40 Fun Facts About Community College

Scottsdale Community College students in Arizona picked which unlikely vegetable as their sports mascot?

An artichoke named Artie has led the Fighting Artichokes since the 1970s, when students chose it as a protest against money being spent on sports instead of academics.

Which Oscar-winning actor spent two years studying theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California?

Tom Hanks moved on to California State University, Sacramento after Chabot, and while studying theater he met the head of Cleveland's Great Lakes Theater Festival.

On the NBC sitcom Community, which fictional Colorado community college do Jeff Winger and his study group attend?

Greendale was drawn from life: creator Dan Harmon based the show on his own time at Glendale Community College in California.

Which First Lady kept teaching English at Northern Virginia Community College while living in the White House?

Jill Biden was the first First Lady to hold a salaried job for most of her husband's presidency, and she had taught at the school since 2009.

Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida, trains students at which unusual attraction on its own campus?

A zoo on the campus is the only one at any college accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and its zookeeping students lead the guided tours.

In 1984, Steve Jobs unveiled which Apple computer at the Flint Center on De Anza College's campus in Cupertino?

The Macintosh made its debut in the community college's theater, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak had been a De Anza student years earlier.

In which Illinois city did America's oldest public community college open in 1901 with just six students?

Joliet Junior College held its first classes inside the township high school, whose superintendent J. Stanley Brown pressed his graduates to keep studying.

Which US military branch has run its own community college since 1972, awarding associate degrees to enlisted members?

Air Force and Space Force enlisted members earn two-year applied science degrees through it, and its vast student body makes it the world's largest community college system.

Which Netflix documentary series first followed football at East Mississippi Community College in Scooba?

Last Chance U spent its first two seasons in Scooba, at one of the most successful junior college football programs in the country.

The first hall of fame in America stands on a community college campus in which New York City borough?

The Bronx is home to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, an outdoor gallery of bronze busts that Stanford White designed for a campus then owned by New York University; it was dedicated in 1901.

Which blockbuster director studied anthropology at Modesto Junior College before film school at USC?

George Lucas grew up in Modesto, and his memories of the town's teenage life in the early 1960s became his breakout film American Graffiti.

Which future baseball Hall of Famer starred in four sports at Pasadena Junior College before transferring to UCLA?

Jackie Robinson played football, basketball, baseball and track at Pasadena, and at UCLA he was better known for football than for the game that made him famous.

Which Super Bowl-winning quarterback played a season at Butte College before joining the California Golden Bears?

Aaron Rodgers was discovered by California's head coach only because the coach had come to recruit one of his Butte teammates, a tight end.

In which film does Robin Williams play a therapist who teaches psychology at Boston's Bunker Hill Community College?

Good Will Hunting won Williams the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Sean Maguire, and the real Bunker Hill campus was one of its Boston filming locations.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dustin Hoffman and James Dean all took community college classes in which California city?

Santa Monica College also owns the NPR station KCRW, which broadcasts from its campus; Hoffman enrolled there to study medicine until an acting class changed his mind.

Jim Sinegal, who earned an associate degree at San Diego City College, co-founded which warehouse retail giant?

Costco was founded by Sinegal and Seattle retailer Jeff Brotman, and Sinegal led it as chief executive from 1983 until 2011.

In 2014, which state became the first to launch a statewide program for free community college tuition?

Tennessee called its scholarship the Promise, and it pays whatever tuition and fees remain after a student's other grants; the first class enrolled in fall 2015.

Which US president's Commission on Higher Education helped popularize the term community college after World War II?

Harry S. Truman's commission called for a national network of public community colleges that would charge students nothing, an idea its six-volume report set out in 1947.

Which Corning Community College graduate became the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission?

Eileen Collins earned an associate degree in mathematics at Corning in 1976, and the 1999 flight she commanded carried the Chandra X-ray Observatory into orbit.

What is the name for programs that let high school students earn community college credit before graduating?

Dual enrollment credits can count toward both a diploma and a degree, and some students finish an associate degree around the time they leave high school.

Students at Walla Walla Community College in Washington make and sell which product through a campus business?

Wine from College Cellars, the school's teaching winery, is made by students who also tend its vineyards, and many of the region's winemakers trained there.

In the 2010s, Austin Community College in Texas turned which kind of failing property into its Highland campus?

A shopping mall, Highland Mall, was the first enclosed one in Austin; the school bought it in 2012 and opened the first phase of the campus two years later.

Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn is the only New York City campus with which summer perk of its own?

A private beach on the campus opens for swimming each summer, and the site looks out over Sheepshead Bay, Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

Which jeans and underwear designer trained at FIT, a New York fashion school that is officially a community college?

Calvin Klein finished his degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which joined the State University of New York as a community college in 1951.

Which honor society for two-year college students was founded at Stephens College in Missouri in 1918?

Phi Theta Kappa was created when eight Missouri women's colleges merged their separate honor groups, and it borrowed its name and model from the older Phi Beta Kappa.

Which association, founded in Fresno in 1938, runs national championships for American two-year college sports?

The NJCAA was born in California but no longer operates there, because the state's community colleges now compete in a separate association of their own.

Which 1944 law sent a wave of new students into American two-year colleges after World War II?

The GI Bill sent so many returning veterans into classrooms that junior colleges grew quickly, helped along by a rising demand for adult education.

Ivy Tech, whose name began as the initials of a vocational technical college, is which state's community college system?

Indiana founded it in 1963 as Indiana Vocational Technical College, and the nickname I.V. Tech stuck for decades before the name was made official in 1995.

Which Native nation opened Diné College in 1968, the first college founded by Native Americans for Native Americans?

Navajo leaders first named it Navajo Community College, and its first semester drew 340 students, as many as the new campus could hold.

Which Canadian province sends students to a two-year CEGEP college after grade 11, before they can enter university?

Quebec requires a CEGEP diploma for university admission, and its students leave high school a year earlier than those elsewhere in North America.

TAFE institutes, short for Technical and Further Education, play the community college role in which country?

Australia does use the phrase community college, but there it means a small business running short courses, while TAFEs are regulated by the states and territories.

Which baseball slugger left high school after his sophomore year to play at the College of Southern Nevada at 17?

Bryce Harper earned a GED so he could enroll early, won the Golden Spikes Award as the best amateur player in the country and was the first pick of the 2010 draft.

Which Heisman-winning quarterback first won a national junior college title at Blinn College in Texas?

Cam Newton spent the 2009 season at Blinn after leaving Florida, and one year later he led Auburn to the national championship.

Which NBA All-Star, unrecruited out of high school, started at Tyler Junior College in Texas before Marquette?

Jimmy Butler averaged 18.1 points a game in his single season at Tyler, which finally brought interest from Division I programs.

Which poet, a 1936 graduate of Wilson Junior College, became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize?

Gwendolyn Brooks won the 1950 poetry prize for Annie Allen, and many of her early poems were published while she was still a student at the two-year school.

Netflix's Cheer followed the champion cheerleading squad of which Texas two-year school in Corsicana?

Navarro College sits about fifty miles south of Dallas, and the squad's coach had gone to high school in the same town before earning a finance degree and an MBA.

Which Midwestern school introduced the associate degree to America around 1900, replacing its two-year certificates?

University of Chicago first awarded the degree in 1900, though Durham in England had used the title since 1873, and Chicago's president also helped launch the first public junior college.

Which 2011 comedy stars Julia Roberts as a speech teacher at a community college where a fired store worker enrolls?

Larry Crowne is a Navy veteran dismissed from a big-box store for lacking a college education, so he signs up for classes in speech and economics.

Miami Dade College owns which downtown landmark, once a processing center for refugees from the Cuban Revolution?

Freedom Tower was donated to the school on condition that it tell the story of Cuban exiles, and it now serves as a museum and cultural center.

The national junior college men's basketball tournament has been played since 1949 in Hutchinson, a city in which state?

Kansas fans know the host city as Hutch, and the tournament has been played in its Sports Arena since the building opened in 1952.