Baylor university

Baylor University is a private Baptist university in Waco, Texas. Chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas, Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas, one of the first educational institutions west of the Mississippi River in the United States, and the largest Baptist university in the world. The university's 1,000-acre campus is located on the banks of the Brazos River next to freeway I-35, between the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and Austin. Baylor University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Baylor is notable for its law, medicine, business, science, music and English programs.
Baylor University athletic teams, known as the Bears, participate in 19 intercollegiate sports. The university is a member of the Big 12 Conference for all NCAA Division I athletics.

History

This statue of Judge Baylor is at the front of Founder's Mall in the heart of campus

In 1841, 35 delegates to the Union Baptist Association meeting voted to adopt the suggestion of Rev. William Milton Tryon and R.E.B. Baylor to establish a Baptist university in Texas, then a self-declared republic still claimed by Mexico. Baylor, a Texas district judge and onetime U.S. Congressman and soldier from Alabama, became the school's namesake. Some at first wished to name the new university "San Jacinto" to recognize the victory which enabled the Texans to become an independent nation, then before the final vote of the Congress, the petitioners requested the university be named in honor of Judge R. E. B. Baylor.

Judge R. E. B. Baylor

In the fall of 1844, the Texas Baptist Education Society petitioned the Congress of the Republic of Texas to charter a Baptist university. Republic President Anson Jones signed the Act of Congress on February 1, 1845, officially establishing Baylor University. The founders built the original university campus in Independence, Texas. Rev. James Huckins, the first Southern Baptist missionary to Texas, was Baylor's first full-time fundraiser. He is considered the third founding father of the university. Although these three men are credited as being the founders of the university, many others worked to see the first university established in Texas and thus they were awarded Baylor's Founders Medal. The noted Texas revolutionary war leader and hero Sam Houston gave the first $5,000 donation to start the university. In 1854, Houston was also baptized by the Rev. Rufus Columbus Burleson, future Baylor President, in the Brazos River.
During the 1846 school year Baylor leaders would begin including chapel as part of the Baylor educational experience. The tradition continues today and has been a part of the life of students for over 160 years. In 1849, R.E.B. Baylor and Abner S. Lipscomb of the Texas Supreme Court began teaching classes in the "science of law," making Baylor the first in Texas and the second university west of the Mississippi to teach law. During this time Stephen Decatur Rowe would earn the first degree awarded by Baylor. He would be followed by the first female graduate, Mary Kavanaugh Gentry, in 1855.
In 1851, Baylor's second president Rufus Columbus Burleson decided to separate the students by sex, making the Baylor Female College an independent and separate institution. Baylor University became an all-male institution. During this time, Baylor thrived as the only university west of the Mississippi offering instruction in law, mathematics, and medicine. At the time a Baylor education cost around $8–$15 per term for tuition. And many of the early leaders of the Republic of Texas, such as Sam Houston, would later send their children to Baylor to be educated. Some of those early students were Temple Lea Houston, son of President Sam Houston, a famous western gun-fighter and attorney; and Lawrence Sullivan "Sul" Ross famous Confederate General and later President of Texas A&M University.

