The University of Tampa (UT) is a private university in Tampa, Florida. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. UT offers more than 200 programs of study, including 22 master's degrees and a broad variety of majors, minors, pre-professional programs, and certificates. Plant Hall, UT's central building, once housed the Tampa Bay Hotel, a resort built by Henry B. Plant in 1891, and the Moorish minarets atop the distinctive structure have long been seen as an iconic symbol of Tampa. History Tampa Junior College In 1931, Frederic H. Spaulding, the principal of Tampa's Hillsborough High School, established the private Tampa Junior College to serve as one of the first institutions of higher education in the Tampa Bay area. The college offered a limited selection of degree programs, with most classes held in the evening on the campus of Hillsborough High School. Move and name change Two years later, the school moved to its current location on the grounds of the recently closed Tampa Bay Hotel, which Henry B. Plant had built in 1891 directly across the Hillsborough River from downtown Tampa. The sprawling resort initially featured a quarter-mile long main building with over 500 guest rooms along with several adjoining buildings and amenities ranging from an indoor pool to a casino to a race track, all spread across six acres of land. After some initial success, however, it struggled to consistently attract enough patrons to make a profit, The city of Tampa purchased the hotel after Plant's death and kept it open by contracting out daily operations to private companies, but it finally shut down in 1931 due to a significant downturn in tourism with the coming of the Great Depression. In 1933, the city agreed to allow Tampa Junior College to move its operations to the former hotel grounds rather than let the iconic buildings remain empty. With the move to a much larger facility, Tampa Junior College became the University of Tampa (UT) and expanded its course offerings, and Spaulding resigned his position at Hillsborough High School to run the university full time. In 1941, UT signed a 99-year lease on the former resort with the City of Tampa for a dollar a year, and the main building was officially dubbed Plant Hall. The lease included all of the Tampa Bay Hotel property except for the southeast wing Plant Hall, which became the location