A Century of Opportunity: Dr. Mike Muñoz Reflects on LBCC at 100
For 100 years, Long Beach City College has been a place where possibility becomes opportunity.
Generations of students have come to LBCC with different dreams, challenges, and ideas of what their futures might hold. Some arrived knowing exactly where they wanted to go. Others were simply looking for a place to begin.
For Superintendent-President Dr. Mike Muñoz, that mission is deeply personal.
Long before becoming a college president, Dr. Muñoz was a community college student himself. A first-generation college student, he attended East Los Angeles College and Fullerton College before transferring to the University of California, Irvine. Along the way, he experienced food and housing insecurity while raising his daughter as a single father.
Those experiences continue to shape how he views the role of a community college — and the responsibility of leading one.
As LBCC celebrates its Centennial, Dr. Muñoz sees the milestone as both an opportunity to honor the generations who built the College and a moment to consider what LBCC must become for the generations still to come.
A College Built for Its Community
Throughout its history, LBCC has evolved alongside the communities it serves.
Programs have changed. Campuses have grown. Industries and technologies have transformed. Yet LBCC’s fundamental purpose has endured: providing an accessible, high-quality education that gives people the opportunity to change the trajectory of their lives.
Today, more than 35,000 students each semester come to LBCC to transfer to universities, prepare for careers, develop new skills, and create new possibilities for themselves and their families.
For Dr. Muñoz, those individual journeys are the real story of LBCC’s first century.
A college’s history can be measured through buildings, programs, and milestones. But its legacy is ultimately measured through people — the student who becomes the first in their family to earn a degree; the worker preparing for a new career; the parent returning to school; or the student whose future changes because someone at LBCC recognized their potential.
Over a century, those stories have multiplied throughout Long Beach and beyond.
Understanding the Student Journey
Dr. Muñoz joined LBCC in 2018 and became Superintendent-President in 2021. His leadership has been shaped by the belief that providing access to college is only the beginning. Students also need the resources, support, and sense of belonging that allow them to succeed.
His own experiences help inform that perspective.
Dr. Muñoz knows that a student can be academically capable while worrying about housing, food, childcare, finances, or whether college is truly a place where they belong.
That understanding has helped shape LBCC’s continued work to remove barriers, strengthen student support, advance equity, and create an environment where students from every background have an opportunity to reach their goals.
It also reflects something LBCC has understood throughout its history: a college must continually evolve to meet the needs of its students and its community.
Building for the Next Generation
As LBCC approaches its second century, the transformation taking place across the College is perhaps the most visible sign of its commitment to the future.
At the Liberal Arts Campus, LBCC is preparing to build the first student housing in the College’s history — creating a new way to address one of the most significant barriers facing today’s students.
Nearby, the 75-year-old Veterans Memorial Stadium is making way for a new, state-of-the-art stadium that will serve future generations of student-athletes and the greater Long Beach community.
A brand-new Student Union will create a vibrant center of campus life and give students a place to gather, connect, study, and build community.
At the same time, LBCC’s growing public art program is transforming campus spaces, reflecting the creativity and diversity of the community while creating an environment that inspires students and welcomes the public.
For Muñoz, these investments are about much more than new buildings.
They are an investment in the student experience and a statement about the kind of institution LBCC intends to be in its second century.
That same commitment can be seen in LBCC’s classrooms and on its fields and courts. The College’s award-winning academic programs continue to prepare students for university transfer and meaningful careers, while its nationally recognized athletics programs carry forward a proud tradition of excellence and achievement.
Together, these accomplishments reflect a College that is not standing still as it celebrates its history. LBCC is actively building its future.
Looking Toward the Next 100 Years
Technology is reshaping industries and classrooms. Workforce needs are changing rapidly. The rising cost of living affects students’ ability to stay in college. And students increasingly expect their education to provide clear pathways to careers, transfer, and economic mobility.
For LBCC, the challenge is to meet students where they are while preparing them for a future that is still taking shape.
That means strengthening transfer and career pathways, deepening partnerships with schools, universities, employers, and community organizations, investing in the campuses where future generations will learn, and continuing to remove barriers between students and their goals.
The Centennial offers a rare opportunity to consider that future while remembering the people who made it possible.
Faculty members who challenged and encouraged students. Classified professionals who helped them navigate college. Administrators, trustees, alumni, community partners, and generations of students who each contributed to LBCC’s story.
One hundred years ago, LBCC’s founders could not have known what the College would look like today. They could not have anticipated every profession, technology, or challenge the next century would bring.
But they built an institution around an enduring belief in the transformative power of education.
That responsibility now belongs to a new generation.
As Long Beach City College celebrates its first 100 years, the Centennial is not only about honoring everything that came before. It is about recommitting to what comes next — ensuring that future generations of students will continue to find opportunity, belonging, and the possibility of a better future at LBCC.