In 1892, Baylor University had two main buildings, Old Main and Burleson Hall

For the first half of the American Civil War, the Baylor president was George Washington Baines, maternal great-grandfather of the future U.S. President, Lyndon Baines Johnson. He worked vigorously to sustain the university during the Civil War, when male students left their studies to enlist in the Confederate Army and serve Texas in various military campaigns. Following the war, the city of Independence slowly declined, primarily caused by the rise of neighboring cities being serviced by the Santa Fe Railroad. Because Independence lacked a railroad line, university fathers began searching for a location to build a new campus.
Beginning in 1885, Baylor University moved to Waco, Texas, a growing town on the railroad line. It merged with a local college called Waco University. At the time, Rufus Burleson, Baylor's second president, was serving as the local college's president. That same year, the Baylor Female College also was moved to a new location, Belton, Texas. It later became known as the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. A Baylor College Park still exists in Independence in memory of the college's history there. Around 1887, Baylor University began readmitting women and became coeducational again.
In 1900, three physicians founded the University of Dallas Medical Department in Dallas, although a university by that name did not exist. In 1903, Baylor University acquired the medical school, which became known as the Baylor College of Medicine, while remaining in Dallas. In 1943, Dallas civic leaders offered to build larger facilities for the university in a new medical center if the College of Medicine would surrender its denominational alliances with the Baptist state convention. The Baylor administration refused the offer and, with funding from the M. D. Anderson Foundation and others, moved the College of Medicine to Houston. In 1969, the Baylor College of Medicine became technically independent from Baylor University. The two institutions still maintain strong links and Baylor still elects around 25 percent of the medical school's regents. They also share academic links and combine in research efforts.
During World War II, Baylor was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.

university of houston

The University of Houston (UH) is a state research university and the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, UH is the third-largest university in Texas with nearly 41,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of Houston–University Park from 1983 to 1991. The Carnegie Foundation classifies UH as a research university with very high research activity. The U.S. News & World Report ranks the university No. 189 in its National University Rankings, and No. 106 among top public universities.
The university offers over 300 degree programs through its 12 academic colleges on campus—including programs leading to professional degrees in law, optometry, and pharmacy. The institution conducts nearly $130 million annually in research, and operates more than 40 research centers and institutes on campus. Interdisciplinary research includes superconductivity, space commercialization and exploration, biomedical sciences and engineering, energy and natural resources, and artificial intelligence. Awarding more than 8,200 degrees annually, UH's alumni base exceeds 260,000. The economic impact of the university contributes over $3 billion annually to the Texas economy, while generating about 24,000 jobs.
The University of Houston hosts a variety of theatrical performances, concerts, lectures, and events. It has over 400 student organizations and 17 intercollegiate sports teams. Annual UH events and traditions include The Cat's Back, Homecoming, and Frontier Fiesta. The university's varsity athletic teams, known as the Houston Cougars, are members of the American Athletic Conference and compete in the NCAA's Division I in all sports. The football team regularly makes bowl game appearances, and the men's basketball team has made 19 appearances in the NCAA Division I Tournament—including five Final Four appearances. The men's golf team has won 16 national championships—the second-most of any NCAA golf program.

History

Founding

The University of Houston began as Houston Junior College (HJC). On March 7, 1927, trustees of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution that authorized the founding and operating of a junior college. The junior college was operated and controlled by HISD.
Originally HJC was located in San Jacinto High School and offered only night courses. Its first session began March 7, 1927, with an enrollment of 232 students and 12 faculty. This session was primarily held to educate the future teachers of the junior college, and no freshmen were allowed to enroll. A more accurate date for the official opening of HJC is September 19, 1927, when enrollment was opened to all persons having completed the necessary educational requirements. The first president of HJC was Edison Ellsworth Oberholtzer, who was the dominant force in establishing the junior college.

UH held its first classes at San Jacinto High School in 1934

University beginnings

The junior college became eligible to become a university in October 1933 when Governor of Texas, Miriam A. Ferguson, signed House Bill 194 into law. On April 30, 1934, HISD's Board of Education adopted a resolution to make the school a four-year institution, and Houston Junior College changed its name to the University of Houston.
UH's first session as a four-year institution began June 4, 1934, at San Jacinto High School with an enrollment of 682. In 1934, the first campus of the University of Houston was established at the Second Baptist Church at Milam and McGowen. The next fall, the campus was moved to the South Main Baptist Church on Main Street—between Richmond Avenue and Eagle Street—where it stayed for the next five years. In May 1935, the institution as a university held its first commencement at Miller Outdoor Theatre.

