USF near bottom in state analysis of teacher preparation programs

The Florida Department of Education is looking at FCAT scores to help gauge the effectiveness of the state’s teacher preparation programs. And according to its first analysis, the University of South Florida College of Education doesn’t look so good by comparison.

A draft report obtained by the Gradebook shows how rookie teachers from different programs – be they university colleges of education, community college programs or district alternative certification programs – fared in 2007-08, based on how well their students performed on the math and reading FCAT.

The DOE determined what percentage of rookies from each institution had 50 percent or more of their students making learning gains. And then, using “value tables” – which you can read more about here – it determined what percentage were “high performing.”

USF – a huge pipeline for teachers in the Tampa Bay area – had 76 percent of its graduates in the first category, which puts it ninth among the 10 state university programs. Florida International was tops at 85 percent. The University of West Florida was last at 70 percent.

Men to march in high heels for rape victims at USF

TAMPA -- Here's something that, thank goodness, you don't see every day: men in high heels.

For the second year, men will take part in a "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes" march at the University of South Florida from noon to 2 p.m. Oct. 8. The march will begin at at the Marshall Student Center, and marchers will walk around campus in silence, stopping at several locations to hear statistics about rape, sexual assault and gender violence.

While "the sight of hairy legs in pumps" might cause some people to smile at first, the cause is serious, according to Eileen Dabrowski, president of USF NITE (Necessary Improvements to Transform our Environment), the group organizing the event. It is to make people think about what they can do to help end violence against women.

 Richard Danielson, Times staff writer

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USF to offer job search help to unemployed alumni

TAMPA -- Starting in late September, the University of South Florida will begin offering free job search help to unemployed alumni.

The new Alumni CareerQuest program involves USF's Career Center and Alumni Association. Jobless alums who have earned a degree from USF can get help with effective job search strategies, resources and coaching.

Alumni CareerQuest is not meant to be a job placement program, administrators say. But it will provide alumni with access to a variety of resources, professional career coaches, workshops, webinars, job search preparation software and opportunties to network and talk to recruiters looking to hire candidates from USF.

You're not done yet? Florida university students to pay extra for additional credits

Students at the University of South Florida got the word earlier this month.

If they exceed the number of credits they need to earn their declared bachelor's degree by 20 percent, the university may charge them an additional 50 percent per credit hour. That's $44.29, an amount that will only go up as tuition continues to rise.

"When you have students ... who are graduating in 170, 180 hours, what they are doing is taking seats in classrooms away from other students," associate dean Glen Besterfield told the USF Oracle. "So now we have an access issue -- we can't admit more students if we've got students hanging around here longer than necessary to get their degree."

The rule holds true for all Florida public colleges and universities, effective this year. And by the way, students, welcome back.

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USF St. Petersburg names three new administrators

ST. PETERSBURG -- The University of South Florida St. Petersburg Monday announced three new members of its executive team:

• Helen Levine will be regional vice chancellor for external affairs. In that  job, Levine will manage USF St. Petersburg's communications, community engagement efforts and public affairs. Levine, who most recently was USF president Judy Genshaft's policy and communications adviser, has previously worked as policy administrator for the city of St. Petersburg and chief lobbyist for Hillsborough County.

• Maling Ebrahimpour is the new dean of the College of Business. Previously, he was dean of the Gabelli School of Business at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. In that job, he led the school's efforts to receive its initial accreditation by AACSB International, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. He also raised nearly $1 million, launched new bachelor's degree majors in economics, while working to strengthen the school's teaching in financial services, international business and computer information systems.

• Carol G. Hixson is the new dean of the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library. She comes to USF with experience as a librarian or library administrator at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Florida, Indiana University, UCLA, the University of Oregon and most recently at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan.

USF St. Petersburg, with an estimated 5,600 students, is separately accredited from USF in Tampa.

Richard Danielson, Times staff writer

USF receives federal grants to help migrant students

TAMPA -- The University of South Florida will receive a total of $802,777 from two programs to help migrant students, the U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday.

USF is the only institution in Florida to receive the funds, which come from two programs.

USF St. Petersburg off probation

USF St. Petersburg is back in good standing with its accreditors.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges lifted the institution from probation today after a year in limbo.

Last June’s decision by SACS took the university by surprise, coming two years after it awarded the campus separate accreditation from USF Tampa. USF St. Petersburg met 87 of 89 standards, but fell short on one standard dealing with assessing the academic skill of general education students and another that involves tracking student success after graduation.

The probation was not based on quality of faculty or academic programs. USF remained an accredited institution throughout.

“This is a very fine institution and the committees have completed the necessary work to demonstrate compliance,” interim regional chancellor Margaret Sullivan said in a press release. "The faculty is to be commended for this oustanding response."

