The State of North Carolina recognized the need to provide additional post-high school opportunities as early as 1957. The development of industrial education centers was approved by the General Assembly, and by 1962, twenty (20) institutions were approved.
In the fall of 1962, the Onslow County Board of Education and the Superintendent of Schools, Mr. J. Paul Tyndall, asked the Onslow County Commissioners to purchase forty (40) acres of property on U.S. Highway 17 for the establishment of an industrial education center. The newly established Onslow Industrial Education Center was a unit of the Lenoir County Technical Institute.
The untiring efforts of Representative Hugh A. Ragsdale, Representative William D. Mills, and Senator Carl Venters secured appropriation from the 1965 General Assembly to establish a separate institution for Onslow County. The North Carolina State Board of Education received the Onslow County Industrial Education Center on July 1, 1965.
The continuous increase in enrollment of the Industrial Education Center gave evidence of the wide and varied needs of the area. Local support was necessary for the growing institute. The people of Onslow County, by referendum in the fall of 1965, voted for a seven-cents-per-hundred-dollar evaluation on property for the center. The Board of Trustees, realizing that a technical institute could more adequately provide vocational and technical education opportunity for the area, requested that the State Board of Educatation grant technical institute status to the center. Onslow Industrial Education Center became Onslow Technical Institute on May 4, 1967.
A rapidly increasing enrollment and continued educational demands on Onslow Technical encouraged the Board of Trustees to request community college status for the institute. Onslow Technical Institute was granted community college status July 1, 1970, and became Coastal Carolina Community College.
In 1972, with the dedication of the Ragsdale Building, the Board of Trustees started the relocation of the college to a new seventy-five (75)-acre campus on Western Boulevard. For several years thereafter, the college operated on a split-campus until relocation was completed in 1978. By 1982, a total of ten modern buildings had been constructed on the new campus with funds from the state and federal governments and from a second bond referendum passed by the citizens of Onslow County in 1974.
With authorization to offer college transfer courses as a community college, the college continued to experience rapid growth and development. Additional curriculums have been made available, and classes are also offered at Camp Lejeune Marine Base and the New River Marine Corps Air Station.
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Guilford Technical Community College
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