Built in 1938, the Roy G. Cullen Building is the first building on campus

In 1936, heirs of philanthropists J. J. Settegast and Ben Taub donated 110 acres (0.45 km²) to the university for use as a permanent location. At this time, there was no road that led to the land tract, but in 1937, the city added Saint Bernard Street, which was later renamed to Cullen Boulevard. It would become a major thoroughfare of the campus. As a project of the National Youth Administration, workers were paid fifty cents an hour to clear the land. In 1938, Hugh Roy Cullen donated $335,000 ($5612635.93 when adjusted for inflation) for the first building to be built at the location. The Roy Gustav Cullen Memorial Building was dedicated on June 4, 1939, and classes began the next day. The first full semester of classes began officially on Wednesday, September 20, 1939.
In a year after opening the new campus, the university had about 2,500 students. As World War II approached, enrollment decreased due to the draft and enlistments. The university proposed to be in a new, highly unusual training activity of the United States Navy, and was one of six institutions selected to give the Primary School in the Electronics Training Program. By the fall of 1943, there were only about 1,100 regular students at UH; thus, the 300 or so servicemen contributed in sustaining the faculty and facilities of the Engineering College. This training at UH continued until March 1945, with a total of 4,178 students.
On March 12, 1945, Senate Bill 207 was signed into law, removing the control of the University of Houston from HISD and placing it into the hands of a board of regents. In 1945, the university—which had grown too large and complex for the Houston school board to administer—became a private university.

University of Houston, circa 1950

In March 1947, the regents authorized creation of a law school at the university. In 1949, the M.D. Anderson Foundation made a $1.5 million gift to UH for the construction of a dedicated library building on the campus. By 1950, the educational plant at UH consisted of 12 permanent buildings. Enrollment was more than 14,000 with a full-time faculty of more than 300. KUHF, the university radio station, signed on in November. By 1951, UH was the second-largest university in the State of Texas and was the fastest growing university in the United States.

State university

A.D. Bruce Religion Center, named after the university's third president

In 1953, the university established KUHT—the first educational television station in the nation—after the four-year-long Federal Communications Commission's television licensing freeze ended. During this period, however, the university as a private institution was facing financial troubles. Tuition failed to cover rising costs, and in turn, tuition increases caused a drop in enrollment.
After a lengthy battle between supporters of the University of Houston, led by school president A.D. Bruce, and forces from state universities geared to block the change, Senate Bill 2 was passed on May 23, 1961, enabling the university to enter the state system in 1963.
As the University of Houston celebrated its 50th anniversary, the Texas Legislature formally established the University of Houston System in 1977. Philip G. Hoffman resigned from his position as president of UH and became the first chancellor of the University of Houston System. The University of Houston became the oldest and largest member institution in the UH System with nearly 30,000 students.
On April 26, 1983, the university appended its official name to University of Houston–University Park; however, the name was changed back to University of Houston on August 26, 1991.This name change was an effort by the UH System to give its flagship institution a distinctive name that would eliminate confusion with the University of Houston–Downtown (UHD), which is a separate and distinct degree-granting institution that is not part of the University of Houston.

university of Alabama

History of the University of Alabama

George Wallace's infamous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door

The History of The University of Alabama begins with an act of United States Congress in 1818 authorizing the newly formed Alabama Territory to set aside a township for the establishment of a "seminary of learning." Alabama was admitted to the Union on March 20, 1819 and a second township added to the land grant. The seminary was established by the General Assembly on December 18, 1820 and named The University of the State of Alabama. The legislature appointed a Board of Trustees to handle the building and opening of the campus, and its operation once complete. The Board selected Tuscaloosa, then capital of the Alabama, as the site of the university in 1827, and opened its doors to students on April 18, 1831.

The school in writing: 1820–1831

The original land grant included the entire area within the Tuscaloosa city limits stretching south of what is now University Boulevard to the AGS Railroad and west to Queen City Avenue. The land had been owned by William Marr, whose name is commemorated today in Marrs Spring and the literary Marrs Field Journal. A prominent architect, Captain William Nichols, was commissioned to design the campus.
Most of the material for the early buildings came from university land. Slaves quarried sandstone near the Black Warrior River, burned and made bricks on the spot, and cut lumber from the university's own timber tract. An extensive vineyard was situated in the area of Denny Field and Barnwell Hall.