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Flu scare means no handshakes for USF grads this weekend

TAMPA -- At the University of South Florida, President Judy Genshaft will not shake the hands of some 5,200 students who are scheduled to graduate in four ceremonies tonight and Saturday.

“She has always shaken the hand of every USF graduate,” USF spokeswoman Vickie Chachere said this afternoon. “For her, this is a big deal.”

As of Thursday, USF administrators had planned to have hand-sanitizing stations available before graduates went on stage to be congratulated by Genshaft and after they left the stage. But today they decided the risk was too great even for that and took the unprecedented step of suspending the graduation tradition.

“It has been decided that there will be no handshaking at commencement ceremonies due to the recent outbreak of swine flu and the spreading of germs through touching (handshaking),” according to a memo sent Friday afternoon by Cynthia S. Visot, Genshaft’s chief of staff. “The president will take photos with each graduate, but the traditional handshake by the president or dean/CEO will not occur during all commencement ceremonies. Hand sanitizers will be available throughout the arena.

“This was a hard decision to make, but the well-being of our students and their families need to take priority during this time of uncertainty about the spreading of this strain of influenza,” Visot added.

As a veteran of many commencement exercises, Genshaft knows not to touch her mouth or eyes until she had sanitized her hands, but she worried about the possibility of shaking the hand of an infected graduate and then passing a virus on to someone else, Chachere said.

“She was more concerned about the line of graduates,” Chachere said. “It’s very easy to pass the virus down the line in that situation.”

The hand sanitizing stations will be provided so graduates can clean their hands after touching the rail as they climb the steps on to the stage.

-- Richard Danielson, Times staff writer

USF installs emergency warning sirens on Tampa campus

TAMPA -- If the University of South Florida is ever the scene of a Virginia Tech-style rampage, students, faculty and staff will be alerted by eight emergency sirens recently installed around campus.

The sirens, a throwback to the civil defense warning systems of the Cold War, are being installed and will be tested in coming weeks, the university announced today. As soon as next week, people on campus could hear chimes or a few words being spoken over the loudspeakers as the system is hooked up.

Each has a siren, strobe light and loudspeaker and is capable of sending out a loud warning noise, followed by a very short message. The sirens are designed to give students and others a first warning about an emergency. Other information would be available through text messages, the school's Web site or digital signs on campus. The system could be used to send alerts on tornadoes, chemical spills or fires.

USF students win award for movie about beer

Students at the University of South Florida School of Mass Communications won their first-ever Telly Award this week for a documentary on a subject close the hearts of many college kids: beer.

An Ale of a Tale beat out thousands of entries from established media outlets and businesses, winning the coveted award from the Silver Council judges who analyze entries based on how they measure up against a specified standard rather than each other.

The student documentary tells the history of beer, focusing on Yuengling Brewery in Tampa and Dunedin Brewery in Dunedin, as well as how to pair different beers with foods.

The Telly Awards honor outstanding local, regional and cable TV commercials and programs, video and film productions, and online film and video.

Donna Winchester, higher education reporter

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USF ROTC program earns top honors

The University of South Florida Army ROTC program has received the MacArthur Award in recognition of the battalion’s performance in 2008.

According to a USF news release, the USF Army ROTC battalion was one of only eight programs among 273 nationwide to earn the award, placing it in the top 3 percent of all U.S. Army ROTC programs and first in the 6th Brigade.

Only battalions that exceed commissioning goals for the year are eligible for the award. In 2008, USF produced 27 commissioned officers and two nurses, well over the requirement of 18 officers and one nurse.

Lt. Col. Jim Botters, military science professor at USF, credited the support the battalion received from USF and the Joint Military Leadership Center as well as six partnership schools in the Tampa Bay area.

Donna Winchester, higher education reporter

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Florida college students plan rally in Tally

It's not just folks in the K-12 crowd who are massing their forces to protest cuts to Florida education funding.

Thousands of college students are putting together a rally of their own to show their displeasure with the effects that budget slashing will have on their schooling.

Frank Malatesta, government affairs coordinator for USF's student government, tells the Gradebook that each of Florida's 11 public universities will be sending at least one busload of students to Tallahassee on March 4 to register their anger over cuts to the State University System.

"With tuition differential on the brink of being expanded, we cannot accept a cost shift," Malatesta said in an e-mail.

The people are talking. Are the lawmakers listening? Stay tuned.

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Congressman wants USF dean off whaling commission

A powerful congressman is calling for William Hogarth, the dean of the University of South Florida's marine science department, to be ousted as the American delegate to the International Whaling Commission.

In a letter dated Wednesday, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., says Hogarth -- a Bush appointee -- should get the boot because he's been working with the Japanese to dismantle the current worldwide ban on commercial whaling.

