Welcome
Rollins College is a private, liberal arts college in Central Florida with about 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students and more than 600 faculty and staff. Nestled between idyllic Lake Virginia and the historic, southern town of Winter Park, Rollins was founded by New England Congregationalists in 1885 as the first recognized, co-educational, post-secondary institution of higher learning in the state of Florida. The city of Winter Park, which became incorporated around the same time as the College’ founding, was established by wealthy industrialists from the North and planned as an intentionally segregated community.
From the beginning Winter Park had a majority Black residential laboring district on the west side of town and, across the railroad tracks, a majority White seasonal tourist district with larger plots and lakeside residences on the east side of town. Because of this historical reality, Rollins College’s staff and workforce has always included local people of color, just like other Winter Park business, hotels, and households. And while Rollins welcomed international students from countries like Cuba, China, and Japan as early as the 1910s and 1920s, the College was not desegregated until 1964. The first class of Black graduates matriculated in 1969 and the following decades saw a series of changes to campus, driven by both alumni and student activism, like a dramatic increase in the number of enrolled students of color, the chartering of the Black Student Union, and the hiring of Black faculty and administrators.
Today, with more than 30 current undergraduate major offerings and several prestigious graduate programs, Rollins exhibits a strong commitment to both global citizenship and liberal education principles through its mission, programming, hiring, and enrollment practices. The campus administration is presently in the process of implementing several DEI-focused strategic initiatives over a five-year cycle. Likewise, the College Archives recently participated in Pathways to Diversity, a multi-institution initiative to explore the moment of integration in campus history and uncover the broader race relations experience using newly unearthed materials from archival collections.