Before We Were M State: Fergus Falls
From the very beginning, the community college in Fergus Falls has been shaped and supported by the Fergus Falls community.
The college’s roots stretch back to 1957, when a group of 100 local community leaders began a grassroots campaign to bring a two-year college to their town. Their campaign was successful, and in 1960 a referendum for the college passed by a healthy margin of 3,284 to 654.
Initially administered by the local public school district, Fergus Falls Junior College opened in the fall of 1960 and, within a year, 177 full-time students were enrolled. The college basketball team played its games in the high school gym.
In 1967, just before construction was set to begin on a new college building, a fire forced the college to temporarily headquarter in a wing of the local State Hospital. The attic was refurbished to create a theater in the round, which came to be known as the Attic Theatre.
The new college building was completed by summer 1968, on the 142-acre campus on the west end of Fergus Falls – then called “Edgetown” – where it remains today.
The 1970s were a time of enthusiastic growth and community-building, and the Spartan athletic teams became increasingly competitive at regional and state matches. The 1980s brought the school’s first on-campus student apartments and the Waage Fine Arts Center. In the 1990s, a major building project connected the student center with the physical education and library wings. More student housing – Williams Hillside Village – was built, and enrollment during that era grew by 183%.
By the end of the ‘90s, the college enrolled the largest number of liberal arts students of any outstate two-year college and had one of the highest rates in the state of transfer to four-year colleges and universities.
In the 2000s, Legacy Hall, the major circular structure that connects all the buildings on campus, was completed. Technology was hard-wired into the classrooms in all the buildings, new spaces were created for visual arts, and an addition was built for music. And, of course, the college became a part of M State.
When that happened in 2003, the college’s then-president, Ken Peeders, noted it wasn’t the first time the campus had been through organizational change.
“In its history,” he wrote in an editorial to the Fergus Falls Daily Journal, “it has been a standalone junior college, then a member of the Minnesota State Junior College System, then a member of the Minnesota State Community College System, and now a member of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. Additionally, from 1983 to 1993, it was one of three campuses of Clearwater Community College.”
“Through all of these organizational changes, the college has remained true to its mission,” he continued, adding that it would continue to adhere to that mission as a part of M State. “The Spartans will continue to compete in athletics. We will continue to field top-notch Division III teams. Our fine arts programs will continue with outstanding opportunities for musicians and artists. The Fergus Area College Foundation will continue in its support of this campus’s programs and students. There will be no loss of excellence.”
Read more about the early histories of our campuses in: