Orange Coast College is a community college in Orange County, California, United States. It was founded in 1947, with its first classes opening in the fall of 1948. It provides two-year associate of art and science degrees, certificates of achievement, and lower-division classes transferable to other colleges and universities. The school enrolls 24,424 undergraduate students. In terms of population size, Orange Coast College is the third largest college in Orange County. It is located in Costa Mesa, California, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles.HistoryOrange Coast College was formed after local voters passed a measure in the January 1947 election to establish a new junior college on a 243-acre site, secured from the War Assets Administration in Washington, D.C, carved from the 1,300-acre deactivated Santa Ana Army Air Base.The first official District board of trustees hired the college's founding president and district superintendent, Basil Hyrum Peterson, on July 28, 1947. Construction of campus classrooms and facilities began when Dr. Peterson hired Fran Albers as the college's carpenter in February 1948. Albers' crew of 35 workers turned an Army movie theatre into an auditorium and concert hall; a service club into a 500-seat gymnasium; an Army chapel into a facility for theatre productions and student/staff weddings; a military storage building into a library; an Army PX into a student center; a battalion headquarters building into an administration building; and several cadet barracks into student dormitories and married student and faculty housing.

Whittier Law School is a law school in Costa Mesa, California. Founded in 1966, it is a fully accredited ABA law school in Orange County, California. A private university, it is part of Whittier College.HistoryThe Law School was originally founded as the Beverly College of Law in 1966, and located in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles’s Westside. It was a private, nonprofit educational institution intended to meet the growing need for a law school in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.In 1974, the Whittier College Board of Trustees voted to merge the Beverly College of Law into Whittier College. In 1975, the Law School became known as the Whittier College School of Law and later as Whittier Law School.In response to a significant gift to the Law School, the Hancock Park building was dedicated as the Ross McCollum Law Center during a ceremony at which Supreme Court Associate Justice Byron R. White presented the major address.During the 1990s, the Law School, along with leaders at Whittier College, decided to relocate the campus to Orange County in order to satisfy space needs and in response to requests by the community for an ABA law school in Orange County. In 1996, the College acquired the present 14-acre campus in Costa Mesa, remodeled the buildings on the site to accommodate the needs of the Law School, and moved the faculty and students over a period of three years. In 1997, the move was completed and Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy gave the major address at the opening ceremony.In 2013, Chief Justice of California Tani Cantil-Sakauye spoke at the grand opening of law school's 4,400 sq. ft. court room. A substantial amount of the funds to build the new $2-million facility was donated by Paul Kiesel, a Whittier alumnus and partner in Kiesel Boucher Larson. Over 150 contributors, including alumni, faculty, judges, law firms, members of the Orange County community, and even Whittier Law School student groups, were responsible for the remainder.