![a student wearing a blue shirt walks onto FSU Panama City's campus on a sunny day](https://foundation.fsu.edu/sites/foundation.fsu.edu/files/styles/impact_image/public/our-impact-article/images/Panama-City-News-Story_0.jpg?itok=zlz8uzuX)
Author: Eryn Dion, News Herald Reporter
PANAMA CITY BEACH — Oh what a difference 35 years makes.
From its humble beginnings in the 1970′s, when Bay District Schools, the business community and Gulf Coast Community College petitioned the legislature for a university in Bay County, to 1982, when the campus opened with “just a few buildings” and a resident faculty of four, to today, Florida State University Panama City has grown into an education hub for the county and the region.