History
Establishment
On July 15, 1961, to meet the burgeoning educational demands of South Florida, the state legislature passed an act authorizing the establishment of a new university in the city of Boca Raton. Florida Atlantic University was built on Boca Raton Army Airfield, a 1940s-era army airbase. During World War II, the airfield served as the Army Air Corps’ sole radar training facility.
The base was built on the existing Boca Raton Airport and on 5,860 acres (23.7 km2) of adjacent land. A majority of the land was acquired from Japanese-American farmers from the failing Yamato Colony. The land was seized through eminent domain, leaving many Japanese-Americans little recourse in the early days of World War II.
The airbase was used for radar training, anti-submarine patrols along the coast, and as a stop-over point for planes being ferried to Africa and Europe via South America. The airfield was composed of four runways, still visible on the Boca Campus today and mainly used for parking.
By early 1947, the military decided to transfer future radar training operations to Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi. The departure of the air force in 1947 would leave Boca Raton Army Airfield essentially abandoned.
Expansion and growth
Florida Atlantic University opened on September 14, 1964, with an initial student body of 867 students in five colleges. The first degree awarded was an honorary doctorate given to President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 25, 1964, at the dedication and opening of the university. At the time of its opening, there were 350 employees, of which 120 were faculty. On-campus housing for students was first added in September 1965, when Algonquin Hall opened.
Florida Atlantic’s history is one of continuing expansion as the university’s service population has grown. The university originally served only upper-division and graduate level students, because the state intended the institution “to complement the state’s community college system, accepting students who had earned their associate degrees from those institutions.”
Florida Atlantic began its expansion beyond a one-campus university in 1971, when it opened its Commercial Boulevard campus in Fort Lauderdale. Due to a rapidly expanding population in South Florida, in 1984 Florida Atlantic opened its doors to lower-division undergraduate students. The following year, the university added its third campus in downtown Fort Lauderdale on Las Olas Boulevard.
Recent history
In 1989, the Florida Legislature recognized demands for higher education in South Florida by designating Florida Atlantic as the lead state university serving Broward County.
To fill this role, the university would establish a campus in Dania Beach in 1997 and another campus in the City of Davie in western Broward County in 1990. Florida Atlantic later purchased 50 acres (20 ha) of land in Port St. Lucie in 1994 to establish a campus on the Treasure Coast.
This would be the institution’s fifth campus. The university continued its expansion in 1999 when it opened its Jupiter Campus, named for the late John D. MacArthur. This campus houses the university’s honors college.
Florida Atlantic University and the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine established a medical training program within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Biomedical Science in 2004. Plans originally called for the construction of a new teaching hospital in coordination with Boca Raton Community Hospital on the main campus. Following successive budgets deficits in 2007, the hospital delayed its participation indefinitely. However, Florida Atlantic later established its own College of Medicine in 2010.
The Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution (HBOI) also joined the university in 2007, creating Florida Atlantic’s seventh campus.[23] To bring HBOI into the university family the Florida Legislature allocated $44 million to Florida Atlantic to acquire the institution.
Florida Atlantic has changed dramatically since its opening in 1964. There are now more than 30,000 students attending classes on seven campuses spread across 120 miles (193 km). The university consists of ten colleges and employs more than 3,200 faculty and staff. As of 2020, the university’s endowment has increased to over $240 million.
Since its founding, the university has been led by seven presidents. The university’s immediate past president is Mary Jane Saunders. She was named president on March 3, 2010, then resigned on May 15, 2013. Her appointment followed the resignation of Frank Brogan. Brogan, a former Lieutenant Governor of Florida, left the university in late 2009 to become Chancellor of the State University System of Florida. Past university presidents also included Anthony J. Catanese, Helen Popovich, Glenwood Creech, and Kenneth Rast Williams. On January 17, 2014, the Board of Trustees announced the selection of John W. Kelly, formerly a vice president of Clemson University, to be the seventh president of the university with a starting date of March 1, 2014.