The Corsicana campus has strong ties with
Texas A&M University–Commerce which has branches at the Navarro College campuses in Corsicana.[2]
History
In spring 1946, a group of local citizens met to form a steering committee for the purpose of establishing a junior college in
Navarro County. In a general election held July 16, 1946, voters approved the creation of Navarro Junior College and authorized a county tax to help finance the institution. In that same election, voters chose a seven-member board of trustees to govern the college. The first students began classes in September 1946. Most of the 238 members of that first student body were returning veterans from
World War II taking advantage of assistance available under the newly enacted
GI Bill of Rights. The first campus of Navarro College was the site of the Air Activities of Texas, a World War II primary flight school located six miles (10 km) south of Corsicana.
In 1951, the campus was moved to its present location, a 47-acre (19 ha) tract west of downtown Corsicana on
Texas State Highway 31.
In 1974, the college broadened its philosophy and purpose to encompass the comprehensive community-based educational concept, adding occupational education programs and implementing new education concepts including individualized and self-paced instruction and the use of audio-tutorial instructional media. In keeping with the new educational role, the word "junior" was dropped from the institution's name, and the official name Navarro College was adopted by the board of trustees. In an attempt to address the growing needs of its service area, which consists of Navarro, Ellis, Freestone, Limestone, and Leon counties, the college began offering courses in various locations in those areas in the early 1970s and eventually established two permanent centers, Navarro College South at Mexia and the Ellis County Center at Waxahachie. Later, a third and fourth off-campus centers were added in Midlothian and Fairfield.[3]
2014 Ebola controversy
In October 2014, Navarro College received criticism for sending admission rejection letters to two prospective students from Nigeria because the college was "not accepting international students from countries with confirmed
Ebola cases."[4] Nigeria was identified by the World Health Organization through the summer of 2014 with multiple confirmed cases of Ebola, but there had been no new Ebola cases (since early September).[5][6] The rejected applicants lived in Ibadan, Nigeria, approximately 80 miles from Lagos, where the most recent infected cases were identified.[4] The college offered an explanation on October 13, stating that the rejections were not a result of fears of Ebola, but that its international department had recently been restructured to focus on recruiting students from China and Indonesia.[5] On October 16, college Vice-president Dewayne Gragg issued a new statement, contradicting the previous explanation and confirming that there had indeed been a decision to "postpone our recruitment in those nations that the Center for Disease Control and the U.S. State Department have identified as at risk."[7]
Campus
The Corsicana campus has expanded to 103 acres (42 ha) with 23 buildings. It is home to the Cook Education Center, which houses a 60-foot-diameter (18 m) dome
planetarium with seating for more than two hundred, tied with the
University of Texas at Arlington for the largest planetarium in Texas.[8][9] The Cook Education Center also contains the
Pearce Collections Museum, home to many
American Civil War artifacts as well as a
western art collection.[10]
Waxahachie Global High School is partnered with Navarro College, and set up in a way that students at Global can take classes at Navarro. Thus they can graduate from high school with an
associate degree or transferable credits to a 4-year university along with their high school diploma.
Athletics
Navarro's athletics teams, nicknamed The Bulldogs, compete in the
Southwest Junior College Conference of the
NJCAA.[13] Navarro offers athletic scholarships in the following sports for men: football, basketball, baseball and for women: soccer, softball, volleyball. In 2011, the baseball team won the
NJCAA Junior College World Series in
Grand Junction, Colorado. The Bulldogs beat
Central Arizona College, 6–4, on J.T. Files' walk-off home run in the tenth inning.
The Bulldogs also have a strong reputation for their coed
cheer team. Since the year 2000, Coach
Monica Aldama has led the program to 16
NCA National Championships in the junior college division, as well as six "Grand National" designations (a status awarded to the team with the highest overall score in competition).[15][16][17][18] In 2020, the squad became the subject of a
Netflixdocuseries called Cheer.[19]