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Palm Beach Community
College was founded in 1933 as Palm
Beach Junior College and was the first public
junior college in the state of Florida. The
college's first classes were held at Palm Beach
High School in West Palm Beach. County school
superintendent Joe Youngblood and Howell
Watkins, principal of Palm Beach High School,
who became the college's first dean, were
instrumental in opening the college. The
college's initialality was to provide additional
training to local high school graduates who were
unable to find jobs during the
Great Depression.
In
1948, Palm Beach Junior College moved to
Morrison Field, a deactivated Army Air Force
base, which is now Palm
Beach International Airport. In 1951, the
college relocated to the
Lake Park Town Hall. Due to the limited
availability of space at the town hall, the
college had to lay off faculty and staff and cut
enrollment to 200 students. During this period,
Palm Beach Junior College was known as "the
little orphan college." In 1955, the
Palm Beach County
Commission gave the college 114 acres in
Lake Worth, and the
state legislature
passed a bill providing over $1,000,000 for
construction at this site. The college moved to
this location, which remains its main campus, in
the fall of 1956.
In 1965,
Palm Beach Junior College
merged with Roosevelt Junior College, which was
established in 1958 under President Britton
Sayles to serve African
American students. In 1968, control over
the college passed from the Palm Beach County
school district to
a board of trustees.
In 1978, the college opened its
Belle Glade campus.
The Palm Beach Gardens
campus opened in 1982. In 1983, the college
opened a campus adjacent to
Florida Atlantic
University in Boca
Raton. In 1988, the college's board of
trustees changed the college's name to Palm
Beach Community College.
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