The frontier school: 1831–1860

The Board of Trustee selected the Reverend Alva A. Woods to be the first president of the university. Educated at Phillips Andover, Harvard College and in Europe. Woods hoped to turn the university into a Harvard-style seminary.
Admission standards were set high. Simply to enter the university, one had to demonstrate the ability to read Classical Greek and Latin at an intermediate level, with advanced study in those languages to begin immediately. But Alabama, a frontier state a sizable amount of whose territory was still under the control of various Native American tribes, was decades away from possessing the infrastructure necessary to provide adequate education (public or even private) to meet such high standards.
The university was consequently forced to admit many students who were not adequately prepared for university education. For the duration of the Antebellum period, the university would graduate only a fraction of those young men who entered. Of the 105 student who enrolled in 1835, only eight graduated.
Within a month of the opening of the university, social societies emerged. Unlike the social fraternities that would emerge in the next decade, these clubs were academic debate societies by nature. The Erosophic Society was founded in May 1831, while the Philomathic Society came out eight months later.
For $80 a year, students received room and board at the Hotel, now known as the Gorgas House. Washington Hall and Jefferson Hall, called the "colleges," stood three stories high. Each contained twelve apartments, which in turn contained two bedrooms and a sitting room. Forty-eight students resided in each dormitory. Madison and Franklin Halls were built later. Following the American Civil War, the remains of Madison and Franklin Halls were made into memorial mounds. Madison Mound was removed during the 1920s, but Franklin Mound is still used for Honors Day ceremonies. Additionally, an archaeological excavation, conducted in 2007, examined the remains of Washington and Jefferson Halls foundations.
At the center of the campus, where the Gorgas Library is now situated, stood the "grande dame" of the university, the Rotunda. In the 1894 yearbook, Corolla, the building is described as "a circular edifice of three stories, seventy feet in diameter and seventy feet in height, and surrounded by a lofty peristyle of the Ionic order of architecture. The principal story was used for chapel service and academic recitations. This department was long celebrated as being the finest auditorium in the State. In the second story was the circular gallery, supported by carved columns of the Corinthian order. The third story contained the library and the collections in natural history." The Rotunda was destroyed by fire and was never rebuilt. Following an excavation in 1985, the Rotunda's remains were cushioned in sand and covered with concrete to mark where the building had once stood.
Greek life began at the university in 1847 when two young Mobilians visiting from Yale installed a chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon. When DKE members began holding secret meetings in the old state capitol building that year, the administration strongly voiced its disapproval. Over the next decade, three other fraternities appeared at Alabama: Phi Gamma Delta in 1855, Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1856, and Kappa Sigma in 1867. Anti-fraternity laws were imposed in that year, but were lifted in 1890s. Eager to have a social organization of their own, women at the university founded the Zeta Chapter of Kappa Delta sorority in 1903. Alpha Gamma Delta and Delta Delta Delta soon followed.

The military school: 1860–1902

In the 1850s, the school's president, Landon Garland, began lobbying the Legislature to transform the university into a military school. In 1860, in the wake a violent brawl which resulted in the death of student as well as the impending war, the legislature authorized Garland to make the transformation beginning in the Fall of 1860. As a result of this transformation, during the Civil War, the school trained troops for the Confederacy.
Because of this role, Union troops burned down the campus in April 1865. Only seven buildings survived the burning, one of which was the President's Mansion - and its outbuildings. Frances Louisa Garland, wife of President Landon C. Garland, saved the home from destruction by the Union soldiers. When she saw flames in the direction of the campus, she ran from the Bryce home where the family had taken refuge and demanded the soldiers put out the fire in the parlor. The university reopened in 1871 and shortly after, the military structure was dropped. The other principal buildings today, have new uses. Gorgas House (http://gorgashouse.ua.edu/), at different times the dining hall, faculty residence, and campus hotel, now serves as a museum. The Roundhouse, then a sentry box for cadets, later a place for records storage, is a campus historical landmark. The Observatory, now Maxwell Hall, is home to the Computer-Based Honors Program.
In 1880, the United States Congress granted the university 40,000 acres (160 km²) of coal land as partial compensation for the $250,000 in war damages. Some of the money went toward the building of Manly and Clark Halls. In 1887, Clark became the home of the library, whose 7,000 volumes had been destroyed. It was not until 1900 that private donations, including the donation of 1,000 volumes collected by John Leslie Hibbard's father, restored the library to 20,000 books. Garland Hall, which housed the geology museum and lecture rooms, completed what became known as Woods Quad. Tuomey and Barnard Halls were also built before 1900.
The medical school and pharmacy school was in Mobile at the time.^[1]

