The story
History
1950s
USF was the first state university in Florida built during the 20th century. Former U.S. representative Samuel Gibbons was instrumental in the school's creation when he was a state representative. He is considered by many to be the "Father of USF".
Although founded in 1956, the university was not officially named until the following year, and classes did not begin until 1960. The university was built off Fowler Avenue on the former site of Henderson Air Field, a World War II airstrip. Before Henderson Field, the area was part of a 5,000-acre temple orange grove, the largest citrus grove in the world at the time, which gave the nearby city of Temple Terrace its name.
In 1957, the Florida Cabinet approved the name "University of South Florida". At the time, USF was the southernmost university in the state university system.
1960s
The first five buildings on campus when the student opened were the old library (now the student services building), the science building (now the chemistry building), the teaching auditorium (no longer standing, on the site of what is now the music building), the university center (no longer standing, on the site of what is now the Marshall Student Center), and the administration building (now called the John and Grace Allen Administration building).
The university was founded as a school for whites only. It integrated and admitted its first African-American student, Ernest Boger, in 1961, the school's second year after opening. Boger graduated in 1964 with a B.A. in psychology.
In 1962, students voted to make the "Golden Brahman" the university's mascot, named after the state's cattle raising industry. In the early 1980s, the mascot evolved into the "Bulls".
In 1963, USF held its first graduation ceremony. 325 degrees were conferred.
The university grew rapidly under the leadership of John S. Allen, who served as its first president from 1956 until his retirement in 1971. During this time, the university expanded rapidly, due in part to the first master's degree programs commencing in 1964. Allen was infamously known for his opposition to college sports in favor of placing an "Accent on Learning", USF's original motto. He received national attention after declaring in 1959 that the school would have no sports teams, though he later had a change of heart and USF's first varsity teams would begin in 1965. Allen's ultimate legacy was to be the first person to build a modern state university from scratch, famously stating: "As a completely new and separate institution, the University of South Florida became the first new institution of its kind to be conceived, planned and built in the United States in the 20th century". Today the John and Grace Allen Administration Building, named after the university's founding president and his wife, houses vital Tampa campus departments including Student Affairs, the Admissions Welcome Center, and the Controller's Office.
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USF's St. Petersburg campus opened in 1965 as a satellite campus. The site was known as the "Bay Campus" at the time and sat on the former site of the U.S. Navy Maritime Training Center.
USF's campus was damaged by an F4 tornado during the tornado outbreak of April 4–5, 1966, with the cooling towers at the university's power plant partially collapsing and the roof being ripped off of one of the dormitories.
1970s
In 1970, M. Cecil Mackey became the university's second president. During his time at USF, Mackey opened the university's medical school, School of Nursing, and first-ever Ph.D. program. Additionally, Mackey worked to strengthen the St. Petersburg campus, while opening new satellite campuses in Sarasota and Fort Myers. While serving as university president, Mackey continued to teach economics courses in a conference room across from his office. Mackey first coined a new descriptor for USF: a "metropolitan university". The term is still used to describe USF and other colleges in large cities today.
USF Sarasota–Manatee was founded in 1975 and shared a campus with New College of Florida, which later became part of the USF system as well before becoming an independent university again.
1980s
USF emerged as a major research institution during the 1980s under the leadership of the university's third president John Lott Brown. During his tenure, the USF Graduate School was established in 1980. In 1986, Brown oversaw the opening of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute on the USF Tampa campus. USF became the first university in the nation to offer a Ph.D. in applied anthropology and the first in the State University System of Florida to offer a degree program in women's studies. In January 1988, USF Lakeland opened.
On February 15, 1988, Francis T. Borkowski was inaugurated as the university's fourth president. He served as president for five years, laying the groundwork for the university's football program, establishing on-campus housing for the USF president at the Lifsey House, and merging several colleges into the College of Arts and Sciences.
1990s
Betty Castor became the university's fifth president and first female president when she was inaugurated in January 1994. She served as USF president for six years until 1999. During this time, USF grew to be one of the largest universities in the nation in terms of enrollment. In 1997, the university began its inaugural season of NCAA football. The Florida Board of Regents named USF a "Research 1" University in 1998.
2000s
Judy Genshaft was selected as the new president in 2000. Under Genshaft's leadership, the university emerged as a top research university (achieving "preeminence" per the Florida Board of Governors in June 2018) and major economic engine with an annual economic impact of $3.7 billion in the 2018–2019 fiscal year, her last year as president. In 2006, Castor returned to USF to lead the Dr. Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions; she stepped down in 2009. The university expanded its global reach, opening the first Confucius Institute in Florida in 2008 and creating the Genshaft/Greenbaum Passport Scholarship Fund in 2011, which provides financial support to USF students who want to study abroad. Under Genshaft, USF has continuously been ranked among the top veteran-friendly universities in the country. In 2009, USF became the first university in the nation to partner with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs to offer specialized services for veterans taking advantage of the new G.I. Bill. USF continues to improve academically, being ranked among the best colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.
2010s
In 2012, USF was recognized as one of the nation's largest producers of Fulbright Program scholars. The university closed its Confucius Institute in 2018, citing falling enrollment, misalignment with the university's research focus, and possible consequences on US-government funding to USF. In 2018, Genshaft announced her retirement from position as president of USF.
The university's seventh president, Steven C. Currall, took office on July 1, 2019. During his tenure, the university broke into the top 50 best public colleges in the nation according to rankings by U.S. News & World Report, achieving a 44th-place ranking in 2019
2020s
Currall led the university through the COVID-19 pandemic, which included budgetary hardships brought by a loss in state funding (including a controversial proposal to phase out the College of Education - later dropped due to fierce opposition). On July 19, 2021, Currall announced his retirement as president, citing "health and family reasons." He remained on the faculty of the Muma College of Business.
