This blog site will track and provide constant updates for The University of Central Florida: Campus History, a collaborative effort between the University of Central Florida Alumni Association and Arcadia Publishing. Set for an '09 release, this book will be the first (and, to date, only) complete book-length history of the school's first four decades.

UCF Reflecting Pond

UCF Reflecting Pond

The Project

The University of Central Florida has stood at the edges of Orlando for forty years, a major institution of research, culture, education, and professional development, stitched into the very fabric of one of the nation's most dynamic and influential metropolitan areas.

It is a school that, founded in 1963 (the same year Walt Disney made his fateful fly over Central Florida and chose the location for his now-famous Walt Disney World), has grown along with the surrounding community, year by year, in size, prominence, and power.

Over 50,000 students currently attend the University of Central Florida, and hundreds of thousands have earned their degrees here since the first semester of classes in 1968. Each has left a mark on the campus, and for the last forty years, it seems as if each new year has seen the school pass some new milestone: a living and working hospitality management school, an on-campus football stadium, a medical school. For a young university, this is a place whose history is being written and revised each year, whose accomplishments are far from over...but this is also an institution with a rich history and a rich tradition.

And, for the first time ever, we are attempting to collect that full history.

But this won't simply be a dry, newspaper-style account of the university's growth, nor will this simply be a bullet-pointed list of accomplishments, as you might see on a web site or brochure.

This will be your history, a collection that showcases the University of Central Florida through extensive photographs, archival material, and individual accounts. What were the most important moments to define the school, from 1963 to the present? What are the most lasting images? What have been the most important landmarks, the most important traditions, the most important events? Who are the people who have helped to build this school into what it is today?

UCF is a school that has been writing its history for the past forty years, and now we will truly have a document to capture that history. Check back to this blog site frequently for updates, calls for interviews and stories, and calls for photographs. This is a project that can only succeed with the help of the students and alumni who call UCF their alma mater.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Did You Go To School At FTU?

This campus history will not just document the school's recent growth, but also the school's early years as "Florida Technological University," and its strange, interesting, and exciting transformation into the "University of Central Florida."

Few who attended school at FTU will recognize the current campus, and while many traditions and campus activities survive, nearly thirty years have passed since the name change on campus. We want to make sure that the culture of FTU is preserved.

If you attended school at Florida Technological University, drop us an email (available at my complete profile, on the right side of the page) to share stories of the old campus. What were the prevailing traditions of the day? Which were the campus landmarks and hangouts? What sort of school was FTU throughout the '70s, and what did students believe it would become? What were your thoughts on the name change, and what do you think of the current UCF campus?

We're interested not just in your stories and your thoughts, but also in your photographs, so if you've got some great shots of the old FTU campus, let us know...your pictures could wind up as archival material in this campus history.

Also, for those of you interested in following along throughout the research and writing process, the Orlando Sentinel recently posted this story about the school's first day of classes:

"University of Central Florida Celebrates 40 Years of Growth"

UCF Historical Timeline

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1 comment:

Jason Holic said...

I found some historical photos on the official UCF PhotoFile: http://photofile.ucf.edu/sec_stage_album.php?prev_path=albums%2FHistorical+Images&name=Historical+Images

And the original 1965 Master Plan: http://fulltext10.fcla.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?a=51;sid=09a1af170a2867e355d41c5df07c5f6e;idno=CF00001714;c=fhp;cc=fhp;view=jpg;seq=3;size=s

And a book on the first 12 years of FTU: http://fulltext.fcla.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=fhp&idno=CF00001585&format=jpg

I hope that helps...

October 24, 2008 at 5:47 AM

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