Colleges

Situated in the midst of natural wonders, Embry-Riddle’s Prescott, Arizona campus covers 539 acres of high-altitude western terrain, with campus life centered in a one-mile area. The flight training center is at nearby Prescott Love Field Municipal Airport.

The campus has excellent programs in flight, engineering, space physics, global security and intelligence studies, computer science, aviation business administration, meteorology, and a graduate program in safety science. Unique facilities include the new Aerospace Experimentation & Fabrication Building; the 48,000-square-foot Academic Complex; the King Engineering and Technology Center; the Robertson Aviation Safety Center (featuring an accident investigation lab); and the Robertson Flight Simulation Center, which contains Frasca flight-training-devices. The newest addition to the campus is the Christine and Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Library and Learning Center.

Nearby destinations include Phoenix, about 80 miles southeast; Las Vegas, 260 miles northwest; and Los Angeles, 375 miles west. The Grand Canyon, considered one of the most impressive natural splendors in the world is only 95 miles away. The Prescott area is centrally located and whether you like adventure, wildlife, nature, sports, culture, any kind of music, metaphysics, or a shopping extravaganza, you will find all that and more within just a few hours drive.

Prescott’s seasonal climate and year-round flying weather yield daytime average temperatures of 80 degrees in summer and 45 degrees in winter. More about the campus. Take a virtual tour.

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Arizona State University is one of the premier metropolitan research universities in the nation, an institution of international scope, committed to excellence in teaching, research, and public service. Established in Tempe in 1885 by an act of the Thirteenth Territorial Legislature, ASU was initially formed as a teachers college. The core of the Tempe campus was a twenty-acre cow pasture donated by leading citizens who sought an institution to train public school teachers, and provide instruction to their sons and daughters in agriculture and the mechanical arts.

The name of the institution changed three times during its first fifteen years, becoming the Normal School of Arizona in 1901. Subsequent changes were associated with expansions of the curriculum and degrees offered. In rapid succession Tempe State Teachers College became Arizona State Teachers College, and, in 1945, Arizona State College. By 1958 the college performed all the functions of a university, and received authorization by an act of the governor to become Arizona State University.

Basic and applied research preceded attainment of university status in 1958, but the development of new academic programs and library holdings, and the conferral of doctoral degrees in the 1960s led the Carnegie Foundation to grant ASU Research I status in 1994. Today research at ASU spans the spectrum of disciplines in the humanities, the natural sciences, the social sciences, the visual and performing arts, and the fields of technology, complemented by distinguished professional programs in such fields as architecture and environmental design, business, and law. ASU today is poised to become a global center for innovative interdisciplinary research.

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The University of West Alabama was chartered in 1835 as a church-related female academy and admitted its first students in 1839. After difficult times during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, the school reopened in the late 1860s or early 1870s. Although it appears that a few male students were admitted following the reopening, a resolution by the Board of Trustees in 1876 excluded boys, and this policy was followed until the beginning of the 20th century.

From 1881 to 1910 the school at Livingston was under the direction of the noted educator and reformer Julia Tutwiler, who succeeded in getting a small appropriation from the State Legislature in 1883 to establish normal school training for girls at Livingston Female Academy. According to statements in the University archives, this is believed to be the first State appropriation in Alabama made exclusively for the education of women. The first normal school diplomas were granted in 1886.

Livingston Female Academy and State Normal College continued as a private institution with some State support until 1907, when the State assumed full control. It remained under its own board of trustees, however, until the Legislature created a State Board of Trustees for all the normal schools in 1911. In 1919 this board was abolished and all state normal schools were placed under the supervision of the State Board of Education. During these early years the school offered both secondary education and normal school programs for the training of teachers.

In 1929 the school at Livingston became State Teachers College, Livingston, Alabama, with authority to confer the degree of Bachelor of Science. The Bachelor of Arts degree was authorized in 1947. Although the institution had begun accepting male students soon after 1900, the student body remained predominantly female through the 1950s.

In 1957 the name was again changed by an act of Legislature — this time to Livingston State College — and the following year the mission of the institution was broadened when the Graduate Division was established and the College was authorized to confer master’s degrees in the field of professional education. In 1967 an act of the Legislature created Livingston University, with its own Board of Trustees.

In 1995 the institution recognized its broader mission as a regional university serving the educational needs of all the citizens of the area by changing its name to The University of West Alabama.

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As a regional, state-assisted institution of higher education, the University of North Alabama pursues its mission of engaging in teaching, research, and service in order to provide educational opportunities for students, and environment for discovery and creative accomplishment, and a variety of outreach activities meeting the professional, civic, social, cultural, and economic development needs of our region in the context of a global community.

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The University of South Alabama, the only major public institution of higher learning on the upper Gulf Coast, was created by act of the Alabama State Legislature in May, 1963. With Alabama’s two older universities more than 200 miles distant, the University is strategically located in the greater Mobile area, which has a population of more than a million within a 100-mile radius.

Mailing Address:
University of South Alabama
307 University Boulevard
Mobile, Alabama 36688-0002
(251) 460-6101

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