Frank Phillips College

Frank Phillips College, in Borger, Texas, was established as Borger City Junior College in 1948. C. A. Cryer served as first president of the college and as superintendent of the Borger schools. The board requested and received permission from Frank Phillips, founder of Phillips Petroleum Company, which had extensive holdings in the Borger area, to rename the college in his honor. J. W. Dillard served as dean in the planning stage of the school and as president from 1955 to 1974. The college and Borger High School shared a physical plant that was completed in time for occupancy in the fall of 1948. During that year 250 students enrolled in the college, and its faculty numbered ten. In 1955 the college bought thirty acres in the southwestern part of the city for a new campus, and facilities were ready for classes by the fall semester of 1956. Enrollment that year was 450, and the faculty had grown to twenty-nine. In 1960 a fine-arts building was completed, with an auditorium, a cafeteria, a student lounge, and a bookstore, as well as classrooms and offices. A $450,000 library opened in 1966, and by 1970 it had more than 21,000 volumes. The college was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1969. With the addition of twenty acres to the campus, the college physical plant was valued at $3 million. In 1973 the Texas Education Agency approved vocational training programs to begin at the college. Because of the growth of the vocational programs, and with the help of a grant from Phillips Petroleum, a new vocational campus began operation in 1976. This campus, three miles west on State Highway 136, housed the agriculture, drafting, and welding schools and an expanded adult continuing-education department until a new building for vocational education was completed on the main campus in 1983. In 1984 Andrew Hicks was president of the college, which that year had ten buildings on a sixty-acre campus valued at more than $12 million. That year the administration, faculty, and staff totaled eighty-one; academic and vocational student enrollment totaled more than 1,000; and continuing-education students totaled about 1,700. In 1997 total enrollment was 3,194 students, with 1,268 in academic programs and 1,926 in workforce education, and there were ninety-four faculty members. Herbert J. Swender was president of the college in 2001.