State University System
It’s Gov. Rick Scott vs. state officials in effort to raise tuition rates
Palm Beach Post
After months of pushing for out-of-the-box thinking, Gov. Rick Scott is getting a familiar answer from universities asked to help students develop new skills for a changing economy. Raise tuition. But unswayed by arguments that Florida’s tuition is too low, Scott has abruptly derailed that strategy – coming out forcefully against boosting costs for students and their families…
FAMU announces its own task force and $50000 in hazing research grants
MiamiHerald.com (blog)
Also on Thursday, FAMU trustees chose seven people to serve on a task force that will examine how administrators handle hazing cases at other universities, what works in persuading students not to submit to the rituals, and how to govern the famed …
FAMU hazing victim Robert Champion marched to his own beat
Orlando Sentinel
Neighbors along a certain suburban-Atlanta street could see him from their windows: a tall, skinny boy in gym shorts and T-shirt, a towel around his shoulders like a cape, a broomstick in hand, marching up and down his driveway. Robert D. Champion IV — a kid with a name made for destiny — didn’t care who saw him there or what they might have thought. In grade school he would parade like that for an hour or more at a stretch, knees high, arms cocked, ticking off the beats of a drum only he could hear.
Activists, students protest voting laws
Tallahassee.com
More than 100 protesters rallied with state legislators, FAMU students and members of the NAACP and marched to the Capitol on Friday. They spoke out against voter suppression laws signed into effect by Gov. Rick Scott last session.
FAU, Wellington may team up for horse sense
Palm Beach Post
Students and faculty at Florida Atlantic University might soon help Wellington craft its equestrian master plan. Students, primarily on the university’s equestrian team, would gussy up in gear bearing Wellington’s logo …
Buddhist Monks Set For Sand Painting At FAU
BocaNewsNow.com
Florida Atlantic University’s Peace Studies program in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters will host Tibetan Buddhist monks from Drepung Loseling Monastery in Atlanta to construct a Mandala Sand Painting in the Schmidt Gallery on FAU’s Boca Raton campus, 777 Glades Road…
FGCU looking to alumni for financial support
WZVN-TV
It’s alumni weekend at Florida Gulf Coast University. Hundreds of grads are expected to return to Southwest Florida to take part in a basketball games and barbecue. But the university is looking to their graduates to help with the future of its next set of Eagles…
Florida State bestows two awards on Proctor
Historic City News
Florida State University President, Dr Eric J Barron, reported to Historic City News that they recently honored Flagler College Chancellor and Florida State Representative Bill Proctor with two awards for his work — both with the students of the State of Florida and in appreciation of eight years of legislative leadership…
UCF ‘Pain Game’ helps nursing students gauge patients’ discomfort
Orlando Sentinel
She is a simulation that exists in a virtual hospital room, and her “nurse” is a University of Central Florida nursing student. UCF’s modeling-and-simulation-lab experts and nursing-school officials have developed “The Pain Game” to help nursing …
UF plans to require class on ‘the Good Life’
Gainesville Sun
The University of Florida wants its undergraduates to get an idea of the good life before they get wrapped up in their majors. UF’s course examines the question of what constitutes the good life from the perspective of the humanities.
The law is a friend, not a foe, youth told at UF conference
Gainesville Sun
About 80 Alachua County middle and high school students got a crash course in law Saturday in which they identified community crime problems and suggested ways to overcome them at a conference sponsored by the Josiah T. Walls Bar Association. The conference at the University of Florida Levin College of Law brought lawyers, UF faculty, police officers and others to both explain the law and inspire the youngsters to possibly enter the professions themselves, said AuBroncee Martin, an assistant public defender and bar association member.
MLK Jr. statue to be unveiled at UNF
WJXT Jacksonville
The University of North Florida will soon be the home of the first life-sized statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. On a college campus in the United States. The 8 foot tall statue was constructed in India and shipped to Jacksonville where it will be …
150 will undergo tuberculosis testing at USF after possible exposure to disease
Tampabay.com
A group of about 150 University of South Florida students, faculty, staff and community members will get tuberculosis testing after a possible case of the disease turned up earlier this week, health officials said. A student earlier this week was found to have what experts believe is tuberculosis. He has since been placed in isolation and given tuberculosis drug therapy, according to the Hillsborough County Health Department.
