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 28, 2008

Spirit Splash

Homecoming is just around the corner at the University of Central Florida.

And, obviously, it wouldn't be a Homecoming week without "Spirit Splash," that mad frenzy of students swarming the waters of the Reflection Pond.

This has become a staple of campus life at UCF, something spoken about on campus tours and during freshman orientation, something looked forward to by young and old students alike, by faculty and staff, by the community at large...it is a tradition that has come to represent all of student life, and its images have become iconic...But how did Spirit Splash start? How has it grown? What were the experiences of students during the early years of Spirit Splash? And what traditions have, themselves, been formed during the Spirit Splash celebration (from squirt guns, to the fountain guard, to slip n slides)?

As always, leave some comments or drop me an email (nholic@mail.ucf.edu). I'd love to hear your thoughts and stories; I'd love to speak with you; and I'd love to see your pictures of the event.

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2 comments:

Judy Gasperini said...

Hey, I graduated in that pond! They drained the water and filled the hole with chairs for the graduating class and audience to sit in. That was class of 1979.

October 31, 2008 at 5:16 AM
Kelly T said...

I think that Spirit Splash can be defined by a few key things: UCF Marching Knights, The UCF Cheerleaders, Rubber Duckies, T-shirts, Fountain Guard and trying to take pictures in the fountain without ruining your camera!

November 23, 2008 at 8:09 AM

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