Read more about it at tampabay.com

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USF frat tries to make a comeback

It's not easy for a fraternity to bounce back from a university-sanctioned suspension for misconduct, the USF Oracle reports.

The USF chapter of Beta Theta Pi was suspended earlier this year for misbehavior at the fraternity's international convention after being cited last year for violating the university's alcohol policy.

The fraternity has been searching for new recruits in recent weeks – males who do not necessarily want to "go Greek," according to Patrick Long, one of the remaining members. Such recruits may not be as focused on drinking and partying and often make better leaders, Long told the Oracle.

Donna Winchester, higher education reporter

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USF biologists link amphibian decline, global warming

A group of University of South Florida biologists have confirmed that worldwide amphibian declines are consistent with the introduction and spread of chytrid fungus, possibly the most deadly invasive species on the planet next to humans.

USF biologist and assistant professor Jason Rohr, left, and his colleagues concluded that the pattern of amphibian extinction was positively correlated with increased temperatures associated with global warming.

“More than 32 percent of amphibian species are threatened and more than 43 percent are experiencing some form of population decline,” Rohr said in a news release. “Unlike past mass extinctions, this one is driven by human activities.”

Chytrid fungi were long thought to be capable of infecting only invertebrates and vascular plants. In 1999, a new species, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, was discovered. It has since been linked with amphibian population declines on every amphibian-inhabited continent.

Rohr’s research was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. The results have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online Early Edition.

Donna Winchester, higher education reporter

A weekend interview with ...

... Jennifer Baggerly, a University of South Florida assistant professor for counselor education. She spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about her recent research report, The Impact of the 2004 Hurricanes on Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test Scores: Implications for School Counselor.

First off, just tell me a little bit about how you decided you wanted to study the effects you studied.

Previous research studies have shown that after hurricanes, children have emotional distress, psychological distress, and children have even said that they have a hard time concentrating in school and they don't do as well on tests after hurricanes. So I wondered if children's concerns and disruptions after hurricanes would disrupt their FCAT scores. Because I heard after ... the 2004 hurricanes - Charley, Frances, Jeanne and Ivan - that many people were afraid the students' FCAT scores would plummet.

Did you look at students who were directly affected by the hurricanes, or everyone in Florida?

What I did was I looked at students who were directly impacted by the hurricanes and compared them to the students who were not in a direct hit area. So I looked at students who were in schools that had a direct hit of a hurricane in their area, from one of the four 2004 hurricanes, vs. students who lived in Florida but did not have a direct hit in their area.

And you found what?

I found that practically, basically, there was no practical difference. There was a small difference in their FCAT scores, but not enough difference to have really any practical significance. I'm trying to explain it in layman's terms. Not enough to make a big difference in their actual test scores.

Does that take into account the students who were so affected that they had to move away?

A weekend interview with ...

... University of South Florida associate vice president Linda Whiteford, who recently was named associate vice president for global strategies by USF president Judy Genshaft. Times  higher education reporter Donna Winchester talked to Whiteford, a medical anthropologist whose work has taken her to Ecuador, China and Argentina, about her new role.

This is a new position at USF. Why was it created?

It was created in part to help USF move toward achieving its strategic goal. Part of the strategic goal mentions quite clearly a whole series of different kinds of global initiatives. This position was created to facilitate some of the things that are already going on at this campus and the regional campuses and to allow us to develop some leverage with those successes to move into new areas.

So there already are global initiatives in place at the university?

Yes. We already have people deeply involved in organizing international activities for USF. One is assistant vice president for international affairs Ann DeBaldo, who has been involved in a number of initiatives in India and Panama. We also have Dr. John Sinnott in the College of Medicine who has led the medical school on major activities in India and other parts of the world. Dr. Marie Crummett, dean of international affairs, has led a course in Panama for the College of Business. She also spearheaded the Confucius Institute, aimed at increasing understanding of the language and culture of China. Part of my job is to help them do what they’re already doing very well and to facilitate other groups on the Tampa campus. Equally important, we want to learn what the regional campuses are doing.

Why is there an increased emphasis on this idea at this particular time?

USF students protest curtailed drinking hours

A USF student has launched a Facebook petition protesting president Judy Genshaft's Sept. 2 decision to ban alcohol sales at an on-campus restaurant during lunch and afternoon hours, the USF Oracle reports today.

The petition group started by senior business major and former Student Government staffer James Callihan had more than 1,850 members as of this morning.

When Beef 'O' Brady's opened in the new Marshall Student Center the week before fall classes began, patrons could purchase beer and wine beginning at 11 a.m. Genshaft curtailed the hours to after 6 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends two weeks later in keeping with the campus' drug- and alcohol-free workplace policy.

The 1993 policy states that no student or employee of USF is allowed to report to class or work under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

A USF spokesman said Genshaft is not likely to change her mind, despite the petition.

