College of Arts and Sciences Marks 100 Years

One of the first events to mark the 100th anniversary is a Centennial Brunch on Oct. 19, featuring a panel including Dorothy M. Ehrlich ’72, an American Civil Liberties Union leader and advocate for justice, Joseph Marshall ’68, founder of Alive & Free and USF trustee emeritus, and Alfred Chuang ’83, tech entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and USF trustee emeritus.

In 1925, the departments of arts, sciences, and philosophy merged to become the College of Arts and Sciences. Courses included English, Latin, Greek, mathematics, chemistry, public speaking, religion, philosophy, foreign language, ancient classics, modern language and literature, history, economics, science, law, and commerce and finance. Some highlights:

• Enrollment plummeted at the beginning of World War II, but by the fall of 1948, 3,044 students were enrolled at USF, of whom 1,062 were in the College of Arts and Sciences.
• Beginning in the spring of 1969, a weekly open-air microphone was set up near Welch Field, with the college’s support, for students who wanted to speak about the Vietnam War, race relations, or any other issue.
• KUSF 90.3 FM, part of the college, broadcast its first show on April 25, 1977, from the station on the ground floor of what is now Burl Toler Hall.
• Stanley Nel served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1990 to 2003, a period of growth in student enrollment, faculty recruitment, and program development in the college. He introduced fellow South African and Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu at an interfaith conference for youth held in June 1995 at USF.
• On April 3, 2004, more than 350 students, community volunteers, and faculty members from the computer science department organized the first “flash mob supercomputer” event in history, linking 669 individual computers to a network capable of performing 180 billion mathematical operations per second.
• Located in the center of the USF campus, the John Lo Schiavo, S.J. Center for Science and Innovation in the summer of 2013.
• In 2020, Fred Angulo, who earned a BS in biology in 1978, and an MS in biology in 1979, both from the College of Arts and Sciences, helped develop a vaccine against the COVID-19 virus that was killing more than 3,000 people a day in the U.S.

Jeffrey Paris, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the accomplishments over the years provide a through line to today’s students.

“A centennial is 100 years of overlapping faculty and staff, who are thinking about how to create the best possible environment for learning,” Paris said. “We can be here for 2125 so long as we engage in the same commitments and practices that we’ve always had.”