The University of Florida (commonly referred to as Florida or UF) is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. The university traces its origins to 1853 and has operated continuously on its Gainesville campus since September 1906.The University of Florida is one of 62 elected member institutions of the Association of American Universities (AAU), the association of preeminent North American research universities, and the only AAU member university in Florida. The university is classified as a Research University with Very High Research by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. After the Florida state legislature's creation of performance standards in 2013, the Florida Board of Governors designated the University of Florida as one of the three "preeminent universities" among the twelve universities of the State University System of Florida. For 2019, U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida as the eighth (tied) best public university in the United States.The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). It is the third largest Florida university by student population, and is the eighth largest single-campus university in the United States with 54,906 students enrolled for the fall 2018 semester. The University of Florida is home to 16 academic colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes. It offers multiple graduate professional programs—including business administration, engineering, law, dentistry, medicine, pharmacy and veterinary medicine—on one contiguous campus, and administers 123 master's degree programs and 76 doctoral degree programs in eighty-seven schools and departments. The university's seal is also the seal of the state of Florida, which is on the state flag.