North Carolina Wesleyan College is a private four-year coeducational, liberal arts college, located in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Founded in 1956, the school is affiliated with the United Methodist Church and offers a number of preprofessional programs. North Carolina Wesleyan also offers evening courses at its 200-acre (0.81 km) Rocky Mount campus, as well as satellite locations in Morrisville and Goldsboro. During the 1950s, when the flourishing and democratization of American higher education was setting an example for the rest of the world, the citizens of Rocky Mount began to plan for their own college. What those citizens had the foresight to recognize was the importance to a post-war community of an institution of higher learning. A college would be an intellectual center for the City and for Nash and Edgecombe Counties. An offer of partnership was made to the United Methodist Church which, in the spring of 1956, announced Rocky Mount as the site of a new college. It made good sense.