UF Jacksonville campus amps up city's growing graduate education

The University of Florida officially opened the first building on its downtown Jacksonville campus and stamped its logo for powerhouse research on the city's expanding menu of options for pursuing graduate degrees.

UF Board Chair Mori Hosseini said the campus and the city will come together in a way that benefits both Jacksonville and the university.

"We are here today to celebrate UF Jacksonville, a bold investment in the future of this city, this region and our great state," he said Sept. 9 at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. "We are here to show that when a top-tier university and a top-tier city unite around a shared vision, there is no limit to what they can accomplish."

The new campus is kicking off classes this fall semester in a renovated two-story

building at 801 W. Bay St. that will be followed next year by groundbreaking for construction of the flagship building housing space for classes and research.

"There really are some days you look around and see the city transforming right in front of you, and this is one of those days," Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said.

The opening of UF Jacksonville comes on the heels of the University of North Florida announcing it hit a record for its graduate school enrollment with 2,821 students, up 6% from last year and 29% higher than fall 2023.

Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine opened its LECOM at Jacksonville University campus in Arlington this year with about 75 students in its first-year class. Jacksonville University's College of Law in downtown welcomed 110 students this fall for its class of 2029, the biggest so far for the law school.

UF Jacksonville is kicking off its classes with an inaugural enrollment of 158 students. Programs at the campus will cover degrees and concentrations in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data analytics, engineering management, business, law, architecture and biomedical and health sciences, according to UF.

The biggest impact of UF Jacksonville is still to come when it rolls out research activity. UF recently announced its best year ever for research at nearly $1.35 billion and will look for ways to bring a piece of that to Jacksonville.

UF President Stuart Bell said the campus will be a testing ground for researchers, faculty and students in fields such as semiconductors, microelectronics, space, strategic technologies, biotechnology and biosecurity so they can "move ideas into application and ultimately into the hands of the people and the organizations that need them the most and that are right here."

"That is what we want the UF campus to be — a campus deeply connected to the community around it that listens to the needs of Jacksonville and brings the full strength of one of the nation's best public universities to answer those needs," Bell said.

UF is using $300 million from the state, city and private donors for the Jacksonville campus. The state put up $150 million, the city is footing $100 million and donors have contributed $50 million. The lead donors are the Jacksonville Jaguars, CSX, Florida Blue Foundation and VyStar.

The effort to bring UF to Jacksonville started when Lenny Curry was mayor. After Deegan won election in 2023, she carried the project forward in a way that Hosseini said initially surprised him because he had expected UF would turn to another city for the campus.

"She said, 'What do you want?' I said, 'Well, we need to raise a lot of money. We need land. We need buildings. We need a lot of things. She said, 'What else? Let's work on it. Let's get there.' And we did. This mayor is amazing, amazing, amazing."

Deegan worked with City Council to allocate $50 million on top of the $50 million in city funding approved during Curry's tenure. The city also donated about 25 acres of land valued at around $31 million for the full buildout of the campus that will likely take decades. The donated property includes the 801 W. Bay St. building that UF renovated for the launch of the campus.

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Hosseini credited City Council, state lawmakers and Jacksonville businesses for rallying behind the vision for UF Jacksonville. He said former House speaker Paul Renner was instrumental in getting $150 million in support from the state and Gov. Ron DeSantis supported it as well when Hosseini talked to him about it.

"I sat in his office and I said, 'This is what we're looking for,'" Hosseini said. "He said, 'This is what Jacksonville needs, Mori. Every time I go there, nothing has changed. This is what Jacksonvlle needs to do.'"

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: UF Jacksonville campus amps up city's growing graduate education