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The story
History
Establishment
In 1991, Charles B. Edwards, chair of the board of regents, lobbied the Florida Legislature to pass legislation recommending that Florida's 10th state university be built in the Florida Southwest Region. Florida governor Lawton Chiles signed the bill authorizing the school in May 1991.
The board of regents selected a 760-acre (310 ha) site in the south Fort Myers area donated by Ben Hill Griffin III on which to build the university. On April 26, 1993, Roy E. McTarnaghan, who served as the executive vice chancellor for the State University System of Florida, was appointed president of the yet-unnamed "New University of Southwest Florida". McTarnaghan and a small number of employees set up temporary base in downtown Fort Myers in a space provided by the Lee County Commission. The school commemorates August 25, 1997, as its commencement date, the first time classes were held on campus.
Academic Building 5 at Florida Gulf Coast University was later renamed Charles B. Edwards Hall, in honor of Edwards.
Expansion and growth
In July 1999, William C. Merwin became FGCU's second president. Merwin sought to create a traditional four-year university. An active fundraiser, Merwin raised more than $250 million for the university in eight years, rapidly expanding the school. New buildings included Lutgert College of Business, Holmes Hall (U.A. Whitaker School of Engineering), Whitaker Hall, Cohen Center (the student union), Alico Arena, and an expansion of on-campus housing. Student enrollment increased from approximately 2,000 in its first year to almost 15,000 as of 2017. In 2007, Wilson G. Bradshaw became the university's third president. Bradshaw announced that he would step down after the 2016–17 academic year, and the Board of Trustees selected Michael V. Martin as his successor.
Responding to a challenge for state universities to improve their four-year graduation rate, FGCU in 2016 introduced a program, Soar in 4, that reimburses out-of-pocket tuition expenses for the freshman year of students who graduate within four years and meet certain other criteria.
Martin, a former chancellor of Louisiana State University and the Colorado State University System, succeeded Bradshaw as Florida Gulf Coast University president on July 1, 2017. The transition from Bradshaw to Martin came during the university's celebration of its 20th anniversary.
In 2017, the College of Health Professions & Social Work was renamed the Marieb College of Health & Human Services after a $10 million gift from donor Elaine Nicpon Marieb, for whom Marieb Hall was named after her original $5 million pledge.
In June 2023, the Board of Trustees selected Aysegul Timur as FGCU's fifth president, making her the first woman president in the university's history. Timur took office on July 1, 2023.
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Main campus
FGCU's 807-acre (3.27 km2) campus is in unincorporated Southwest Florida in Lee County, 21 mi (34 km) from Naples and south of Fort Myers. It is within San Carlos Park's fire district and has a Fort Myers postal code.
The 150-acre (0.61 km2) center of the campus, known as the Academic Core, contains the buildings housing most of the school's classrooms and labs. There are three separate housing areas on the periphery of the campus: North Lake, South Village, and West Lake Village. North Lake Village overlooks Lake Como, with recreational activities including boating and water skiing, with a new boardwalk and dining facility opening along its waterfront in 2017.
Expansion
The Lutgert College of Business building opened in 2008, Holmes Hall (which houses the U.A. Whitaker School of Engineering) in 2009, and Herbert J. Sugden Hall (home to the School of Resort & Hospitality Management) in 2008. Academic Building 7 for the College of Arts and Sciences was completed in 2010 and named Seidler Hall in 2016 after donors Lee and Gene Seidler. In 2012, Academic Building 8 was completed. Now Marieb Hall, it was dedicated to Elaine Nicpon Marieb in 2012. The $24 million, 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) building was designed for the College of Health Professions, which in 2017 was renamed the Marieb College of Health & Human Services after Marieb's second transformative gift, an additional $10 million pledge.
Other construction projects include expansion of the Cohen Center (the student union building also affectionately known as Harv's Place in honor of donor Harvey Cohen), an addition to the fine arts building, a 2017 expansion of Alico Arena, an addition of one of the largest solar panel fields at a university, and the construction of academic building 9. FGCU also opened a new facility a few miles northeast of campus in 2016, the Emergent Technologies Institute.
