Setting the position of date on title page

Question

I am new using LaTeX and am therefore copy pasting a lot of packages and template into my LaTex. I am having an issue with the year on my title page. I need it to be below the department and not at the bottom.

\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}

\usepackage{tabularx} % extra features for tabular environment
\usepackage{amsmath}  % improve math presentation
\usepackage{graphicx} % takes care of graphic including machinery
\usepackage[margin=1in,letterpaper]{geometry} % decreases margins
\usepackage[final]{hyperref} % adds hyper links inside the generated pdf file
\usepackage[numbers]{natbib} % Endnote references
\usepackage{fancyhdr}% Footer & Header 
\usepackage{lastpage}% Add last page
\linespread{1.25} %Line spread of 1,5 in word 
\usepackage{xcolor,colortbl} %colour for the tables
\usepackage{booktabs} %for table design
\usepackage{gensymb} % for degree symbol
\usepackage[toc,page]{appendix} % For appendix


\title{ \normalsize \textsc{Individual Study Activity}
        \\ [2.0cm]
        \LARGE \textbf{title of project}
        \HRule \\ [2 cm]\leavevmode\\}

\date{January 31, 2019}

\author{
        My name\\
        Student ID: XXXX\\ 
        University of Southern Denmark\\
        Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology\\
        \date{January 31, 2019}
        \\
        \\
        \\ 
        \\
        \\
        \small {Supervised by:\\
        \small Supervisor: XXX\\
        \small Co-supervisor: XXX}
        }

\begin{document}

\maketitle 

\end{document}

Answer 1

Just add the date without the \date command. But it's much better using titlepage:

\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}

\usepackage[margin=1in,letterpaper]{geometry} % decreases margins

\begin{document}

\begin{titlepage}
\centering

\textsc{Individual Study Activity}

\vspace{\stretch{1}}

{\LARGE\bfseries title of project\\}
\rule{3in}{0.4pt}

\vspace{\stretch{1}}

My name\\
Student ID: XXXX\\ 
University of Southern Denmark\\
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology\\
January 31, 2019

\vspace{\stretch{1}}

{\small
Supervised by:\\
Supervisor: XXX\\
Co-supervisor: XXX}

\vspace*{\stretch{1}}

\end{titlepage}


\end{document}