After Currall's resignation, Rhea Law, a USF alumna and former USF Board of Trustees chair, was appointed as interim president. The Board of Trustees selected Law for the permanent job as president on March 22, 2022, and she is the first USF graduate to serve in the role. Law stated her top priorities were for USF to reach a top-25 public university ranking, to gain admission into the Association of American Universities, and to build an on-campus football stadium. USF was accepted into the AAU in 2023.
In 2025, the university established the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, and Computing following a $40 million donation from Arnie and Lauren Bellini, the largest donation in USF's history. The Bellini College offers eight undergraduate and advanced degree programs, including master's and doctoral degrees.
In June 2026, USF became the first institution in Florida to launch an upgraded Secure Research Environment through a collaboration with Amazon Web Services, providing a compliance-enabled cloud computing environment to support Department of Defense-funded research. The infrastructure includes high-performance computing, digital engineering, and data analytics capabilities supporting USF's existing contracts with United States Special Operations Command and the Army Research Laboratory.
Seal and colors
In 1958, President John Allen commissioned a seal for the new university, wanting a symbol that would represent education on a global scale. USF's original colors were green, gold, and purple. These are also the colors of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, of which President Allen was a member. Purple was later dropped and the official colors became just green and gold, but purple accents are visible on some of the older buildings on campus including the administration building which now bears the name of John Allen and his wife, Grace. Purple has since returned as a tertiary color for the university, though it has very limited use aside from some of the women's sports teams having purple accents featured on their alternate jerseys.
Preeminence
In 2018, USF was classified as the third Preeminent university in Florida by the state university system. For a public institution to achieve a status of preeminence, they must meet or surpass benchmarks in at least 11 of 12 metrics set forth by Florida lawmakers.
University of South Florida System (1965–2020)
USF was previously identified as a university system from 1965 until 2020, but is now chartered as one university geographically distributed across three campus locations: Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee. Before being consolidated into one university geographically distributed, the University of South Florida System included three member institutions: USF Tampa (which was the flagship campus), USF St. Petersburg, and USF Sarasota-Manatee. Each institution was separately accredited, had a distinct mission, and its own strategic plans.
The USF System once included three other member institutions: one in Fort Myers, one in Lakeland, and a second Sarasota campus.
USF Fort Myers opened in 1982 and closed in 1997 with the opening of Florida Gulf Coast University.
The Sarasota institution was originally a private college called New College which sold itself to USF in 1975 to pay off debt, and became New College of the University of South Florida. As part of the deal, New College was allowed to keep its unique grading system. It shared a campus with USF Sarasota-Manatee, which opened in 1975, but was accredited differently as USFSM was considered a branch campus rather than a member institution at the time. New College became the independent New College of Florida in 2001, but continued to share a campus with USFSM until a new one was built for USFSM in 2006.
USF Lakeland opened in 1988 and split off from the USF System in 2012 to become the independent Florida Polytechnic University.
In summer 2020, the system was consolidated into "one university geographically distributed"
Campus recreation
Gyms
The Campus Recreation Center on the USF Tampa campus is a 21,000-square-foot, WiFi-enabled fitness facility featuring a two-basketball court gymnasium, six group fitness rooms, a bouldering wall, a 200-meter indoor three-lane running track, 120 pieces of cardio equipment, six racquetball courts, and a 25-meter indoor swimming pool. Inside the facility, members can work out, take group fitness classes, play intramural sports, rent equipment, receive personal training, undergo fitness assessments, and more. The Campus Recreation Center, known as the USF Gymnasium at the time, was also the first on campus home to USF's men's basketball team, who played three home games there in 1978–79 before the completion of the Sun Dome. It also hosted all of the women's basketball team's home games from their founding in 1972 until they moved to the Sun Dome in 1980, as well as in the 2011–12 season while the Sun Dome underwent renovations (the men's team primarily played at Amalie Arena in downtown Tampa during that season). This area has space for roughly 1,500 spectators.
In addition to the Campus Recreation Center, there are other, smaller fitness facilities on the USF Tampa campus: The Fit in the Village housing complex, the WELL in the USF Health area, and the Magnolia Fitness Center within the Magnolia Apartments complex; plus a 1.25-mile long fitness trail through the woods near the varsity tennis courts complete with exercise stations.
Other recreation
Through the Campus Recreation Department, USF offers more than 30 intramural sports throughout the academic year. USF Campus Recreation also maintains USF Riverfront Park, located 1.5 miles away from the Tampa campus. The recreational park is only open for use to USF students, faculty, and staff. Located on the Hillsborough River, the park boathouse offers canoeing, kayaking, and paddleboarding for a small fee. Groups can sign up to climb the 55-foot high ropes course located at the park, which features three levels of challenges. A less challenging version of the ropes course, called the low ropes workshop, allows teams to participate in trust-building exercises and group problem solving. The park also has an 18-hole disk golf course.
Club sports
The Campus Recreation Department also offers over 40 club sports teams to students, including rugby, lacrosse, and even ice hockey. These teams mainly compete against club teams from other nearby schools such as Florida, Tampa, and Central Florida as well as nationally in leagues like the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Club teams have won 17 national championships for USF; two in flag football, two in karate, two in cricket, two in paintball, nine in cheer, and one in wakeboarding; as well as one world championship in cheer.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of South Florida, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5