FGCU has created the Everglades Wetland Research Park (EWRP), housed in the Kapnick Education and Research Center on the campus of the Naples Botanical Garden in Naples, Florida, approximately 35 miles south of the main FGCU campus. The EWRP provides teaching, research, and service related to wetland, river, coastal science and ecological engineering.
In 2019, FGCU began construction for the Water School, a facility to house research labs and classrooms focused on environmental implications of water quality in Southwest Florida. Upon its completion, the Water School (also known as Academic Building 9) became FGCU's largest academic building. The Water School opened in November 2022.
Satellite campuses
There are three other satellite campuses: Naples, the Atrium in Fort Myers, and Herald Court Centre in Punta Gorda, where continuing education and lifelong learning classes are held. The FGCU Board of Trustees voted in January 2010 to assume ownership of 500 acres (2.0 km2) in Buckingham. Located between East Fort Myers and Lehigh Acres, the land already contains over 60 buildings and housing for 300 people. Originally, the property operated as Gulf Coast Center, a residential facility for people with developmental disabilities. After the state phased out such large-scale institutions, FGCU's board of trustees accepted the land donation. It is used for off-campus team-building exercises and storage, among other things.
In 2007, the university purchased the former Bonita Beach Plantation Resort in Bonita Springs for use as a marine research laboratory. The Norm and Nancy Vester Marine and Environmental Science Research Field Station site has 10 boat slips and is located on Estero Bay. The site includes laboratories, offices, apartments for visiting researchers and a classroom.
Environmental sustainability
Since its founding, 400 acres (1.6 km2) on the main campus have been set aside for environmental preservation. FGCU also has constructed a number of lakes on the campus that are home to large numbers of wildlife; the lakes also help promote the ecology of the area. Environmental sustainability is the principal goal expressed in the university charter. Seidler Hall, the new facility housing science laboratories and classrooms for the College of Arts and Sciences, achieved platinum certification, the highest level awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The university's 15-acre (61,000 m2) solar field supplies about 85 percent of the energy needed to operate Holmes, Lutgert and Seidler halls, reducing FGCU's reliance on Florida Power & Light Co. by 18 percent. An ice thermal storage plant sends chilled water through an underground loop that cools campus buildings, saving more than $1.64 million over five years. The newest residence halls—Everglades, Biscayne, Palmetto, Osprey, and Eagle—heat their water via rooftop solar panels.
Library
The Library Complex is on FGCU's main campus in Fort Myers. The main facility accommodated 1 million visitors for the first time in the 2016–17 school year. The library has more than 1.5 million items in its collection, which can be accessed by students or any patron with a library card. The library also subscribes to more than 400 databases to allow students and patrons access to more than 700 million full-text articles. Its east wing includes a 115-seat computer lab.
In 2014, the Collection Analysis Project (CAP) began so that the FGCU library could determine what parts of the collection were being utilized by students and what could be removed in order to make way for various new projects within the library. One of the projects completed in 2023 is a renovation of the computer lab in the east wing of the first floor. The renovation features new furniture, computers, and work areas. In addition to its various print and electronic collections, the library also houses various art pieces, including seven signed lithographs by Salvador Dalí. The Archives and Special Collections unit on the library's third floor has held various exhibitions since the fall of 2013. The list of past exhibits is on the library's website. Other resources in the library complex include the ArtLab Gallery, Center for Academic Achievement, Lucas Center for Faculty Development, and the Writing Center. In 2019, the Library Complex was formally named after FGCU's third president, Wilson G. Bradshaw.
Campus recreation
The official Campus Recreation department organizes several day and overnight trips annually, including rock climbing, skydiving, white-water rafting, sea kayaking and more. There are also 32 official sports clubs on campus, many of which engage in intercollegiate competition with their peers.
From Wikipedia’s article on Florida Gulf Coast University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5