University of Tampa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Established | 1931 |
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| Type | Private |
| Endowment | $20,264,151 (2006) |
| President | Ronald Vaughn |
| Undergraduates | 5,300 |
| Location | Tampa, Florida, USA |
| Campus | 100 acres, urban |
| Colors | Red and Gold |
| Mascot | The Spartan |
| Website | www.ut.edu |
The University of Tampa, or UT, is a private, co-educational university in downtown Tampa, Florida. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. In 2006, the University commemorated its 75th anniversary. UT offers over 100 undergraduate degree options, along with master's degree programs in business administration, accounting, finance, teaching, marketing, innovation management, and nursing. UT’s John H. Sykes College of Business is one of 45 schools that The Princeton Review is adding to its annual best business schools guide this year, selecting it for inclusion in the 2007 edition of Best 282 Business Schools (Random House/Princeton Review Books).
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[edit] Students
UT is a private university with approximately 5,300 students, including at least one from every state. Many students come from northern and northeastern states, attracted to UT by the warm weather and the nearby beaches. UT's students from Florida make up over half of the student body. Over a hundred countries are represented within the student body, giving it a rich cultural diversity.
[edit] Academics
UT offers nearly a hundred pre-professional programs and areas of study for undergraduate and graduate students. The graduate school offers nine masters-degree programs and seven concentrations, and is accredited by The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). An evening school is also offered for students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. All classes are kept small and taught by faculty members. UT employs no teaching assistants.
The University operates two distinct schools, the John H. Sykes School of Business and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. These have been UT’s mainstay offerings to the community. As of 2006, the graduate school had a separate dean and budget, essentially allowing it to operate independently from the more-undergraduate-focused programs.
Some of UT's most popular majors include communication, management, criminology, and a four-year nursing program.
To aid students in the pursuit of a degree, the University offers several learning communities. The Academic Center for Excellence (ACE) provides students with free tutoring in a variety of subjects by students who have passed those classes with an A grade and also have passed a rigorous competence exam in their chosen tutoring area. The Saunders Writing Center provides students with a free editing service for documents ranging from research papers to resumes. In addition to these services, UT was one of the first schools to implement a two-semester freshman orientation program. These “Gateway” classes are taught by UT professors who volunteer an hour each week, covering topics from time management and study tips to the history of UT and the Tampa Bay area. In addition, each student's Gateway professor helps him or her schedule second- and third-semester courses, and select a personal advisor, also a professor, for guidance throughout college.
Finally, the University of Tampa offers a host of international study-abroad options led by UT professors. UT is also an associate member of the European Council of International Schools (ECIS)
[edit] Sports
The University of Tampa competes at the NCAA Division II level in the Sunshine State Conference (SSC). The University's mascot is The Spartan. UT is among the top schools in the SSC numbering student-athletes named to the Commissioner's Honor Roll.
Spartan teams have won NCAA II titles in men's soccer (1981, 1994 and 2001), baseball (1992, '93, '98 and 2006), golf (1987 and '88), and most recently women's volleyball (2006). UT fielded a men's football team from 1933 to 1974, and was the original team playing in Tampa Stadium. In addition to varsity sports, UT is well known for its crew teams, which compete around the nation including on the Ivy League circuit. Every spring UT hosts a crew regalia, attracting top teams from across the US.
The Sports Hall of Fame at UT includes former New York Yankees Lou Piniella and Tino Martinez, and former NFL players Fred Solomon of the San Francisco 49ers and John Matuszak of the Oakland Raiders. Matuszak was also an actor and participated in the World's Strongest Man competition. As an actor, he is probably most remembered as Sloth in The Goonies (1985).
[edit] Campus
The University's buildings are heavily steeped in Moorish influences, and serve as a leading example of Moorish architecture in the southeastern United States. The school's newspaper is named The Minaret, a reference to the spires adorning many UT buildings. Plant Hall, formerly the old Tampa Bay Hotel, is a national historic landmark built in 1891 by Henry B. Plant. It serves double duty as UT's main building and as the Henry B. Plant Museum dedicated to the hotel’s glory days. It regularly holds special exhibits, often highlighting the late-19th century. The campus also includes the old Tampa Auditorium, built in the 1920s and remodeled in the late 1990s.
