Bethune-Cookman University

Overview

Bethune-Cookman University is a private historically Black university in Daytona Beach, Florida, affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It was founded by Mary McLeod Bethune, who started the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in 1904, with its first students meeting in the home of John Henry and Alice Smith Williams. In 1923 the school merged with the Cookman Institute of Jacksonville — founded in 1872 by the Rev. D. S. Darnell — to become a coeducational high school known as the Daytona Cookman Collegiate Institute, affiliated with the Methodist Church’s Board of Education. It became a junior college by 1931, and in 1941 Florida’s Department of Education approved a four-year bachelor’s program in liberal arts and teacher education, at which point the school took the name Bethune-Cookman College; its first Bachelor of Science graduates, in elementary education, came in 1943.

Accreditation and Growth

The school earned an “A” rating from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Florida State Department of Education in 1947, and full accreditation from that association in 1970. In 1988 it joined the United Negro College Fund and gained candidacy status to offer a master’s degree in science education. The Board of Trustees approved its present name, Bethune-Cookman University, on February 14, 2007.