Evergreen State College
The Evergreen State College is a public liberal arts college in unincorporated Thurston County, Washington, with an Olympia postal address. Founded in 1967, and offering classes in the fall of 1971, it offers a non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students have the option to design their own study towards a degree or follow a predetermined path of study. Full-time students can enroll in interdisciplinary academic programs, in addition to stand-alone classes. Programs typically offer students the opportunity to study several disciplines in a coordinated manner. Faculty write substantive narrative evaluations of students' work in place of issuing grades.
Evergreen's main campus, which includes its own saltwater beach, spans 1,000 acres of forest close to the southern end of Puget Sound. Evergreen also has a satellite campus in nearby Tacoma. The school offers the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Master of Environmental Studies, Master in Teaching, and Master of Public Administration degrees.
Evergreen was one of many alternative colleges and programs launched in the 1960s and 1970s, often described as experiments. While the vast majority of these have either closed or adopted more mainstream approaches, Evergreen continues to teach a non-traditional curriculum. The college experienced enrollment declines in the late 2010s but had record growth between 2022-2023 and school years 2023-2024 and four straight years of enrollment growth as of the 2024-2025 school year.
History
In 1964, a report was issued by the Council of Presidents of Washington State baccalaureate institutions stating that another college was needed in the state to balance the geographical distribution of the existing state institutions. This report spurred the 1965 Washington legislature to create the Temporary Advisory Council on Public Higher Education to study the need and possible location for a new state college.In 1965–66, the Temporary Advisory Council on Public Higher Education concluded that "at the earliest possible time a new college should be authorized", to be located at a suburban site in Thurston County within a radius of approximately from Olympia. Evergreen's enabling legislation – HB 596 – stated that the campus should be no smaller than, making it then the largest campus in the state as well as the first public four-year college created in Washington in the 20th century.
On January 24, 1968, "The Evergreen State College" was selected from 31 choices as the name of the new institution. On November 1, 1968, Charles J. McCann assumed the first presidency of the college. McCann and the founding faculty held the first day of classes October 4, 1971, with 1,128 students. McCann served from 1968 until stepping down to join the faculty June 6, 1977, when former Governor Daniel J. Evans, who signed the legislation creating Evergreen, assumed the presidency. Evans left the president's office in 1983 when he was appointed to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of senator Henry M. Jackson. The largest building on campus is named in honor of Evans, the Daniel J. Evans Library Building. The entrance to the campus bears McCann's name, the Charles J. McCann plaza.
In 1982, Maxine Mimms founded Evergreen's Tacoma campus.
In the 1992–93 school year, students chose Leonard Peltier to give the address at commencement, which was the first with a graduating class of more than 1,000. The selection was described as "perhaps the most unconventional commencement speaker" in a published round-up of the most controversial graduation speakers on campuses nationwide that year. Peltier, who was in federal prison, submitted his remarks in writing, to be read by a graduating senior.
In 1999, Mumia Abu-Jamal was invited to deliver the keynote address by audiotape for the graduating class at the college. The event was protested by some.
In 2004, the college completed the Seminar II building, as well as a significant remodeling of the Daniel J Evans Library.
In 2015, George Sumner Bridges became the sixth president of Evergreen State College, not counting interim appointments. Bridges had previously served as president of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. He followed Thomas L. "Les" Purce, Jane L. Jervis, and Joseph D. Olander.
2017 protests
President Bridges appointed a committee to study social equity on campus. In November 2016, the committee recommended changes to faculty hiring and evaluation criteria that proved to be controversial. Earlier that year, a white male faculty member was given an annual review that referred to his race and speculated whether students of color in his class were able to freely participate in discussions; however, ultimately the College agreed that a teacher's race and gender should not be mentioned in performance reviews, so it was changed. The debate continued through the spring quarter. Every April from the 1970s until 2017, Evergreen held a daylong event called "Day of Absence", inspired by the Douglas Turner Ward play of the same name, during which minority students and faculty members voluntarily stayed off campus to raise awareness of the contributions of minorities and to discuss racial and campus issues. Since 1992, the Day of Absence has been followed by the "Day of Presence", when the campus community reunites. In 2017, approximately 25% of Evergreen students were members of racial minority groups.In 2017, some students of color voiced concerns about feeling unwelcome on campus following the 2016 US presidential election and a 2015 off-campus police shooting. Consequently, "it was decided that on Day of Absence, white students, staff and faculty will be invited to leave the campus for the day's activities" to attend an off-campus event. The off-campus event was held at a church that accommodated 200 people, about 7% of the white student body. An event for students of color was held on the Evergreen campus. Bret Weinstein, a professor of biology at Evergreen, wrote a letter in March to Evergreen faculty, protesting the change in format, stating "On a college campus, one's right to speak—or to be—must never be based on skin color." and "There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away." The incident attracted national attention, with The New York Times writing that Evergreen "found itself on the front line of the national discontent over race, speech and political disagreement" and that the national exposure led "right-leaning websites to on their newest college target".
In late May 2017, student protesters disrupted the campus and called for a number of changes to the college. Protesters occupied the office of Evergreen’s President George Bridges, without permission; exits to the campus library were blocked with furniture. Weinstein was told by campus police that it was not safe for him to be on campus, which caused Weinstein to hold his biology class in a public park. Weinstein and his wife, professor Heather Heying, later resigned and each received $250,000 in a settlement with the university, after having sued for $3.8 million for failing to "protect its employees from repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence".
A June 1 direct threat to campus safety led to an evacuation and two-day closure of the campus. According to campus police, protesters with sticks and bats caused approximately $10,000 in damage to the campus and forced closure of the school for an additional day. Two weeks later, a June 15 protest on campus by the far-right group Patriot Prayer led to the campus being closed early. The following day, Evergreen's 2017 commencement ceremony was also moved off-campus because of safety concerns. Through the spring and summer, African American students reported receiving harassing and threatening messages. An African American staff member and faculty member both resigned before the end of the year claiming escalating online attacks against them.
A report from the college suggested protests may adversely affect Evergreen's enrollment, which had been declining over the last decade. In the immediate aftermath enrollments fell, with the November 2018 head count dropping to 3,327 students, down from 3,881 students in 2017. The college's chief enrollment officer cited "questions about our reputation" as making efforts to attract students "more difficult" and the drop forced the college to cut its budget by 10% and increase student fees. Enrollment plummeted by 41%, to 2,281 students in fall of 2020 and was expected to top at around 2,000 in 2021. In February 2022, the chief enrollment officer reported that total enrollment had fallen to 1,952 students. Enrollment began to recover from its low point with 14% year-over-year growth in 2022, and 23% growth in 2023, which brought the total enrollment to 2,225.
Academics
Undergraduate
Evergreen is unique in that undergraduate students select one 16-credit program for the entire quarter rather than multiple courses. Full-time programs will encompass a quarter's worth of work in everything related to that program concentration, by up to three professors. There are no majors; students have the freedom to choose what program to enroll in each quarter for the entire duration of their undergraduate education, and are not required to follow a specific set of programs. Evergreen is on the "quarter" system, with programs lasting one, two, or three quarters. Three-quarter programs are generally September through June.At the end of the program, the professor writes a one-page report about the student's activity in the class rather than awarding a letter grade, and has an end-of-program evaluation conference with each student. The professor also determines how many credits should be awarded to the student, and students can lose credit.
In order to be granted a Bachelor of Science degree, a student must complete 180 credits, 72 of which need to be in science, with 48 of those noted as upper division. This upper division requirement can be satisfied by one year of full-time upper-division science studies.
Evergreen offers an evening and weekend program.