The UT campus is relatively small for a school with over 5,000 students. On its west side is the Hillsborough River (Florida), and Kennedy Boulevard is to the south. Recent expansions have seen the campus grounds move northward and eastward following purchases of sections of Tampa Preparatory School and vacant lots across the east-side railroad tracks.
Although the University is located in a major metropolitan area, palm trees, stately oaks, rose bushes, and azaleas can be found in abundance on campus. UT’s grounds include Plant Park, named for railroad tycoon Henry B. Plant. The park is a landscaped, palm-tree-lined, riverside area in front of Plant Hall's main entrance. The park is open to students and Tampa residents at all hours, and features cannons from Tampa’s original harbor fort and the Sticks of Fire, a large sculpture that serves as a gathering place for many campus organizations. Banana trees and majestic oaks are scattered throughout the park. It also is home to the oak tree under which Hernando de Soto supposedly met the chief of the local Native-American tribes on first coming ashore at what is now Tampa. Finally, the campus incorporates the former Tampa fairgrounds, where legend has that Babe Ruth hit a home run of 630 feet, the longest of his career.
[edit] Facilities
About 70% of all UT students live on the University's main campus. UT is known among its students and visitors as having some of the better residence halls in the region. All but three of the nine on-campus residence halls have been built since 1998, with one just completed in 2006, and another currently under construction. All residence halls are co-ed and wired for broadband Internet access and cable television. Two dorms, Straz Hall and Rescom, offer apartment-style living with each student having a private room but sharing a bathroom, kitchen, and common area with three others. Five dorms, Smiley, McKay Hall, Boathouse, Austin Hall, and Vaughn Center, offer more-traditional dormitory arrangements, with two or three students in a connected suite sharing bathroom and open living areas. One hall, Brevard, currently offers a hybrid package with students sharing a common area but without a kitchen. A small room sleeps one or two students and opens into a common area and restroom area with another small room. The residence hall under construction, temporally dubbed “Residence Hall VI”, will have a similar arrangement. Finally, Kennedy Place provides students with what is essentially a studio apartment, a private suite consisting of a bed, closet, kitchenette, and restroom.
Vaughn Center also serves as the campus student union. Located on the first two floors of Vaughn is a full-service cafeteria with multiple dining stations, each with a particular style of cooking. Also on the first floor is a grill, a Chick-fil-A, a salad shop, and a Freshens smoothie shop; a large dining area and lobby also offers an Internet cafe. On the second floor of Vaughn Center a full theater can be found where movies are shown every Friday night, and which hosts student government meetings on Tuesdays. All student-related offices are also located on the second floor, such as those for Student Activities, Student Government, and Greek Life. Finally, the second floor of Vaughn Center has a full-service commuter lounge with a big-screen TV, lockers, and desks.
Other UT dining options include a Boar's Head Deli and the Empire Grill, a short order grill serving breakfast and lunch in the Rathskeller. The Rathskeller or the "Rat" is an old-style pub located in the basement of Plant Hall and now converted into a game room and study area. Resident Hall VI will have a Dairy Queen and an Orange Julius, as well as a new, and somewhat novel, dining establishment in which students can sit and be waited on by professional servers.
UT has about thirty computer labs and about seventy wireless zones around campus; an interesting UT feature is its free-printing policy. The University also has a fully-equipped library with computer terminals and viewing rooms available to students. The John Sykes School of Business, in addition to housing a computer lab, has a Stock Market Lab, equipped with terminals and plasma screen TVs for teaching finance majors the intricacies of the stock market.
For recreation there is an on-campus aquatic center with an Olympic-size pool and a deep swimming section for scuba classes, all open to students at various times. For drier recreation, the UT campus offers sand volleyball, basketball courts, softball fields, tennis courts, a ropes course, a soccer field, a running track, a baseball field, a multi-use intramural field, and a fully-equipped gym that underwent a major renovation in 2005.
