 The City of Stafford also enjoys a unique education-government partnership with Houston Community College-Southwest, located on Cash Road, just down the street from the new Stafford Centre. The city took the initiative to join the Houston Community College System in 1989 when it called an election to have the Stafford Municipal School District annexed into the HCC System. Citizens of Stafford approved that action with an overwhelming majority vote.
By 1995, the HCC - Stafford campus facilities, located in a converted warehouse provided by the City, were "bursting at the seams." The city responded by getting precedent-setting legislation passed by the Texas Legislature that allowed the city to sell $7.5 million in bonds to expand the campus with the construction of a science and technology center. Stafford citizens approved the bonds, with debt service being paid entirely through student fees.
The Scarcella Science and Technology Center opened its doors in the spring of 1998. The 75,000-square-foot academic building houses 6 science labs, 13 computer labs, 15 general-purpose classrooms, a 105-seat lecture hall, and 3 computer-equipped business technology classrooms. It contains:
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A corporate training center that offers videoconferencing facilities and provides businesses with an opportunity to train employees on new software; |
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A television station that offers students an associate's degree in Broadcast Technology. This facility also houses S-METV, the city's municipal-educational television station that broadcasts most governmental meetings live. It brings a whole new dimension to local television service for the citizens of Stafford; and |
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Associate degree programs in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) - expanding areas within the computer science field, and the only degree program of this type in the state when it began in 1998. |
With over 7,000 students enrolled at HCC-Southwest, the campus is currently the second largest in the HCC System, second only to the central campus. It is expected to grow beyond its present 70 acres and attract an enrollment of more than 20,000 students in the not-too-distant future.
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