University of Florida

The College of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It’s a senior member and flagship of the State University System of Florida. The college traces its origins to 1853^[12] and has operated repeatedly on its Gainesville campus since September 1906.^[13]

After the Florida state legislature’s creation of efficiency requirements in 2013, the Florida Board of Governors designated the College of Florida as a “preeminent college”.^[14][15] The College of Florida is one in every of three members of the Association of American Universities in Florida and is classified amongst “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very excessive analysis exercise”.^[16][17]

The college is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). It’s the third largest Florida college by student population^[18] and is the fifth largest single-campus college in america with 57,841 college students enrolled for through the 2020–21 college 12 months.^[19] The College of Florida is house to 16 tutorial faculties and greater than 150 analysis facilities and institutes. It provides a number of graduate skilled packages—together with business administration, engineering, law, dentistry, medicine, pharmacy and veterinary medicine—on one contiguous campus and administers 123 master’s degree packages and 76 doctoral degree packages in 87 faculties and departments. The college’s seal can be the seal of the state of Florida, which is on the state flag, although in blue quite than a number of colours.

The College of Florida’s intercollegiate sports activities groups, the Florida Gators, compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and the Southeastern Conference (SEC). As of 2021, College of Florida college students and alumni have gained 143 Olympic medals, including 69 gold medals.^[20]

Historical past[edit]

Foremost article: History of the University of Florida

Origins[edit]

The trendy College of Florida traces its origins to 1853, when the East Florida Seminary, the oldest of its 4 predecessor establishments, was based in 1853 because the East Florida Seminary in Ocala, Florida.^[21] The seminary was Florida’s first state-supported establishment of upper studying and operated till 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War.^[22] In 1866, the East Florida Seminary reopened in Gainesville on the grounds of the Gainesville Academy, a small personal faculty that had closed through the conflict.^{[note 3]}

The second precursor to the College of Florida was Florida Agricultural School (FAC), the state’s first land-grant college below the Morrill Act, established in Lake City in 1884. The Florida Legislature, seeking to develop FAC’s curriculum past agricultural and engineering choices, modified the college’s identify to the “College of Florida” for the 1903–1904 tutorial 12 months. This identify was in use for 2 years.^{[23][note 4]}

“College of the State of Florida”[edit]

In 1905, the Florida Legislature handed the Buckman Act, which reorganized the state’s publicly supported establishments of upper schooling. Below the act, Florida’s six state-supported establishments had been merged to type the State University System of Florida below the newly established Florida Board of Control. 4 establishments had been mixed to create a brand new “College of the State of Florida” for white males: the College of Florida at Lake Metropolis (previously Florida Agricultural School), the East Florida Seminary in Gainesville, the St. Petersburg Regular and Industrial Faculty in St. Petersburg, and the South Florida Army School in Bartow.^[24]

The Buckman Act additionally created two different establishments segregated by race and gender: Florida Female College (later the Florida State School for Ladies after which Florida State College) for white girls and the State Normal School for Colored Students (later Florida A&M) for African-American women and men, each in Tallahassee.^[25]

The Buckman Act didn’t specify the place the brand new College of the State of Florida could be situated. The Metropolis of Gainesville, led by its mayor William Reuben Thomas, campaigned to be the positioning of the brand new college, with its major competitor being Lake City.^[26] After a quick however intense interval of lobbying, the Board of Management chosen Gainesville on July 6, 1905, and funds had been allotted for the development of a brand new campus on the western fringe of the city. Nonetheless, as a result of the campus would take a number of months to construct, the brand new college was housed on the campus of the now-defunct Florida Agricultural School in Lake Metropolis through the 1905–1906 tutorial 12 months. Former FAC president Andrew Sledd was chosen to be the primary president of the College of the State of Florida.

The College of the State of Florida’s first semester in Gainesville started on September 26, 1906, with an enrollment of 102 college students. Two buildings had been accomplished on the time: Buckman Hall, named after the first creator of the legislation that created the college, and Thomas Hall, named after the mayor of Gainesville who had led the profitable effort to carry the college to city.^[27] Each buildings had been designed by William A. Edwards, who designed lots of the college’s unique buildings within the Collegiate Gothic fashion in his function as lead architect for Florida’s Board of Management.^[28]

Progress, mascots, and institution of schools[edit]

Throughout his time period, first college president Andrew Sledd typically clashed with key members of the Board of Management over his insistence on rigorous admittance necessities, which his detractors claimed was unreasonably impeding college enrollment. Sledd resigned over these points in 1909.

Florida State School for Ladies president Albert Murphree was named UF’s second president earlier than the 1909–1910 tutorial 12 months, which was additionally when the college’s identify was simplified from the “College of the State of Florida” to the “College of Florida”. Murphree oversaw a reorganization of the college that included the institution of a number of faculties, starting with faculties of law, engineering, and liberal arts and sciences by 1910. Murphree was additionally instrumental within the founding of the Florida Blue Key management society and in constructing complete enrollment from below 200 to over 2000. He’s the one College of Florida president honored with a statue on campus.

