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Ava Parker, COO Florida Polytechnic University
Higher Education in Florida
It's prime time for Florida's newest public university: Florida Polytechnic
The legislation creating Florida Poly mandated milestones and mission — a focus on STEM, an opening by fall 2014 — but left implementation to the university. The board and Parker turned to UF, which it hired to provide back-office services. (It paid UF $2 million this year for its services.) They also turned to Florida Gulf Coast University, the last public university founded in Florida. Created by the Legislature in 1991, it opened six years later on Fort Myers land donated by Ben Hill Griffin III and Alico, the ag company Alexander later headed.
Florida Poly emulated Florida Gulf Coast’s policy of no tenure for faculty. That practice hasn’t dissuaded applicants, Parker says. Florida Poly received 1,300 resumes for 30 full-time faculty positions and 20 adjunct positions. Including faculty, the university employs 69.
There will be only a limited traditional library. Parker says technology allows students to build a personalized digital library. The relatively smaller space the university will inherit from USF at Polk State can house needed print books and periodicals, she says.
Florida Poly settled on 19 concentrations in six majors. Parker acknowledges that majors such as electrical engineering, computer science and mechanical engineering sound the same as what’s already offered in the State University System. But, she says, Poly has selected concentrations that are not saturated by existing universities and are in demand by industry. That said, several sound familiar to other Florida university offerings, including cybergaming, cybersecurity and big data analytics. The university also will focus on applied, not theoretical, research.
To get a dorm opened in time for August, the university brought in Jacksonville-based apartment developer Vestcor to build and manage a 219-bed all-suite facility. Rates, without board, run from $7,430 to $8,100 depending on the suite layout. Vestcor pays the university a share of net cash flow from the building and annual payments on a 50-year land lease.
The new university’s board thought of asking for another $25 EDUCATION HIGHER REPORT million from the Legislature to cover construction shortfalls after receiving a $22 million allocation but it set off a storm, and Parker said the school didn’t need it. The project so far, including constructing Calatrava’s building and equipping it, campus site work and engineering cost $134 million.
“She understands the state legislators; she understands the Board of Governors because she was one of them. She’s been able to navigate this huge challenge and get us open, open on time,” says Scott Rhodes, executive director of enrollment services.
Rhodes’ job illustrates one difficulty in starting with a blank slate. Campus visits are important to wooing students, but “we couldn’t have an open house on campus. We didn’t have a campus,” Rhodes says. A multi-purpose building quickly went up, opening in November, to serve as an admissions center. Prospects and parents donned purple hard hats and vests — the school color is purple — to tour the site of Calatrava’s underconstruction Innovation, Science & Technology building.
To see what they were getting into still took imagination. When it opens, Florida Poly will have just 500 students — fewer students than at most high schools, fewer than 793-student New College in Sarasota (the next smallest State University System institution) and fewer even than the number living in UF’s honors dorm.
Even by 2024, the Lakeland campus where USF envisioned 16,000 students will house just 5,000 undergrad and grad students. The first students will arrive at a college with, initially, no sports and no accreditation, which means no federal Pell grants for those in need, nor work-study, nor federal loans. To address that, the Poly board offered $5,000 annual scholarships — just $29 less than annual tuition and fees — for the first three years, dropping to $3,200 in the fourth year when accreditation presumably will have been earned and federal funds flow. Raising that scholarship money fell to another startup, the Florida Poly foundation, chaired by Alexander’s wife, Cindy.
With the scholarship offers to dangle, Rhodes’ five-counselor admissions staff hit the road from August to Thanksgiving to visit 200 high schools and community colleges in the state to sell Florida Poly, aiming initially to attract 250 freshmen and 250 transfer students. The university also paid Lakelandbased Indie Atlantic Films $50,000 to $60,000 to create a 32-minute movie about Poly. (The number isn’t exact because the movie came from a larger contract to create several promotional spots of varying length.) Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, approximately 900 people around Florida attended “Poly Premiere” showings, complete with purple carpet and purple velvet ropes, at schools and theaters. The gimmick worked. Students, parents and guidance counselors watched a history of Ponce De Leon, Disney and the space program that then settled on Poly as an extension of discovery and innovation. Viewers also saw Parker, other Florida Poly officials, an Apple exec and industry representatives bang the innovation, industry involvement and jobs and employability drums. In the debate on whether college is for job preparation or something else, there’s no debate at Florida Poly: It’s all about jobs, and the school has developed partnerships with a number of businesses, including Harris Corp., DSM Technology Consultants, Bright House Networks and ASI Chemical that are offering internships or other workrelated experience to Poly students.
