Santa Monica College

Coordinates: 34°01′00″N 118°28′15″W / 34.0168°N 118.4707°W / 34.0168; -118.4707

Santa Monica College is a two-year, public, junior college located in Santa Monica, California, United States.

Santa Monica College was first opened in 1929 as Santa Monica Junior College. Current enrollment is over 30,000 students in more than 90 fields of study.

Santa Monica College is ranked number one among California's junior colleges in transfers to the University of California,University of Southern California, and Loyola Marymount University.

The Santa Monica College Arts Mentor Program provides certain students in the fine and applied arts with graduate-level training by professionals in their specialized fields. The program was designed for select individuals whose talents exceed the scope of the traditional curriculum at the College.

Santa Monica College offers a variety of occupational certificate programs, including accounting, fashion design, office information systems, and the Academy of Entertainment Technology (which offers certificates in interactive media and animation).

Santa Monica College is also the home of KCRW (89.9 FM), a leading public radio station, broadcasting throughout the Los Angeles and Orange County area with an estimated 450,000 listeners. The station is the broadcast home of Morning Becomes Eclectic and Harry Shearer's Le Show. As part of its hands-on media curriculum, the college also produces its own weekly, student-run newspaper (both in print, and online) called The Corsair which took home 14 awards at its most recent State Competition, including the Award for General Excellence. Recently Santa Monica College has received national attention due to a controversial plan to create a two-tier system of education in which more "popular" courses would be offered at higher costs.

SMC is one of few community colleges that has a superconducting magnet. "SMC Students to Intern at Nation’s Top Laboratories". Retrieved 2013-4-23. 

Santa Monica College fields 16 sports which compete in the Western State Conference. The mascot for SMC is Pico the Corsair.

SMC fields both men's and women's teams in basketball, cross country, swimming, track and field, volleyball, and water polo. SMC fields men's teams in American football team, and women's softball, soccer, and tennis teams.

Santa Monica College Football played undefeated seasons in 1958, 1966 and 1980.

Santa Monica College Won the Junior Rose Bowl, the unofficial National Championship in 1958 against Northeastern Oklahoma A&M on Dec. 13, 1958.

Santa Monica College Football is the defending two time conference champion, for the years 2011 and 2012.

Corsair Field (4,850) built in 1948, is home to football and track and field. The field was the starting point for both the men's and women's marathon events for the 1984 Summer Olympics held in neighboring Los Angeles.

Corsair Pavilion (1,600) is home to men's and women's basketball and volleyball teams, as well as the Hollywood Fame of the American Basketball Association

The Santa Monica College men's volleyball team won the national intercollegiate volleyball championship each year from 1961–66, except for 1965, when it lost the title to UCLA.

Also, the Santa Monica College's track is featured on the album cover "Running with Scissors" by Weird Al Yankovic.

* Description and images provided by Wikipedia under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license .