The Welsh Neck Baptist Association founded Welsh Neck High School as a coeducational boarding school, which opened on Sept. 17, 1894, through the generosity of Maj. James Lide Coker, a Civil War veteran, local industrialist, and the school's first chairman of the board of trustees. Enrollment peaked at 267 in 1902. After the 1907 public high school act reduced the need for the school, its trustees converted it into a four-year college for women. It opened on Sept. 30, 1908, as Coker College for Women, founded by James L. Coker, a non-sectarian Baptist college. Baptist control ended in 1944, and in 1969 the college became coeducational. The Governor's School for Science and Mathematics opened on the campus in 1988, and throughout its history Coker has emphasized liberal arts.