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SCC to celebrate 40 years this Saturday
Southwestern Community College will mark its 40th anniversary this Saturday, April 2, with a daylong celebration, and everyone is invited to the Sylva campus to join the fun.
Events will begin at 11 a.m.
Outside, there will be an antique car show (no entry fee, with “Best in Show” and “Best 1960s” trophies awarded), a “Street Pounder” auto sound competition, inflatable rides for kids and hot-air balloon trips.
Inside the Balsam Center, also starting at 11 a.m., will be “Heritage Alive!” storytelling by Doreyl Cain and Amy Garza. The Ammons Sisters will be accompanied by Josh Bulla on bagpipes, Celtic harp, fiddle and Irish whistle.
Area crafters and SCC clubs will set up booths, and Wade Jones will have his “Elvis cup” on display.
The afternoon schedule will include:
12:30 p.m.: Cherokee legends with storyteller Jerry Wolfe.
1 p.m.: Cherokee Elementary School traditional singers and dancers.
2 p.m: Tried Stone Choir of Asheville.
3 p.m.: Acquoni Baptist Chapel Choir of Cherokee.
4 p.m.: “Elvis Live!” With Elvis impersonator Chris Monteith.
Prior to the show, Monteith will draw the winning ticket that will allow one lucky SCC student to pay tuition at the going rate in 1964, the year the school was founded.
Southwestern Community College began 40 years ago as the Jackson County Industrial Education Center, a satellite of Asheville-Buncombe Technical College.
The college grew so rapidly that in 1967 it was granted independent status as Southwestern Technical Institute, a unit of the state’s community college system.
A board of trustees was established in 1968, and Bill Dillard, who had worked toward the school’s establishment, wasthe board’s first chairman. Former center director Edward Bryson was the school’s first president.
From those early days, the college grew in service area, curriculum offerings, buildings and vision and now serves Jackson, Macon and Swain counties and the Qualla Boundary. In 1964 Southwestern’s enrollment was 493 students, including curriculum and continuing-education programs. Today that figure has grown to 9,000 students annually who can choose from more than 40 curriculum programs, 44 general-education distance learning programs, and numerous continuing education/self-improvement courses and workshops.
Most (80 percent) of the college’s students are from the region and plan to stay, a success story that’s illustrated by the fact that SCC now provides the training for 95 percent of the area’s hands-on health care providers and 90 percent of its firefighting and law enforcement personnel.
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