In 1969, USF St. Petersburg opened its library with 2,248 volumes and offered its first degrees to 51 graduates of elementary education program.

In that same year, a State Legislature passed bill establishing USF St. Petersburg as a branch of the University of South Florida.

[11] USFSP has athletic club teams in many sports including baseball, basketball, sailing, soccer, and more.

[13] The team has a waterfront facility on Bayboro Harbor on USFSP's campus called the Haney Landing Sailing Center.

[23] The Nelson Poynter Memorial Library, serving the University of South Florida's St. Petersburg community, is an inviting place for students, faculty, and campus visitors to read, relax, research, or study.

[24] The Nelson Poynter Library has over a 200,000 volume collection featuring business, education, liberal arts, and marine science.

Literature selections range from classics such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick to the latest award-winning novels.

[24] In 1950, when the Merchant Marine training base at Bayboro Harbor was deactivated, Nelson Poynter started a campaign to persuade the City of St. Petersburg to donate the land to the state.

Poynter committed himself to donate $500,000 to help buy additional land for expansion and was the principal contributor and fundraiser for the first St. Petersburg campus library.

[25] On June 15, 1978, Nelson Poynter, his wife Marion, business and civic leaders, educators, and students took turns with eight gold-painted shovels to break ground for the first phase expansion of the campus.

The newspaper is published in the fall and spring semesters, and contains news stories, features and entertainment pieces that are of interest to students and the campus community.

The newspaper now distributes 800 copies of the paper every Monday on campus and also publishes stories online via their website.

Students can easily walk to class, the gym, parking garage and Campus Activity Center, located on the same street as Residence Hall One.

[6] USF St. Petersburg officially opened the doors to Residence Hall One on August 23, 2006, for the Fall semester.

All utilities are included; electricity, water, heat and air conditioning, local telephone service, high speed Internet and cable TV.

[34] The University of South Florida St. Petersburg has on-campus police to safeguard the campus, students, and parking garage.

Besides student housing, the building also includes a dining hall called The Reef that is open to the public serving breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week.

The center also includes an atrium lobby, wireless internet, laundry facilities, a student lounge, seating areas and two outdoor basketball courts.

On January 15th, 2020, Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock announced the residences at the University Student Center would be renamed to Ibis Hall.