History of the University of Tampa

The University of Tampa was founded as Tampa Junior College, a two-year school that began classes on October 5, 1931 without a campus of its own.

According to the Tampa athletics department's history of the university, classes began on October 5, 1931, under the name Tampa Junior College, with 62 local students, tuition of $120 per semester and no building to call home. The same account credits Frederic Spaulding with almost single-handedly forging his dream of a local university for Tampa.

Spaulding came to the project from public education. The University of Tampa history page identifies him as the former principal of Hillsborough High School and the motivating force behind establishing the first local university for Tampa's high school graduates. Until August 1933 the junior college kept its headquarters at the local high school, which tied the new institution closely to the city's public schools before it had any property of its own in Tampa.

The school moved into the former Tampa Bay Hotel in 1933, after the hotel closed in 1932, sharing the building with a new city museum in its south wing.

The building had a civic history before the university arrived. The City of Tampa biography of Mayor Herman Glogowski records that on April 23, 1888, New York architect J.A. Wood approached the mayor and City Council with a proposal to build a hotel for Henry B. Plant, and that Glogowski laid its cornerstone on July 26, 1888. The city's 2026 City Council book describes the Moorish style Tampa Bay Hotel as completed in 1891.

The Henry B. Plant Museum, which occupies part of the building, explains that the Tampa Bay Hotel faced an uncertain future after Henry Plant died in 1899. The National Register nomination for the Tampa Bay Hotel records that in 1905 his heirs sold the building and its furnishings to the city of Tampa for $125,000, that the hotel stayed the center of Tampa social life until 1932, and that in 1933 the city offered to lease the hotel to the University of Tampa for an annual rent of one dollar. The museum adds that in that same year the city set aside the south wing of the first floor for the Tampa Municipal Museum, and the remainder of the building, along with the grounds, became home to the University of Tampa. The City of Tampa biography of Mayor Robert E. Lee Chancey, who served from November 3, 1931 to November 3, 1943, lists repairs to the Tampa Bay Hotel and the establishment of the University of Tampa in 1933 among the civic improvements of his administration during the economic hardship of the early 1930s.

The date the school marks is August 2, 1933. On that day, the university's history page says, Tampa Junior College became the University of Tampa when its headquarters moved from the local high school into what is now Plant Hall. The university describes the building as built between 1888 and 1891 at a cost of $2.5 million, a five-story, 511-room resort topped by Moorish minarets, domes and cupolas, whose rooms are now classrooms, laboratories and administrative offices. The National Park Service lists the Tampa Bay Hotel at 401 W. Kennedy Blvd. in Tampa, with J.A. Wood as architect and Henry Bradley Plant as its significant name.

The university presents the building as part of its own story. Its history page notes that local historians credit Henry B. Plant, the railroad and shipping magnate who built the hotel, with transforming Tampa from a sleepy fishing village, and that rooms which once hosted Teddy Roosevelt, the Queen of England, Stephen Crane and Babe Ruth now serve University of Tampa students.

The University of Tampa got through the hard early 1930s by paying faculty from a small surplus and taking non-cash tuition, then grew with returning GIs after World War II.

Money was scarce from the start. During the first year, the athletics history reports, the university's $700 surplus was divided among the faculty as pay, and the school accepted notes, insurance policies and deeds on homes in place of tuition. Those terms show how closely the young Tampa institution depended on local families in the early 1930s, the same years of economic hardship that the City of Tampa's Chancey biography describes as a time when many Tampa residents lost their jobs and savings.

World War II changed the campus population. The same history records that military pilots were trained in Tampa during the war years, and that returning GIs then enrolled at the university. Housing was improvised inside the old hotel: married couples and some faculty members lived on the upper floors of Plant Hall. Campus life at the University of Tampa grew as well, with traditions such as pajama parties, sock hops and parades, and the Tampa football program became an important part of the university's identity, according to the same account.

The University of Tampa achieved accreditation in December 1951, after a struggle of approximately 20 years, and later answered the creation of USF by expanding.

The athletics department's history describes that lengthy struggle for accreditation. Today the University of Tampa accreditation page states that the school is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award baccalaureate, master's and doctoral degrees. It also lists program accreditations, including AACSB International for the Sykes College of Business and the American Alliance of Museums for the Henry B. Plant Museum.

The next challenge came from across Hillsborough County. The creation of the University of South Florida presented a challenge that many believed would threaten the future of the University of Tampa, according to the athletics history. President David Delo arrived and helped take the university in a new direction, expanding the campus, constructing new buildings and increasing enrollment, so the private school kept growing after its new Tampa neighbor opened.

Today the University of Tampa reports more than 11,400 students, four colleges and more than 200 academic programs on a 110-acre campus around Plant Hall.

The University of Tampa profile for 2025-2026 lists enrollment of more than 11,400 students from all 50 states and around the world; the university's history page gives a different figure, more than 11,047 undergraduate and graduate students, and the page does not say which year that count covers. The university is organized into four colleges: the College of Arts and Letters, the Sykes College of Business, the College of Natural and Health Sciences, and the College of Social Sciences, Mathematics and Education. Together they offer more than 200 academic programs at the bachelor's, master's and doctoral levels, with a 1:17 faculty-to-student ratio, and 90 percent of UTampa faculty hold a Ph.D. or terminal degree.

The physical campus has grown around the hotel. The university's history page describes Plant Hall as the foundation of a 110-acre, 71-building campus that blends the historic with the modern, and the profile reports $1.06 billion in new construction since 1998 and a $1.4 billion economic impact. Since 2024, the profile adds, UTampa has been recognized by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as a top producer of Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program awardees. The main campus address is 401 W. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, and the university phone is (813) 253-3333.

The history of the University of Tampa is kept in two places on its Tampa campus, the Macdonald-Kelce Library archives and the Plant Museum in Plant Hall.

The Macdonald-Kelce Library says its Archives and Special Collections hold rare books, manuscripts, memorabilia and University of Tampa papers going back to the founding in 1931. Its archival and digital collections include the Minaret student newspaper, the Moroccan yearbook, the University of Tampa Journal alumni magazine and the Insighter staff and faculty newsletter.

The library draws a clear line between the two collections. The Plant Museum collection focuses on the Plant hotel before it became the University of Tampa, while the library's Special Collections focus on archival material since the university's inception. The museum itself took its present name in 1974, when the Tampa Municipal Museum became the Henry B. Plant Museum, and it still occupies the south wing of Plant Hall alongside university offices and classrooms.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the university's history, profile, accreditation and library archive pages, the UT athletics history, the Plant Museum's account of the building, two City of Tampa mayoral biographies, the city's 2026 Council book and the National Park Service record for the Tampa Bay Hotel.