Three Lowcountry campuses make up the University of South Carolina Beaufort, part of the University of South Carolina System, and you are on the Beaufort campus. This institution enrolls about 2,000 students and offers over 50 areas of study. Its main campus is in Bluffton; the Beaufort campus you are on houses the school's honor programs and the Department of Visual Arts & Design, while the campus location on Hilton Head Island is home to the program for hospitality management.
This place carries a long history. In 1795 a preparatory school and college in Beaufort was chartered as the Beaufort College; classes began in 1802 and the college reached a prominent status in the community during the antebellum period. The college was forced to close in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War.
The Beaufort College building, constructed in 1852, was occupied by Union forces for use as a hospital, was later used by the Freedmen's Bureau during Reconstruction, and served as an elementary school from 1909 to 1959. In the 1950s two factors brought about the return of higher education to the Beaufort region. Notice the campus buildings that carry these chapters of local life forward into the present.