Profile
From Farmland to 21st Century
When they arrived for classes in fall 1972, 3,500 Richland College (RLC) credit students shared their campus lawn with sheep grazing on the farmland and ducks on the lakes that separate the campus buildings. Architects, winners of numerous awards for RLC’s design, had care- fully protected the trees, the lakes—even the animals—as they planned the campus. The sheep graze elsewhere now, but students and staff still enjoy and protect those first campus ducks’ descendants. Those original ducks inspired the name of our mascot—R. Mobius Thunderduck. “Moby Duck,” in student parlance, smbolizes the linkages, in Mobius-strip fashion, between one’s inner life of contemplation and mindful reflection and one’s outer life of service with sustaining others, community, planet, and universe.
Today RLC serves, in partnership with community entities, more than 17,000 college credit students and some 4,800 continuing education students each semester. These students come from over 130 countries and speak 79 first languages. Nearly 25% take advantage of Richland’s distance learning course offerings. In 2003, Thunderduck Hall opened as the college’s one-stop student-enrollment “front door.” Funds from the 2004 bond election added $54 million in new construction, including a science building (2009), designed as a “LEED Platinum” green building, as well as a “LEED Gold”-designed Richland College Garland Campus (2009), in one of our primary service-area communities.
Our Diverse Profile
RLC’s student body includes 55% women, 45% men; 28% full-time, 72% part-time; 38% Anglo-American, 19% African-American, 21% Hispanic, 16% Asian-American, 2% international, and 4% undeclared. Almost seventy percent of RLC’s enrollment is in courses for university transfer, 9% enrollment in courses for technical-occupational training, and 22% in developmental coursework. The average student is 27 years old. RLC works closely with local ISDs, private schools, home schools, and universities in a “seamless P-16 student success pipeline” into the workforce. In 2005, RLC added the innovative Richland Collegiate High School (RCHS) of Mathematics, Science, and Engineering, the first public charter high school awarded to a Texas community college, enrolling up to 900 students, RCHS helps college-ready juniors and seniors simultaneously earn dual credit toward their RCHS diploma and their RLC associate degree.
RLC’s baccalaureate-track programs are comprehensive of what students usually find at the first two years of all Texas public universities. Richland transfers nearly 55% of its students to Texas’ four-year colleges and universities.
Our academic programs include “learning community” clusters, thematically linked with special emphases, such as Global Studies, Honors, Mind-Body Health, Studies Abroad, the Richland Institute for Peace, Mexican-American/Latino Studies, African-American/Black Studies, and Asian-American/Middle Eastern-American Studies. In addition, Richland’s International Studies programs link with global partners in Russia, Estonia, Mexico, Mozambique, Vietnam, and Senegal.
Career programs meet urgent training needs for skilled workers to stay current in today’s economy. Richland’s Corporate Services, in partnership with local chambers and other economic development partners, tailors contract training to the specific needs of local businesses. The Emeritus Program for seniors aged 50 and above continues to grow with the recent addition of a new Baby Boomer program.
Richland serves as the host location for the national Center for Renewal and Wholeness in Higher Education (CRWHE), whose mission is “the renewal of whole people who form the heart of whole organizations that are vital to sustaining whole communities.”