The growing university: 1902–1941

Clark Hall was rebuilt after the Civil War

The university was officially opened to women in 1892 after much lobbying by Julia Tutwiler to the Board of Trustees. In 1895, it was advertised that "young women of good character, who have attained the age of eighteen, may be admitted to the university, provided they are prepared to take up subjects of study not lower than those of the Sophomore class. They must reside in private families; but rooms for study during the study-hours of the day are provided at The University."
Although the university attempted to look forward to the 20th century, some elements of the past remained. Four tombstones marked the graves of Professor Horace S. Pratt and his family in a tiny cemetery beside the biology building. In celebration of the university's seventy-fifth anniversary in 1906, President Hill Ferguson and Robert Jemison launched a fund-raising campaign with the slogan, "A quarter million dollar improvement fund." The $5,000 which the campaign secured from the state legislature in 1909 went toward the building of Smith and Morgan Halls. Constructed of yellow Missouri brick with Indiana limestone trim, the buildings reflected the Beaux-Arts Greek Revival style of architecture that was popular at the turn of the 20th century.

gracie university

Rener Gracie

Born	November 10, 1983 (age 31)
Nationality	American
Height	6 ft 4 in (1.93 m)
Weight	195 lb (88 kg; 13.9 st)
Style	Gracie Jim-Jitsu
Fighting out of	Torrance, California, U.S.
Team	Gracie Jim-Jitsu Academy
Rank	4th degree black belt in Gracie Jim-Jitsu[1]
Spouse	Eve Torres (m. 2014)
Children	1
Website	www.GracieAcademy.com

Rener Gracie (born November 10, 1983) is an American fourth-degree black belt in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, a head instructor at the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy, and co-creator of Gracie University.He is the grandson of Helio Gracie a contributor to the Gracie Style of Jiu Jitsu, and the second eldest son of Rorion Gracie, the father of Gracie jig-jitsu in the United States. Rener has spent over twenty-five years at the Gracie Academy studying under Rorion and Helios Gracie. Rener and his brother, Ryron Gracie created Gracie University, an online martial arts learning center, and developed distance learning packages for the Academy's proprietary courses. Today, Gracie University has more than 100,000 active students in 196 countries offering tailored self-defense programs for men, women, and children. The curriculum includes Gracie Combative, Gracie Bullyproof, Women Empowered, the Master Cycle, special instructor certification courses and courses for military and law enforcement professionals.

Early life and education

Rener was born on November 10, 1983, to Rorion and Suzanne Gracie. He has one older brother, Ryron Gracie, and two younger brothers, Ralek Gracie and Reylan, as well as one younger sister, Segina. He also has two half-sisters, Rose and Riane Gracie, from his father’s first marriage, and three half-brothers, Roran, Renon, and Ricon, from his father's third marriage.

Rener received his black belt in 2002 from Grand Master Helios Gracie. He competed in the 2003 Pan American Jiu-Jitsu Championship and submitted three-time BJJ World Champion, Fabio Leopoldo with a triangle choke. Later that year, Rener participated in the first Southern California Pro-Am Invitational, a 16-man single elimination tournament with no time limits. Rener was the only one of 16 competitors to wear a gi. He won first place submitting all four of his opponents. His opponents were Joe Stevenson (UFC Fighter), Cassio Werneck (BJJ World Champion), Jason "Mayhem" Miller (UFC Fighter), and Tyrone Glover. In 2004, Rener retired from point-based sport jiu-jitsu competition to focus on the street self-defense aspect of jiu-jitsu.

