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• 1990
   

  LaGuardia wins three grants worth $131,333 in the Vocational Education Act's 1990 Postsecondary Competitive Grant Program, and is the only institution to receive awards in all major funding categories.

• 1990
  January

  Due to ACE's exceptional ESL program, LaGuardia is chosen to join the federally funded Amnesty Program designed to provide immigrants with the education they need to obtain permanent residency status. Students range in age from 17 to 64.

• 1990
  August

  LaGuardia offers the Emergency Medical Technician certificate program.

• 1990
  September 18

  President Bowen is sworn in as the second president of LaGuardia Community College in an inauguration ceremony held at the International Design Center at 30-20 Thomson Avenue – which, in 2010, would become the College's B building - and attended by 700 guests, including city, state and CUNY officials. "Nowhere, more than at LaGuardia is the spirit of innovation so alive, and the commitment to meeting the diverse needs of the community so profound," says newly appointed CUNY Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds, who makes her first public address at the event.

• 1990
  September 23

  Newly appointed CUNY Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds is the keynote speaker at LaGuardia's 18th annual commencement exercises held at Queens College's Colden Auditorium. Over 1,000 graduates attend.

• 1991
   

  Renovations are completed on the E building. With 379,364 square feet, the five-story building houses offices, classrooms, a central atrium, two courtyards, a swimming pool and the Mainstage Theatre.
  
  

• 1991
   

  LaGuardia is awarded a $900,000 grant by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to launch a collaborative program with Barnard College to encourage minority community college students to pursue a science degree at a four-year college.

• 1991
  September 21

  NY City Council Speaker Peter Vallone receives the President's Medal at the College's 19th annual commencement exercises held at Queens College's Colden Auditorium. Over 1,200 graduates attend.

• 1991
  Fall

  On the eve of its 10th anniversary, the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives acquires the private and public papers of three generations of Wagners—New Deal era Senator Robert F. Wagner, three-term NYC Mayor Robert F. Wagner, and Robert F. Wagner Jr., deputy mayor under Mayor Koch. In addition, the NY City Council awards LaGuardia a $100,000 grant to preserve the collection and develop programs using its content.

• 1992
   

  Philosophy Professor Dr. John Chaffee is named Educator of the Year by the NY Association for Developmental Education for the success of his nationally acclaimed Critical Thinking program. Students enrolled in the program nearly double the College-wide pass rate in writing and reading in standardized testing. His textbook, Thinking Critically, is used in classrooms throughout the nation.

• 1992
   

  LaGuardia launches College Opportunity to Prepare for Employment (COPE), a welfare-to-work program designed to help participants enter the workforce.

• 1993
   

  LaGuardia is ranked 32nd among colleges that awarded the highest number of associate degrees during the 1989-90 academic year. Over 5,800 institutions participated in the survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

• 1993
   

  NYC Mayor David N. Dinkins is the recipient of the President's Medal at the College's 21st annual commencement exercises held at Queens College's Colden Auditorium.

• 1993
   

  Middle College High School Principal Dr. Cecelia Cullen is named NYC's best public high school principal in the city-wide Reliance Awards for Excellence in Education, an annual competition that recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the quality of education in NYC.
  
  

• 1993
  January

  President Bowen signs an agreement with Dr. Julio Ravelo Astacio, Rector of Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo, to collaborate on the creation of the island's first community college. Located in an underserved area, the college provides academic programs in addition to co-op education, ESL and continuing ed offerings.

• 1993
  February

  WNYC-AM (820) airs the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives' biographical series on Mayor LaGuardia.
  
  

• 1993
  June 4

  President Bowen, student leaders, city officials and over 300 guests attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the official completion of construction on the College's E building.

• 1993
  September

  For the first time, commencement is held at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, then known as The Paramount, marking the end of LaGuardia's use of Queens College's Colden Auditorium for graduation exercises.

• 1994
   

  LaGuardia launches College Now, a collaboration with 10 Queens high schools that gives juniors and seniors the chance to take college-level courses for transferrable credit.
  
  

• 1994
   

  LaGuardia enacts a no smoking policy across campus, becoming the first community college in Queens with a smoke-free environment.

• 1994
  September

  NYC Commissioner of Business Services Rudy Washington, future Deputy Mayor under Rudolph Giuliani and Class of '74 alumnus, is the first LaGuardia alumnus to deliver the keynote speech at the College's 22nd annual commencement exercises held at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
  
  

• 1994
  September

  Mayor Ed Koch donates his personal papers from his terms in office to the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, creating the Koch Collection.

• 1994
  Fall

  LaGuardia's first honors course is taught by Psychology Professor Lawrence Rushing, Director of the newly created Honors Experience. This forerunner of the Honors Program enables intellectually curious and ambitious students to enroll in special sections of certain courses that emphasize critical thinking, intensive analytical writing and research skills, and oral debate.

• 1995
   

  Protesting recent stringent immigration rulings, folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary visit International College High School to perform for students. Students perform for the musicians two original songs written in their American Dream class.
  
  

• 1995
  May 17

  A team of 14 faculty and staff create and present a three-foot-by-six-foot patch to the NAMES/AIDS Memorial Quilt Project on AIDS Awareness Day with the names of 14 faculty, staff and students who died of AIDS or HIV infection.

• 1996
  Summer

  ACE launches the CUNY Language Immersion Program (CLIP) to help CUNY students improve their English language skills so they can succeed in college.

• 1996
  Fall

  The Humanities Department creates a Fine Arts program offering a variety of courses in drawing, painting and sculpture.

