St. Petersburg College

Last updated
St. Petersburg College
Seal-of-St-Petersburg-College.svg
Former names
St. Petersburg Junior College (1927–2001) [1]
MottoLux et veritas (Latin)
Motto in English
"Light and truth"
Type Public college
Established1927;97 years ago (1927)
Parent institution
 Florida College System
Accreditation SACS
Endowment $32.1 million (2024) [2]
Budget$168.6 million (2024) [3]
President Tonjua Williams
Academic staff
322 (full-time) [4]
900 (part-time) [4]
Undergraduates 23,501 (fall 2022) [4]
Location
St. Petersburg
,
Florida
,
United States

27°46′43″N82°43′58″W / 27.77861°N 82.73278°W / 27.77861; -82.73278
CampusLarge city [4]
Colors Blue, gold, and white
   
Nickname Titans
Sporting affiliations
 NJCAA Region 8 – Suncoast Conference
MascotTitus the Titan
Website www.spcollege.edu
St. Petersburg College.svg

St. Petersburg College (SPC) is a public college in St. Petersburg, Florida. Part of the Florida College System, SPC offers several associate and baccalaureate degree programs. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Contents

History

SPC was established in 1927 as St. Petersburg Junior College by Captain George M. Lynch, the city superintendent of schools for St. Petersburg. It was founded as a private, non-profit institution to provide affordable, local access to higher education during the economic downturn preceding the Great Depression. [5] The college began with 102 students and 14 faculty members in a wing of St. Petersburg High School. After one semester, it moved to a former high school near Mirror Lake and later, in 1942, to its current location at the St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus. The institution became public in 1948. [6]

In 1962, a second campus was established in Clearwater, following a study indicating a need for expanded educational facilities in northern Pinellas County. Over time, SPC expanded to eleven campuses and centers across Pinellas County. [7]

In 1957, Gibbs Junior College, a segregated institution for Black students, was established and later incorporated into SPC in 1965, becoming the "Gibbs Campus." [8]

Campuses

SPC operates eleven campuses and centers across Pinellas County, including four in St. Petersburg and others in Seminole, Pinellas Park, Largo, Clearwater, and Tarpon Springs. The college does not offer on-campus housing due to the decentralized nature of its campuses. Many campuses specialize in specific fields; for example, the Caruth Health Education Center in Pinellas Park focuses on health care programs, while the Seminole Campus is known for its technology programs.

The Seminole Campus also houses the University Partnership Center, which offers select degree programs through partnerships with 16 accredited institutions. These include universities such as Florida State University, the University of Florida, and the University of Central Florida. [9] SPC offers 60 bachelor's degrees and 39 graduate degrees through these partnerships. [10]

Reconstruction of the Gibbs and Clearwater campuses included LEED Gold Certified buildings, marking the first such certification for higher education facilities in Pinellas County.

Libraries

SPC has eight campus libraries, including joint-use libraries that serve both the college and the public. These libraries provide access to print and electronic resources, including books, academic journals, streaming media, and research databases. Students can also access digital reference services through AskALibrarian. [11]

Athletics

The SPC athletic teams, known as the Titans, compete in the National Junior College Athletic Association and are members of the Suncoast Conference. The college offers men's teams in basketball and baseball, and women's teams in basketball, volleyball, tennis, and softball. The Titans softball team participated in the first Women's College World Series in 1969. [12]

Notable alumni

Nicole P. Stott Nicole Stott v2.jpg
Nicole P. Stott

Notable SPC alumni include U.S. Representative Gus Bilirakis; Henry Lyons, former president of the National Baptist Convention; Jim King, former president of the Florida Senate; Frank Wren, former general manager of the Atlanta Braves; Bob Carroll Jr., creator of I Love Lucy; astronaut Nicole P. Stott; and musician Jim Morrison, who attended SPC briefly. [13]

Partnerships

SPC collaborates with the Multijurisdictional Counterdrug Task Force Training and the Florida Army National Guard to provide tuition-free training for criminal justice professionals. Additionally, SPC is partnered with the Combating Transnational Organized Crime Center of Excellence, offering training to support U.S. Department of Defense strategies.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinellas County, Florida</span> County in Florida, United States

Pinellas County is a county located on the west central coast of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 959,107, making it the seventh-most populous county in the state. It is also the most densely populated county in Florida, with 3,491 residents per square mile. The county is part of the Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area. Clearwater is the county seat. St. Petersburg is the largest city in the county, as well as the largest city in Florida that is not a county seat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clearwater, Florida</span> City in Florida, United States

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinellas Park, Florida</span> City in Florida, United States

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Clearwater High School (CHS) is a four-year public high school located in Clearwater, Florida, United States. It is part of the Pinellas County School System. The school mascot is a tornado, therefore students and faculty are known as the Tornadoes. Their colors are crimson and gray, which is also the name of their fight song.

Gibbs High School is a public high school of the Pinellas County School District in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gibbs is home to the Pinellas County Center for the Arts (PCCA), Business, Economics, and Technology Academy (BETA) and their television production in Communication Arts. The school is named for Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs, a black man who was Superintendent of Public Instruction and Secretary of State in Florida during the Reconstruction era. Gibbs' current principal is Barry Brown.

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Carl Martin Kuttler Jr. is the former president of St. Petersburg College in St. Petersburg, Florida, which he headed from 1978 to 2009.

The St. Petersburg Library System is a free public library system for residents of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, located in Pinellas County. The St. Petersburg Library System is part of the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative and consists of 7 branch locations.

Gibbs Junior College was created in 1957 by the Pinellas County Board of Public Instruction to serve African-American students in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was the first and most successful of Florida's eleven new African-American junior colleges, founded in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the racial integration mandated by the unanimous 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision. It was named for the minister and abolitionist Jonathan C. Gibbs, who opened a private school for freed slaves after the Civil War, and was later Florida's Secretary of State (1868–1872) and then Superintendent of Public Instruction, the first African-American member of the Florida Cabinet.

Tonjua Harris Williams is the current President of St. Petersburg College in St. Petersburg, Florida, assuming the office in 2017.

References

  1. ↑ Page, Rodney (September 9, 2001). "St. Petersburg College has Junior and Trojans removed from its name". Tampa Bay Times . Retrieved September 8, 2024.
  2. ↑ Marra, Andrew (February 12, 2024). "Two Florida universities have more than $1 billion in endowments to invest on campus". The Palm Beach Post . Retrieved September 8, 2024.
  3. ↑ "Annual Budget Summary - Fiscal Year 2024-25 (St. Petersburg College)". Florida Department of Education. Retrieved September 12, 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 4 St. Petersburg College. National Center for Education Statistics (College Navigator). Retrieved September 8, 2024.
  5. ↑ "History of St. Petersburg College" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-02-27. Retrieved 2009-02-27.
  6. ↑ History of St. Petersburg College, p. 4.
  7. ↑ An Informal History of the Clearwater Campus
  8. ↑ Walter L. Smith, The Magnificent Twelve: Florida's Black Junior Colleges, Winter Park, Florida, FOUR-G Publishers, 1994, ISBN   1885066015, pp. 47-48.
  9. ↑ University Partnership Center: Partnering Institutions Archived 2008-10-15 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ↑ University Partnership Center: Degrees Archived 2008-10-10 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ↑ St. Petersburg College Libraries and Services
  12. ↑ Plummer, William; Floyd, Larry C. (2013). A Series Of Their Own: History Of The Women's College World Series. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States: Turnkey Communications Inc. ISBN   978-0-9893007-0-4.
  13. ↑ "SPC History". St. Petersburg College. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
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