40 Fun Facts About Florida Atlantic University

FAU's Boca Raton campus sits on a World War II Army airfield that trained troops in which secret technology?

Radar was so new and secret that Boca Raton held the Army Air Forces' only wartime school for it, and trainees had to pass a background investigation to attend.

Which sitting US president came to Boca Raton to dedicate FAU and received the first degree it ever awarded?

Lyndon B. Johnson accepted an honorary doctorate at the dedication, telling a crowd of 15,000 that education should be open to everyone who could qualify.

Which prop comedian with a Las Vegas residency enrolled at FAU and first tried stand-up during his first year there?

Carrot Top, born Scott Thompson, grew up in Cocoa, Florida, where a swimming coach gave him the nickname that later became his stage name.

Which local sea animals does FAU's Elasmo Lab study using drones, aerial surveys and underwater video?

Sharks and rays are the lab's speciality, above all the blacktips that crowd local waters each season, which it follows to learn what drives their migration.

The World War II runways still visible on FAU's Boca Raton campus are mainly used for what today?

Parking now covers the four runways of the old Army airfield, and a neighbouring college's lot is the concrete ramp where B-17 bombers once stood.

A 2013 deal to name FAU's football stadium collapsed after protests over what kind of company?

A private prison firm, GEO Group, had offered about $6 million for the name, and an FAU play-by-play announcer promptly dubbed the venue Owlcatraz.

Part of the wartime airfield that became FAU's campus was taken from the last farmers of a colony from which country?

Japan was home to the Yamato Colony's pineapple growers; its last families lost their land to the airfield in 1942, and Yamato Road in Boca Raton keeps the name.

FAU's 2023 Final Four run ended by one point on a buzzer-beater scored by which team?

San Diego State won 72–71 when Lamont Butler's jump shot dropped at the horn, ending a 35-win FAU season, the most by any Division I men's team that year.

Former FAU point guard Brittany Bowe went on to win Olympic medals for the United States in which sport?

Speed skating brought Brittany Bowe two Olympic bronzes, and in 2022 she gave her 500-metre place to teammate Erin Jackson, who went on to win the gold.

What is the nickname of FAU's basketball arena, officially named for donor Eleanor R. Baldwin?

The Burrow suits a school whose owl mascot nests in the ground; the arena opened in 1984 for women's basketball, four years before FAU had a men's team.

FAU's annual football rivalry game against FIU is named for which Hall of Fame NFL head coach?

Don Shula had worked with both schools' first head coaches, one as his assistant and one as his player, so the game and its travelling trophy took his name.

FAU's football field is named for founding coach Howard Schnellenberger, who won a 1983 national title at which school?

Miami had never won a national title before he arrived; at FAU he began with no team at all, raising $13 million in pledges before a game was played.

Which former USC and Tennessee head coach won two Conference USA titles at FAU before leaving for Ole Miss?

Lane Kiffin arrived from running Alabama's offense, and his first FAU team won its last ten games, finishing with a 50–3 postseason rout of Akron.

Which coach took FAU men's basketball to the 2023 Final Four and left a year later for Michigan?

Dusty May never had a losing season in six years at FAU, and his center Vladislav Goldin followed him north when he took the Michigan job.

Which conservation group declared FAU's Boca Raton campus an official owl sanctuary in 1971?

The Audubon Society's designation was meant to shield the owls from campus construction; the birds favour the site because the wartime airfield stripped it of vegetation.

What is the name of FAU's organized student tailgating area on football game days?

The Rat's Mouth plays on the city's Spanish name, which early maps gave to an inlet on Biscayne Bay before mapmakers misplaced it to the north.

FAU students make 'Owl Fingers' during free throws and extra-point kicks using which familiar hand gesture?

The OK sign became Owl Fingers in 2002; its creators designed it to spell the word owl, with thumb and index finger as the O and the other three fingers as the W.

Which FAU club team, an unlikely fit for South Florida, won its first national championship in 2025?

Ice hockey is a non-varsity club sport at FAU, yet the Owls won the AAU College Hockey national championship in 2025, practising at the Florida Panthers' rink in Coral Springs.

Submersibles from Harbor Branch, now part of FAU, found a faulty rocket booster on the seabed from which space shuttle?

Challenger broke apart in 1986, and the recovered booster held the failed seal that caused it; the same submersibles also examined the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor.

FAU master's graduate Mark Dean holds three of the nine patents behind which company's 1981 personal computer?

IBM hired Mark Dean straight after his first degree, and in 1995 he became the first African American to be named an IBM Fellow.

