By Matthew Cimitile and Cliff McBride, University Communications and Marketing
As students return to campus this fall, USF St. Petersburg brought an alum from the first class back to campus to see all that has changed since he was a student.
Gary Brown was one of 260 freshman who attended what was then known as the Bay campus in 1965. He and his fellow students took classes in a former military installation, affectionally called the barracks, which had housed and trained merchant marines who provided critical logistical and transportation support for military operations, especially during World War II.
By the early 1960s, the installation was decommissioned. It came into the possession of the University of South Florida, founded in 1956, which was looking to expand its footprint and academic offerings across Tampa Bay.
Brown, who majored in English literature and would go on to become a journalist for the Miami Herald, Bradenton Herald and Palm Beach Post, visited the university this summer. It had been some years since he last returned to the Bay campus.
Though a whole lot of change separated that first class with today, some similarities still exist.
“The plus of being here was we could just walk down the street and go to stores, movies, restaurants and more that were there,” Brown said of downtown St. Petersburg.
During his visit, he took a golf cart tour of campus, where he saw the newest residence hall, Osprey, and the award-winning design of Lynn Pippenger Hall, home of the Kate Tiedemann School of Business and Finance. At the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library, he viewed an exhibit on 60 years of student life at USF St. Petersburg, with archival photos from that first class.
Brown also returned to his old classrooms.
The barracks are now home to the College of Marine Science labs, the site of research into seafloor mapping, fisheries, red tide, storm surge modeling and more. During his visit, he was shown firsthand the kind of cutting-edge research taking place at the college.
“It’s amazing,” Brown said of his overall experience. “It makes you proud that it has grown up and is as big and important as it is.”