The University of Tampa

The University of Tampa (UT) is a private co-educational university in Downtown Tampa, Florida, United States. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. UT offers more than 200 programs of study, including 14 master's degrees and a broad variety of majors, minors, pre-professional programs, and certificates.

Plant Hall, UT's central building, once housed the Tampa Bay Hotel, a resort built by Henry B. Plant in 1891, and the Moorish minarets atop the distinctive structure have long been seen as an "iconic symbol" of Tampa.

Frederic H. Spaulding, the former principal of Tampa's Hillsborough High School, founded the private Tampa Junior College in 1931 to serve as one of the first institutions of higher education in the Tampa Bay area. In 1933, the school moved to its current location, the then-defunct Tampa Bay Hotel.The former resort had been opened in 1891 by Florida railroad magnate Henry B. Plant but closed due to a significant downturn in tourism with the coming of the Great Depression. The main hotel building covers about 6 acres of land and once held over 500 guest rooms. With the move to a much larger facility, Spaulding decided to expand the scope of the school. Tampa Junior College became the University of Tampa, and the hotel's main building was renamed Plant Hall.

UT offers 200 areas of study for undergraduate and graduate students. Classes maintain a 17:1 student-faculty ratio. UT employs no teaching assistants.

Some of UT's most popular majors include international business, biology, marketing, marine science, criminology, finance, communication, psychology, sport management, entrepreneurship and nursing. UT recently launched a new major in cybersecurity.

The university is organized into four colleges: College of Arts and Letters; College of Social Sciences, Mathematics and Education; College of Natural and Health Sciences; and Sykes College of Business, which is accredited at the undergraduate and graduate levels by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

The University of Tampa has an Honors Program, which "allows students to go beyond the classroom and regular course work to study one-on-one with faculty through enrichment tutorials, Honors Abroad, internships, research and classroom-to-community outreach.

UT's campus features 60 buildings on 110 landscaped acres. Plant Hall – a National Historic Landmark built in 1891 by Henry B. Plant – is a leading example of Moorish Revival architecture in the southeastern United States and a focal point of downtown Tampa. In addition to serving as a main location of classrooms and faculty and administrative offices, the building is also home to the Henry B. Plant Museum. The campus also includes the former McKay Auditorium, built in the 1920s and remodeled in the late 1990s to become the Sykes College of Business. In the last 16 years,[when?] UT has invested approximately $575 million in new residence halls, classrooms, labs and other facilities.