The alligator grew to become the college’s casual mascot when an area vendor designed and offered school pennants imprinted with the animal, which is quite common in lakes in and round Gainesville and all through the state. The ‘gator was a preferred selection, and the college’s sports activities groups had formally adopted the nickname by 1911. The college colours of orange and blue had been additionally formally established in 1911, although the explanations for the selection are unclear. The most probably rationale was that they’re a mix of the colours of the college’s two largest predecessor establishments, because the East Florida Seminary used orange and black whereas Florida Agricultural School used blue and white.^[29] The older faculties’ colours could have been an homage to early Scottish and Ulster-Scots Presbyterian settlers of north central Florida, whose ancestors had been initially from Northern Eire and the Scottish Lowlands.^[30][31][32]

In 1924, the Florida Legislature mandated girls of a “mature age” (not less than twenty-one years outdated) who had accomplished sixty semester hours from a “respected academic establishment” be allowed to enroll throughout common semesters on the College of Florida in packages that had been unavailable at Florida State School for Ladies. Earlier than this, solely the summer time semester was coeducational, to accommodate girls academics who needed to additional their schooling through the summer time break.^[33] Lassie Goodbread-Black from Lake Metropolis grew to become the primary girl to enroll on the College of Florida, within the School of Agriculture in 1925.^[34]

Murphree died in 1928 and John J. Tigert was named UF’s third president. Disgusted by the under-the-table funds being made by universities to athletes, Tigert established the grant-in-aid athletic scholarship program within the early Nineteen Thirties, which was the genesis of the trendy athletic scholarship plan utilized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.^[35] Inventor and educator Blake R. Van Leer was employed as Dean to launch new engineering departments and scholarships. Van Leer additionally managed all purposes for federal funding, chaired the Superior Planning Committee per Tigert’s request. These efforts included consulting for the Florida Emergency Aid Administration all through the Nineteen Thirties.^[36][37]

Publish World Warfare II[edit]

Starting in 1946, there was dramatically elevated curiosity amongst male candidates who needed to attend the College of Florida, largely returning World War II veterans who might attend faculty below the GI Bill of Rights (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act). Unable to instantly accommodate this elevated demand, the Florida Board of Management opened the Tallahassee Department of the College of Florida on the campus of Florida State School for Ladies in Tallahassee.^[38] By the top of the 1946–47 college 12 months, 954 males had been enrolled on the Tallahassee Department. The next semester, the Florida Legislature returned the Florida State School for Ladies to coeducational standing and renamed it Florida State University. These occasions additionally opened up the entire faculties that comprise the College of Florida to feminine college students. Florida Women’s Hall of Fame member Maryly Van Leer grew to become the primary girl to obtain from the College of Florida a master’s degree in engineering.^[39][40] African-American college students had been allowed to enroll beginning in 1958.^[41] Shands Hospital opened in 1958 together with the University of Florida College of Medicine to affix the established College of Pharmacy. Fast campus growth started within the Nineteen Fifties and continues right now.^[42]

The College of Florida is one in every of three Florida public universities, together with Florida State University and the University of South Florida, to be designated as a “preeminent college” by Florida senate invoice 1076, enacted by the Florida legislature and signed into legislation by the governor in 2013.^[43][44] Consequently, the preeminent universities obtain further funding to enhance the lecturers and nationwide fame of upper schooling throughout the state of Florida.^[45]

Integration[edit]

From its inception till 1958, solely white college students had been allowed to attend.^[46] In 1958, George H. Starke grew to become the primary Black scholar.^[47]

Nationwide and worldwide prominence[edit]

In 1985, the College of Florida obtained an invite to develop into a member of the Association of American Universities.

Throughout President Bernie Machen‘s tenure and with the backing of the University of Florida Board of Trustees, a major coverage shift was introduced in 2009 for the college. This shift concerned lowering the variety of undergraduate college students and reallocating monetary and tutorial assets in direction of graduate schooling and analysis initiatives.^[48] In 2017, the College of Florida achieved a notable milestone by changing into the primary college within the state of Florida to rank among the many high ten greatest public universities in keeping with U.S. Information.^[49] Within the 2022 fiscal 12 months, the College of Florida obtained greater than $1 billion in sponsored analysis expenditures.^[50] In 2017, College President Kent Fuchs unveiled a plan to recruit 500 new college members with the intention of elevating the college’s rating among the many high 5 greatest public universities. Nearly all of these new hires are concentrated in STEM fields. In 2018, 230 college members had been employed, with the remaining 270 college positions anticipated to be stuffed by the autumn of 2019.^[51]