Jerry Kolo, Florida Atlantic University
Kolo's favorite cities from a planning perspective: Lyon, France; San Francisco; Montreal; Toronto; and Vienna, Austria.
Sports: Kolo was MVP of the Charlotte, N.C., city soccer league while an assistant professor at Johnson C. Smith University there.
Growth management: "Although it's being watered down, it was a planning success."
In seven years, planning Professor Jerry Kolo's Center for Urban Redevelopment and Empowerment in Fort Lauderdale has counseled 400 low-income people on obtaining housing, advised 850 people on starting businesses and given 2,300 people computer training -- often in the largely minority, low- and moderate-income neighborhoods bordering Interstate 95 in south Florida. Seaside it isn't. Nor is it any other showplace of the "New Urbanism." It's old urbanism, where Kolo puts much of his planning energy -- addressing the byproducts of scant economic opportunity and other ills as enduring as concrete slabs and six lanes of asphalt.
Kolo, 42, who teaches at Florida Atlantic University's Fort Lauderdale campus, founded CURE to "give people the most powerful tool they need today, and that is information."
Kolo also hires himself out to the region's cities for homeless and housing studies and to conduct planning workshops and write strategic plans.
Though no fan of south Florida's "quilt of one color" city and home design, he favors incremental changes and modest proposals over grand schemes. He thrives on what would seem the tedious part of planning: the hours of citizen workshops required to develop a plan. He likes talking. He helped found an FAU-sponsored minority think-tank where entrepreneurs get together to discuss mutual problems. "Planning is supposed to be a helping profession," says Kolo, a Nigerian by birth and naturalized U.S. citizen. "I always tell people who tell me they are bored or depressed: Just look around and find something to do."
Charter Member
Chris Cothron, First Coast Technical Institute
Education: Cothron has a master's in educational leadership, a master's in guidance and counseling and a bachelor's in sociology, all from the University of North Florida.
On her career: Cothron originally wanted to be a social worker. Jobs were scarce so she became a teacher.
Change doesn't scare her, says Chris Cothron. Good thing. Last year, the old St. Augustine Technical Center became First Coast Technical Institute, Florida's first charter technical school. Cothron went from being a principal/director answering to the St. Johns County school district to being a president answering to a board of businesspeople from St. Johns, Clay and Putnam counties, including Chairman Jerry Bexley, the owner of a St. Augustine vinyl and cloth manufacturing company.
Bexley is widely seen as the driving force behind the charter school's creation. The proper place for control of adult technical education -- school districts, community colleges or independent bodies -- is in flux in Florida. Bexley, chair of the local chamber's education partnership group, concluded that community colleges did poorly at turning out workers for "dirty jobs" manufacturers need to fill. St. Johns school Superintendent Hugh Balboni suggested a charter school, in which the school would answer to businesspeople rather than district administrators. Bexley dived in. He wanted a school with customers rather than students, a board rather than bureaucrats and Cothron as president rather than principal/director.
St. Augustine native Cothron, 45, has spent 14 years at the school, starting as an adult education teacher. The charter setup allowed her to quickly upgrade technology.
Business needs change "almost daily," Cothron says. The 7,000-student institution she runs also includes a new technical high school and a skills academy for special-needs children heading for the workforce.
Ahead, "We're all learning together," she says. "They've never been a board, and we've never had one."
Reaching Out
Andre Russell, Palm Beach Community College
Coaching experience: Russell coaches Pop Warner football.
Sports highlight: Forget pro perks. Russell's favorite road trip was as a Palm Beach Bandit to play the New York City firefighters' team. The Bandits rode a city police bus, with escort, to their lodging, the Downtown Athletic Club.
Education: Glades Central High School, Belle Glade, 1987; bachelor's, rehabilitative psychology, Southern University, 1992.
"I'm hurt. I'm fine. I didn't really want to do this anyway." With those thoughts, Andre Russell ended a career that lots of boys dream of, especially boys in rural, poor, western Palm Beach County: being a pro football quarterback. Russell spent 1992 and 1993 with the Atlanta Falcons before a shoulder injury returned him to his native Belle Glade. Today, he's a program specialist -- an outreach worker -- for Palm Beach Community College, recruiting students for the college or the college's "career academy," its non-degree, vocational education program.
