Dallas College - El Centro Campus

Dallas College El Centro Campus is the downtown Dallas campus of Dallas College, located at 801 Main Street in the historic former Sanger Harris department store building. Founded in 1966, it was the first of the seven formerly independent colleges that consolidated in 2020 into a single institution accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. El Centro's signature offerings are its Culinary and Hospitality Institute, nursing, fashion marketing and design, and architecture. It is the only Dallas College campus with hands-on culinary and pastry cooking labs, which it shares with the separate Culinary, Pastry and Hospitality Center; culinary coursework is available system-wide but lab instruction is not. The campus is also the system's dental hygiene site and hosts an authorized Cisco Networking Academy preparing students for CCNA and CCNP, network security and VoIP certification. Additional health sciences at El Centro include magnetic resonance imaging, cardiac sonography, invasive cardiovascular technology, radiologic sciences, surgical technology, respiratory care and medical laboratory technology, alongside associate degree and vocational nursing. Building trades such as HVAC, welding, electrical technology, construction technology and automotive technology are taught at other Dallas College campuses rather than El Centro. Enrollment, graduation rate, tuition and student-faculty ratio figures below are system-wide for Dallas College, as no campus-level data is published.