Happy Cyber Monday!
A media advisory sent Sunday afternoon says Governor Rick Scott will make an announcement regarding higher education at St. Petersburg College at 10 a.m. Another announcement is scheduled at Valencia College later in the day at 4 p.m. (St. Petersburg College, 2465 Drew St., Clearwater; Valencia College, 190 S. Orange Ave., Orlando).
SPECIAL SECTION: State of Florida Online University Study
The 2012 Legislature provided funds to the Board of Governors to obtain the services of a consulting firm that would study online education in Florida. Through a competitive bidding process, the contract was awarded to The Parthenon Group, which is based in Boston, MA. The Scope of Services provided that the study would include, among other requirements, a description of the nature and extent of existing online postsecondary programs in Florida; an assessment of educational opportunities needed to boost Florida’s economy; options for expanding the awarding of degrees; and, for each option, a ten-year plan for start-up and operating costs, enrollments, degree production, and revenue generated.
Below are the deliverables:
A report on the materials above will be presented to the Board’s Strategic Planning Committee at a workshop, which will begin at 12:30 p.m. on December 17, 2012, at Florida Atlantic University’s Davie Campus. The Committee’s agenda for its meeting on January 16 or 17 will include a follow-up conversation on online learning; its goal is to develop recommendations to submit to the Board of Governors for its consideration.
State University System
Empowerment Fair aims to engage middle-school students
Tallahassee.com
The FAMU School of Business and Industry students will hold the fair to teach entrepreneurship and how students can make themselves fit for the competitive global market…
Albert J. Dunlap Athletic Training Facility
Seminoles.com
In addition to being excited about the big FSU-Florida football game, Seminole Boosters and fans of Florida State University Athletics will be celebrating the groundbreaking of a new state-of-the-art indoor training facility just a few hours before the game. The invitation-only groundbreaking ceremony for the Albert J. Dunlap Athletic Training Facility will take place at 11 AM on Saturday. The event will be held on the current FSU football practice fields…
A House (and Senate) divided
Tallahassee.com
Earlier this week, presiding officers greeted new members of the Legislature with calls for bipartisan cooperation. Today, Republicans and Democrats are returning to Tallahassee where another divide runs just as deep. Florida State University and the University of Florida both count some of the state’s most prominent elected officials among their alumni, and both sides will be well represented today at Doak Campbell Stadium when the No. 10 Seminoles face the No. 6 Gators in a game that, for the first time in more than a decade, could impact national-title chances for both teams…
UF hoping to use statewide push to complement online offerings
Gainesville Sun
A consulting group recently issued a report to the Florida Board of Governors on the expansion of online degrees. As the state of Florida considers ways to expand online education, the University of Florida wants to make sure the effort benefits — rather than threatens — its programs. A consulting group recently issued a report to the Florida Board of Governors on the expansion of online degrees. The Parthenon Group’s report detailed four options, including allowing an existing university to lead the effort or creating a new online-only institution.
Size of international enrollment at UF booming, led by Chinese
Gainesville Sun
…UF‘s international student enrollment has grown by about 20 percent since 2008, now ranking 16th in size among U.S. universities. Chinese students are the largest group of international students at UF, with numbers that have more than doubled in the past five years to more than 1,900 students in fall 2012…
Pricing Out the Humanities
Inside Higher Ed
History professors at the University of Florida think their courses are plenty valuable, but they don’t want them to be among the most expensive. And they are organizing to protest a gubernatorial task force’s recommendation to charge more for majors without an immediate job payoff — a recommendation that the historians fear could discourage enrollments. History professors have organized a petition against one of the more controversial recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on State Higher Education Reform: differential tuition that could be punitive to the humanities…
Hope Fund looks to help the needy during holiday season
Florida Times-Union
For 19 years, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Times-Union and students from the University of North Florida collaborate with Jacksonville nonprofits through HandsOnJacksonville to tell the stories of families struggling to overcome adversity.
State College System
FKCC students create wrecker robot
KeysNews.com
So how many Florida Keys Community College students does it take to build and activate an underwater robot capable of performing a specific task, like snipping an underwater cable? The answer is six, along with the help of students from other institutions, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense…
Feds find more FSCJ mistakes in financial aid grants
WOKV
The Federal Government says the Florida State College at Jacksonville changed students’ courses of study without their permission, and in some cases it allowed them to receive financial aid when they should not have.
