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Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College

Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC) in Tifton is one of the largest residential two-year colleges in Georgia. The college is named after Abraham Baldwin, a Georgia signer of the U.S. Constitution and the first president of the University of Georgia.

The first students attended the institution in 1908,

Tift Hall

when it was an area high school called the Second District Agricultural and Mechanical School. The name was changed twice in the 1920s, to South Georgia A&M College in 1925 and to Georgia State College for Men in 1929. It was then a four-year school, and it even fielded a football team. When the University System of Georgia was formed in 1933, the college assumed two-year status and received its present name in recognition of its emphasis on agriculture and home economics.

The fall 2003

Town Hall

enrollment at ABAC consisted of 3,410 students from 146 Georgia counties, 16 other states, and 15 countries. The college has fifty-one programs of study, including nursing, criminal justice, and education. Approximately 21 percent of ABAC students major in the Division of Agriculture and Forest Resources, which features such diverse programs as golf club management, wildlife, and forestry. More than 750 students live on campus.

ABAC offers seven intercollegiate sports programs, including men's and women's basketball, men's and women's tennis, women's fast-pitch softball, baseball, and rodeo. The rodeo team is the only one at a two-year college east of the Mississippi River. ABAC has won three national championships in women's softball and two national titles in men's tennis.

Other extracurricular interests for the students include a wide-ranging music program with a concert band, jazz band, concert choir, and jazz choir. The college has its own theater troupe, the Baldwin Players. The college also has an award-winning student newspaper, the Stallion, a literary magazine, Pegasus, a student radio station (WPLH), and a television studio.

ABAC students can transfer without loss of credit to other units of the University System of Georgia or choose one of the thirteen majors in the career technological program, which are designed to be completed after two years of study. Persons who want to upgrade their skills or acquire expertise in a particular area of study can enroll in nineteen one-year certificate programs.

Pedestrian Mall

In 1987 ABAC expanded its scope to include classes in nearby Moultrie, at a location in the center of downtown now called "ABAC on the Square." The Moultrie campus has proven to be very popular, with almost 400 students now attending classes there. These students can select from three different degrees offered entirely in Moultrie or from a variety of core curriculum classes. ABAC also has offered off-campus classes in Fitzgerald, Nashville, and Sylvester.

ABAC has joined with five other members of the university system to offer students an opportunity to take bachelor's- and master's-level classes on the Tifton campus. Macon State College offers a degree in information technology; Valdosta State University, in early childhood education; Georgia Southwestern State University, in accounting and management; and the University of Georgia, in agriscience and environmental systems. Albany State University also offers a master's degree in business administration on the ABAC campus.

ABAC's 421-acre campus includes the 12-acre Lake Baldwin and the 200-acre Jasper G. Woodroof Farm, named for ABAC's first president, Jasper Guy Woodroof.

Jasper G. Woodroof Farm

The ABAC Foundation owns the 91-acre Forest Lakes Golf Club, which proves a perfect teaching laboratory for students in programs ranging from agricultural equipment technology to sports turf management. Prominent ABAC alumni include former lieutenant governor and state supreme court justice George T. Smith; former secretary of state Cathy Cox; and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who enrolled in several short courses through ABAC's continuing education program when he was a peanut farmer in nearby Plains.

In 2008 ABAC was ranked number ten in Washington Monthly magazine's inaugural list of "America's 30 Best Two-Year Institutions." The ranking was based on graduation rates and on a survey of students conducted by the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, which measured such factors as teaching quality and student-faculty interaction.

Michael D. Chason, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College

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