Tallahassee State College History

Tallahassee State College is the public college that Florida law assigns to Gadsden, Leon and Wakulla counties, based on Appleyard Drive in Tallahassee.

Section 1000.21, Florida Statutes, lists Tallahassee State College among the Florida College System institutions as the college that serves Gadsden, Leon and Wakulla counties. The college's locations page puts the main campus on the west side of Tallahassee at 444 Appleyard Drive, approximately 3.5 miles west of the State Capitol and two miles west of Florida State University, with service centers in Gadsden and Wakulla counties and in downtown Tallahassee.

The college's About page says it offers more than 100 degree and certificate programs, from business management to engineering and from nursing to law enforcement, at seven locations across its Leon, Gadsden and Wakulla district, enrolls more than 16,000 credit and noncredit students each year and maintains a student-to-faculty ratio of 25 to 1. The college catalog history gives a different count, more than 15,000 students annually, and says more than 60 percent of students now come from around the state, nation and world; both are the college's own figures.

Tallahassee Junior College opened in the fall of 1966 with classes at Godby High School and Rickards High School in Tallahassee.

According to the history of the college in the TSC catalog, the college opened to serve the post-high school educational needs of students from Gadsden, Leon and Wakulla counties and welcomed nearly 700 students in its first year at Godby and across town at Rickards, under Fred Turner, its first president; the same history gives the initial enrollment as 698. Three new buildings were ready on Appleyard Drive in time for the second year of operation.

The governing structure followed quickly. The catalog says the Legislature established the District Board of Trustees as the college's governing authority in 1968, with Tallahassee businessman Earl Lambert serving three terms as the first board chairman. In 1970 Tallahassee Junior College became Tallahassee Community College, adding one and two year occupational programs including nursing, and later dental hygiene, as enrollment approached 3,000 in the first decade.

The next decades brought growth on the Tallahassee campus. The catalog records enrollment above 5,000 in the second decade, a campus that grew from 54 acres to more than 140 between 1986 and 1995, the acquisition of the Pat Thomas Law Enforcement Academy, a $10 million first capital campaign completed in 2006 that included a $2 million gift from the Ghazvini family, and the Ghazvini Center for Healthcare Education opening in fall 2011 near the city's two major hospitals.

Six presidents have led the Tallahassee college since its founding, with Jim Murdaugh in office since 2010.

The Legacy of Leadership page says Turner was selected in September 1965 while serving as director of instructional services at the Department of Education, that Wetherell left in 2001 to become president of Florida State University, and that Law left in 2010 to lead St. Petersburg College. It says Murdaugh was selected as sixth president on October 18, 2010, while the catalog history says he was appointed on November 15, 2010; the two college pages give different dates and both are shown here.

A state law, Senate Bill 522 of 2024, renamed the college Tallahassee State College effective July 1, 2024.

The catalog history explains the background. In 2023 the Tallahassee college launched bachelor's degrees in Business Administration, Elementary Education and Exceptional Student Education, bringing its bachelor's programs to four with the existing Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and a task force of employees, students and alumni worked with Pace Branding and Marketing to review the name. The District Board of Trustees approved a recommendation from President Murdaugh, and Senate Bill 522 changed the name.

The Florida Senate bill page records SB 522 by Senator Simon, titled Tallahassee Community College, renaming the college as Tallahassee State College, with House Bill 501 by Representative Shoaf as its identical companion, which was laid on the table when the Senate bill passed.

The college's locations page lists nine sites, five in Tallahassee and four in Gadsden and Wakulla counties, although its About page speaks of seven locations.

Several sites have their own pages. The Center for Innovation describes itself as a newly redesigned, 34,000-square-foot facility with conference facilities for up to 150 attendees, all within steps of the state Capitol. The Florida Public Safety Institute says it was established in 2009 to train students for public safety careers such as law enforcement and firefighting, and the catalog says trustees created it that year as the umbrella for the Pat Thomas Law Enforcement Academy and other academies on the Gadsden County site. The locations page places the Wakulla Environmental Institute 3.1 miles south of the Wakulla Center on Crawfordville Highway, and the catalog says it opened in 2016.

In its 60th anniversary year the college was named an Aspen Prize finalist and announced a $27.3 million building in Wakulla County.

The college says on its recognition page that it has been named a finalist for the 2027 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, placing it among the nation's top 10 community colleges. On September 21, 2026, the TSC newsroom announced a $27,338,737 Workforce Training and Resilience Facility in Wakulla County, supported by $17,064,633 from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, $10,007,946 from Triumph Gulf Coast and $266,158 from TSC Foundation donors. The two-story building is designed so that portions can serve as a Category 3-rated hurricane shelter.

The college's economic impact page, based on a Lightcast study of FY 2023-24, says TSC added $296.5 million in income to its Gadsden, Leon and Wakulla service area, about 1.2% of the region's gross regional product, and supported 4,214 jobs. TSC employed 1,459 full-time and part-time faculty and staff with a payroll of $79.3 million, and around 65% of students came from outside the region. Its Prosperity 32304 page notes that the main campus is in the 32304 ZIP code, which the college calls Florida's most underserved, and reports that about 51% of TSC students are the first in their family to go to college.

The District Board of Trustees is the college's policy-making body; trustees are appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Florida Senate. The board page lists Christian Caban, a Leon County Commissioner, as chair and Monte Stevens as vice chair, with meetings rotating among the main campus, the Center for Innovation, the Ghazvini Center and other sites.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Florida Senate's SB 522 record, section 1000.21 of the Florida Statutes and Tallahassee State College's catalog history, Legacy of Leadership, About, locations, trustees, economic impact, Aspen, Prosperity 32304, Center for Innovation, public safety institute and Wakulla newsroom pages.