Page 11 - Laker Connection Fall 2009

The Downs Years
By Dr. Harry S. Downs
It was my great fortune to begin work for the Board of Regents in September of 1960. Two years later I was given the assignment of opening Brunswick
Junior College. This involved finding a president and then assisting in every way possible to prepare the college for its first students. In this capacity I opened four new junior colleges.
In 1966, I was assigned the respon- sibility of planning the campuses and buildings for new junior colleges. Both Chancellor George Simpson and Gov- ernor Carl Sanders were committed to adding junior colleges so that almost every citizen of Georgia would reside within commuting distance of a public
college. The second institution under this assignment was Clayton Junior College. The Clayton site was by far the most attractive. Unlike the other com- munities with new junior colleges, in the case of Clayton County it was the Board of Education rather than the County Commission that initiated the bond issue on which the voters agreed to fund the initial campus. The total of $4.9 million was a much larger local contribution than for any of the other similar colleges. At that time the Clay- ton School System was under the able leadership of Superintendent J.E. Ed- monds, Assistant Superintendent
Ernest Stroud and Board Chairman Collie Adamson. In the Georgia legisla- ture Clayton County had two senior members in leadership roles, Senator Terrell Starr and Representative Bill Lee. The community support for a new college in Clayton County was far supe- rior to other communities with which I had worked.
By February of 1969, when con- struction of the CJC campus was well underway, Chancellor Simpson and the chair of the Boards of Regents ap- proached me to ask if I would consider assuming the presidency of the new college. I was honored to accept the op-
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Part of the original campus infrastructure, the Round Building, now known as the Lecture Hall, was the inspi- ration for the college’s first logo.
THE HEART OF CAMPUS