As we now know, the University of Tampa is planning to expand. Again. Actually, it seems like the 105-acre, downtown Tampa campus is in perpetual expansion-renovation-upgrade mode.
Currently, the largest ($150 million) fund-raising campaign in its history is focused on growing the endowment and underwriting priorities that range from the largest residence hall on campus and new fitness center to modern accommodations for cybersecurity and organic chemistry labs.
It still amazes.
Back in the early 1990s I was at USF as media relations manager and had a different vantage point of UT. It still missed football and Freddie Solomon, and it had seen its enrollment fall below 2,000 students. It had budget–and as a result, viability–issues. And no one, to be sure, was referencing it as the “Harvard of the South.”
Talk of USF, which had long pined for a downtown presence, eyeing UT was no longer considered idle chatter. TransPlant Hall might happen. UT was that vulnerable.
Enter a game-changing trifecta: a new, energetic president, a pro-active approach to recruiting and key benefactors. UT turned it around.
Two decades later, that can-do, new president, Ronald Vaughn, is still there–only he now presides over a university with more than 8,000 students, academic programs that have increased from 80 to 200 and an endowment that has grown from $6 million to $68 million.
UT’s economic impact on the Tampa area is now estimated at $850 million. It’s a major player in the vision and verve of downtown. Just ask Mayor Bob Buckhorn, who appreciates major economic engines as well as a catalyst for growth on the west side of the Hillsborough River.
And, BTW, that fund-raising campaign, which will also underwrite UT’s wherewithal to attract high-quality students, faculty and lab support, had already collected $135 million in donations before the official campaign announcement earlier this month.
It’s often said that world-class cities have two attributes in common. They are on water and they have a higher-education presence. Sometimes that reality is overlooked. That’s no longer the case in 2015 Tampa.
Go Spartans.
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Ever notice how often guns are part of the news? Of course, that’s a rhetorical question.
And we’re not even talking about generic holdups and homicides, a controversial “Black Lives Matter” scenario or the most recent mass murder. Just page-one, above-the-fold, local news within the last fortnight with guns as overlapping constants. To wit:
*We’ve had high-profile insights into a case that is the latest test of Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law. It’s the notorious movie theater-texting confrontation that led to a patron being shot to death.
Prosecutors say the victim threw popcorn at the suspect’s face and the suspect responded by drawing his handgun and shooting him. The law allows people to use deadly force when they fear death or great bodily harm. It erases the duty to retreat from violent confrontations.
It will all be hashed out legally, starting with a hearing in January. But this is “Flori-duh,” and (misunder)stand your ground may be further validated.
*We know the Department of Environmental Protection still has plans to allow hunting in Florida’s park system–including the Hillsborough River State Park in Thonotosassa and Cockroach Bay Preserve Park near Ruskin.
It’s part of a Scott administration mantra to monetize public property, even though the parks system is intended to preserve Florida’s natural landscape, which includes habitat. It’s part of DEP’s effort to make the parks–all 161 of them–pay for themselves.
To that end, perhaps a well-publicized series of on-site, gubernatorial dunk tanks would obviate the need to turn state parks into killing fields. Moreover, they would likely become profit centers.
*And we’ve recently had a colloquium at the University of South Florida that weighed in on, among other things, a (concealed carry) bill that would allow people to carry guns on college campuses such as USF.
The most ardent opponents? Police chiefs–as well as Florida Fraternal Order of Police and the Florida Sheriff’s Association. Among the more outspoken at the USF forum: former Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor. “This whole issue about the open carry law, I really don’t get that,” she said. “My interpretation of this is that you’re going to be the first one to die when the shooting starts.”
The common theme here is a culture and a mindset. You go to a movie and you’re armed? You go on a college campus and you pack? You go to a Florida state park with a gun? We’re still the “Gunshine State.”