1987: FAMU-USF architecture school opens in Tampa

The University of South Florida loves to use FAMU's professional schools as a model for building its own.

In 2007, USF hired Kevin Snead, a FAMU professor, to lead its newly created Division of Clinical Pharmacy. The university also announced that Snead will serve as dean of its proposed pharmacy school. USF plans to build a College of Pharmacy that will match FAMU’s in size, operational funding, and research dollars.

This isn’t the first time USF has needed FAMU’s help to launch a new academic program. Back in 1987, FAMU actually launched USF’s architecture school.

The Board of Regents voted to establish an architecture school at FAMU in 1974 as part of Florida’s desegregation settlement with the U.S. Department of Education. It began as a cooperative program between FAMU and the University of Florida’s College of Architecture until it earned accreditation.

The BOR originally tried to put FAMU’s architecture school at USF. That way, it would be a HBCU school in name but a USF school in effect. However, President Benjamin L. Perry, Jr. fought to have the school built on FAMU’s campus in Tallahassee.

In 1986, the BOR went ahead with its plans to give USF an architecture school under FAMU’s name by ordering FAMU to start a second “joint” program with USF in Tampa. The "joint" program enrolled its first students in fall 1987.

The “joint” collaboration quickly ran into trouble with the National Architectural Accreditation Board. The board hinted that it might not accredit the Tampa program because the "joint" management structure was "hazy" and it wasn't clear which university did what. President Frederick S. Humphries and Provost Richard Hogg told the St. Petersburg Times that FAMU was fully capable of running the Tampa architecture school all by itself.

A group of Tampa architects threatened to yank $110,000 they’d raised for endowed professorships at the school unless the BOR agreed to kick FAMU out of the shared program.

USF eventually got its wish for an independent architecture school, thanks to FAMU’s help in getting the program started.

Pictured: FAMU School of Architecture building in Tallahassee, 1986.