Students work around garage-collapse probe
Florida Today
The campus at Miami-Dade College West now sits empty, save for the investigators, the engineers and others shifting through mounds of rubble, seeking clues to why a section of a five-story parking garage came crashing down six weeks ago, killing four workers. The school’s 8,000 students from the Doral campus have been shifted to other MDC sites, grabbing buses at the International Mall that drop them at the various locations so that they can stay on their same class schedule.
Independent Colleges and Universities
Making It Count: Students Work To Catalog Circle B’s Frogs, Snakes
The Ledger
A small group of students from Florida Southern College has begun work to come up with a better answer. They’re conducting the first-ever survey of the popular nature park’s reptiles and amphibians…
Jacksonville University sets record target for fundraising goal: $85 million
Florida Times-Union
An artist rendering shows a proposed new College of Health Sciences building at Jacksonville University that would result from a new $85 million fundraising campaign.
New T-U feature will provide insights from JU’s School of Nursing
Florida Times-Union
In this new occasional feature, Jacksonville University School of Nursing faculty discuss symptoms, diagnoses and treatments based on composites of patient cases handled by instructors, students and alumni of JU’s local training programs…
Nemours, Rollins team to fight childhood obesity
Orlando Sentinel
That’s why institutions as diverse as Nemours Children’s Hospital, Rollins College, Winter Park Health Foundation, “Sesame Street” and nearly two dozen local child-care centers have joined to tackle the problem in Central Florida…
Rollins swim teams raise money for cancer research in Ted Mullin Hour of Power
Orlando Sentinel
The Rollins College men’s and women’s swim teams participated in the Ted Mullin Hour of Power on Nov. 16 to raise money for cancer research.
Impressive local residences open doors for tours
Daytona Beach News-Journal
Impressive local residences open doors for tours. The Stetson University President’s Mansion, built in 1910 and now home to Dr. Wendy Libby, is featured on the West Volusia Historical Society’s 2012 Tour of Historic Homes…
Yip Yap: Noted and Quoted FLHE Voices from Around the State
Our view: Charter schools perform worse than public schools
St. Augustine Record
Dr. Stanley Smith, a professor at the University of Central Florida’s business school, last summer analyzed the results of elementary schools across the state. This is what he found: “When the poverty and minority characteristics of the student population are controlled, the average charter school performs significantly lower than the average traditional public school.” He concluded that “The average charter school is doing about the same as the non-charter school when no adjustments are made for poverty and minority statuses. But, “When the adjusted scores are considered, the average charter school performs significantly worse than the average non-charter school.”
Thumb up: Veterans can get college credits for military training
TCPalm
Speaking this month at a Veterans Summit at Indian River State College, state Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, who sponsored House Bill 347 requiring colleges and universities in the state to develop rules for giving college credit for military training and experience, said, “Unemployment among veterans is over 30 percent, so this will give them the opportunity to come back, use the skills they have in the military and get credit, get their certificates and move on with their lives to become employees.”
Denton: Passion fuels new education leaders
Florida Times-Union (subscription)
Cost won’t take over as president of Jacksonville University until July 1, but he’s come to town 21 times so far this year as he’s launched an $85 million fundraising campaign for a 78-year-old college that now has an endowment of only $32 million …
Cottle: Group aims to coax students into physics, engineering
Tallahassee.com
On Nov. 16, the Future Physicists of Florida (FPF) held its inaugural induction ceremonies for seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students at Florida State University and the University of West Florida. This new organization — put together with effort from a group of college and university physics professors, middle-school science teachers, Florida State University’s Florida Center for Research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and Bill Harper of Horizon Marketing — recruited 128 mathematically gifted students from six middle schools in Jacksonville, Orlando, Pensacola and Tallahassee (including Cobb and Raa Middle Schools and the School of Arts and Science)…
Nickinson: UWF students get an election education with exit poll project
Pensacola News Journal
A group of University of West Florida students learned plenty from their work on an Election Day exit polling project they did with two other universities. The answers weren’t always what they expected…
Imagination, effort reap rewards in college financial aid hunt
Palm Beach Post
If Jasmine Wilson strides across the campus at Florida Atlantic University with a confident smile, she has earned it. This freshman paid for her tuition, books and dorm room by relentlessly tracking down every possible source of financial aid, from a federal Pell grant to a pile of other scholarships from a multitude of sources.
