SCC Celebrates 35th Anniversary

Published: 04/19/2021

On April 1, 1986, voters approved the formation of the St. Charles Community College district. Thirty-five years later, SCC is proud to continue serving students and the community.

SCC held its first classes in June 1987 with nearly 400 students. By the fall 1987 semester, 1,547 students were enrolled in credit classes, and other non-credit, continuing education programs were taking shape. Today, SCC serves more than 10,000 credit students and has another 54,000 non-credit enrollments annually – a large segment of the county’s population. Approximately one out of every five St. Charles County high school graduates attend SCC.

In February 1989, the SCC Board of Trustees chose a 135-acre tract that was estimated to be located directly in the county’s center of population growth for the year 2000. The site on Mid Rivers Mall Drive had easy access to major interstate highways, and its location positioned the college to be close to home for thousands of area residents.

Groundbreaking for the first phase of building construction took place on June 6, 1990. The new four-building campus was officially dedicated in a public ceremony on Jan. 26, 1992.

Since that time, SCC’s campus has been through three additional construction phases, with the most recent buildings opening in August 2006 on the main campus.  

SCC expanded its campus operations to Dardenne Prairie in February 2017. The SCC-Dardenne Creek Campus was officially dedicated in May 2018.

In April 2019, SCC broke ground on a new student housing facility on campus. In January 2020, the first students moved into the Campus Lake Apartments, ushering in a new era for SCC as a residential campus.

In August 2020, the new Culinary and Agricultural Center located on the Dardenne Creek Campus opened its doors. The building, previously a gym, was transformed into a space that features a bakery, test kitchen, commercial kitchen and brewing lab.

With the passage of Proposition Community College in August 2020, SCC broke ground on a new Department of Public Safety building on campus in March 2021. Future bond issue projects include a workforce and technical building, additional STEM labs and a redesign of student services.