HomeMy WebLinkAboutBlinn-125yrs3Page A8 The Bryan-College Station Eagle Sunday, March 30, 2001
The Earle
g
Jim Wilson Donnis Baggett Robert C. Borden
Publisher Editor-in-Chief Opinions Editor
editboard@theeagle.com
Blinn is an asset
to education here
ongratulations to Blinn College on 125 years of pro-
viding quality education to the young people of Cen-
tral Texas. For almost 40 of those years, the college
has been an important part of the Bryan-College Station
educational community.
Today, the Bryan campus is a great place for students to
get a start on their college career, to make a new start when
necessary and to get the technical training they need to
land good jobs in the community.
Blinn opened its doors on March 28, 1883, in nearby Bren-
ham. The Mission Institute, as it was then known, was a
private academy run by the Methodist Church's Southern
German Conference to train ministers -men only back
then. Within five years, traditional academic courses had
been added and women had started attending the Brenham
school. In 1889, the school changed its name to Blinn Memo-
rial College to honor the Rev. Christian Blinn of New York,
who donated a large sum of money to the Texas school.
Blinn was organized as a private junior college in 1927,
and a decade later, the people of Brenham severed ties with
the Methodist Church and created a public junior college,
the first county-owned junior college in Texas.
Blinn opened its first Bryan-College Station campus in
1970, when Allen Academy was told by accrediting agencies
that it no longer could offer junior college classes in the
same facilities used by its junior high and high school stu-
dents. Blinn took over those college classes and, by 1972,
had added day classes to meet local demand.
When Blinn first opened it doors locally, it had 236 stu-
dents, .all meeting on the old Allen campus, now a federal
prison. Blinn soon moved to the former Kraft Building in
'downtown Bryan and, from there, to other campuses in
College Station and Bryan.
In the mid-1990s, community and college officials knew a
more permanent local home was needed. With the help of
the city of Bryan, Blinn was able to construct a new campus
near the intersection of 29th Street and Villa Maria Road.
That campus continues to expand, both in the- number of
buildings and in the number of courses offered. Today,
more than 10,000 students attend Blinn's Bryan campus.
Blinn has entered into cooperative efforts with local pub-
lic schools to allow students to gain college credits before
their high school graduation. And Blinn and Texas A&M
cooperate so that the transition from one school to the
other is seamless.
Blinn is acost-effective way for many students to get
their introductory college courses out of the way before
moving to four-year schools. For some, it is a way of easing
into the college experience without feeling lost on a big-
school campus. And for still others, Blinn is a way to get
that training they need or to brush up on their skills neces-
sary for the business world.
Blinn is a wonderful part of the academic community
here in the Brazos Valley.
Happy anniversary, Blinn. Best wishes for the next 125
years of educating young Texans.