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2015-16 School Year Marks Kirkwood 50th Anniversary

By September 28, 2015December 5th, 2018No Comments

Passage of Iowa Senate File 550 launched the community college system

Cedar Rapids, Iowa (September 28, 2015)-Kirkwood Community College celebrates 50 years of postsecondary education, including vocational-technical training and continuing education to statewide, national and international students. The passage of Iowa State Senate File 550 that launched the Iowa community college system was influenced by one of Kirkwood’s founders.

Iowa community colleges formed in 1965. Prior to the passage of Senate File 550 postsecondary education consisted of junior colleges and vocational-technical training. In 1965, Governor Harold Hughes proposed a set of public colleges whose mission would be to train people for jobs. Legislation passed that merged Iowa’s junior colleges with vocational-technical training to form the community college system.

Founding Kirkwood Board Chair Bud Jensen, addressed the legislature prior to the passage of the bill. His impassioned speech influenced legislators to allow area schools to offer the first two years of a four-year postsecondary education.

“These are the hands of a bricklayer,” said Jensen. “They are calloused and hard but they have given both me and my family and excellent living. Would you deny these hands or the hands of my children or other children throughout the state the right or opportunity to read a good book? To caress a book of poetry or to learn something about higher math?”

Fifty years later those words and the spirit behind them continue to provide opportunity. Over the past 50 years Kirkwood, formerly know as Area 10 Community College, has graduated nearly 60,000 students from the surrounding seven county area, throughout the state, nationally and internationally.

Kirkwood is named after Iowa Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood. He was once quoted as saying to Abraham Lincoln, “The subject of general education has been, and must continue to be, one of the greatest. The intelligence of our people measures to a large extent, the wisdom of the laws under which we live, and also of the administration of those laws.” The University of Iowa gifted the statue of Samuel Kirkwood that is the focal point of college’s main entrance.

Kirkwood celebrates its 50th anniversary with events at all 10 campus locations. The Golden Opportunity Scholarship created because of this milestone was awarded to 67 incoming freshman who were the first to apply for financial aid.