“Although bulldozers rumbled elsewhere on the 760-acre FGCU campus Nov. 28, the earth they moved was far less significant than the spadesful of dirt being turned on the campus entrance road by Southwest Florida’s high school leaders.”
So begins an official account of a momentous day in 1995: the ceremonial groundbreaking for the state’s newest campus, Florida Gulf Coast University, after years of community campaigning for a public university in Southwest Florida. The symbolic act was chronicled in University News, a joint publication of FGCU and the University of South Florida-Fort Myers, which eventually was folded into the fledging 10th state university.
To mark the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking, FGCU sent commemorative containers of campus soil to community leaders whose hard work helped establish the university, develop its academic programs and build a strong foundation to support it. As FGCU approaches the 20th anniversary of opening its doors in August 1997, a committee of representative faculty, staff and students is planning events to celebrate, beginning in August 2016 and continuing throughout 2017.
Reflecting on the groundbreaking anniversary, President Wilson G. Bradshaw says, “What was once just a vision – and vacant lands – has grown into a diverse and evolving university serving Southwest Florida, the state and beyond. Today, Florida Gulf Coast University is a well-regarded institution of higher learning that has positively touched the lives of many.”
With more than 22,000 graduates and nearly 15,000 students enrolled in 2015, FGCU has touched the lives of many seeking higher education. Although the university’s impact reaches far beyond campus, encompassing economic growth and community enrichment, it was clear from groundbreaking day that students would be the No. 1 priority. Twenty student government leaders from Southwest Florida high schools were selected to turn over the first shovels of earth at the ceremony.
“Whenever a public institution breaks ground on a building there always are a lot of political figures who want to be the first person to turn the dirt,” recalls Founding President Roy McTarnaghan, who served from 1993 to 1999. “We sent the message that this educational institution was for the benefit of students.”
The long-planned celebration sparked excitement in a community that fought for years to land a state university and to get the site approved. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers OK’d permits for developing the land roughly 48 hours before the groundbreaking was scheduled to happen, McTarnaghan recalls. “For those who lived through it, it was a high-stakes poker game.”
A crowd approaching 600 watched the golden shovels shimmer in the bright sun as they pierced the ground near where the information booth stands today on FGCU Boulevard. There was no road then, of course. Spectators were bused in from staging areas elsewhere. Crowding under the shade of a canopy, they listened to remarks by Gov. Lawton Chiles, state legislators, representatives of the Florida Board of Regents and Ben Hill Griffin III, Chairman and President of Alico Inc., which donated the land for the university. Chiles called FGCU “the newest jewel in the crown of Florida’s State University System.”
“It was hot — everybody was trying to get out of the sun,” recalls Terry Wimberley, the only founding dean who remains on faculty today. “My memory of the day was of starting a brand-new experiment in education. FGCU would be a university that was not only new but was innovative. Academic administrators live for an opportunity to do something new. Starting a university is one of those things that just doesn’t happen very often.”
Vice President and Chief of Staff Susan Evans, who joined FGCU in 1993 before it even had a name, recalls visiting the undeveloped land with contractors, riding in four-wheel-drive vehicles and wielding machetes to cut through vegetation.
“The land was very natural. I remember the wind rustling through the palmetto bushes,” she says. “You’d look around and think, ‘Wow, this is where it’s all going to happen.’ We were going on faith — this whole region was going on faith. So many people worked really hard to make this happen.”
The groundbreaking provided the community an opportunity to celebrate that cooperation and dedication, Evans says, and helped to start filling in the picture of what FGCU would become. In less than two years, the first academic and student-support buildings would be finished in time for classes to begin in August 1997.
Reflecting on the groundbreaking anniversary, Evans says she can’t help thinking: What if Florida’s 10th state university had landed somewhere else in the state? What would Southwest Florida look like without FGCU?
“It’s pretty striking to me. There are so many things we have in place now that wouldn’t be here. There’s been economic development and workforce development,” she says. “Every time you see someone cross the stage at commencement, you see someone whose life was changed for the better. So many people have a piece of this in their hearts, their minds, their souls. I can’t imagine it would have been as successful without community support.”