Trendsetters

In 12 years, Anthony Catanese more than doubled enrollment at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton to 25,000, increased the endowment nearly eightfold to more than $150 million, added four campuses, undertook $500 million in construction and renovation, saw 36 new degree programs start, brought in football and watched the basketball team take its first trip to the NCAA tournament.

Catanese likened running FAU to piloting a jumbo jet, and at age 59 he seemed firmly ensconced in the left seat. So it surprised many when on July 1 he jumped to "a rocket" blasting off to become president of the private and much smaller (4,400-student) Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. Says Catanese, "I think I've died and gone to heaven."

In contrast to the public university setting, he'll be working at an institution with smaller classes, a selective mission and focused research. "A private university, to be successful in the next decade, is going to have to do it on teaching with small classes and research grants and contracts and fund raising, rather than competing with the public universities," he says.

Anthony Catanese
Pay: At private FIT, Catanese's salary isn't public.
At FAU, he made $191,000 a year, had a car and a new $2-million president's house.
In shape: Catanese has run 25 marathons.

Catanese aims to make Florida Tech better known. He also will be building: At FAU, he discovered that he enjoys raising money.

Indeed, Catanese took up golf at FAU solely to woo donations. He says his game suits his needs perfectly -- an 18 handicap, he plays well enough to stay on the course with adept golfers, but badly enough that he never risks showing up potential donors. "It's the one area of my life I strive to be average in -- and I'm doing a good job at it," he says.

Miami-Dade Community College
Filling the Teacher Gap

Subject: Leslie Roberts, 47, director, School of Education, Miami-Dade Community College.

Noteworthy: The school will begin offering its first four-year degrees in the fall. Miami-Dade will join St. Petersburg College and Chipola Junior College in Marianna as the only Florida community colleges awarding bachelor's degrees. The state will spend $1.7 million to launch the degree program and to get it accredited in exceptional student education and secondary education. The first baccalaureates will be awarded in 2005. The state approved offering the degrees as a way to address the teacher shortage.

Concern: Mission creep -- that community colleges will lose sight of their traditional mission if they pursue granting four-year degrees.

Market: Roberts says 5,108 students last fall expressed an interest in an education major, up from 4,384 the year before. She expects many candidates for the four-year degree will be teacher aides, people interested in changing careers and part-time students.

Bio: A Detroit native with an undergraduate degree in social work from Wayne State University and a graduate degree in social work from Atlanta University, she specialized in education upon joining Miami-Dade Community College in 1985 as a financial aid officer. "I always saw a clear link between my original profession and education. Both of them are people professions." She holds a doctorate in educational administration from the University of Texas. Schools and programs she's headed have twice been honored with an Innovation of the Year award from the League for Innovation in the Community College.

Leslie Roberts
Jobs in College: Waitress, shelving library books.
Founder A 10-year-old book club. "It's one of the highlights of the month."
Recommended Reading: The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat.

Florida School Choice Fund
Scholarships for Choice

John Kirtley's venture capitalist career was humming along in 1998. FCP Investors, the Tampa firm he co-founded to specialize in management buyouts of small companies, was generating returns in the 30% range.

Amid the prosperity, Kirtley pondered his politics and discovered he was a libertarian, believing that with a few exceptions (say, national defense) society can work things out without government. That led him to consider the public schools. He read criticism that as a government-run monopoly, the schools are the last socialist institution in America. Like many a monopoly, he judged, schools offer indifferent quality at high cost. Blaming funding levels, kids or parents is a sham, he decided. From college aid to food stamps, he says, government gives assistance but lets users choose the provider. Why not with K-12 education?

In 1998, Kirtley offered 750 scholarships of up to $1,500 to low-income families around Tampa Bay. He had 12,500 applications. Encouraged, he lobbied the state for a dollar-for-dollar income tax credit for corporations that donate to state-approved scholarship funds for low-income, public school kids. He got parents to testify about their need to legislators. "It's fair to say that we wouldn't be where we are as far as corporate tax scholarships without John Kirtley," says Florida Catholic Conference lobbyist Larry Keough.

John Kirtley
Special Limited Partner/FCP Investors
Bio Geography: Kirtley's family moved to Fort Lauderdale from Iowa when he was 16. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia.
Why a VC?: "I wanted to learn how to start a company. There's a great history of not always successful etrepreneurship in my family."
The Five Scholarship Funds Are:Florida PRIDE in Tampa, Orlando's Children First-Central Florida, Miami's Florida Child, Jacksonville's HEROES and Marion County's Yes Opportunities.

In January, there were 1,000 takers for the new scholarships, which allot up to $3,500 for private school tuition or for transportation to better public schools. Kirtley expects 8,000 students to receive scholarship funds this school year. Public education is a singular thing for Kirtley, 39, to be passionate about; he's not married and isn't a father. (He says he hopes to be both someday.) In 1999, he became a special limited partner at FCP. Being a choice advocate is now his full-time occupation. "It just took over my life," Kirtley says.

North Broward Preparatory Schools
School Dreams

Philip Morgaman had such fond memories of boarding school that he dreamed of one day owning one. Meanwhile, though, he started an insurance company in Fort Lauderdale and bought a taxi company in Tampa. He taught Sunday school. He and his wife, Sandi, served as foster parents.

It wasn't until 1995 that he bought a school -- a 295-student, private elementary in Lighthouse Point. Seven years later, Morgaman's North Broward Preparatory has three campuses and 2,250 students through 12th grade. "This is, I guess you could say, living a dream," he says. Touring a North Broward campus, Morgaman shows the stuff parental dreams are made of: Polite, well-groomed kids; small classes; and a wireless campus computer network, for starters. There are a dozen horses for the equestrian PE elective. A hundred kids annually get dive-certified at the school's pool. His investment to date: $40 million.

As you guessed, North Broward ain't cheap -- roughly $10,500 a year. Morgaman says his school educates for less than what public schools spend per student in operating and capital costs.

Morgaman also gives out $1.5 million a year in financial aid. A Broward native, Morgaman "wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was 14 years old when I learned what the word was." Revenues from insurance, taxis and students will reach $250 million, up from $160 million last year.

Morgaman plans dormitories and talks of acquiring a European school and having students fly between campuses during the year.

Philip Morgaman
Chairman, CEO/Transportation Financial Group
Fort Lauderdale
Key Post: Morgaman chairs the state's Council for Education Policy Research and Improvement.
Interests:Travel with family, "as far and as long and as often as we're able to do."