Former USF CEO Rips New Bill
The Ledger
The former CEO of the University of South Florida‘s Lakeland campus sent a letter Friday to those who oversee the state university system asking for reconsideration of a new Legislative bill that would split the school from USF immediately. L. Preston Mercer wrote to the State University System of Florida Board of Governors and Chancellor Frank Brogan in response to legislation that was presented Wednesday. The proposal, which will go straight to the Senate Budget Committee, would remove the polytechnic university from USF’s system and give it immediate independence…
Faculty Seek Halt To Plan
The Ledger
The Faculty Senate of the University of South Florida Polytechnic voted Saturday to ask for removal of a state senator’s new proposal to immediately liberate USF Poly, keep the money and equipment and leave faculty behind. Faculty leaders wrote a letter addressed to Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, and the rest of the Florida Senate, expressing “great dismay” over the proposal. The three-page letter provides detailed reasons for their objections…
USF Poly bill could mean loss of accreditation
Tbo.com
The anxiety that pervaded the USF Polytechnic campus last fall finally lifted in November when the state Board of Governors settled the question of whether the campus would break away to become an independent university. The anxiety is back. A bill introduced in the Senate Higher Education Appropriations Committee on Wednesday would turn USF Polytechnic into the autonomous Florida Polytechnic University. The split from the University of South Florida could be immediate. It could also leave the new school without the academic accreditation that makes a university a university.
Senate Budget Leader Defends Polytech Bill
WCTV
A Senate proposal inked Thursday would speed up the spin-off of Florida Polytechnic from the Tampa-based University of South Florida and create the state’s 12th public university in Polk County, the Senate’s top budget leader said Thursday.
UWF looking ‘up’ for future plans
Santa Rosa Press Gazette
The University of West Florida is looking ahead to its future in the Panhandle area after it unveiled plans on Monday for a more college-like atmosphere for the growth is expected to acquire within the next 10 years. A public input meeting was held …
State College System
Florida college students face tuition increase
Examiner.com
Florida college students will face a major increase in tuition under plans revealed by the Florida Senate. Students will see tuition increases of between 3 and 15 percent and tuition for workforce education would increase by 3 percent under a proposal …
More Miami-Dade high school students jump into college classes
MiamiHerald.com
The demand of dual enrollment programs in Broward has grown so much that two high schools — Coconut Creek and South Broward in Hollywood — are starting programs in which teachers accredited by Broward College will teach at the schools.
St. Lucie teens, families look forward to College Preparatory Academy
TCPalm
Officials are negotiating with Florida Atlantic University to house the school on the joint campus of FAU and Indian River State College, Rains said. Applications are being accepted and due by Feb. 21. Eligible students must have a GPA of 2.0 or higher …
13 year-old is youngest to ever attend Polk State College
ABC Action News
Alexander was accepted into the Polk State‘s Collegiate High School program when he was 12. At this rate he’ll earn his Associate of Arts Degree a few months before he gets his high school diploma at 15.
Parents get help with college aid as demand goes up
Gainesville Sun
Across the country on Sunday, there were a lot of parents like Chester Umaguing looking for help. He was one of about 150 parents and high school students who went to Santa Fe College to talk with advisers and make sure they dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s on the potentially daunting applications for college financial aid. SFC was one of 22 sites in Florida participating in College Goal Sunday, a nationwide effort to help parents and their college-bound children fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Better known as the FAFSA, the required form uses parents’ tax information to determine qualifications for loans and other programs…
Independent College and University System
Bethune-Cookman University student killed in car crash
Daytona Beach News-Journal
Marcus Thomas, a Bethune-Cookman University band member, was killed in a crash on Feb. 10, 2012. (Wanda Wright Todd) The driver …
EWC correcting deficiencies cited by SACS
Florida Times-Union
Edward Waters College is working to fix deficiencies in full-time faculty staffing and documentation of its academic plan cited by the …
Eminent domain legislation advances
St. Augustine Record
Gardner said Proctor led Flagler College much of the time it acquired city properties in its steady expansion. “In the past 25 years, Flagler College has encroached on a lot of land, including half of one side of Cedar Street with historic homes, …
Historian, Author To Speak at FSC
The Ledger
Historian and author Tracy Jean Revels will explore the history of tourism in Florida in a lecture Thursday at 7 pm at Florida Southern College.
Watch webcast of our forum on anti-Semitism, offer your view
Sun-Sentinel
Monday night, the Sun Sentinel and the Jewish Journal are sponsoring a town hall forum at Lynn University in Boca Raton to address this topic: “Fighting Anti-Semitism in an Era Without Holocaust Survivors.”
