It is hard to believe that Tillamook Bay Community College turned 40 years old this month! Those of you who have been in Tillamook for that long may remember that the College started out in Bay City and was actually a satellite campus of Clatsop Community College. Clatsop decided to discontinue services in 1981 and Tillamook County voters approved the creation of the Tillamook Bay Area Education District. This in essence began the 40-year history of Tillamook Bay Community College.
TBCC has been an integral part of Tillamook County ever since, providing this small, rural county on the north Oregon coast with exceptional higher education opportunities. In 2002, the college moved from Bay City to its First Street campus in Tillamook, becoming one of the few community colleges in the nation to be located in a mortuary! That campus served the college well until it became clear that it was growing to the point of needing a larger facility. The community stepped up and passed a bond which allowed the college to construct this beautiful building we call our main campus here on Third Street. It opened in January 2010 and has served us well for the past 11 years. But we are still looking to the future.
As the college continues to grow and expand the number of programs offered, we are now outgrowing this campus. We are continuing to move forward and are set to take the next big step in growing our college campus. The TBCC Facilities Master Plan developed over the past year calls for a new 28,000 square feet building to be located just south of the main campus across our driveway. It will contain more classrooms, labs, offices, and a community space that can hold up to 360 people. We will start working to raise the money for that building this summer. More on all this in future articles.
We are also excited that we will be starting a new TBCC Alumni and Friends Association this summer. With celebrating our 40th anniversary and looking to the future with a new building, this is a perfect time to start developing relationships with all the people who have been touched by TBCC over the past 40 years. You will be hearing more about this in the coming months.
So this really is a time to look back and be proud of what we have accomplished as a community for higher education in Tillamook County over the past 40 years. It is also an opportunity to look forward to an exciting future of offering even more classes and programs and creating additional ways for you to become engaged with the college. On top of all this, it is also the time of year students should be looking forward to next fall if they are thinking about attending college. Part of that process should be to consider scholarships that can help them greatly reduce the financial cost of going to college. TBCC has lots of resources available to new students. Please check out our website and we look forward to another 40 years with you!