid-Peninsula, Earl Warren, Herbert Hoover, North Santa Clara, Altos, Valley, Skyline, Highland, and Intercity. At first the name was Foothill Junior College, but because Flint insisted that his new college would be "not junior to anyone", the Board dropped the "Junior" in September 1958.

Foothill held its first classes in the old Highway School campus on El Camino Real in Mountain View on September 15, 1958. It was accredited by March of the next year and was the first school in the state to ever reach full accreditation in less than six months. The owl mascot originated from a concrete owl that was a decoration on the Highway School's bell tower; it was later moved to the new campus.

Foothill's unique neo-Japanese architecture is well-known among architects; the campus was designed by architect Ernest Kump and landscape architect Hideo Sasaki.

Traditionally, Foothill serves the communities of Los Altos Hills, Los Altos, Mountain View and Palo Alto; together these communities form the northwest corner of Silicon Valley. The college sits next to Interstate 280, at the interchange with El Monte Road.

In 2002, a second campus was opened on the site of the former Cubberly High School at 4000 Middlefield Road in Palo Alto. The Middlefield Campus is leased from the Palo Alto school district, and currently serves approximately 1,000 students.

In 2003, the college began the most dramatic construction project ever attempted since its founding, to accommodate the fact that a campus designed for 3,500 is now serving 19,000. It is renovating nearly all buildings, tearing up and rebuilding its potholed parking lots, demolishing several unsafe buildings (including the campus center), and constructing several replacement buildings. Two of the new buildings feature sod roofs (part of the lower campus complex).