Historique
HISTORY
Florida State University traces its origins to a plan set by the 1823 Territorial Legislature of Florida to create a system of higher education. The 1838 Florida Constitution codified the basic system by providing for land allocated for the schools.
In 1851 the Florida Legislature established two seminaries of higher education on opposite banks of the Suwannee River.Francis W. Eppes and other city leaders established an all-male academy called the Florida Institute in Tallahassee as a legislative inducement to locate the West Florida Seminary in Tallahassee. The eastern seminary, located in Ocala, FL, began operations in 1853 but closed during the American Civil War. It reopened in 1866 in Gainesville, FL and would eventually be combined with other schools to form what would be called the University of the State of Florida in 1906.
In 1856, the land and buildings in an area formerly known as Gallows Hill – where the Florida Institute was built – was accepted as the site of the state seminary for male students. Two years later the institution absorbed the Tallahassee Female Academy founded in 1843 as the Misses Bates School and became coeducational. The West Florida Seminary stood near the front of the Westcott Building on the existing FSU campus, making this site the oldest continually used location of higher learning in Florida.
During the Civil War, the seminary became the The Florida Military and Collegiate Institute. Cadets from the school defeated Union forces at the Battle of Natural Bridge in 1865, leaving Tallahassee as the only Confederate capital east of the Mississippi River not to fall to Union forces. After the fall of the Confederacy, campus buildings were occupied by Union forces and the West Florida Seminary reverted to its academic role awarding its first diplomas (Licentiates of Instruction) in 1884. The seminary was renamed the University of Florida by the Florida Legislature in 1883. The university included a medical and surgical college but lasted only to 1885 due to lack of legislative support.
By the turn of the century, the seminary increasingly focused on post-secondary education and became the first liberal arts college in Florida after it was reorganized into the Florida State College with four departments (the College, the College Academy, the School for Teachers and the School of Music) in 1901. The 1905 Buckman Act, named after Henry Holland Buckman, reorganized the Florida college system into a school for Caucasian males, a school for Caucasian females (Florida State
College for Women), and a school for African Americans. By 1933 the Florida State College for Women had grown to be the third largest women’s college in the United States and was the first state women’s college in the South to be awarded a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, as well as the first university in Florida so honored.
The influx of G.I. Bill students after World War II stressed the state university system to the point that a Tallahassee Branch of the University of Florida (TBUF) was opened on the campus of the Florida State College for Women with the men housed in barracks on nearby Dale Mabry Field. By 1947 the Florida Legislature returned the FSCW to coeducational status and renamed the college Florida State University. The FSU West Campus land and barracks plus other areas continually used as an airport later became the location of the Tallahassee Community College. The post-war years brought substantial growth and development to the university as many departments colleges were added including Business, Journalism (discontinued in 1959),
Library Science, Nursing and Social Welfare. Strozier Library, Tully Gymnasium and the original parts of the Business building were also built at this time.
During the 1960s and 1970s Florida State University became a center for student activism especially in the areas of racial integration, women’s rights and opposition to the Vietnam War. The school acquired the nickname ‘Berkeley of the South’during
this period, in reference to similar student activities at the University of California, Berkeley and is also purported to be the site of the genesis of “streaking,” which is said to have first been observed on Landis Green. Governor Claude Kirk once spent a night on Landis Green, in the center of campus, discussing politics with protesting students.
After many years as a segregated university, in 1962 Maxwell Courtney became the first African American undergraduate student admitted to Florida State. In 1968 Calvin Patterson became the first African American player for the Florida State University
football team. Florida State today has the highest graduation rate for African American students of all universities in Florida, including the historically black Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
Today, Florida State University aspires to become a top American research university with at least one-third of its graduate programs ranked in the Top-15 nationally. Florida State University owns more than 1,530 acres (6.2 km²) and is the home of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory among other advanced research facilities. The university continues to develop in its capacity as a leader in Florida graduate research. Other milestones at the university include the first ETA10-G/8 supercomputer, capable of 10.8 GFLOPS in 1989, remarkable for the time in that it exceeded the existing speed record of the Cray-2/8, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by a substantial leap and the development of the anti-cancer drug Taxol.
The Jefferson-Eppes Trophy is exchanged between the University of Virginia and Florida State University after each football competition in recognition of the common roots shared between the two schools.