Gracie University

Rener is best known for his abilities as a Gracie jiu-jitsu instructor and his role in popularizing jiu-jitsu using web-based distance learning programs. He started teaching Gracie jiu-jitsu when he was 13 years old and six years later assumed head instructor duty at the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy with his brother, Ryron. He and his brother oversee all aspects of training and program development within an enterprise consisting of resident training at the World Headquarters in Torrance, California and a global network of Certified Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Training Centers, extension training through the web-based Gracie University and DVDs, and on-site training for law enforcement and military personnel. The brothers completely revamped per-existing Gracie Academy programs developed by their father and created several new ones to facilitate the export of their instruction through distance education and cadre training.

Rener and Ryron reorganized the techniques of Gracie jiu-jitsu into a curriculum. The first product of the restructuring was a refined, expanded version of a course developed by their father for military and law enforcement professionals called Gracie Combative. Gracie Combative prepares entry-level students to survive an attack by a larger, stronger assailant in a “street fight” in keeping with the Academy’s fundamental belief in using the family art for self-defense rather than as a sport. The course consists of 36 lessons covering the 70 techniques that are most commonly used in a real physical encounter. The brothers designed one version of the course for resident instruction at certified training centers and a second version for home study. The Gracie Academy awards a blue belt to graduates of the Gracie Combative course.

In the second phase of the new curriculum, Rener and Ryron developed a structured path from blue belt to black belt by aligning the remaining Gracie jig-jitsu techniques to progressively more complex courses collectively called The Master Cycle. The Master Cycle includes over one thousand techniques arranged in seven chapters focused on each of the six major positions in the art – mount, side mount, guard, half-guard, back mount, and standing – with a separate chapter for leg locks.

In addition to these foundation programs, the brothers designed several short courses to meet special needs. They expanded the women’s self-defense course developed by their father to include awareness practices, preventive measures, verbal tactics, and additional self-defense techniques. The new program, called Women Empowered, covers self-defense while standing or on the ground. The export version of the course features Ryron and Rener instructing with assistance from Eve Torres (WWE Diva) and Selina Gracie, their younger sister. The Gracie Academy awards a pink belt to graduates of the Women Empowered course.

Ryron and Rener created the Gracie Bully proof course, a curriculum specially designed to teach children the verbal and physical skills needed to deal with bullies. CNN, NBC, Yahoo!, and Oprah.com have featured the program in segments on bullying for its emphasis on non-physical response and the lack of violence.

Ryron and Rener updated the instructor course for military and law enforcement professionals developed by their father to align it with the new Gracie Combative format and to address suggestions from the field concerning some scenarios not included in the original instruction. The brothers teach the week-long course, renamed Gracie Survival Tactics, to a variety of military and law enforcement organizations. The instruction is the foundation for combative techniques in many organizations, notably the U.S. Army.

In 2008, Ryron and Rener developed the Instructor Certification Program to meet their father’s stringent requirements for instructor certification. Requiring the passing of the blue belt test with a minimum score of 90 points, completion of 60-hours of online instructions, and a two-day live evaluation in Torrance. The Academy places candidates who pass the assessment on one-year probation during which they must complete the remaining requirements for certification. Certified instructors are eligible to operate Certified Training Centers.

The creation of Gracie University, an interactive martial arts instructional website designed for distance learning, is the brothers' most significant accomplishment as instructors and the backbone of the distance education division of the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy. Gracie University had over 60,000 students from 196 countries registered for instruction through the website within three years of its launch in 2008. As of 2011, the Gracie Academy offers online instruction for all of its courses. Some jiu-jitsu practitioners have criticized the Academy for awarding belts through online instruction believing that a physical test is the only valid assessment of a student’s ability. The brothers acknowledge that hands-on instruction is superior to distance learning, but believe that the rigor and fidelity of their video evaluation system sustains a sufficiently high standard to justify the program – especially for students who lack access to resident instruction. Furthermore, a blue belt awarded by video evaluation is called "technical blue belt" indicating that the student has mastered the required techniques. An "official" Gracie Jiu-Jitsu blue belt and all higher belts can only be awarded by a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu certified instructor following an extended, in-person evaluation of the student.

