University of South Florida

• 1. Introduction

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  The University of South Florida sits on what was once the largest citrus grove in the world, a 5,000-acre stretch of temple oranges that gave the nearby city of Temple Terrace its name. Before those trees, the land served as Henderson Air Field, a World War II airstrip. Today, it is home to nearly 50,000 students from over 145 countries and an institution that holds the third-largest endowment of any American public university founded after World War II. How did a school built on a former orange grove and wartime runway become one of the most patent-productive universities on the planet? And what does it mean that its founding president once publicly declared it would never field a sports team? The story of USF begins not with a vision of greatness, but with a practical question: where in Florida should a new public university be built for the 20th century?

• 2. Built From Nothing

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  Samuel Gibbons, then a Florida state representative and later a U.S. congressman, is considered by many to be the Father of USF for his role in pushing the institution into existence. Founded in 1956, USF was the first state university in Florida built during the 20th century, though classes did not begin until 1960 and the name University of South Florida was not formally approved by the Florida Cabinet until 1957. At the time, it was also the southernmost university in the state system.

  The man who shaped the university's earliest identity was John S. Allen, its first president, who led USF from 1956 until his retirement in 1971. Allen arrived at an empty field. There were zero trees on the campus when it opened, and the five original buildings included a library, a science building, a teaching auditorium, a university center, and an administration building. Two of those original structures no longer stand.

  Allen's philosophy was summed up in the motto he gave the institution: Accent on Learning. In 1959, he declared publicly that USF would have no sports teams, drawing national attention. He eventually changed course, and USF fielded its first varsity teams in 1965. But Allen's deeper ambition was singular. He later described USF as the first new institution of its kind to be conceived, planned, and built in the United States in the 20th century. The John and Grace Allen Administration Building, named after the founding president and his wife, still houses key Tampa campus departments today.

  Allen's love of trees left another mark. He planted the first pine trees on campus, and today nearly 20,000 trees cover the Tampa campus. Arbor Day plantings continue as a student tradition, and the ceremonial mace is topped with a gold pinecone to honor both growth and those original pines.

• 3. Early Growing Pains

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  Ernest Boger became the first African-American student admitted to USF in 1961, the school's second year of operation, after the university opened as a whites-only institution. Boger graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in psychology. That same year, USF's first master's degree programs began, fueling rapid enrollment growth.

  The physical campus was still fragile. On April 4-5, 1966, an F4 tornado struck during a multi-state outbreak and partially collapsed the cooling towers at the university's power plant while ripping the roof off one of the dormitories. The St. Petersburg satellite campus, which had opened in 1965 on the former site of the U.S. Navy Maritime Training Center along Bayboro Harbor, was also in its earliest years.

  In 1963, USF held its first graduation ceremony. The ceremony conferred 325 degrees. Fifty years later, that number had grown to more than 13,000 degrees awarded each year. The second president, M. Cecil Mackey, who took office in 1970, opened the university's medical school, School of Nursing, and first-ever Ph.D. program, while also coining the term metropolitan university to describe institutions embedded in large cities. The term remains in use nationally today.

  A student vote in 1962 had already set a distinctive mascot in motion. Students chose the Golden Brahman, named in honor of Florida's cattle-raising heritage. By the early 1980s, that mascot evolved into the Bulls, though USF's fight song still carries the original name: the Golden Brahman March.

• 4. The Research Climb

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  John Lott Brown, USF's third president, oversaw the institution's emergence as a serious research university during the 1980s. The USF Graduate School was formally established in 1980, and in 1986 Brown oversaw the opening of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute on the Tampa campus. USF also became the first university in the nation to offer a Ph.D. in applied anthropology during this period.

  The university's research trajectory accelerated sharply under Judy Genshaft, who became president in 2000. According to the National Science Foundation, USF spent $568 million on research and development in 2019, ranking it 43rd nationally and 25th among public universities. In the 2021 fiscal year, the university was awarded more than $590 million in research awards.

  Patents became a signature measure of USF's output. In its 2018 ranking, the Intellectual Property Owners Association placed USF first in Florida, seventh in the United States, and 16th worldwide in the number of U.S. patents granted. Faculty, staff, students, and alumni collectively hold over 2,400 patents. USF is home to both the National Academy of Inventors and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame, both located in the USF Research Park.

  Florida's Board of Governors designated USF one of three Preeminent State Research Universities in 2018, the year Genshaft retired. To reach that designation, a public institution must meet or surpass benchmarks in at least 11 of 12 metrics set by Florida lawmakers. Rhea Law, USF's eighth president and the first USF graduate to hold that role, named gaining admission to the Association of American Universities as a top priority when she took office. USF was accepted into the AAU in 2023.

