Motto | "Veritas Lux. Orbis Terrarum" (Latin: "Truth and Light of the World") |
---|---|
Type | Public |
Established | 1830 |
Endowment | $30,000,000 |
President | Kenneth D. Kitts |
Academic staff
|
365 |
Students | 7,497 |
Location |
Florence, Alabama, U.S. 34°49′N 87°41′W / 34.81°N 87.68°WCoordinates: 34°49′N 87°41′W / 34.81°N 87.68°W |
Campus | Urban, 130 acres (0.526 km²) |
Colors | Purple and Gold |
Athletics | NCAA Division II – Gulf South |
Nickname | Lions |
Mascot | Leo III & Una |
Website | www |
The University of North Alabama (UNA) is a coeducational university located in Florence, Alabama. It is the state's oldest four-year public university. Occupying a 130-acre (0.5 km2) campus in a residential section of Florence, UNA is located within a four-city area that also includes Tuscumbia, Sheffield and Muscle Shoals. The four cities comprise a metropolitan area with a combined population of 140,000 people.
The University of North Alabama was founded as LaGrange College in 1830. It was reestablished in 1872 as the first state-supported teachers college south of the Ohio River. A year later, it became one of the nation's first coeducational colleges.
The University of North Alabama has developed into a comprehensive regional university exerting a major influence over the cultural, social and economic life of Northwest Alabama and providing educational opportunities for students pursuing undergraduate and graduate majors offered through the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Business, Education and Nursing and Health.
The 2008 edition of U.S. News and World Report's America's Best Colleges ranked the university as a top-tier public university.
The University of North Alabama opened its doors as LaGrange College on January 11, 1830, in a mountain hamlet a few miles south of Leighton in northeast Colbert County, Alabama. LaGrange means "The Barn" in French. Twenty-one local college trustees were listed in Acts of Alabama, Eleventh Annual Session.
The town of LaGrange and its college were sacked and burned by Union troops in 1863. But by then, however, the college had moved north across the Tennessee River to Florence. The section of Franklin County containing LaGrange Mountain is now Colbert County. LaGrange College, which became Florence Wesleyan University in 1855, is now the University of North Alabama.