The University of Tampa Theater Department also hosts student produced and acted plays across Kennedy Blvd. in the Falk Theater. Falk also host large academic gatherings, student productions and music shows and freshman convocation. In 2003 Falk theater was featured as a setting in the film The Punisher
[edit] Fraternities and sororities
UT has a vibrant and thriving community of sororities and fraternities, currently overseen by the Director of Greek Life, Casey Stevens. The history of UT and its Greeks is a somewhat contentious one. The first Greek groups appeared on campus in the early 1950s and by the 1970s they had developed a thriving culture that included the tradition of having a rock on campus with the organizations' letters on it. However, by the late-1970s all Greeks were removed from UT and all Greek housing was destroyed or converted for other uses. In fact, the City of Tampa, with the University's support, even went so far as to pass a law banning more than three unrelated people of the same sex living together. This was an attempt to stamp out UT Greek life, and the ban remains in place.
Despite these obstacles, Greeks resurged on campus in the mid-1980s. Many UT students formed local Greek groups developing traditions and rituals anew. After these homegrown groups had established a campus presence, many lobbied national organizations, particularly those on campus before the ban, to assimilate them. In this way, Greek life returned to UT and with many of the same fraternities and sororities of the past. Today UT boasts seven nationally-recognized fraternities, one colony of a national fraternity, and three more fraternities scheduled to colonize the campus within 2 years. Ten sororities also call UT home, with one more sorority scheduled to colonize the campus in the future.
[edit] History
The University of Tampa, was established by Frederic Spaulding, in 1931 as Tampa Junior College, and was founded to serve as an institution of higher education for Florida’s west coast. In 1933 UT moved to its current location, the then defunct Tampa Bay Hotel. With the move, and the additional room it provided, Mr. Spaulding decided to expand the scope of the juinor college to a full university and the University of Tampa was born. In 1941 the city of Tampa signed a 99 year lease on the hotel with the school for a dollar a year. The lease excluded the south east wing of the hotel to allow for the housing of the Henry B. Plant Muesuem. The University prospered for the next few decades, becoming a well-respected institution of learning in the Tampa Bay area. In 1951 the University received full SACS accreditation.
However, in the early 1990s financial troubles hit the school. The University’s endowment was lost to bad investments, high salaries for professors, and declining student enrollment. The University's President resigned, faculty left for better opportunities, and the University was a step away from dissolving.
In 1994 the Board of Trustees was forced to elect a new president to lead the school out of its troubles and prevent bankruptcy. Ronald Vaughn, who was then junior member of the Board of Trustees, was selected to bring the school out of the red. His initial efforts were aimed at bringing the campus up-to-date with new dorms and a major renovation to the business school. Once these projects were underway, Dr. Vaughn launched the "Take UT to the Top" campaign. This major financial initiative aimed to return the University to financial stability, and then to raise the University’s profile to that of an elite school. The project focused on fundraising in the alumni community and among the business people of the Tampa Bay area, who so heavily rely on UT graduates.
The "Take UT to the Top" campaign's goal was to raise 70 million dollars in 10 years, and to restore the University's endowment. By the time the campaign ended, UT had raised 83 million dollars. A major reason for this success was the generous contributions of the John H Sykes family of Tampa, Florida. A gift of $10-million by the family in 1997 was followed by one for $28-million in 2000, thought to be the largest such gift to a Florida university at the time. These generous gifts were all the more impressive since no one in the Sykes family had ever attended the University of Tampa. More details of the Sykes family's gifts can be found in this news story.
The additional funds raised by the financial campaign have been used to purchase new land and to implement a faster-paced building program. They also have been used to hire additional faculty, permitting the University to expand its student body’s size and still maintain a 17:1 student-to-professor ratio.
[edit] Noted alumni
- Dick A. Greco- (1956) former Tampa mayor
- Joanie Laurer- (1992) WWE wrestler "Chyna", and model
- Bob Martinez- Former Gov. of Flordia
- Tino Martinez- retired MLB first baseman
- John Matuszak- "Sloth" from the movie Goonies,
- Paul Orndorff- "Mr. Wonderful"
- Pete Peterson- Douglas B. "Pete" Peterson]] - former congressman (1991-1997) and ambassador to Vietnam
- Lou Piniella - Baseball player, manager, and TV commentator
[edit] External links
- Official website
- University of Tampa's student newspaper The Minaret Online
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