LaGuardia Community College

LaGuardia Community College is a public community college in Long Island City, New York. It is part of the City University of New York. LaGuardia is named after former congressman and New York City mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia. The college offers associate degrees in the arts, sciences, and applied sciences, as well as continuing education programs.

LaGuardia Community College
TypePublic community college
Established1968 (1968)
PresidentKenneth Adams[1]
Students17,569
Location
Long Island City, Queens, New York City
,
New York
,
United States
CampusUrban, 1,872,263 sq. ft [2]
Websitewww.lagcc.cuny.edu
Building E

History

LaGuardia Community College was founded on January 22, 1967, by a resolution of the Board of Higher Education of the City of New York, a New York State agency which was the precursor to the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York.[3] The new college, originally designated "Community College Number Nine", was to be comprehensive: "The college will be oriented to the needs and interests of the community in which it is located, providing cultural activities, special services, continuing education and skills training opportunities for community residents of all ages."[4]

The college's first president was Joseph Shenker, who had been Acting President of Kingsborough Community College and at age 29, the youngest community college president anywhere. In October 1970, the Board of Higher Education, breaking with CUNY’s geographic naming convention, named the new college after Mayor LaGuardia, noting his "lifelong public service to the people of the City of New York and of the United States, and his ambitious and successful leadership of good government campaigns to provide decent living conditions and guarantee democratic processes for all...."[5]

The college was officially opened on September 22, 1971, and received its first accreditation from the Middle States Association in December 1972 when the college graduated its first class.

The La Guardia and Wagner Archives was established on campus in 1982.[6]

Campus

On March 24, 1970, the NYC Board of Higher Education approved the former Ford Instrument Company building on Long Island City's Thomson Avenue as the location for the College. Renovations to the five-story, former factory, which had most recently been used to manufacture material for the U.S. Army in World War II, began the same year. This building would serve as the Main building of the new college—renamed Shenker Hall in 2009 in honor of the College’s founding president.[7]

On September 22, 1972, the school received from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, for payment of $1, a 5.2-acre (21,000 m2) site in Astoria that had formerly been the U.S. Army Pictorial Center, with the intention of moving the college to a campus on the new site, but when the city's budget crisis hit in 1974, the site had to be sold off, as the expense of maintaining it in the interim was too high. In the years since its founding, the college has maintained its original building and has expanded into nearby buildings.

The college owns and occupies the historic Sunshine Biscuits Building, or building "C", on their main campus which also houses the Long Island City Business Coalition.[8][9][10][11]

Academics

In the 2010-2011 school year, LaGuardia granted 2,197 degrees, of which 96% were associate degrees, and 4% were certificates.[12]

The College offers associate degrees and certificates in over 50 majors in Business and Technology, Liberal Arts, Health, Math, and Science. Its academic departments include

  • Business & Technology
  • Fine Arts
  • Communication Skills
  • Cooperative Education
  • Education & Language Acquisition
  • English
  • Health Sciences
  • Humanities
  • Math, Engineering & Computer Science
  • Natural Sciences
  • Social Sciences

Enrollment

As of the Fall of 2011, LaGuardia had an enrollment of 17,569 undergraduate students, 58% of them attending full-time, and 42% part-time. This undergraduate enrollment made the college the third largest community college in the CUNY system, after the Borough of Manhattan Community College and Kingsborough Community College.[13][14]

Student body

LaGuardia's student body is made up of people from 160 different countries who speak 127 languages natively.[14]

Of the student population, 43% (6,386) are Hispanic, 22% (3,171) are Asian, 18% (2,699) are Black, 13% (1,937) are White, and 4% (656) described themselves as Other.[14]

Athletics

LaGuardia Community College teams participate as a member of the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). The Red Hawks are a member of the community college section of the City University of New York Athletic Conference (CUNYAC) since the 2013-14 season (the inaugural year of the school's athletic program). Sports include men's and women's basketball. Men's & women's soccer and men's & women's swimming & diving will also be added within its athletic program, effectively on the 2014-15 season.[15] The Athletics Department is now defunct.

Notable people

Alumni

Faculty

LaGuardia launched its new logo in March 2011. It consists of a red square with nine arrows signifying the College’s inception as Community College Number Nine. The arrows come together in the center of the logo mark to represent introspection, and the negative space at the center and between each of the arrows forms a star representing infinite growth. The emanating lines convey the energy, ideas, and solutions that emerge when coming together to ask, “What if?” [23]

Before this logo, LaGuardia used a flower with five petals, symbolizing the five boroughs of New York City; and the first name of its namesake, Fiorello, which in Italian translates to "Little Flower." Capitalizing on its reputation as one of the most diverse campuses in the country, the college also used an apple logo covered with various national flags. The apple was taken from the "Big Apple" nickname for New York City.

References
  1. "CUNY Names Four College Presidents". CUNY Newswire (Press release). June 29, 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  2. (PDF) https://web.archive.org/web/20120118181609/http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/facts/2011factbook.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-01-18. Retrieved 2018-10-13. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. Fitzpatrick, John. "City University of New York" U.S. History Encyclopedia
  4. "Archived copy". hdl:10090/23441. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. "A Proposal for the Establishment of Community College Number Nine". Dspace.nitle.org. Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  6. "About the La Guardia and Wagner Archives."
  7. http://webdev.laguardia.edu/livewire/98/98.pdf%5B%5D
  8. "History Toics: Industry Loose-Wiles (Sunshine) Biscuit". Greater Astoria Historical Society. astorialic.org. Archived from the original on 2010-09-04. Retrieved 2010-06-19.
  9. "Citadel Construction to complete 46,000 s/f renovation for Laguardia Community College". New England Real Estate Journal. nerej.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-14. Retrieved 2010-06-19.
  10. "Union Agent Reveals 1908 Threat To Queensboro Bridge". The Queens Gazette. Retrieved 2010-06-19.
  11. "Intro/Outside of C Building". LaGuardia Community College. lagcc.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2010-06-19.
  12. "Commencement". Laguardia.edu. 2014-06-05. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  13. "Total Enrollment by Undergraduate and Graduate Level, Full-time/Part-time Attendance, and College" (PDF). CUNY. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-10-19.
  16. Archived July 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  17. "Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. - Trustees - CUNY". Cuny.edu. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  18. "Reby Hardy: Everything You Want To Know About Matt Hardy's Wife". richathletes.com. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
  19. "National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education: Welcome to NITLE" (PDF). Dspace.nitle.org. 2014-02-21. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-27. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  20. "Timeline". Laguardia.edu. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  21. Reginald, R. (2010-09-01). Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature - R. Reginald - Google Books. ISBN 9780941028776. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  22. Jules Heller; Nancy G. Heller (19 December 2013). North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-63882-5.
  23. "LaGuardia Community College - Page Not Found" (PDF). www.laguardia.edu. Cite uses generic title (help)

Further reading

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