When Joe Al Picone attended Blinn College nearly 50 years ago, the Brenham campus had just one classroom building, a gym and three dorms -- two for men and one for women.
That was in 1960. There was no Bryan campus, nor were there branches in Schulenburg or Sealy. At home in Washington County, Blinn enrolled just 400 or so students, Picone estimated.
"That was the campus," said Picone, now 66 and executive director of the Blinn College Foundation. Picone has led the foundation for the past seven months, but previously served 35 years with the college, including 17 years as dean of business services and another 18 years as a member of the Blinn College Board of Trustees.
A Buccaneer himself, Picone said he has seen many changes. A dozen dorms now sprinkle the Brenham campus, and three more branches have opened. Those changes were driven by the increase in the sheer number of students attending the community college. More than 14,000 now call themselves Blinn students.
But some things never change -- even after 125 years, officials are eager to celebrate Friday at the Bryan campus.
"I think the significance for the community is providing a well-rounded academic education to a great number of students who possibly would not have had that opportunity to enhance or continue their education without having their start at Blinn because it is economical to do so," Picone said.
Blinn College opened its doors on March 28, 1883, as Mission Institute, which was part of the Southern German Conference of the Methodist denomination, according to officials. The college originally was organized by German Methodists to educate immigrant families, and many early classes were conducted in German.
The college didn't assume the Blinn name until 1889, when it became Blinn Memorial College. The name change was designed to honor the Rev. Christian Blinn of New York, who was a major donor.
Blinn formally was organized as a junior college in 1927 and became the state's first county-owned junior college following a Washington County election in 1937. The first Bryan campus -- which has since moved, consolidated and now is the largest of the four sites -- was created in 1970. The Schulenburg and Sealy campuses followed in 1997 and 2005, respectively.
Barbara Pearson, vice president for the Brazos County campus since 1996, first started working for Blinn College more than three decades ago as a part-time history teacher. Pearson taught out of a small second-floor room in a downtown Bryan building that backed up to the railroad tracks, she said.
Designed as an office building, the hallways were narrow, the lighting was poor and the elevator often malfunctioned, leaving students and teachers to take the stairs, she recalled. The building's fire escape was at the rear of the room in which Pearson taught, but it wasn't the threat of a fire that worried the 400 or so students who attended classes in the building.
The students were more concerned with calls from Bryan police warning of potential train derailments. At least once a semester, the college received a warning that a train was en route and conditions on the track were ripe for a derailment, she said. Each time, they had to evacuate the building.
Both Picone and Pearson described explosive growth as the biggest change and challenge for the college over the past 125 years.
The college started out with a strong emphasis on academic transfers -- and it currently boasts the highest academic transfer rate in the state, as well as the highest percentage of students who go on to earn bachelor's degrees and highest pass rates of students taking licensing exams, according to Blinn officials.
But along the way, vocational training also became a focus and the college now offers an array of technical courses, including programs related to nursing and fire training and manufacturing, Pearson said.
It wasn't always easy living in the shadow of Texas A&M University, Pearson said. An elitist attitude sometimes seemed to suggest that Blinn College offered an inferior education, which Pearson said she found almost comical since many Blinn employees are Aggie graduates.
Blinn faculty members have worked hard to eliminate that perception by forming solid partnerships with both Texas A&M and Sam Houston State University, she said. The key is to realize Blinn and Texas A&M aren't competitors, she said. A&M's mission is research, while Blinn is focused more on workforce training and skills development.
"Building this facility, I guess I am as proud of that as anything," Pearson said, referring to the consolidated Bryan campus set back off 29th Street and Villa Maria Road. "It's given us the opportunity to grow into our name -- community college. We are working and serving the needs of the local community."
• Holly Huffman's e-mail address is holly.huffman@theeagle.com.
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