Central Campus

Nursing students chat as they stroll to class on Central Campus. Behind them is the library building and to their left is the distinctive round science lecture theater.

Dr. Elzie Lauderdale, a Mississippian, was BCC's first dean of instruction and helped establish the emphasis on academic excellence. When he called Mildred Bailey Mullikin in May 1960 to recruit her to head the drama department at the college, Mullikin's mother took the call. "Who is Dr. Lauderdale in Fort Lauderdale?" she asked her daughter. Dr. Lauderdale encouraged Mullikin and her mother to visit Fort Lauderdale. "Needless to say," Mullikin wrote years later, "I fell head over heels in love with Fort Lauderdale."

Classes filled quickly at the Davie campus. Even before exterior work was complete and the landscaping was installed, classrooms were filled with students. By the start of the second year, enrollment had doubled to 1,400. More than 2,500 students were enrolled by September 1963.

Nursing remains one of the most popular health sciences offered by the college. The first class of nurses began in 1963.

In her autobiography, Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser, author, screenwriter, and BCC alumna Rita Mae Brown wrote that the college was "a couple of buildings and a mess of sandspurs." Those sandspurs are evident along the sidewalk from the science lecture theater to the library. The young college, Brown added, "offered little by way of aesthetics, yet a lot by way of education."

Dr. Rex Kidd, director of the evening program, points out the library building to touring students as the Central Campus neared completion of its first buildings in 1963. Kidd, who died in 2002, was jokingly called the "Dean of Darkness" because a high percentage of students attended night classes during the early days of the college.

A college architect, Causeway Lumber president Gene Whiddon and Dr. Rushing discuss the president's office at the new Central Campus in Davie in November 1963. Whiddon, a supporter of the college from the start, provided paneling for the president's office. He later became the founding chairman of the Broward Community College Foundation.

Here, landscape workers plant coconut palms at the east entrance of the campus. When the campus opened in August 1963, it had 7 buildings spread out over 152-acres; it was built on land donated by the United States government. Other fixtures on Central Campus at the time of its opening were temporary trailers for the bookstore and horticulture program.

Two students enjoy a quiet conversation in 1963 on the Davie Campus.

Students participate in a presidential rally at Central Campus, with supporters of candidates Barry Goldwater and Lyndon B. Johnson taking the microphone to extol the virtues of their candidate.