Broward College - History

History

The institution was founded in 1959 as the Junior College of Broward County (JCBC). It opened its doors the following year under the leadership of President Joe B. Rushing, with a faculty of 28 serving a class of 701 students. Until the college’s first permanent buildings were completed in 1963, students attended classes in the former Naval Air Station Junior High buildings on the western edge of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

After helping JCBC through its formative years and onto firm footing, Rushing in 1965 announced he was returning to his home state of Texas to become founding president of Tarrant County Community College in Fort Worth. He was followed by Dr. Myron Blee, and then in 1968, A. Hugh Adams, superintendent of public education in Charlotte County, Florida, was appointed president and served in that role until 1986.

Changes began almost immediately. A month after his arrival, the college changed its name to Broward Junior College. Two months after Dr. Adams’ arrival, the Florida Legislature removed junior colleges from oversight by county school boards, and transformed their advisory boards into district boards of trustees.

Adams’ interests lay in expanding access to the college for citizens living throughout the county. In his 19 years as president, South and North campuses were created, as was the Downtown Center and the Tigertail Lake Center.

Succeeding Adams was Dr. Will Holcombe, a protégée of Dr. James L. Wattenbarger, the architect of Florida’s community college system and executive vice-president at Brevard Community College. Dr. Holcombe had served in a variety of administrative capacities at Broward before joining Brevard’s administrative team.

During his 17 years as president, Holcombe worked to expand infrastructure and to create community partnerships to better serve the needs of the community and its workforce.

Dr. Larry Calderon succeeded Holcombe upon his retirement in 2004. Dr. Calderon, an expert in strategic planning, was serving as president of Ventura College when he was appointed Broward's fifth president, and its first of Hispanic heritage. When Dr. Calderon left the college in 2006, Holcombe returned to serve as interim president through the appointment of J. David Armstrong, Jr., in July 2007. President Armstrong came to the college from his position as Chancellor of the Florida College System. Armstrong brought more than 25 years of experience as a leader in higher education and economic development to his presidency at Broward College. Under Armstrong’s leadership, the College has been ranked among the top community colleges nationwide for the past two years based on student success indicators by the Aspen Institute and continues to be consistently ranked in the top 10 producers of degrees nationally. During the most challenging state budget reductions in the College's history, President Armstrong has managed to balance the budget through efficiencies while adding new programs such as manufacturing and new workforce bachelor’s degrees in Science, Math, Engineering and Technology (STEM) areas to serve student and community needs. While most colleges and universities implemented significant cost increases to students, Broward College this year kept tuition flat for the first time in more than a decade, resulting in the lowest cost college and university tuition in South Florida for students and their families.

Armstrong helped Broward College develop a new strategic plan focused on "Transforming Students' Lives by Connecting, Challenging and Completing." The plan emphasizes online learning, math redesign, a summer program for developmental students, student educational plans and other initiatives to lead Broward College to "best in class" status among its peers as measured by student learning gains and success.

Many documents describing this history have been digitized by the Broward College Archives and Special Collections department on Central Campus and are available online at the Internet Archives.