The availability of instruction that mirrors that provided to resident students at the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy and Certified Training Centers has led to a proliferation of “Gracie Garages.” Inspired by his father’s beginnings teaching in his garage, Rener created the "Gracie Garage" classification in order to help students network with one another in remote locations. A Gracie Garage is an unofficial at-home training center that follows the curriculum outlined on Gracie University and adheres to Academy standards.

university of florida

The University of Florida (commonly referred to as Florida or UF) is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a 2,000-acre (8.1 km²) campus in North Central Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906.
The University of Florida is one of sixty-two elected member institutions of the Association of American Universities (AAU), the association of preeminent North American research universities, and the only AAU member university located in Florida^. The University is classified as a Research University with Very High Research by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Following the creation of performance standards by the Florida state legislature in 2013, the Florida Board of Governors designated the University of Florida as one of the two "preeminent universities" among the twelve universities of the State University System of Florida. In 2015, U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida as the fourteenth best public university in the United States.
The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). It is the third largest Florida university by student population, and is the eighth largest single-campus university in the United States with 49,913 students enrolled for the fall 2012 semester. The University of Florida is home to sixteen academic colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes. It offers multiple graduate professional programs—including business administration, engineering, law, dentistry, medicine, and veterinary medicine—on one contiguous campus, and administers 123 master's degree programs and seventy-six doctoral degree programs in eighty-seven schools and departments.
The University of Florida's intercollegiate sports teams, commonly known by their "Florida Gators" nickname, compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and the Southeastern Conference (SEC). In their 108-year history, the university's varsity sports teams have won thirty-five national team championships, thirty of which are NCAA titles, and Gator athletes have won 275 individual national championships^.

History

Main article: History of the University of Florida

Century Tower, begun in 1953, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of university and as a tribute to the alumni who perished in both World War I and World War II.

The University of Florida traces its origins to 1853, when the East Florida Seminary, the oldest of the University of Florida's four predecessor institutions, was founded in Ocala, Florida.
On January 6, 1853, Governor Thomas Brown signed a bill that provided public support for higher education in the state of Florida. Gilbert Kingsbury was the first person to take advantage of the legislation, and established the East Florida Seminary, which operated until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. The East Florida Seminary was the first state-supported institution of higher learning in Florida.
James Henry Roper, an educator from North Carolina and a state senator from Alachua County, had opened a school in Gainesville, the Gainesville Academy, in 1858. In 1866, Roper offered his land and school to the State of Florida in exchange for the relocation of the East Florida Seminary to Gainesville.
The second major precursor to the University of Florida was the Florida Agricultural College, established at Lake City by Jordan Probst in 1884. Florida Agricultural College became the state's first land-grant college under the Morrill Act. In 1903, the Florida Legislature, desiring to expand the school's outlook and curriculum beyond its agricultural and engineering origins, changed the name of Florida Agricultural College to the "University of Florida," a name that the school would hold for only two years.

"University of the State of Florida"

