Ten years ago, Cascadia Community College was a bit of a different place than it is now.

Shared with the University of Washington, Bothell, Cascadia’s present campus was, at the time, undeveloped farm land and wetlands. Such as it was, the college — devoid of students — sat in an apparently barely converted warehouse space in a Bothell business park.

Earth and space science instructor John Van Leer said that initially he and his colleagues worked with a roll-up garage door at their backs.

“We had tape on the floor to mark separate offices,” said Kathryn Hurley, an administrative assistant in Cascadia’s human resources department.

An assistant director of professional development, Debbie Amble said she remembers phone cords taped to the ceiling of the warehouse, with lines dropping down to various desks, which consisted of the kind of student work stations often found in libraries.

“There wasn’t a playbook for opening a community college,” noted mass-media instructor David Ortiz. “We had to write the book, distribute the book and rewrite the book… We were learning as we went.”

But if Cascadia’s beginnings were a bit jury-rigged, those who were there say they always felt they were helping create something different, something worthy of their time and effort.

“There was a lot of creativity on display those first few years,” Ortiz said.

“Right from the beginning, they put this huge emphasis on student success,” added Van Leer. “The whole institution was committed to it and has been from the inception.”

Van Leer and the others are among a handful of Cascadia faculty and staff who have been with the school since its opening in 2000. The college marked its 10th anniversary with a celebration Oct. 21 in the still-new Global Learning and the Arts Building, Cascadia’s third building, opened in November 2009.

“You open the building and it’s full, instantly,” said Brian Bansenauer, a Web-development and math instructor, as well as another founding faculty member.

Bansenauer and others said the rapid use to which the Global Learning building was put is a sign of Cascadia’s equally rapid growth. Amble said prior to the arrival of the third building, staff had turned every conceivable space, from conference rooms to open areas in hallways, into temporary classrooms.

One of the key speakers at the 10th anniversary party, Cascadia President Eric Murray said even with the third building, the college has enough room to last it maybe the next year or so. After that, officials seriously are considering leasing added classroom space. While additional buildings are planned, Murray is assuming further state construction dollars are going to be tough to come by. Both he and others hold that Cascadia’s location and its unique approach to teaching are the reasons behind its continual growth.

Coming here from a college in Pennsylvania, Bansenauer said Cascadia’s philosophy was attractive to him even before he arrived. A total lack of academic departments is perhaps the biggest difference between Cascadia and traditional community colleges. Bansenauer noted at other schools, instructors in the English department might not even talk with those in the math department.

At Cascadia, they might teach classes together. Dubbed learning communities, Cascadia offers any number of blended classes featuring multiple teachers from varied disciplines. For example, Van Leer is one half of the team leading a combined astronomy/philosophy class.

“It’s a lot easier for students to succeed when they see the links between different disciplines,” Murray said, laughing as he added that having no departments certainly makes the school tougher to run from an administrative standpoint.

“It’s worth it because it’s just better for the students,” Murray said.

As the anniversary of the school was approaching Amble and others said the remaining founders, so to speak, became understandably nostalgic.

“We have our secret handshake, of course,” Amble quipped.

“Seeing the cars lined up as the students came in that first day… You stood there with tears in your eyes,” Hurley said.

Murray and the others are all united in that they don’t want to see Cascadia moved from its present location, as some state legislators have suggested.

“It wouldn’t be so crazy to talk about that if this wasn’t working, but it obviously is,” Bansenauer said.

Ortiz contends a transplanted Cascadia really would no longer be Cascadia, among other factors, missing important links with the UW-Bothell. Murray has talked about growing and strengthening those links since he arrived at the school earlier this year. Van Leer wondered out loud how a new Cascadia possibly could replace the wetlands surrounding the school, which as a science teacher, he talked about extensively and described as an invaluable outdoor teaching tool.

“We were put here by design,” Ortiz said. “I personally plan on sticking around… I want to see what the next 10 years have in store.”