West Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC), located in Paducah, is one of 16 two-year, open-admissions colleges of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS). It was formed by the 2003 consolidation of Paducah Community College and West Kentucky Technical College. WKCTC is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).
History
Paducah Community College was founded in 1932 as a private school called Paducah Junior College (PJC). PJC became a municipal college in 1936. In 1964, PJC moved to a new campus on Alben Barkley Drive in Paducah which serves as today's WKCTC campus. In 1967, PJC joined the University of Kentucky's Community College System and became Paducah Community College.
West Kentucky Technical College was founded in 1909 as West Kentucky Industrial College, a teacher training school for African American students. West Kentucky Industrial College became a state-supported junior college in 1918. The college changed its name twice more, eventually becoming West Kentucky State Vocational-Technical School. In 1979, the school moved its operations to a new campus adjacent to PCC.
In 1998, PCC and West Kentucky TECH (yet another name for the vocational-technical school) joined the newly formed Kentucky Community and Technical Colleges System (KCTCS). At that time, West Kentucky TECH became West Kentucky Technical College. That same year, the University of Kentucky opened a branch campus of its College of Engineering at the PCC campus. PCC and West Kentucky Technical College consolidated in 2003 to become West Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC).
Located in the beautiful river community of Paducah, Kentucky, WKCTC is a two-year, comprehensive college serving more than 9,000 students annually and offering more than 250 associate degree, diploma and certificate options in 48 academic and career programs. The college has been recognized as an Aspen Prize Top 10 Community College each of the three times the Prize has been awarded by the Aspen Institute and has twice been named a Finalist With Distinction for providing students with strong job training and continuing higher education opportunity, for achieving high completion and transfer rates, and for providing strong employment results for its graduates.
Service area
The primary service area for WKCTC includes all eight counties in the Purchase area:
- Ballard County
- Calloway County
- Carlisle County
- Fulton County
- Graves County
- Hickman County
- Marshall County
- McCracken County
plus two other counties that border on the Purchase area:
- Livingston County
- Lyon County
External links
- West Kentucky Community and Technical College Home Page
- Kentucky Community and Technical College Home Page