Donna Winchester, higher education reporter

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What a mess

A scant three weeks into the fall semester, USF officials are saying they've never seen a building sustain as much wear and tear in so short a time as their new $65-million Marshall Student Center.

While most of the damage is unintentional, the USF Oracle reports, building staff members have found gum stuck to the backs of chairs and pencil marks on the walls.

John Curran, vice president of Gould Evans Architecture and head architect of the Marshall Student Center project, said some of the walls may be repainted with a type of fiber-reinforced laminate used in counter tops.

Marshall Student Center director Joe Synovec said he simply would like the students to treat the building with the same respect they would show their own houses.

- Donna Winchester, higher education reporter (Times photo, Ken Helle)

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USF curtails alcohol sales at new campus hot spot

Realizing that the availability of beer and wine from 11 a.m. to midnight at its new on-campus hot spot violates one of its own policies, USF officials have limited the sale of alcohol at Beef ‘O’Brady’s to after 6 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends.

The decision comes less than a week after the sports bar opened in the new Marshall Student Center. But the policy dictating that no USF student or employee is allowed to report to class or work under the influence of drugs or alcohol has been in effect since 1993.

"Everyone was excited about having a pub on campus without thinking through that it would run up against that policy," USF spokesman Michael Hoad said. "We either abide by our policy or we decide that it’s not a policy we want to live with. For now, the decision is that we’re going to stand by it."

Donna Winchester, Times higher education reporter

Incubators at USF

Rather than just learn about business, a group of USF students is living it.

Professor Stephen Sundarrao has created Rehab Ideas to implement student ideas that seem to have potential in the marketplace. Among the initiatives are a foldable aluminum crutch and a mechanical retriever.

"The measure of success used to be how many papers were published," Sundarrao told the Associated Press. "Now it's how much of what you produced at the university is in the community."

To read more about the effort, click here.

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Cutbacks affect school newspapers, too

It looks like big city dailies aren’t the only newspapers struggling during tough economic times. The Oracle, produced by students on the Tampa campus of the University of South Florida, has announced it no longer will publish on Fridays.

Editor in Chief Candace Braun blamed the cutback on lower ad sales and reduced readership on Fridays since fewer students are on campus. But readers needn’t worry about missing anything, Braun says.

“Should something happen on campus — whether it’s Friday, Saturday or Sunday — expect the full scoop at usforacle.com,” she wrote in an Oracle opinion piece published Monday, the first day of fall classes. “Just because we’re not printing that day doesn’t mean we’re not working. We’re just publishing it online instead of in the newspaper, with continuous updates as we receive more information and links embedded right into the stories, so everything you need is only a mouse click — or less — away.”

Donna Winchester, higher education reporter

USF will dip into cash reserves

Citing budget cutbacks that seriously affect the morale of faculty, staff and students, the University of South Florida will begin dipping into its cash reserves to leverage raises and cost of living increases for its faculty and staff.

USF provost Ralph Wilcox announced the decision today at a fall faculty assembly, saying that the move is the best approach to managing the “unprecedented magnitude of budget cuts” handed down to the State University System from Tallahassee.

“We do have limited cash reserves that have, over time, been set aside in part for rainy days,” Wilcox said. “It doesn’t take a provost to tell you that today, it’s raining.”

Read more in Saturday's St. Petersburg Times.

- Donna Winchester, Times higher education reporter

Tobin named associate VP for academic affairs at USF

A University of South Florida geography professor who specializes in natural hazards and water resources management has been named the school’s new associate vice president for academic affairs.

Graham A. Tobin, who served as geography department chair for five years, will work with college and department heads to align budget planning with USF’s strategic plan. He also will work to strengthen interdisciplinary initiatives in research and scholarship.

Tobin, who was associate vice chancellor for academic administration at the University of Minnesota, has been awarded the Research Honors Award from the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers, the USF Askounes-Ashford Distinguished Scholar Award, and the USF Presidential Excellence Award.

Donna Winchester, higher education reporter

USF students to learn strategies for catching online predators

The University of South Florida department of anthropology will join this week with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to bring law enforcement personnel from across the country to explore up-to-the-minute advances in investigative strategies for catching online sexual predators.

USF undergraduate and graduate students will learn a variety of forensic imaging techniques such as facial reconstructions, superimpositions, and age progression and regression techniques, skills that are critical to solving missing persons cases.

In the year since the partnership between USF and MCMEC began, the anthropology department, led by assistant professor Erin Kimmerle, has hosted three training programs for law enforcement that have brought more than 50 participants from five countries to USF, according to a news release issued by the university.

“With the use of the internet to target children a growing problem, providing such training offers a real world solution to a significant problem,” Kimmerle said in the release. “This is not only an opportunity to seek justice for victims but also to prevent more children from becoming victims.”

