Florida College history

When President Wilson resigned early in 1949, the Board of Directors chose James R. Cope, then a teacher at Freed-Hardeman College in Henderson, Tennessee, to succeed him.

The 1950's brought further development and expansion to the University.

A student in the Department of Chemistry was awarded the University's first Ph.D. in 1952.

Established in 1960 as Brevard Junior College, the first students — and 31 faculty members — met in the old Cocoa High school building off Forrest Avenue, since demolished.

In 1965, following a request from the Florida Gators football head coach, a team of UF scientists develops a beverage that helps athletes stay hydrated better than water.

In 1968, the first Gator competes in the Olympics.

The College was renamed Brevard Community College in 1970 when the state of Florida created a system of two-year colleges.

In 1979, Wendy Stoeker earns a berth on the UF diving team despite having been born with no arms.

Since 1988, more than 90,000 students have collectively served more than 3 million volunteer hours through EFSC’s Center for Service-Learning and Civic Engagement.

In 1990, the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art opens as one of the largest university art museums in the South, housing more than 8,000 works in its permanent collection and a variety of traveling exhibitions.

In 1992, the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts is founded, which hosts international events and offers an outlet for creating art that opens windows to the wider world.

In 1995, Dance Marathon at UF is created, making it one of the first five dance marathon fundraising programs in the nation.

Florida College added its first accredited four-year degree program, the Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies, in 1996.

In 1998, the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute becomes a magnet for collaboration, opening a $60 million building adjacent to the Health Science Center.

In 1999, researchers with the UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences isolate a gene from a common pond algae that can be transferred to crop plants, boosting yields by as much as 30 percent and creating a greener, more efficient growing process.

In 2000, the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity opens, becoming one of the largest collections of Lepidoptera in the world with more than 6 million butterfly and moth specimens.

In 2002, UF begins leading six other universities under a $15 million NASA grant to work on a five-year space research initiative.

The year 2005 saw the creation of the Office of National Fellowships, which had immediate success in increasing the numbers of undergraduates who received nationally and internationally prominent scholarships and fellowships.

In 2006, UF faculty and researchers begin designing the framework for the Emerging Pathogens Institute.

In 2008, as part of its commitment to collaboration and a greater world, UF teams up with the Zhejiang University in China to research sustainable solutions to the Earth’s energy issues.

H. E. Payne, Jr. was chosen by the Board of Directors to serve as the College’s fifth president effective May 22, 2009.

Eric J. Barron took office as Florida State's 14th president in February 2010.

In 2011, researchers at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences develop a breakthrough in pine tree breeding that can create new tree varieties in half the time.

In 2012, a team of UF physicists play a leading role in one of the two major experiments of the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile-long, $5 billion supercooled underground tunnel outside Geneva, Switzerland.

Eastern Florida State College, located in the heart of Florida’s Space Coast, is a co-educational, publicly supported post-secondary institution that adopted its current name on July 1, 2013 with the addition of four-year Bachelor's Degrees.

In January 2015, Doctor W. Kent Fuchs becomes UF’s 12th president, bringing with him a background in academic leadership as a provost, a distinguished career as an engineering professor, and a commitment to push UF to even greater heights.