The Evergreen State College

In 1967, the State of Washington enacted legislation to create a new four-year college in southwestern Washington—from the ground up. Then-Governor Daniel J. Evans and the state Legislature wanted this institution to be more than “just another four-year college.” Evans urged the Trustees to unshackle their “educational thinking from traditional patterns” and imagine a college that truly embraces interdisciplinary learning and hands-on experiential education. At this college, faculty would go beyond awarding letter grades for assignments; they would instead provide meaningful, reflective, and constructive feedback through narrative evaluations. At this college, students would experience the depth and rigor of a liberal arts education, not through incongruent “classes” without integration, but through intentional academic programs where subjects are intertwined through a coordinated studies approach.

This college–a courageous experiment at inception–would become The Evergreen State College.

In 1971, Evergreen welcomed its first students to a beautiful piece of land. On Olympia’s Cooper Point, Evergreen’s 1,000-acre campus and 3,000-foot Puget Sound beachfront became a living laboratory for creative and scientific inspiration and research. Since then, the college has continuously earned accolades for its unique delivery of a collaborative, comprehensive liberal arts education; national publications such as Princeton Review, Fiske Guide, U.S. News and World Report, and Sierra Magazine, regularly rank Evergreen as a top college and it has been named one of the few “Colleges That Change Lives.”

Today, The Evergreen State College serves approximately 3,650 students per year, each of whom are channeling their interests into a customized “area of emphasis”—pulling from more than 60 subject areas—that will culminate in a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree. Additionally, the college offers three graduate degree programs serving nearly 340 students: Master of Public Administration, Master in Teaching, and Master of Environmental Studies. Evergreen’s Tacoma Program serves an additional 166 transfer students who are focused on degree completion.

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