CrossRoads News, Sept. 5, 2014

Georgia Perimeter College is turning 50 years old and Dr. Houston Davis, the University System of Georgia executive vice chancellor, was in town this week to help the college kick off its landmark anniversary celebration.

Davis was special guest speaker at the Sept. 5 Fall Convocation on the Clarkston campus. Other anniversary events include a living history project and a 1960s symposium in February and a college-wide festival in April in 2015.

During convocation, Georgia Perimeter’s interim president, Dr. Rob Watts, gave the annual state-of-the-college address, and Academic Affairs Vice President Ron Stark provided a college update.

The college was founded in 1964 when the DeKalb Board of Education officially opened DeKalb College, the first and only public two-year college in the state controlled by a local school district.

Twenty-two years later, DeKalb College joined the University System of Georgia, and in 1997, the USG Board of Regents changed its name to Georgia Perimeter College to reflect its expanding mission and its service throughout metro Atlanta.

The GPC moniker became official in fall 1998.

Today, Georgia Perimeter has five campuses – Decatur, Clarkston, Dunwoody, Alpharetta, and Newton County – plus the University System’s largest online program. It serves more than 21,000 students and during its history has helped more than 350,000 students toward their dream of earning a college degree.

Barbara Disney, 82, former college human resources director, was one of the first employees hired by the DeKalb Board of Education when the school doors opened on Sept. 28, 1964, in Clarkston.

Disney joined past and present employees at Friday’s anniversary celebration kickoff.

The celebration allows the college to honor the anniversaries of its opening, its dedication and the first graduating class in 1966. Its 2014 freshman class will be its 51st graduating class.

Collins Foster, GPC alumni director and 50th anniversary co-chair, says that acknowledging and honoring the past are very powerful exercises.

“I am excited to see the long-term impact of how celebrating GPC’s rich history will inspire the future,” said Foster, who is co-chairing the anniversary celebration with Bill Moon, GPC business professor and department chair. “Knowing where you started is the first step toward a better way forward.”

The college’s Decatur Campus, formerly known as South Campus, opened in 1972, the year the college became DeKalb Community College and students enrolled in DeKalb Area Technical School were able to enroll in dual vocational and collegiate programs.

As growth continued both for DeKalb County and the college, the Dunwoody Campus, formerly North Campus, was added and began operation in 1979.

In 1985, DeKalb Vocational-Technical School was placed under the governance of a new statewide board for vocational-technical schools with daily operations remaining under the control of the DeKalb County School System.

Students enrolled in specific Associate of Applied Science degree programs continued dual enrollment in the college, and the technical school, which is now known as Georgia Piedmont Technical College.

In 1986, when DeKalb County relinquished its support, the college was accepted by the Board of Regents as the University System of Georgia’s 34th member institution.

During spring 1993, Georgia Perimeter College in cooperation with Clayton State College, DeKalb Technical College and Rockdale County Public Schools formed the Rockdale Center for Higher Education, which offered credit and non-credit courses.

In November 1997, when the Board of Regents approved changing the name of the college to Georgia Perimeter College, the names of the campuses were changed to identify the cities in which they are located.

In December 2001, Georgia Perimeter College’s Lawrenceville Campus, along with its partners at the Gwinnett University Center, relocated from the MacCleod Industrial Park on Sugarloaf Parkway to a 177-acre campus at 1000 University Center Lane.

In 2007, Georgia Perimeter discontinued offering courses at the Lawrenceville Campus and the site became Georgia Gwinnett College, a new four-year USG institution. In summer 2007, the Rockdale Campus was relocated to a larger new campus in Newton County and renamed the Newton Campus.

GPC began offering classes in Alpharetta in a building owned by Georgia State University. Through the years, the college has expanded its class and service offerings to citizens in north Fulton County.

For more information, visit www.gpc.edu.