From Seminary to Seminoles

On May 15, 1947, Florida’s governor signed the act that officially made the Florida State College for Women coeducational and changed the name to Florida State University. The change marked a turning point in a story that stretched back more than a century. Its origins reach to the 1820s, when Congress called for learning seminaries in East and West Florida, and to the 1827 founding of The Leon Academy in Tallahassee.

By the 1850s, separate schools for men and women had been brought together as West Florida Seminary, located on Gallows Hill, now home to FSU’s Westcott Building.

During the Civil War, the seminary became The Florida Military and Collegiate Institute, and its cadets fought alongside Confederate forces at the Battle of Natural Bridge. In the decades that followed, the school went through a series of reorganizations, most dramatically under the 1905 Buckman Act, which separated Florida’s colleges by gender and race.

After World War II, the growing demand for higher education pushed the state to return the women’s college to full university status. By 1947, more than 4,000 students were enrolled, and the newly coeducational campus adopted the Seminole as its mascot.