Donna Winchester, higher education reporter

Two colleges of education struggle

USF is taking a lot of heat for cutting ties between its College of Education and the USF/Patel Charter School (see here and here). But its ed school isn't the only one that has struggled trying to help a high-needs campus.

The Developmental Research School at FAMU earned an F last year before its students made big gains this year, moving the school up to a C. The FAMU DRS is not a charter, but like the Patel school it has close ties to a university ed school, in this case FAMU's. Its student body is 100 percent minority and 35 percent on free/reduced lunch, compared to 80 percent and 65 percent, respectively, at Patel.

There are three other university-tied lab schools in the state – at UF, FSU and FAU – but none of them have struggled as much as FAMU's in recent years, and none of them have the more challenging demographics. The St. Petersburg Times wrote about FAMU's DRS back in January, after a controversial hire. Here's the latest on the school from the Tallahassee Democrat.

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

USF's Genshaft: No Golda Meir

USF President Judy Genshaft is one of several university leaders profiled in the summer issue of Jewish Woman magazine , a publication of the charitable organization Jewish Women International.

In the article, Genshaft recalls growing up in Canton, Ohio, where her Russian immigrant father established what would become the largest independent meatpacking company in the country. Working in the family business, “that’s how I knew I would like administrative work,” she says.

She says she "couldn’t do my job if my husband wasn’t the primary caretaker" of their two adolescent sons. She also says people around the world are sometimes surprised to meet here.

"They’re still not used to seeing women leaders, particularly younger or more attractive ones. I mean, I don’t look like Golda Meir.” 

'Our highest institutional priority'

Accreditors who stunned USF St. Petersburg last month by putting it on probation have offered a little more detail about why the school came up short.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges concluded USF St. Petersburg did not meet two of 89 accrediting standards - one concerning the assessment of academic skill of general education students; the other involving tracking student success after graduation.

In a July 10 letter  to USF St. Petersburg Regional Chancellor Karen White (left), accreditation commission President Belle Wheelan said on the first issue the school "documented great strides in the assessment of writing effectiveness and quantitative reasoning, but usable results for the third generation education dimension, liberal arts, were not evident."

On the second, she said the school "demonstrated how it had begun to extract data on course completions, graduation rates, licensing exam passage rates for the College of Education, and job placement rates, but the university did not demonstrate how these data were used to evaluate success."

USF St. Petersburg must submit a monitoring report to SACS by April 2009.

White emailed a memo to faculty, staff and students this afternoon, updating them on what SACS had to say. "Satisfaction of the two remaining SACS standards is our highest institutional priority," she wrote. "To conclude this conversation about our accreditation, we must continue rigorous introspection of our student learning outcomes."

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

Byrd-USF partnership moves forward

Forging ahead with plans for a USF-Byrd Center partnership, a new seven-member board formed to establish the parameters of the relationship was announced this morning. The group meets for the first time Friday morning at the Alzheimer's Research Institute on USF's campus.

The board has until the end of August to hammer out an affiliation agreement between the Institute and USF.

The board members are:

Johnnie B. Byrd, Jr., member and former chair of the Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute Board of Directors, former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, attorney in private practice.
Kathy Harris, vice-chair of the Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute Board of Directors, General Counsel and Chief of Staff for the Supervisor of Elections
Pamela Vergara, chairman of the Board of Directors, president of Skyshadow Ventures, Inc. and faculty member at Hillsborough Community College 
Dr. Wayne Goodman, director of Division of Adult Translational Research and Treatment Development, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD.
Karen Holbrook, vice president for Research and Innovation at USF
Frank L. Morsani, member of the USF Foundation Board of Trustees
Sherrill M. Tomasino, member of the USF Board of Trustees

Brain drain alert: USF loses rescue robot professor

Another week, another top professor leaving the state.

The University of South Florida is losing bragging rights to internationally renowned robotics researcher Robin Murphy, who gained notoriety when she deployed her search-and-rescue robots at the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster and then more recently in the Utah mine disaster.

She is resigning at the end of the summer to take a post at Texas A&M University.

"I hope that the faculty will think of my move as creating a new partner for those multi-institutional grants and that we will continue to work together to create technology to save lives," she wrote in her June 19 resignation letter.

For USF, a research university trying to boost its national profile, the departure is a painful reminder of how hard it’s becoming to keep the best faculty in the state university system. Florida State and the University of Florida, the other two major public research institutions, also are losing dozens of faculty and administrators.

They’re headed to universities in states like North Carolina that do not suffer the same financial and political uncertainties as Florida — where lawmakers facing revenue shortfalls have cut tens of millions of dollars from colleges’ rolls in the past year.

USF, Byrd Center to join after all?

The board of the Alzheimer's research center established by former House Speaker Johnnie Byrd Jr. is meeting this morning to consider a proposal that would have USF Health take over management of the center located in Tampa on the USF campus.

