History
The school was established on March 11, 1964 as a community college named Gainesville Junior College. Classes were first held in the fall of 1966, with an enrollment of 419 students, and the school utilized facilities at the Gainesville Civic Center and First Baptist Church of Gainesville. The school moved into its own dedicated facilities beginning in the winter of 1967. The initial enrollment was approximately double what had been projected, and the school continued to enroll more students than had been projected by long-range studies, necessitating a tripling of educational facilities during the College’s early years.
In 1987, the school's name was changed to Gainesville College.
During the fall of 2000, the Georgia Board of Regents granted then-Gainesville College permission to establish the Gainesville College University Center on the Gainesville campus. The University Center enabled the College to form partnerships with other baccalaureate degree granting institutions to provide coursework leading to the bachelor’s degree on the Gainesville campus. In October, 2005, the Board of Regents voted to expand the school's mission and change its name to Gainesville State College. The school was reclassified as a four-year state college, which allowed it to begin offering a limited selection of baccalaureate degrees. The first four-year degree offered by the school was a Bachelor of Science in Applied Environmental Spatial Analysis, and the selection of four-year degrees offered has expanded through the years.
In the spring of 2001, the school was granted permission to open a second campus in Athens, Georgia. This site was opened in the fall of 2001, and was relocated in 2003 to a nearby site in Oconee County, Georgia. The Oconee campus was expanded in 2009 with the addition of an 11,000 square foot multipurpose Faculty Center.
Enrollment growth in recent years (to 8,800 students in 2009, with 6,597 enrolled at the Gainesville campus) have resulted in the construction and renovation of several buildings, bringing the total number of buildings at the Gainesville campus to thirteen. The most recent major addition was a building devoted to science, engineering, and technology.
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