​Celebrated Past. Boundless Future.

Discover the history of Santa Ana College. As we celebrate our centennial, take a journey through our long and storied history.

1953

The passage of a $900,000 bond allowed for great campus growth.

October: El Donito, SAC’s alumni newsletter, was first published and distributed to 1,200 readers.

1954

Enrollment was 757 students.

September 16: Mexican Independence Days in Southern California culminated at the Los Angeles Coliseum with a football game between Santa Ana College and the Instituto Politécnico of Mexico City. During halftime, the Mexican president presented the SAC President Daniel McNaughton with a Mexican flag.

October 8: SAC had 28 clubs including two honorary service clubs, six Greek honor society groups, seven special interest clubs including business, French, Spanish, engineering, and farming.

October 22: A scholarship committee, comprised of faculty and staff, was instituted.

1955

February 11: Enrollment climbed to 840 students with one in every four students a veteran.

June 16: Three outstanding alumni were honored during commencement exercises in honor of the college’s 40th anniversary. It was decided that the new awards would be presented every year to distinguished alumni in the fields of education, science, and public administration.

The college track was built at a cost of $15,000.

1956

A 3,000-seat gymnasium named for athletic director Bill Cook was dedicated and later that same year, a mass naturalization ceremony for new U.S. citizens was held there.

A $936,000 bond issue was passed to fund future construction projects at SAC, including a new library, three Technical Center buildings, and a three-wing fine arts building. The Bishop Observatory, bequeathed by the estate of Attorney Clyde Bishop to SAC, was moved to the campus.

February 10: Adlai Stevenson, Democratic presidential nominee, spoke to 2,000 in the Student Union.

February 28 & 29: SAC Business Education Days were held in Cook Gymnasium displaying hundreds of vocationally-focused businesses, industries, and equipment.

May 5: The two-story Hammond Hall named for Dana King Hammond, Santa Ana Junior College's first director, was dedicated along with Cook Gymnasium. The gymnasium was named in honor of Andrew J. "Bill" Cook, SAC’s head coach for 25 years. The dedication took place during the first annual Orange County Science Fair.

September: U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon visited the college to present a "jungle plane" to Peru for use by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The plane was purchased with donations from Orange County citizens. The plane took off and landed from the SAC baseball field to demonstrate its capabilities.

October: College enrollment included 1,145 men and 442 women for a total of 1,587.

1957

Dr. John E. Johnson was appointed as first chief executive of Santa Ana College to bear the title of president. He would serve until 1979.

October: Phillips Hall, the first building designed specifically for drama production in the city of Santa Ana, was dedicated and named for the college’s first drama and public speaking instructor Ernest Crozier Phillips.

1958

Santa Ana College continued to grow and the record enrollment of 2,237 shows a 32% increase over the previous year. The faculty consisted of 58 full-time and seventeen part-time instructors. A fully transferable program in fire science was launched in cooperation with the USC School of Public Administration.

January 28: The Harlem Globetrotters performed against Philadelphia in the Bill Cook Gymnasium.

June: Previously housed in an army barrack, the new Santa Ana College library was named in honor of Edward M. Nealley, a respected and longtime SAC professor of history, psychology, philosophy, and sociology (1917-1938).

1959

Fall: Complete lower division offerings were offered for the first time in police science in coordination with upper division courses at Long Beach State College.