This, after much back-and-forth all session over the center's management and funding. First Byrd said he wanted USF to take it over, then later in the session he changed his mind and asked Speaker Marco Rubio to block a proposal that would have turned management over to USF.

In exchange, Byrd agreed to let the center be zero-funded for the budget year to begin July 1.

Brain drain continues, two more profs leave USF

Another day, another departure (or two) from a state university. The Women's Studies department at USF is losing professor Carolyn Eichner, and the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences department is losing Kennan Ferguson, who submitted their resignations yesterday. (See the letter here here.)

USF tried to keep them with salary negotiations, but the professors say salary isn't as important to them as the value USF puts on "research and pedagogy."

They're leaving for the University of Wisconsin, where they feel their research and academic goals will get far more support. In contrast, the professors write, "the administration's claim of Women's Studies' centrality to the university appears to be merely semantics."

USF staff union: 30 laid off so far

According to the latest newsletter for the union representing USF's staffers, administrators have notified 30 employees so far that their positions are being eliminated as part of the university's recently announced budget-cutting plan.

That includes nine maintenance workers; the rest are professional and office employees.  Three of those laid off have worked at USF for at least 10 years. Five others have worked there more than two decades.

Union leaders also say in the newsletter that USF President Judy Genshaft's promise to help ousted employees find work elsewhere isn't panning out in many cases.

"Many employees have complained that service is not providing the support in placement that has been promised by the Administration," the newsletter states.

USF announces major academic reorg

Two weeks after they unveiled their plans to trim the University of South Florida's annual budget by $36-million, administrators just announced a major academic reorganization that they say will strengthen USF in the long run.

 

The College of Arts and Sciences faces the most dramatic changes, including an administrative overhaul and the trading of several programs with other colleges and institutes at USF.

USF trustees OK new tuition rates for fall

USF trustees just approved new tuition rates for fall that will cost in-state graduate and undergraduate students more, but will lower the bill for out-of-state graduate students in select programs.

In-state undergrads at the regional campuses will pay 6 percent more, or $82.03 a credit hour. In-state undergrads on the Tampa campus who started in Fall 2007 or later will pay 9 percent more, or $88.99 per credit hour, under the "differential tuition" plan lawmakers approved last year. (That's $105 more per semester for a 15-credit schedule.)

All in-state graduate students will pay $242.04 a credit hour, up from $246.06, or $246.06 more a year.

Those same graduate students enrolled in programs including finance, marketing and nursing will pay an additional 4 percent to cover program costs, for a total of 10 percent.

Law, Ramil re-elected to head USF trustees

Prominent Tampa attorney Rhea Law and TECO executive John Ramil this morning were re-elected by their peers to serve as chair and vice-chair of the USF Board of Trustees.

Law is chairman and CEO of Fowler White Boggs Banker P.A. The USF graduate has long been involved with the Tampa Bay Partnership, the Florida Council of 100 and the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce.

Ramil, also a USF alum, is president and CEO of Teco Energy.

USF approves pharmacy degree

USF trustees just approved a doctor of pharmacy degree to be housed within USF Health. USF administrators say it's a response to a shortage of pharmacists, particularly in the Central Florida area.

There are currently 100 pharmacy programs in the country, including five in Florida. Among them is the FAMU program, which offers classes in Tampa.

Genshaft: 42 laid off so far at USF

Opening the USF Board of Trustees meeting this morning, President Judy Genshaft reported that 42 USF employees have been laid off since last month, when she announced a $35.6-million budget-cutting plan that ultimately eliminates 450 positions from the payroll

Only 70 of the 450 positions were filled when USF officials unveiled their plan a couple of weeks ago, so that leaves more than two dozen who still will get notices. Of the 42, 34 are staff, three are non-tenured faculty who were not actively teaching, and five were administrators.

"We're working very hard to place all of these people in career spots," Genshaft told trustees. "We want everybody to reach their career goals."

USF gets its Polytechnic

The governor has signed into law SB 186, officially turning USF's Lakeland campus into the state's first polytechnic university.

He said this 'step forward for higher education will place this campus on the same level as the other campuses of the University of South Florida."

After signing the bill, Gov. Crist sent out a mass e-mail with shout-outs to lawmakers including Sen. J.D. Alexander and Lakeland Rep. Seth McKeel "for their leadership on this issue." He also thanked Rep. Ed Homan of Temple Terrace and Sen. Carey Baker.

Crist also is expected to leave intact the $15-million in the proposed 08-09 budget that USF needs to start building a new campus for the polytechnic.

Alexander owns lots of land near the Lakeland campus.