• 5. Money, Medicine, and Innovation

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  In 2022, USF reported an annual budget of $2.31 billion and an annual economic impact of over $6 billion. Its $889 million endowment is the third-largest among Florida public universities and the largest of any American public university founded after World War II. Those figures reflect decades of deliberate investment in health sciences and research infrastructure.

  USF Health brings together the Morsani College of Medicine, the College of Nursing, the Taneja College of Pharmacy, the College of Public Health, and several other health-related schools under one umbrella. The College of Nursing ranks first in Florida for research funding received from the National Institutes of Health. In 2012, USF opened the Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation in downtown Tampa, a 90,000-square-foot facility that trains health professionals from around the world. In 2020, the Morsani College of Medicine and the USF Health Heart Institute moved to a 395,000-square-foot, 13-story tower in the Water Street district of downtown Tampa.

  The university's 2025 establishment of the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, and Computing marked the largest single donation in USF history. Arnie and Lauren Bellini donated $40 million to create the college, which now offers eight undergraduate and advanced degree programs. The Bellinis had made an earlier gift as well: in 2022, a $10.6 million donation from the alumni pair created the Bellini Center for Talent Development, a 9,000-square-foot career services facility in Tampa.

  The Center for Urban Transportation Research, founded in 1988, conducts over $13 million in research annually for public and private sponsors. Congress designated its National Center for Transit Research in 1991 and reaffirmed that designation multiple times since. The Materials Simulation Laboratory, established in 2002, uses supercomputers to model quantum behavior under the extreme temperatures and pressures found in planetary interiors and during inertial confinement fusion.

• 6. Campus, Culture, and Tradition

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  The Tampa campus spans 1,562 acres, making it by far the largest of USF's three locations. Over 19,000 trees cover the grounds, and the Arbor Day Foundation has named it a Tree Campus USA every year since 2011. Nearly every road on campus is named after a tree, as are six of the 14 dormitories.

  The 15-acre botanical garden, established in 1969 for the Biology Department, contains over 3,000 taxa of plants ranging from carnivorous species and cycads to bamboo and subtropical shade plants. The medicinal herb garden is used by the USF College of Pharmacy for active research. The garden is open to the public six days a week at no charge to students.

  Martin Luther King, Jr. Plaza occupies the geographical center of campus. Beneath a small bust of Dr. King, five granite lines point in the directions of five cities significant to his legacy: Atlanta, Boston, Memphis, Montgomery, and Washington D.C. Stone tablets nearby are engraved with his "I Have a Dream" speech.

  The Marshall Student Center, opened in 2008 and named for longtime director Phyllis P. Marshall, is a four-story building with a 1,200-seat ballroom and a 100-station computer lab. The Centre Gallery within the building, established in 1984, is the only fully student-run, non-profit exhibition space in Florida.

  USF's hand sign is Horns Up, used by fans at games and as a general greeting. Since 1995, the university's water tower is lit green the night after any Bulls sports team wins. The alma mater was written by USF music professor Wayne Hugoboom in 1960 as the result of a campus competition, for which Hugoboom won a first-place prize of $250.

• 7. Athletics and Olympic Reach

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  USF competed in its first intercollegiate athletic event on the 25th of September 1965, defeating the Florida Southern College men's soccer team. The university was admitted to the NCAA in 1968 and has since moved through the Sun Belt Conference, Conference USA, the Big East, and currently the American Conference.

  The Bulls' one team NCAA national championship came in women's swimming in 1985. Athletes have also won 19 individual NCAA national championships across women's swimming, men's swimming, rifle, and track and field, along with five relay national championships. The cheerleading program has been particularly dominant in recent years: the co-ed team won the UCA Division I-A national championship in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and the all-girl team won the title in 2024.

  USF's football team plays at Raymond James Stadium, home to the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, making it one of only five FBS programs to play in an NFL stadium. The stadium holds over 75,000 people, though seating for most USF games is limited to the lower bowl at around 45,000.

  As of the 2024 Summer Olympics, 20 USF alumni representing 13 countries had competed as athletes in the Olympic Games. Evelyne Viens, a member of Canada's women's soccer team, became the first USF alumna to win an Olympic medal as an athlete when Canada took gold in 2020. Among the notable alumni in professional sports, Tony La Russa graduated in 1969 and went on to become a three-time World Series champion manager and the second-winningest manager in MLB history. Jason Pierre-Paul, who attended in 2009, is a two-time Super Bowl champion. Shane McClanahan, who attended in 2018, became the first pitcher in Major League Baseball history to make his debut in the postseason.