Monday chat: Delve into the world of crime scene work
TCPalm
If you’re a fan of television shows featuring crime scene investigators then Palm Beach Atlantic University’s forensic science degree program may be a fit for you…
BARKupy Miami occupies Tropical Park
MiamiHerald.com
University of Miami President Donna Shalala,accompanied by Sweetie, the 8-year-old mutt she got from a rescue group, said that properly funding animal services is “a health issue for the county. If animals are in good homes and are loved, …
Yip Yap: Noted and Quoted FLHE Voices from Around the State
Guest Op/Ed: Legislature Marginalizing Youth and Students at Representative …
The Bradenton Times
Simply put, HJR 931 is a red herring that, combined with last year’s HB 1355, further marginalizes the participation and representation of youth and students. If the Legislature is seeking to show Florida’s future that fostering representative democracy is not one of its core values, then it is succeeding…Michael Long is the President of the Florida Student Association; Yury Konnikov is the President of the Florida Initiative for Electoral Reform
FAMU must embrace anti-hazing fight
Florida Times-Union
The hazing culture at Florida A&M University’s famed marching band is so entrenched that the search for solutions will be difficult. A major incident occurred in 2001 when Marcus Wayne Parker, a Wolfson High School graduate from Jacksonville, was paddled so severely in a hazing ritual conducted by the FAMU band members that he suffered acute renal failure. Parker won a $1.8 million …
Online education no substitute for the real thing
Tampabay.com
A recent White House gathering of university presidents concluded with the predictable pronouncement by Education Secretary Arne Duncan that “higher education must change its way of doing business because it has become unaffordable for too many Americans.”…Donald R. Eastman III is president of Eckerd College, a private liberal arts college in St. Petersburg.
My Word by Deborah German: Why we need a UCF teaching hospital
Orlando Sentinel
The University of Central Florida built the College of Medicine thanks to outstanding partnerships throughout our community. Partnerships will again be important as we develop a university teaching hospital in the Lake Nona Medical City. Deborah German is dean of the University of Central Florida College of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs.
Editorial: USF Polytechnic Bill: Don’t Get Greedy
The Ledger
State Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, has done much good for the University of South Florida Polytechnic. As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, he secured funding to start construction on its new campus, when others could not. As a persuasive speaker before the State University System’s Board of Governors, he laid out a straightforward, compelling case for establishing the polytechnic as an independent state university…
LETTER: UWF’s bad plan
The Northwest Florida Daily News
The public-private partnership you describe between the University of West Florida and private developers to build things UWF “needs” and “rent them back” to the college may sound lovely, but does the college really need a football stadium and a new …
Schneider: Change is coming to Pensacola, and future hinges on how we plan
Pensacola News Journal
Last week, I was asked about the University of West Florida’s plan for a three-laned Greenbrier Boulevard. Greenbrier, now a residential two-lane road, would become a feeder road into UWF’s “college park” area, under the school’s master plan.
Ave Maria president: compromise on birth control law creates ‘more confusion’
Naples Daily News
A compromise announced Friday by President Barack Obama regarding a controversial birth control policy created “more confusion than ever before,” said the president of Ave Maria University. The original mandate, announced in late …
New FAU dean David Bjorkman makes house call to Dr. Dennis
Palm Beach Daily News
The area’s new medical school was the topic of conversation when Dr. Michael Dennis and his wife, Phyllis, hosted a reception and dinner at their home on North Lake Way to honor Dr. David Bjorkman, new dean of Florida Atlantic University’s School of Medicine. Attending the event were members of the school’s board and FAU’s top officials: Mary Jane Saunders, president, and Brenda Claiborne, provost. Partygoers included: Richard and Carol Sloane, Margaret Wilesmith, Jack Laub and Robert Wechsler.
Florida gay-marriage advocates inspired by rights won on West Coast
Sun-Sentinel
“A morale booster,” is what Fred Fejes, a gay activist and communications professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, termed the new measures in California and Washington. Tuesday, the 9 t h US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco …
FAU professor tried to launch Whitney Houston’s career
Sun-Sentinel
Years before he created a commercial music program at Florida Atlantic University, Michael Zager started something else pretty special: the career of pop star Whitney Houston. Houston, who died Saturday at the age of 48, first sang professionally in the late 1970s with a disco group called The Michael Zager band. She was 15 when she performed her first solo, in the band’s song, “Life’s a Party.” The tune never became a hit, but it became part of history…
College debt spurring Southwest Florida students to become activists
Naples Daily News
Angela Cisneros, a nontraditional student who graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University in December, said she knows she’s lucky to have a job out of college working as a legal secretary. “I have friends who are very qualified and it’s hard for them …
Could war engulf the Mideast?