FIT student detonates “device” in Melbourne dorm
Orlando Sentinel
Moments after midnight early Sunday, an explosion rocked a dormitory at Florida Institute of Technology in a prank blamed, in part, on the “MythBusters” TV show, according to Melbourne police. A 19-year-old student at the campus now faces felony charges of making, possessing and discharging a destructive device on school property, records show. Christian Barnes Duke told police he learned how to build the “device” using common household chemical by watching the popular science program on the Discovery Channel, records show…
‘App Economy’ Creating Jobs, Defying Overall Hiring Situation
CBS Local
A Florida International University senior is developing an iPhone application called Pet Finder that will allow users to browse the dogs and cats at the local animal shelter or request an animal for adoption. CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald reports he is also part of a team creating mobile apps that track bank failures, issue alerts about earthquakes and organize homework assignments. Raymond Gonzalez knows it’s a well-calculated effort to learn as much as he can about mobile technology as quickly as possible…
FIU student straddles two worlds, one a war-ravaged homeland
MiamiHerald.com (registration)
When Shahed visited her home in Homs, Syria, last year during the summer break from her nutrition classes at Florida International University, she saw how much her city had changed. On previous trips, she would go to weddings.
Florida State fan apparently put on face paint in the mirror, because her “FSU” was backwards
Yahoo! Sports (blog)
At some point, at a very young age, we realize that when we look at something in a mirror, it’s reversed. That’s a pretty neat day for most toddlers, but we’re usually not surprised by it the rest of our lives…
Sparking the flame: Event aims to instill spirit of …
Naples Daily News
The secret to being a successful entrepreneur, said Gary Brecka, a businessman who has helped to develop six companies, is not to be afraid to fall flat on your face. ”You need to not be afraid to put your idea forward. It’s so true that most entrepreneurs fail because of the fear of failure,” Brecka told his audience at Hodges University.
New Warren Con school board member enrolled at Fla. university
Royal Oak Daily Tribune
A newly elected Warren Consolidated school board member who wants to block “outsiders” from attending the district’s schools apparently may spend much of his time approximately 1,100 miles away. Ben Lazarus, 22, who finished second this month in a five-candidate race for two board seats, campaigned heavily on a theme of halting the enrollment of students who don’t reside within Warren Consolidated Schools boundaries…Geographically speaking, it appears Lazarus may be a bit of an outsider if he intends to fulfill his role as a member of the school board. He is a student at Stetson University in Florida.
UCF professor wins federal grant to study Florida’s new pill-mill laws
Orlando Sentinel
The laws are being praised for their seemingly quick results, and now a University of Central Florida professor will launch a two-year study to find out whether the state’s pill-mill legislation is making a dent in the prescription-drug battle. Criminal-justice assistant professor Jacinta Gau applied for and was recently awarded a $250,000 grant by the National Institute of Justice — the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice — to take a sweeping look at Florida’s pill-mill laws, which went into effect in July 2011.
Crowds can’t sway economist
Sun-Sentinel
“While long lines of pre-dawn shoppers and mad dashes for door-busters make great TV, they don’t necessarily reflect the state of the economy,” University of Central Florida’s Sean Snaith said in a statement.
Bruce Hornsby and 10 Other Famous University of Miami‘s Frost School of Music …
New Times Broward-Palm Beach (blog)
The University of Miami‘s Frost School of Music is a hotbed of talent. Case in point, Bruce Hornsby (though not the Range) graduated from the program in 1977.
USF medical professor one of early proponents of new HIV testing guidelines
Tampabay.com
“We’ve kind of put ourselves out of business when it comes to children with HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), which is fabulous,” said [Patricia] Emmanuel, a University of South Florida professor and pediatric infectious disease specialist.
Florida’s vanishing springs
Tampabay.com
“Springs occur in areas where the aquifer is close to the surface, which means it’s susceptible to contamination,” explained Mark Stewart, a geology professor at the University of South Florida.
Releases and Web Stories
FAU To Host Unique 3D Experience, “The Icebook”
BocaNewsNow.com
Florida Atlantic University’s Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts will host the North American debut of “The Icebook,” a three-dimensional cinema production created from paper and enhanced by light projections, for 10 shows daily from Friday, …
Student learning to live with amnesia
Seminole State College
The Seminole State College of Florida student loved dancing, pranking friends and playing volleyball, and she belonged to numerous clubs at the College’s Oviedo Campus. She had recently been chosen as secretary for the Student Government Association (SGA) at Oviedo. That’s how Nazario’s friends and family remember her. But Nazario, 19, who is studying to become a physical therapist, doesn’t share their memories…
Nine graduate students receive mentoring awards
University of Florida
The Graduate School at the University of Florida and the Innovation through Institutional Integration Program announce that nine graduate students have received the 2012 Graduate Student Mentoring Award.