• 1996
  Fall

  LaGuardia is the first college in Queens to link up to a fiber optic cable network.

• 1996
  November 16

  LaGuardia celebrates its 25th anniversary with a host of cultural activities that bring together faculty, staff, students and members of the Western Queens community.
  
  

• 1996
  November 19

  Rock and roll legend Bo Diddley performs at the College's Mainstage Theatre as part of LaGuardia's 25th anniversary celebration.

• 1997
   

  LaGuardia launches Family College, an intergenerational program in which 16 adults on public assistance pursue their Associate's degrees while their 19 children attend an on-campus school.

• 1997
  May 12

  Singer Richie Havens performs at the opening of LaGuardia's international Hall of Flags ceremony honoring the diversity of the College with a permanent display of 132 flags representing the countries of origin of the College's faculty, staff and students.
  
  

• 1997
  September 16

  NYS Senator Serphin Maltese is the recipient of the President's Medal at the College's 25th annual commencement exercises held at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.

• 1997
  Fall

  The first 25 graduates of LaGuardia's Certified Paramedic program pass their NYS Department of Health and NYC licensing exams. The year-old program is the result of a partnership between the College and Western Queens Community Hospital.

• 1997
  Winter

  Future third president of LaGuardia Dr. Gail O. Mellow is appointed Senior Administrator for Pedagogy and Curriculum in the Division of Academic Affairs for a term of one year. "My research and focus have been on trying to ensure that community colleges look seriously at how our students may differ, and what we can do as faculty to structure supportive and successful academic environments for them."

• 1998
   

  LaGuardia is ranked fourth among the nation's top 100 producers of Associate's degrees for minorities during the 1995-96 academic year according to a report issued by Black Issues in Higher Education.

• 1998
   

  The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awards LaGuardia's Urban Center for Economic Development (LUCED) a three-year, $500,000 grant to expand its quality management program founded in 1994 to help small businesses improve revenues.

• 1998
   

  The LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC) receives a $400,000 grant from the NYC Board of Education to recruit local and national art educators and performers to help elementary school teachers infuse arts into their curriculum.

• 1998
   

  Family Institute programs for summer youth employment, computer skills for displaced workers and career retraining for the unemployed receive awards from the NYC Department of Employment. The College is the only institution among the 53 organizations recognized to receive three awards.

• 1998
  March

  President Bowen announces the creation of the Division of Information Technology. The new Division brings together Academic Computing and the Faculty Lab, from Academic Affairs; Administrative Computing, from the Division of Administration; and Information Management and Analysis, from the Division of Institutional Advancement. Charged with improving the College's technology and access to it, the Division also creates the College's first website.

• 1998
  Spring

  LaGuardia's Bridges to the Future Program receives a $470,000 three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue its efforts to engage minority students in earning Bachelor's degrees and pursuing careers in the sciences. "What excites students is the research-centered aspect of the program," says Bridges' Program Director Clara Wu, a LaGuardia science professor.

• 1998
  Spring

  Vice President Al Gore congratulates Middle College High School Principal Cecelia Cunningham and founder Dr. Janet Lieberman when they accept the Ford Foundation's Innovations in American Government Award for Middle College's success in encouraging at-risk youngsters to graduate high school and pursue a college degree.

• 1998
  Fall

  LaGuardia purchases the entire nine-story C building in a $54 million acquisition that also includes a nearby garage and parking lot that increases the size of the campus by 70%.

• 1998
  Fall

  The Library launches its website, offering many of the collection's resources online.

• 1998
  Fall

  LaGuardia's Co-op Department receives the Beacon Award for its outstanding contributions to experiential education from the National Society of Experiential Education.

• 1998
  Fall

  Nationally renowned photojournalist Bruce Davidson joins the Commercial Photography program as a visiting Distinguished Professor.
  
  

• 1998
  October 1

  The second issue of LaGuardia's recently launched literary magazine New York Stories features an excerpt from John Updike's newest novel Bech at Bay and a story by acclaimed filmmaker Ethan Coen.
  
  

• 1998
  November

  LaGuardia launches a GED program for inmates in Rikers Island and six detention houses in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan.

• 1999
   

  Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education ranks LaGuardia third in the nation in the number of Associate's degrees earned by Hispanic students during the 1996-97 academic year. At the time, there were 1,123 two-year degree-granting institutions in the U.S.

• 1999
   

  Due to their outstanding success educating at-risk students, LaGuardia's Middle College and International High Schools are among the first schools chosen to lead the way in NYC Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew's charter school conversion plan.

• 1999
  January 14

  On the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 70th birthday and the 35th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act, LaGuardia unveils a photo exhibition of King's struggle for equality by Commercial Photography adjunct Ben Fernandez, King's personal photographer. The 50 black and white images become a permanent display in the College's second floor E building Atrium.

• 1999
  Spring

  Fifteen faculty and staff are selected to help begin the process of creating LaGuardia's first Strategic Plan.

• 1999
  September

  President Bowen retires.

• 1999
  September 21

  Newly installed CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein gives his first commencement address as the keynote speaker at LaGuardia's 27th annual commencement exercises held at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.

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LaGuardia Community College Then AND Now 1971-2011
Forty Years of Challenging Expectations

Our timeline tells our story, then AND now.

In 2011, LaGuardia Community College celebrates 40 years of opening the doors of higher learning to all. By challenging expectations and daring to do more everyday, LAGCC is at the forefront of momentous shifts in the landscape of higher education in the 21st century. Now, as we did then, we imagine new ideas, create new curriculum and pioneer programs to make our community and our country stronger.