UNIVERSITY FACILITIES
• Founded in 1963, South’s 1,200-acre campus has been transformed over the past decade with new facilities and resources for housing and recreation, health sciences, the arts, engineering, computer science and athletics.
• The Mitchell College of Business provides spacious classrooms, a business library and financial trading room for students interested in accounting, economics and finance, management, and marketing. The college was endowed by USA supporters and philanthropists Abraham Mitchell and Mayer and Arlene Mitchell in 1999.
• Shelby Hall — home to the College of Engineering and School of Computing — opened in 2012 and is the newest academic building on campus. The lobby of Shelby Hall is the gateway to many state-of-the-art classrooms and labs, with a Starbucks located inside the lobby and classrooms made for student-professor interaction quipped with the most up-to-date technology.
• The USA Student Center — which houses the food court, USA Bookstore and USA Mail Hub — is the center of activity on the University of South Alabama campus.
• Stokes Hall is one of the newest housing facilities and gives more students the option of living on campus. Stokes, which has 330 beds along with classroom space, laundry facilities and group study areas, has become a model for on-campus residence hall construction with semi-private style suites. Students have their own room and share a bathroom with their suitemate.
• A state-of-the-art, 116,000-square-foot student recreation center was dedicated in September 2010 and helped revolutionize student life on campus. The facility includes a three-story rock-climbing wall, basketball courts, an indoor soccer field, indoor and outdoor heated pools, racquetball courts, workout facilities and studios and more to provide opportunities for students, faculty, staff and alumni to participate in a wide array of activities ranging from individual fitness programs to all levels of recreational sports.
• Alumni Hall, the renovated historic Toulmin House, is one of Mobile County's oldest structures, which today houses the USA National Alumni Association and the Office of Alumni Relations. Its future threatened by urban renewal, the building was moved to the USA campus in the 1970s and restored.
• The Faculty Club is designed to provide space for faculty, staff and administrators and their guests to interact outside the normal campus environment and to hold events.
• The John W. Laidlaw Performing Arts Center, which opened in 1998, gives the departments of music and theatre & dance concert and stage space to showcase the talents of students and faculty to the community. Laidlaw features include a 240-seat recital hall, 179-seat theatre, a 60-seat black box studio space, a fully digital recording/production lab, a large rehearsal hall, practice rooms, studio-teaching spaces, classrooms and theatrical shop spaces.
• Originally built at the corner of Church and St. Emanuel Streets for Isaac Marx, the Marx House is considered among Mobile’s finest examples of townhouse design called “side-hall-with-wing.” The two-story Italianate brick dwelling has a simple floor plan distinguished by a main hall with stairway, two rooms to the left, and a recessed, one-room wing to the right. The townhouse stood in the path of I-10 and was dismantled in 1968 before it was reconstructed on the University’s campus. Extensive renovation was completed in 2013.
• The Marx Library was constructed in 1968 and was one of the first buildings on campus. In 2003, it underwent major renovation and expansion and is now home to a wide array of print and multi-media resources, group study rooms, art galleries and a popular first-floor Starbucks. The library in 2013 was named after the Marx family in recognition of a $3 million pledge from the Julien E. Marx Foundation Trust to support the facility.
• Meisler Hall, a 43,000-square-foot student services building named in honor of Herbert A. and Fanny R. Meisler, was dedicated in 2006. The building was created as a space to house vital student services in one centralized location. Meisler Hall opens to a courtyard that connects to the student center.
• Dedicated in 2010, Moulton Tower and Alumni Plaza was named in honor of Gordon and Geri Moulton, USA's second president and his wife. This USA landmark is a 140-foot-high bell tower in a complex that features seating for large and small events, as well as an amphitheater, two arbors, an alumni plaza and Walls of Honor with names of the 1,300 donors to the project. A vaulted ceiling at the base of the bell tower includes colorful murals that represent the heart, soul and mission of the University -- student life, research, teaching, and health care and outreach.
• The Seamen’s Bethel was constructed downtown in the early 1860s and was intended to aid the spiritual and physical well-being of sailors visiting the Port of Mobile. During urban renewal, the Mobile Housing Board condemned the property for construction of the Wallace Tunnel on I-10. The building was dismantled for its move to USA, and today it houses the Honors College.
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