Flagler College officially welcomed nearly 800 new students to the Flagler family Tuesday evening, during the college’s annual convocation ceremony in Lewis Auditorium. The students clutched railroad spikes, symbolic of their Flagler journey, as they listened to new President Dr. Joseph Joyner share his vision of great leadership and the core values that define the college.

Flagler College will kick-off its series Ideas & Images: Scholars and Artists-in-Residence with a talk on “The Impact of the Great War on St. Augustine: America’s European City” on Tuesday, Sept. 5.

See photos of Move-In Day New and returning students have arrived to Flagler College’s campus for the 2017-2018 academic year. Approximately 760 first-year students moved into residence halls this past weekend, and upperclassmen are returning early this week.

Cosmopolitan Magazine released its list of “30 of the Most Beautiful College Campuses in the World,” and top on the list was Flagler College.

Abare Hall, part of Flagler College's largest-ever construction project, will open its doors to upperclassmen this weekend after 15 months of work. The new residence hall, named after retired President Dr. William T. Abare Jr., sits on the west side of the college’s existing FEC Residence Halls on the banks of St. Augustine’s San Sebastian River. It houses 159 students in 75 suites.

Flagler College recently welcomed 14 faculty members to campus. Those individuals with a “Visiting Lecturer” title represent a new rank, elevating former adjunct instructors to full-time teaching and advising responsibilities.

Flagler College’s Hospitality and Tourism Management program is growing — in size, community support and now scholarship assistance, thanks to its first scholarship donor. The Columbia Restaurant Group, owner of St. Augustine’s downtown Columbia Restaurant, recently agreed, for five years, to fund a $2,500 annual scholarship to deserving students majoring in Hospitality and Tourism Management. The decision to fund the scholarship was conceived by Richard Gonzmart, a fourth-generation co-owner of the famed Florida restaurant.

This summer Flagler College students had the unique opportunity to study the 100-year anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, in which the imperial government of Russia was overthrown, when they visited St. Petersburg and Moscow.

The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum at Flagler College will kick off the 2017-2018 academic year with Gamaliel Rodriguez’s exhibition, “A Third Way to Look at You.” The artist’s work delves further into the aesthetics and ideas explored in a 2015 series titled “Figures,” which feature indeterminate architectural structures that are overrun by an encroaching landscape.

Flagler College sophomore student Sanad El-Farhan was awarded a $2,750 UPS Scholarship for the second year in a row by the Florida Independent College Fund and its national partner, the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC). El-Farhan is from St. Augustine and is majoring in Business Administration.

The Gargoyle, the Flagler College’s student-led online newspaper, won first place for Best Website in the Society of Professional Journalists Florida Chapter’s 2017 Sunshine State Awards. The publication took the top award ahead of University of Miami and Lynn University. This also marks the 100th award for The Gargoyle and its staff, all won in the last decade. The Gargoyle's student editors are Mallory Hopkins, Julie Householder and Katie Garwood.

The Princeton Review’s newest guidebook, “The Best 382 Colleges,” has again included Flagler College among the top 15 percent of all American four-year schools.

In an effort to better serve the Flagler College community, several additions and changes will be coming to the St. Augustine campus this fall. The most prominent of these will be the opening of Anderson Cottage as the new Alumni House, located just south of the Proctor Library. The renovated building will serve as a central meeting hub for local and visiting alumni, and will also house the Career Development Center. The aim, Dr. Alan Woolfolk said, is to enhance the overall student experience.

This year marks the 500th commemoration of the Protestant Reformation, the 16th-century upheaval that redefined the Roman Catholic Church. This summer, Flagler College students enjoyed the unique opportunity to study the transformative period at the University of Dresden in Germany, as part of an interdisciplinary-transatlantic program titled “Faces of Faith: Late Medieval and Reformation Germany.”

Six Flagler College students recently returned from a 10-day adventure in Belize, where they worked on research to help save the critically-endangered Hicatee turtle, experienced first-hand living sustainably deep in a tropical rainforest, witnessed wildlife thrive in its native habitat and snorkeled the country’s barrier reef.

Two Flagler College professors, four alumni and two current students recently attended a symposium commemorating the 800th anniversary celebration of the 13th-century Franciscan leader Saint Bonaventure. The conference, held at The Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University in New York in mid-July, was dedicated to the cultural and religious dynamics that shaped the scholar’s theology and spirituality.

Flagler College students witnessed first-hand the changes Cuba is experiencing, as the socialist country grapples with the impact of its revolutionary past and uncertain future. As part of this summer’s study abroad trip to Cuba, Assistant Professor Tracey Eaton guided students on a Cuban adventure. They met Cuban entrepreneurs, artists, farmers, guides and other locals who shared their perspectives on economic and social conditions, mass tourism, property disputes between the United States and Cuba, the Cuban missile crisis and more.

Flagler College has joined the international arena of historic preservation. Dr. Leslee F. Keys, the college’s assistant professor of History and director of Historic Preservation and Special Initiatives, has been elected to the 21-member Board of Trustees of the United States chapter of the International Commission on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS).  She is the member representing Florida, and one of four newly-elected trustees.

This summer as part of Dr. Michael Butler’s course “The American War: The Struggle for Independence in Vietnam,” Flagler College students visited the places and listened to the voices in Vietnam that they read about in course texts — those that shaped the narrative of the Vietnam War through the eyes of the Vietnamese.

For Flagler students in the college’s Natural Sciences department, the classroom is as much the marsh, wetlands or any other coastal habitat surrounding St. Augustine as it is the lab on campus. Their studies in the field often yield valuable research and play a significant role in better understanding the area’s ecosystems.