Palm Beach Post
“The only way to end those ambitions would be full-fledged invasion and occupation, a regime change,” said Russell Lucas, a Florida International University professor of international relations. Such an invasion is apparently not on either the Israeli …
FIU gets grant to speed DNA analysis in rape cases
Sun-Sentinel
A South Florida researcher believes he may be able to speed up the time it takes to nab sexual predators. Bruce R. McCord, a professor of analytical and forensic chemistry at Florida International University, has received a $349000 grant from the US Department of Justiceto develop a new way to analyze DNA evidence…
Fewer dollars flowing into statewide school repairs fund
MiamiHerald.com
“This could be one of the most significant strategic challenges that our entire system will face,”Florida International University President Mark Rosenberg recently told the Board of Governors.
Do Oil and Politics Mix?
First Coast News
“It often times can’t buy the votes directly, but, it does provide that access,” Jacksonville University political science professor Dr. Stephen Baker said.
Quotations of the day
Washington Post
“It’s the kind of thing that you go, ‘Whoa. What?’” —Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Florida’s Nova Southeastern University, after John Goodman, a multimillionaire polo magnate, adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend in an attempt, critics say, to shield some of his fortune as he face a wrongful-death lawsuit …
Inmate set to die for slaying of St. Pete woman
MiamiHerald.com
University of Florida law professor George R. “Bob” Dekle, a former prosecutor who sent notorious serial killer Ted Bundy to death row, said Florida governors have rarely been forthcoming about the reasons they select one inmate over all the others for …
Guest column: Ira Sharp: Hearing raises questions on Florida voting changes
Naples Daily News
Thanks to the research that Daniel A. Smith of the University of Florida submitted to the Senate subcommittee, why early voting was targeted for restriction is clear. In 2008, though African-Americans comprised 13 percent of the state electorate, …
Florist blooming within Walmart
Florida Today
… someone in that’s in tune with the local market and suppliers in a way that would actually benefit them,” said Barton Weitz, executive director of the David F. Miller Center for Retailing Education and Research at the University of Florida.
Bringing a tech vision to reality? Here’s help
MiamiHerald.com
Susan Amat is cofounder and executive director of The Launch Pad at the University of Miami, which has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs develop skills, make connections and launch businesses. She is also a professor and serial entrepreneur.
US faces tough fight in cash smuggling crackdown
The Associated Press
Sure, $90 million sounds like a lot,” said Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami international studies professor who researches drug trafficking. “That’s nothing in comparison to the $19 to $39 billion that’s being returned” into the Mexican economy.
Overeating May Double Risk of Memory Loss: Study
U.S. News & World Report
Another expert, David Loewenstein, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said that “this makes a lot of sense because increased caloric intake is associated with obesity and metabolic …
Nevin Shapiro Vows To Bring Down Miami, Predicts Death Penalty
SB Nation
In a series of angry emails to the Miami Herald, former University of Miami booster Nevin Shapiro, who’s in New Orleans prison for 20 years for a Ponzi scheme, threatened to reveal more information that could condemn the Hurricanes football program …
Iranian-Israeli tensions: Could war engulf the Mideast?
WPTV
“They are advertising this because they really don’t want to do this,” said Ira Sheskin, a Middle East expert at the University of Miami. But if Israelis are trying to involve the world community, how can diplomats convince Iran not to develop a weapon …
Religion burns Obama again
The Hill
“It almost appears that every time he tries to steer clear of [the intersection of politics and religion], he steps right into it,” said Susan MacManus, a professor of political science at the University of South Florida.
New study shows cancer drug may help Alzheimer’s patients
Tampabay.com
University of South Florida professor Huntington Potter said further exploration of the drug is needed to sort out which biological mechanisms are creating positive changes in the brain. But the results definitely are promising, he said.
Releases and Web Stories
Freedom Eagle Sculpture Dedication March 14
Santa Fe College
The first public sculpture on the Santa Fe College campus will be the Freedom Eagle, to be installed in Liberty Pond on the Northwest Campus. The sculpture, purchased through private donations, will be presented by the SF Collegiate Veteran Society at …