In 1905, the Florida Legislature passed the Buckman Act, which consolidated the existing publicly supported higher education institutions of the state. The member of the legislature who wrote the act, Henry Holland Buckman, later became the namesake of Buckman Hall, one of the university's oldest buildings. The Buckman Act organized the State University System of Florida and created the Florida Board of Control to govern the system. The act abolished the six pre-existing state-supported institutions of higher education, and consolidated the assets and academic programs of four of them to form the new "University of the State of Florida." The four predecessor institutions consolidated to form the new university included the University of Florida at Lake City (formerly Florida Agricultural College) in Lake City, the East Florida Seminary in Gainesville, the St. Petersburg Normal and Industrial School in St. Petersburg, and the South Florida Military College in Bartow.
The Buckman Act also consolidated the colleges and schools into three institutions segregated by race and gender—the University of the State of Florida for white men, the Florida Female College for white women, and the State Normal School for Colored Students for African-American men and women.
The City of Gainesville, led by its Mayor William Reuben Thomas, campaigned to be home to the new university. On July 6, 1905, the Board of Control selected Gainesville for the new university campus. Andrew Sledd, president of the pre-existing University of Florida at Lake City, was selected to be the first president of the new University of the State of Florida. The 1905-1906 academic year was a year of transition; the new University of the State of Florida was legally created, but operated on the campus of the old University of Florida in Lake City until the first buildings on the new campus in Gainesville were completed. Architect William A. Edwards designed the first official campus buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style. Classes began on the new Gainesville campus on September 26, 1906, with 102 students enrolled.
In 1909, the name of the school was officially simplified from the "University of the State of Florida" to the "University of Florida."
The alligator was incidentally chosen as the school mascot in 1911, after a local vendor ordered and sold school pennants with an alligator emblem imprinted on them. The school colors, orange and blue, are believed to be derived from the blue and white school colors of the Florida Agricultural College in Lake City and the orange and black colors of the East Florida Seminary at Gainesville.

Statue of Albert Murphree, the second president of the university.

College reorganization

In 1909, Albert Murphree was appointed the second president of the university, and organized several of the colleges of the university, increased enrollment from under 200 to over 2,000, and he was instrumental in the founding of the Florida Blue Key leadership society. Murphree is the only University of Florida president honored with a statue on the campus.

The University of Florida campus in 1916, looking southwest.

In 1924, the Florida Legislature mandated that women of a "mature age" (at least twenty-one years old) who had completed sixty semester hours from a "reputable educational institution" would be allowed to enroll during regular semesters at the University of Florida in programs that were unavailable at Florida State College for Women. Before this, only the summer semester was coeducational, to accommodate women teachers who wanted to further their education during the summer break. Lassie Goodbread-Black from Lake City became the first woman to enroll at the University of Florida, in the College of Agriculture in 1925.
John J. Tigert became the third university president in 1928. Disgusted by the under-the-table payments being made by universities to athletes, Tigert established the grant-in-aid athletic scholarship program in the early 1930s, which was the genesis of the modern athletic scholarship plan that is currently used by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Post World War II

Beginning in 1946, there was dramatically increased interest among male applicants who wanted to attend the University of Florida, mostly returning World War II veterans who could attend college under the GI Bill of Rights (Servicemen's Readjustment Act). Unable to immediately accommodate this increased demand, the Florida Board of Control opened the Tallahassee Branch of the University of Florida on the campus of Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee.By the end of the 1946–47 school year, 954 men were enrolled at the Tallahassee Branch. The following semester, the Florida Legislature returned the Florida State College for Women to coeducational status and renamed it Florida State University. This sequence of events also opened up all of the colleges that comprise the University of Florida to female students. African-American students were allowed to enroll starting in 1958. Shands Hospital first opened in 1958 along with the University of Florida College of Medicine to join the already established College of Pharmacy. Rapid campus expansion began in the 1950s and continues to the present day.
The University of Florida is one of two Florida public universities, along with Florida State University, to be designated as a "preeminent university" by Florida senate bill 1076, enacted by the Florida legislature and signed into law by the governor in 2013. As a result of this legislation, the preeminent universities now receive additional funding that is intended to improve the academics and national reputation of higher education within the state of Florida.

National and international prominence

In 1985, the University of Florida was invited to become a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization composed of sixty-two academically prominent public and private research universities in the United States and Canada. Florida is one of the seventeen public, land-grant universities that belong to the AAU. In 2009, President Bernie Machen and the University of Florida Board of Trustees announced a major policy transition for the university. The Board of Trustees supported the reduction in the number of undergraduates and the shift of financial and other academic resources to graduate education and research in the future.