Chris Carrabba, who studied education at FAU, is the singer and songwriter behind which emo band?

Dashboard Confessional made him a face of early-2000s emo; he had moved to Boca Raton at 16 and played in local bands while he was at FAU.

Joan Joyce, FAU's softball coach for 28 years, struck out which Hall of Fame slugger in a 1961 exhibition?

Ted Williams faced pitches that topped 70 miles per hour; Joyce went on to earn her 1,000th win as a head coach just days before her death in 2022.

In the 2023 NCAA tournament, FAU's second-round win came against which 16-seed that had just stunned top-seeded Purdue?

Fairleigh Dickinson was only the second 16-seed ever to beat a 1-seed, and it had reached the field without even winning its conference tournament.

FAU clinched its first Final Four by beating Kansas State 79–76 in which famous arena?

Madison Square Garden staged both of FAU's regional wins, over Tennessee and Kansas State; before that March the Owls had never won an NCAA tournament game.

Which Pennsylvania school beat FAU 40–7 in the Owls' first-ever football game in 2001?

Slippery Rock spoiled the debut before 25,632 fans in an NFL stadium, but FAU got its first win a game later, 31–28 over Bethune–Cookman.

In 1965 FAU launched the first undergraduate program in the United States devoted to which field?

Ocean engineering still has a seaside campus of its own, SeaTech in Dania Beach, set between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway.

Which group of students did FAU first admit in 1984, twenty years after the university opened?

Freshmen and sophomores were left out by design: Florida wanted FAU to pick up where community colleges stopped, enrolling students who already held associate degrees.

FAU's Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College has its own residential campus in which Palm Beach County town?

Jupiter is home to the John D. MacArthur Campus, where honors students live for their first two years beside Scripps and Max Planck research labs.

Before FAU was built, the Army secretly grew which crop beside the airfield's runways for germ-warfare tests?

Wheat was sprayed with a rust fungus so the spores could be harvested, part of a Cold War effort to find a way of wiping out the Soviet Union's crops.

Which former FAU pass rusher led the entire NFL in sacks in 2024 while playing for the Cincinnati Bengals?

Trey Hendrickson was only a third-round draft pick out of FAU, where he studied criminal justice, yet his 2024 season earned him the Deacon Jones Award.

Which FAU running back, nicknamed 'Motor', led all of major college football with 32 rushing touchdowns in 2017?

Devin Singletary shared the nickname with his father, and his 2017 season also set FAU's single-season rushing mark before the Buffalo Bills drafted him.

FAU's Harrison Bryant won the 2019 John Mackey Award, given to college football's best player at which position?

Tight end Harrison Bryant was the first FAU player to win a major national award, and he became the school's first unanimous All-American.

Which FAU alumna was named WNBA Most Valuable Player in 1999 and later won a title with the Sacramento Monarchs?

Yolanda Griffith was Division II Player of the Year at FAU in 1993, while supporting herself and her daughter by working for a car repossession company.

Harbor Branch, now part of FAU, helped rescue Winter, an injured animal who later starred in which family film?

Dolphin Tale tells how Winter, found tangled in a crab trap line at about two months old, learned to swim with a prosthetic tail; she played herself in the film.

FAU scholarship athlete Mark Zupan later became a Paralympic champion and the star of Murderball in which sport?

Wheelchair rugby became his sport after a 1993 truck accident, hours after a soccer game, left him paralysed; he won Paralympic gold with the US team in 2008.

Until 2005, FAU's baseball team used which nickname, carried through a 34-game winning run in 1999?

Blue Wave gave way to Owls once students chose a single athletic identity; the 1999 team that won 34 straight finished 54–9, the best season in school history.

What is the name of FAU's costumed bird mascot, who shares the sidelines with a partner called Hoot?

Owlsley is modelled on the burrowing owl, a ground-nesting bird that lived on the land before the campus existed and gave every FAU team its name.

By tradition, FAU fans dress in which color for rivalry games such as those against FIU?

Red is saved for rivalry games, a custom spread by fan T-shirts; on any other night either of the school's main colours will do.

FAU's Commercial Music Program launched Hoot/Wisdom in 2002 as a student-run business of what kind?

Record label work at Hoot/Wisdom spans the creative and business sides, and one early release reached the top ten of a Billboard sales chart in its first week.

FAU's football stadium once doubled as home to the Florida Launch, a professional team in which sport?

Lacrosse came to Boca Raton when Major League Lacrosse expanded into Florida, with a team owned by Jim Davis, the chairman of New Balance.