Florida Gulf Coast College, or FGCU, is among the latest universities to make its debut in academe, opening its doorways in August 1996. A lot of the impetus behind its incorporation was the overwhelming need of Southwest Florida residents to host a world-class college of their midst. Not surprisingly, the attract of a gentle local weather, a number of sunshine and close by seashores has helped FGCU greater than double its pupil enrollments yearly since inception to greater than 10,000 college students for 2008-09. In an period of faculty educations that price upwards of $40,000 a 12 months in tuition, FGCU is a relative discount with out-of-state annual tuition averaging $17K.
Positioned on 760 acres within the coronary heart of Southwest Florida, FGCU has rigorously mapped out its location to maximise the encircling wildlife and nature preserves and provide a “residing laboratory” to college students, school, and alumnae. True to this mission, FGCU is heralded as one of the crucial ecologically sound campuses in North America. The College lately bought waterfront property in Bonita Springs with the intention of creating a marine analysis laboratory to additional capitalize on its coastal location and the abundance of marine and fowl life.
A co-ed establishment, FGCU is four-year with accreditation to award affiliate, bachelor’s, grasp’s, and doctoral levels. As of the autumn of 2008, the College presents 51 undergraduate and 31 graduate diploma applications in Arts and Sciences, Enterprise, Schooling, and Well being Professions. With the plethora of resorts and eating places within the area, the Resort and Hospitality Administration program is among the extra fashionable majors. College students can take part in an energetic internship program at among the world’s premier resorts situated simply minutes from campus. Biology and prison justice are additionally rising applications. The Division of Justice Research is in its first 12 months of providing a Grasp of Science in Felony Forensic Research, paving the way in which for future CSI investigators.
College students reward the small class sizes and particular person consideration with an 18:1 trainer/pupil ratio on the undergraduate stage. FGCU can be one of the crucial technologically superior campuses on this planet with a campus-wide high-speed Web community. School rooms all function absolutely geared up multimedia educational techniques that embody Web entry, cameras and audio and video presentation capabilities. Capitalizing on its experience, FGCU has hosted an Informational Expertise (IT) discussion board for the previous eight years, connecting space specialists with MBA college students in Germany.
Whereas many college students barely tolerate dorm or off-campus residing throughout their faculty years, the two,400 college students who stay in FGCU campus housing take pleasure in a relatively luxurious existence. Residences are apartment-style, utterly furnished and wired for high-speed Web entry. Full-size kitchens, spacious residing rooms overlooking the lake, and automatic laundry amenities are further touches that give new that means to the faculty expertise. Different facilities embody a swimming pool, barbecue areas, seaside volleyball, and easy accessibility to lake water sports activities.
Athletics are an more and more giant a part of the FGCU program and embody baseball, males’s basketball, males’s golf, males’s soccer, males’s tennis, softball, volleyball, ladies’s basketball, ladies’s cross nation, ladies’s golf, ladies’s soccer, ladies’s swimming and diving, and girls’s tennis, amongst others. The ladies’s groups have carried out particularly nicely, regardless of the novelty of the applications with the ladies’s basketball staff ending their 35-1 season with a loss within the Division II Nationwide Championship. As of the 2007-2008 tutorial 12 months, FGCU moved to Division I sports activities.
Regardless of its sunny local weather and laid-back ambiance, FGCU presents a stable classroom expertise. Whereas college students can take programs in paradise, graduates are nicely ready to excel in at present’s tech-savvy and more and more inexperienced setting.