The university dates back to 1957, when the University of South Carolina set up a freshman college in a basement room of the Florence County Library. A few years later, in 1961, USC-Florence was set up on land donated by the Wallace family six miles east of Florence, South Carolina. A group of Florence-area citizens continued to push for the establishment of a four-year university in Florence to allow better access to higher education for the people of that area. After several years of lobbying, Governor Robert E. McNair signed into law an act creating Francis Marion College, effective July 1, 1970. The newly created Francis Marion College initially enrolled 907 students from 23 of South Carolina's 46 counties.[citation needed]
In 1992, Francis Marion College achieved university status and subsequently changed its name to Francis Marion University. Today, Francis Marion has a student body of approximately 4,000. The student body's average in-state enrollment is 95 percent. Just more than half of FMU's students come from the Pee Dee Region.[citation needed]
Francis Marion University offers five undergraduate degrees: Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Business Administration, Bachelor of General Studies, Bachelor of Science, and Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Graduate degrees include the Master of Arts in Teaching, Master of Business Administration, Master of Education, Master of Science in Applied Psychology (clinical and school psychology tracks), and Specialist in School Psychology. All master's degree programs are accredited by their respective professional organizations. In 2017, FMU gained approval for its first doctoral program, a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP). The first class of DNP students enrolled in January 2018.[3]
Front View of Stokes Administration Building
Campus
Located on a 400-acre (162ha) tract of land originally included in a grant by the King of England and later made a cotton plantation by the Wallace Family, Francis Marion University is situated 6 miles (9.7km) east of Florence. The campus includes 100 acres (40ha) of mixed pine-hardwood and bottomland forests. The city of Florence has a metropolitan-area population of 200,000.[citation needed]
Academic facilities
Lee Nursing Building, home of the FMU Nursing Program
The university's physical plant includes eleven major buildings. In addition, the university constructed new student apartments on campus in 2006, known as The Villas. Francis Marion is also home to a two-story observatory, equipped with a 14-inch (360mm) reflecting telescope, and a planetarium.[citation needed]
The Francis Marion athletics program is a member of the NCAA Division IIConference Carolinas (CC), which consists of 13 member schools in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. FMU joined CC after 31 years in the Peach Belt Conference.[4] The school sponsors 15 intercollegiate varsity sports; men's sports are baseball, basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, tennis, and indoor track and field), and women's sports are basketball, cross-country, soccer, softball, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field (counted by the NCAA as separate sports), and volleyball. The Patriot men's golf team competes in NCAA Division I as a single-sport member of the Southland Conference.[5][6]
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