Cogswell Polytechnical College is a private college located in San Jose, California. It holds accreditation through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Cogswell had a student body of 315 full-time and 148 part-time students in 2013. Programs at Cogswell range from Digital Media to Engineering, with emphasis on digital animation and video game design. Cogswell Polytechnical College was the first technical training institution in the West. Cogswell is the only for-profit institution of education that holds a California constitutional tax exemption.
History
Cogswell College was founded as a high school on March 19, 1887, by Dr. and Mrs. Henry Cogswell in San Francisco. It opened in August 1888, offering technical classes for boys and business classes for girls. On June 30, 1930, it became a technical college. It was the first technical training institution in the West. The original campus building was occupied in 1888 in the Mission District in San Francisco. When the 1906 earthquake partially destroyed the campus, the College relocated across the street to an existing home. After the City of San Francisco purchased some of the land by eminent domain in 1917, a new building was constructed at Folsom Street and 26th Street in San Francisco to house the school. In 1974, having outgrown the existing campus, the college moved to a location at Stockton and California Streets. In 1985, it moved to Cupertino, where it remained until 1994. In 1993, the college purchased a campus in Sunnyvale, which it moved to in 1994. This campus was sold in 2012, and in 2015 the college moved to a leased building in San Jose. In 2010 Cogswell was acquired by Palm Ventures, a private equity firm. The following year Charles "Chuck" House, executive director of the Media X program at Stanford University, became chancellor. Deborah Snyder was appointed president of the college in 2014. As of 2018, the current Chief Executive Officer is Charles Restivo.
Academics
About 24% of the student population are women. The student to faculty ratio for Fall 2010 was 7:1. Cogswell offers the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, and Master of Arts degrees. Cogswell specializes in digital animation and video game design. Its computer graphics degree program is the longest-running in the Bay Area. It includes Project X, an invitation-only animated film production course that approximates the experience of interning in the industry. In November 2007 Cogswell announced the addition of a minor in business management. In January 2011 Cogswell started its Entrepreneurship program; it expanded this in 2012 into the first Master's program in Entrepreneurship & Innovation.
Awards
Ryan Page, a Cogswell student, won first place in the 2007 SIGGRAPH SPACE-TIME Student Animation competition in the category of Storytelling/Narrative with his film MacGuffin's Night Out. Anton Delfino, a Cogswell student, won for “Best Editing” for his film Cereal Monogamy at Columbia University's National Undergraduate Film Festival in 2007. Worlds Apart, an 8-minute film created by a Project X student cohort, has won 23 awards. The previous year's film, The Offering, also won several awards and was screened in June 2010 as part of the New York City Downtown Short Film Festival Audience Choice Screenings and in August 2010 at the New York City International Film Festival.