In 1998, Palm Beach became the first community college in Florida to take over adult vocational and technical education from a public school district. Career academy enrollment from the Glades area is up 86% to 1,400 since Russell signed on in the second year of a three-year transition. The Glades area lies 36 miles west and several flights down the economic ladder from the wealthy island that gives the county fame. Locals glory in Glades Central High having more current NFL players than any other high school, including Jacksonville's Fred Taylor. Not as glorious: Glades Central and nearby Pahokee High are D schools. College President Dennis Gallon had the college adopt both schools as part of his Glades Initiative launched last year. He needed the college to build trust and persuade students to enroll in its programs. Enter Russell last September as recruiter and PR man. "We have a lot of students who don't see past high school," the 29-year-old says. He's a regular at community meetings to talk about post-secondary education. He persuaded six current and former NFL players and Glades Central graduates to come to a NFL Day rap session with 270 students, a "very, very powerful event," Gallon says.
Russell, by the way, hasn't said farewell to football. He plays for the semi-pro Palm Beach Bandits, for whom he recently threw for 409 yards and seven touchdowns. "It's fun again to me," Russell says.
Making the Grade
Sylvia Hornsby, E.L. Bing Elementary
Quote: "I had this intense desire as a child to be a teacher."
When discouraged: She turns to prayer and inspirational reading for renewal. "Then I'm back."
How business can help schools: Let employees off to go to school to talk about their child's problems.
Hillsborough County's E.L. Bing Elementary resembles Principal Sylvia Hornsby's prior posting at Edison Elementary nine miles away. Both schools qualify for federal aid based on the number of poor children who attend. Minorities make up a majority of both schools' students. There's an equally striking similarity: Hornsby removed Edison from the state's "critically low" performing list -- the state's old standard of bad. She also just led D-graded Bing, where she is about to start her second year, to a C grade. Gentle-spoken as befitting the grandmother she is, the 52-year-old Hillsborough County native last year spent federal money at her disposal on networking Bing's classroom computers, on resource teachers to augment classroom teachers and on Accelerated Reader software. A bike went to the student who earned the most points in the software's incentive system.
"We're pushing reading, reading, reading," she says. She "suggested" teachers focus on core material and spend less time on related crafts and activities. "She has that sort of quiet, friendly demeanor," says school district official Jim Gatlin, who supervised the area that includes Hornsby's former school, Edison. When Bing opens later this month, students will find some new teachers, a new emphasis on character education and a new business parent. SunTrust Banks, as part of Gov. Jeb Bush's education initiative, will provide Bing with mentors, tutors, funds and managerial advice from Tampa CEO Dan Mahurin.
Hornsby is gratified by Bing's move to C status. She says she believes in accountability, but a poor grade for the school unintentionally "can be demeaning, especially when you're giving it everything you can." Hornsby has no plans to hop to another turnaround challenge. "You need more than a year or two. You get to know the families, and they get to know your focus, and the communication is freer."
Solving a Math Problem
Marilyn Repsher, Jacksonville University
On education: Repsher started her doctoral work at Notre Dame but switched to Columbia. "A doctorate is hard enough to get without battling the female thing."
On today's college students: "They're going places, and it's terrific to see."
On Jacksonville University: "The architecture is dreadful ... (but) this is a jewel of a place."
Name: Dr. Marilyn Repsher, math professor for 31 years at Jacksonville University.
Recent claim to fame: Chosen U.S. Professor of the Year.
Who picked her: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and a college fund-raiser association, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
Teaching philosophy: Introduce the fascinating aspects of "the glorious ride that is mathematics" early. Show students how math applies to their majors and interests. Teach problem-solving.
Quote: "Every child with normal intelligence can learn math, and what we do is run them off. Long division is boring as hell."
Other claims to fame: She heads the math department and established the university's computer information systems major.
Education: Repsher's mother was a math teacher. Repsher received a bachelor's from D'Youville College in her native Buffalo, a master's from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and a doctorate from Columbia University in 1968. She arrived at Jacksonville, a small, private liberal arts institution, in 1969. The attraction: A "paradise" climate and a school that put teaching over getting research work published.
Endorsement: "She was light-years ahead of everyone else in trying to integrate math and technology and business analyses," says former student George Gabb of Chesapeake, Va. Gabb, a Vietnam veteran, enrolled at Jacksonville University in his late 20s with 12 years of Navy service behind him and "hair down to my ass." He flunked math throughout high school but graduated with a bachelor's in math and computer science. He returned to the Navy, retired as a commander and now teaches middle school. Repsher was his adviser. "She changed my life."
Why she applied for the Professor of the Year award: The dean told her to.
Why she hesitated: She thought, "I'm not going to get an award like that. They give them to Mother Teresa."