USF provost responds to dean's resignation

UPDATE: Provost Ralph Wilcox has named Eric Eisenberg, former longtime chairman of USF's department of communications, to lead the College of Arts and Sciences temporarily. Wilcox told Gradebook that Eisenberg is a "national authority" on organizational change and leadership - and the college will be going through some major organizational changes.

“These are difficult times," Wilcox said. "But I think we have a real opportunity to get things right. But it means we have to do things differently, and we’re going to look different.”

In response to the resignation of USF's liberal arts dean, Provost Ralph Wilcox sent out this e-mail this morning to faculty:

Memorandum

To:                  Faculty and Staff, College of Arts and Sciences

From:              Ralph C. Wilcox, Provost and Senior Vice President

Subject:           College Leadership
            
Date:               June 9, 2008
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You may already have heard that Dr. John Skvoretz will step down as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences effective August 6, 2008. I would like to take this opportunity to thank John for his broad contributions in steering the College through a critically important period, over the past four years, as USF has strengthened its position as a national research university.

As I have regularly acknowledged, we all recognize that a very strong College of Arts and Sciences is essential to USF’s future. Since Fall 2004, Dean Skvoretz has guided the College through a period of growth in student and faculty headcount, degree productivity, and increases in external research funding. He has also brought a new appreciation to the importance of data analysis in informing decisions in the College. Today, Florida’s public universities are faced with a significant loss of public funding, a condition that will demand transformational, energized and innovative leadership with an increased focus on faculty recruitment and retention, enhanced scholarly productivity, improvements in undergraduate and graduate student success, interdisciplinary collaboration, global and community engagement, and fundraising.

Moreover, the coming months and years will call for some difficult decision-making as we continue to focus on our strategic path to the future. To this end, I look forward to working with College leaders, chairs and faculty in immediately moving forward to initiate a national search for our next dean. I expect to follow-up with you shortly in announcing the appointment of an interim dean and plans for the College’s future. Meanwhile, I trust you are enjoying a productive Summer, at least in a scholarly sense, and that you manage to find some time for rest and regeneration.

USF liberal arts dean resigns

USF's College of Arts and Sciences dean is resigning with what he calls "mixed emotions," and he cites as his reason the "potential dismantling" of the college (USF's largest) due to a looming budget-related reorganization.

"I carefully considered the fit between the type and style of the leadership I can provide and the type and style of the leadership the College needs at this point in time and concluded, reluctantly, that the fit is no longer there," Dean John Skvoretz wrote in an e-mail to colleagues.  "It has been extremely difficult over the past six months to see the advocating of proposals for its potential dismantling with quite limited consideration of the up and down sides of such an large and potentially contentous [sic] undertaking."

The liberal arts college will see its budget cut by nearly $7-million, under a $35.6-million savings plan USF officials announced last month. That includes seven potential staff layoffs, on top of 41 faculty and 30 staff posts that have already been left vacant to save money. There are also plans to consolidate some institutes and centers within the college.

Skvoretz joined USF in February 2005, following a long career at the University of South Carolina. His last day as dean will be Aug. 6. He told Gradebook in an e-mail Monday that he plans to continue teaching at USF.

Keep reading for the full e-mail he sent out Sunday.

Higher tuition, lower tuition at USF

A powerful politician speaks, and USF listens?

"Why don't we raise the tuition for the graduate students and the law school students instead of those on Bright Futures? I think it should be raised significantly."

So said Sen. Daniel Webster (left), outgoing Majority Leader, as the legislative session wrapped up last month, when the Gradebook asked him how universities might generate more revenue.

Well, fast forward a few weeks and whattaya know? USF trustees are poised to raise tuition for in-state graduate students by 10 percent for programs including finance, marketing and nursing. Florida med school students would pay 6 percent more, physical therapy students 4.5 percent more.

Meanwhile, out-of-state grad students in several programs would pay 10 percent less, allowing USF to more easily lure top students from around the country and the world. Faculty say the lower tuition also will mean grants covering the studies of those students will stretch further.

Graduate tuition and fees for non-Floridians studying here are now among the highest in the nation, more than $20,000 a year. Yet in-state graduate tuition and fees are among the lowest, $6,100 a year.

The full USF board of trustees will vote on the changes June 12.

USF-St Pete budget cuts will only mean 5 layoffs

In a letter sent yesterday to the USF St. Petersburg community, Chancellor Karen White stressed that only 5 of her campus' employees face layoffs as part of the administration's plan to save $35.6-million by eliminating a total of 450 positions across the USF system.

Read her letter below:

USF announces budget cuts

USF officials just announced plans to trim their 08-09 budget by 15 percent, or $52-million, over the next two years - with $35.6-million of the cut coming in the budget year that begins July 1.

The rest will be set aside, with the expectation that the governor and lawmakers will have to further cut the $66-billion state budget they just approved as the economy here worsens and tax collections come in below earlier estimates.

