About Jacksonville University
Founded in 1934, Jacksonville University (JU) is a private doctoral granting institution in Jacksonville, Florida - the state's most populous city at 1.3-million residents. Located on the east bank of the St. Johns river that flows through the city, the campus is comprised of 260 acres of riverfront and hundreds of years old Live Oak trees with their immense canopies providing constant relief from the Florida sun.
JU has just over 4,000 total students of which 2,652 are in undergraduate studies and 1,349 are in graduate studies, within which the university offers three doctoral programs.
MOBTS 2023 will be hosted in the Davis College of Business & Technology. The Davis College is a truly visionary business school not only offering the traditional business degrees, but also offering a School of Aviation, and recently having brought in the university's mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, physics, communication, cybersecurity, computer science, and Naval ROTC programs with a recognition that today's world requires all of us to have an understanding of business and to possess business-related skills for upwards movement.
The Bold City & The First Coast
Jacksonville is nicknamed The Bold City and you will see the term Bold all throughout. It received that nickname after a 1968 major governmental restructuring of the city and the county (Duval, which you'll often hear yelled "DUUUVAL" in the area) that ended up creating the largest city land mass in the United States, which still holds true to this day.
You'll also hear the area referred to as The First Coast, a reference to the fact that it was indeed the first coast explored and settled upon by European explorers in what would become the contiguous United States. First explored by the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon in 1513 during his search for (and believed finding of) the Fountain of Youth, French explorers would eventually settle in what is now Jacksonville in 1562 as a new world settlement safe from religious persecution. In 1565, Spanish settlers arrived and created St. Augustine - what is now the oldest continuous settlement in the country, predating the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth Rock by 55 years. Spanish architectural influence can still be seen throughout the Jacksonville area, while St. Augustine remains a complete time warp into old Spain with preserved architecture, city walls, and forts.
If you have the time while visiting the area for MOBTS 2023, it is strongly recommended that you spend a day to visit St. Augustine and be transported back to the old world in a way that no other city in the nation can achieve.
