Florida Institute of Technology

Florida Tech was founded in 1958 as Brevard Engineering College by Dr. Jerome P. Keuper, a physicist who worked at Cape Canaveral at the start of the Space Race. According to university lore, it all began with a 37-cent donation pushed across a bar counter. It started as a night school for the early "missilemen" of the US space program and took the name Florida Institute of Technology in 1966.

Today it is a private, not-for-profit, doctoral-granting, research-intensive university. Its motto, *Ad Astra Per Scientiam*, means "To the Stars Through Science."

Campus

The campus covers 130 subtropical acres in Melbourne on Florida's Space Coast: about 2 miles from downtown and the airport, 6 miles from the beach and 45 miles from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. In the middle of campus is the 15-acre public Joy and Gordon Patterson Botanical Garden, nicknamed "The Jungle," with more than 200 palms and bamboos.

Notable facts

• More than 70,000 graduates from over 120 countries
• Five alumni flew as space shuttle astronauts, including Sunita Williams
• 15 NCAA Division II teams play as the Florida Tech Panthers
• Home of the Indian River Lagoon Research Institute (est. 2013) and the NPR station WFIT 89.5 FM