The cuts include the loss of 450 positions, only 70 of which are currently filled. The bulk have been left vacant since last year, when falling state revenues forces universities including USF to cut their base annual budgets by tens of millions of dollars.

Trustees are expected to approve the plan this afternoon.

President Judy Genshaft (shown above) stressed that tenured and tenure-track faculty positions will not be cut. Nor will the university eliminate or suspend degree programs, as UF plans to do.

And provost Ralph Wilcox said USF will use non-recurring reserves to fill some 170 vacant teaching positions for fall with adjuncts and non-tenured instructors. "It's a reinvestment, we're putting that money back into faculty," he said. "We have to teach classes in the fall, and we have an obligation to the students here."

- Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, higher education reporter

Vice President of the USF Faculty Senate Larry Branch raised a question on the budget cuts at the end of Judy Genshaft's announcement. [Ken Helle, Times]

Admins, faculty at odds over $240-mil reserve fund

Does USF really have $240-million in reserves sitting around, and if so, can't administrators use it to blunt the more than $50-million in cuts that trustees are expected to approve at a special board meeting tomorrow afternoon?

Such is the contention of USF's faculty union, whose leaders are pushing administrators to tap into the so-called "unrestricted assets."

"The board could put us on a glide path, or on a crash path," said faculty union president Sherman Dorn. "Use those assets to bring in faculty, to award sabbaticals so that faculty can improve themselves."

But USF officials say the fund is not something that can be so easily accessed, nor is it as flush as it looks. USF spokeswoman Lara Wade said that of the $240-million, only $70-million is uncommitted to various USF projects.

And that $70-million must, at the Board of Governors' direction, be left untouched as as emergency fund that covers at least a month of payroll in the event of a disaster like a hurricane, Wade said.

Faculty union leaders are expected to raise the issue anyway during the trustees meeting, at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Marshall Center. The union last week also voted to request that administrators delay the reorganization of academic colleges and departments as part of their cost-saving strategy -- a request likely to be ignored.

Here's the union's analysis of assets

USF says thumbs down to movie theater classes

Hold the popcorn! The Oracle, USF's student paper, reports that administrators are ending the seven-years-long tradition of holding classes in the nearby University Mall.

Officials told the Oracle that they now have space for students on campus, and that some of the roughly 2,500 students attending classes in the theater didn't like the cinematic academic experience much anyway.

Not only were the classes huge, but students had to pay a $7.50 fee to take the classes there, helping offset what the university paid in shuttle transportation and mall space leasing costs.

Now maybe students can use the money to cover the rising gas costs just to get to the main campus...

A sly try at putting Byrd under USF

Sen. Arthenia Joyner is trying to revive efforts at putting the Johnnie Byrd Sr. Alzheimer's Research Center under USF -- tacking an amendment onto a bill (SB 1768) that would allow UCF and eventually FIU to charge a higher "differential" tuition to Florida undergraduates.

The amendment essentially lays out the governance shift that USF has been fighting for all session, but that had recently been thwarted by Byrd supporters including former Speaker Johnnie Byrd Jr. In exchange for getting no money in 2008-09, leading lawmakers have signaled they'll let the center remain independent, as Byrd wants.

The House adopted the UCF tuition bill last week, but not with the Byrd amendment, which seems unlikey to fly over there.

Senate votes to make USF Lakeland separate

The Senate just unanimously approved a bill (SB 186) to make USF's fledgling campus in Lakeland, dubbed USF Polytechnic, a separately accredited regional campus.

The setup would be similar to USF's St. Petersburg campus. Meanwhile, USF officials and some lawmakers are pushing for $15-million in state money in next year's budget to start construction of a new $200-million campus they say will hold 16,000 students by 2043.

Read recent Times coverage here and here and here

Byrd setback for USF?

The latest House health budget proposal would leave the Byrd Alzheimer's Center outside of USF's control, and would provide zero new funding for 2008-09. Brandon Sen. Ronda Storms proposed the same in an amendment that failed on the floor last week. The proposal could change in conference, but the sentiment is notable.

USF is lobbying hard to assume control over the center, which would generate lots of rsearch dollars but has been controversial ever since former Speaker Johnnie Byrd established it. But Byrd lobbyists are fighting just as hard to maintain the research center's independence.

The center would not be bankrupt next year should lawmakers decide not to gie any new money. The center has more than $15-million in reserves

Is demand there for $15-mil USF Lakeland?

In a year when colleges are laying off staff and freezing enrollment, University of South Florida officials are strongly lobbying the Legislature for $15-million to kick-start a large new campus in Lakeland.

With a price tag of up to $200-million, the branch campus is slated to serve an eventual population that would make it larger than four of the state's 11 four-year universities.

But is the demand really there?

Read more here and here and here