The\u00a0海角直播 is gearing up to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2013, and much will be said and written about the transformation of the university from a small campus to one of the largest universities in the United States.<\/p>\n
As someone who witnessed much of that transformation, I have tried to remember what UCF was like when I arrived on campus in the early \u201870s. Although memory is notoriously unreliable, I will do my best.<\/p>\n
UCF opened its doors for classes in the fall of 1968 as Florida Technological 海角直播, a name that led many to believe that it was a technical college rather than a four-year university.<\/p>\n
When I arrived on campus in the fall of 1972, FTU was a small, sleepy campus with something less than 8,000 students. Today it is\u00a0the nation\u2019s second-largest university with almost 60,000 students.<\/p>\n
Located on the outer fringes of Orlando and Orange County, its existence seemed to be a well-kept secret in the city. On countless occasions when I told Orlando residents that I was a professor at the university, they indicated they had no idea there was a university in Orlando.<\/p>\n
Having come here from Florida State 海角直播, I was amazed at the quiet that reigned over the campus, as well as the look of the students. As a commuter campus whose students mostly worked in the city, the average FTU student was well dressed, smartly groomed, and politically diffident. At times I felt that I had walked through a time warp back into my undergraduate days in the 1950s.<\/p>\n
In class, students were eager to learn, willing to work as hard as their schedules allowed, and calm in demeanor. Whereas at Florida State I was regard as politically mainstream, at FTU I was perceived as a radical leftist.<\/p>\n
Physically, the campus was large but most of the land was undeveloped. Tall slash pines surrounded the core cluster of buildings.<\/p>\n
The Administration building, known at first as the \u201cmirrored-glass building\u201d (and today as Millican Hall), and the Library, which was about half the size of the current building, stood facing each other across the Reflecting Pond.<\/p>\n
To the east was the Engineering building and a few dorms. Farther northeast was the small Computer Science building, Chemistry lecture hall, and Chemistry building.<\/p>\n
To the west was Phillips Hall.<\/p>\n
That was about it.<\/p>\n
The History Department was in the \u201cmirrored-glass building\u201d along with classrooms, the college office, the administrative and business offices, and a few other department offices. I shared an office with another faculty member on the second floor of the Library, where a significant number of faculty offices were located.<\/p>\n
The athletic facilities were mostly off campus. The Education building with the gymnasium had not yet been built.<\/p>\n
FTU was a member of Division II in men\u2019s athletics and a member of the AIAW in women\u2019s athletics. The various teams in the athletic department played their games off-campus, mostly at high schools in the area. Under these conditions there was very little campus excitement over athletics. Nonetheless, FTU very quickly built a powerful program that competed successfully and won national championships.<\/p>\n
The area around the campus could be described as \u201ccountry.\u201d There were few buildings along Alafaya Trail, which certainly resembled a trail in both directions. FTU Boulevard, today known as 海角直播 Boulevard, was a two-lane road lined with orange groves and woods. State Road 436 (Semoran Boulevard) for the most part marked the eastern edge of the city of Orlando.<\/p>\n
There was one gasoline station on the corner of Alafaya Trail and Florida Tech Boulevard, and not much else adjacent to the campus. The nearest restaurant was more than a mile away on East Colonial Drive (State Road 50).<\/p>\n
On campus, food service was minimal. The bookstore was small and stocked mostly with just textbooks for classes.<\/p>\n