When it began, 50 years ago this week, it was a tiny place with modest ambitions. It was called the “Bay Campus” of the University of South Florida, a temporary outpost selected hastily because there was not enough dormitory space at USF’s campus in Tampa, where classes had begun just five years earlier.
Nearly 260 turned out for the first day of class in St. Petersburg on Sept. 7, 1965. They lived and attended class in old barracks that had housed training programs for thousands of young men in the U.S. Maritime Service between 1939 and 1950.
Students attending those first classes at Bay Campus were inconvenienced by having to travel between the bayside barracks and the Tampa campus, according to historian James Anthony Schnur, the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library’s special collections librarian.
Though the campus served as an overflow site for freshman and sophomores, the role changed in 1968 when USF President John S. Allen kept the facility as a place to offer a few upperlevel undergraduate and graduate programs for the convenience of Pinellas County residents.
A year later, the legislature approved USF St. Petersburg as the first branch campus in the Florida public university system.
Throughout the ’70s, collegial entertainment and academic opportunities grew for students, faculty and staff.
Students who attended during this time may recall sharing one another’s company while watching the popular Friday Night Film series, or when Jacques Cousteau, an internationally renown oceanographer, docked in Bayboro Harbor.
Some may remember the women’s soccer team, the Sandspurs, and their funny slogan “a pain in the grass.” There was a time when everyone would cool off between studies and play volleyball near the pool.
The college grew through leadership and community partners, such as the St. Petersburg City Council and the vision of longtime St. Petersburg Times editor Nelson Poynter.
Once things were more established, students and faculty sought to expand academic programs and extracurricular activities.
Fast forward to 2000, when the university began the process of acquiring separate accreditation from the Southern Association of College and Schools. The campus gained this level of autonomy in 2006.
After all the development, renovations and achievements in the last 50 years, it may seem that there is little left to be done.
But as it turns out, Sophia Wisniewska, USFSP regional chancellor, is leading innovations to expand the university through a five year plan called Vision 20/20.
“The plan’s purpose is to take inventory of where we are today and choosing how we are going to develop for tomorrow,” Schnur said.
