Tag: New College of Florida

State approves $200 million plan for New College of Florida, despite concerns about spending

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Photo via New College of Florida/Facebook

A five-year, multimillion-dollar effort to expand student enrollment and continue other major changes at New College of Florida was approved Wednesday by the state university system’s Board of Governors, despite some concerns about the spending.

The Board of Governors approved a New College strategic plan, which will allow the school to receive $15 million that was included in the state budget. The plan also puts the small liberal-arts college on pace to request more than $200 million over the next five years.

“We are supporting the spending of a lot more money to educate a very small number of students that already cost exponentially more of state taxpayer dollars to educate, and I personally have concerns about that,” said Board of Governors member Eric Silagy, who voted against the plan during a meeting at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Silagy, a former president and CEO of Florida Power & Light, said the funding is “the equivalent of USF (the University of South Florida) asking for $13 billion” over five years.

Silagy calculated that New College spent nearly $91,000 per student based on a 2023-2024 enrollment of 732 students, while the average for the state university system is about $10,000 per student.

Silagy also questioned plans to increase student-athlete enrollment at the Sarasota college to 36 percent of the student body over the next decade.

“Is this strategic plan the way that New College should go forward?” Silagy asked. “Should we be focusing on having a third of the student body be student-athletes and spending $100 million for that?”

For other board members, the answer was yes.

Board Vice Chairman Alan Levine said the issue of per-student spending isn’t new for New College, which historically has had the lowest enrollment in the university system. Levine, the chairman, president and CEO of Ballad Health, added it isn’t unusual for small schools to have a high percentage of students participating in athletics.

Board Chairman Brian Lamb said that while he wasn’t “happy” with the costs at New College, he was “supportive” of where the school is headed in student achievement.

“Getting your students through the university, performing at a high level, driving the outcoming in performance-based funding … I’m almost more focused on that,” said Lamb, a managing director with JPMorgan Chase Commercial Banking.

New College has undergone major changes during the past two years, with Gov. Ron DeSantis remaking its Board of Trustees and former state House Speaker Richard Corcoran taking over as college president. It has tried to bulk up enrollment through adding athletic programs while taking controversial steps such as deciding to eliminate the school’s gender studies program.

Corcoran told the Board of Governors he was given the responsibility of rapidly turning around New College, and “that’s what we’re doing.”

“What the Legislature said with this is that we should have a premier liberal-arts college, but we’re tired, exhausted with the last 15-year history of this college and we want massive changes,” Corcoran said.

He said that based on updated student enrollment figures, and the annual fluctuation in state money, the cost per student should be around $68,000.

The plan compares New College with what are considered the “best” liberal-arts colleges across the nation, including Washington and Lee University and the University of Richmond in Virginia and Davidson University in North Carolina.

New College offers 12 intercollegiate sports and has a goal of fielding 24 teams by 2028 and 30 by 2034, with $100 million needed to upgrade athletic facilities.

This year’s state budget provided $10 million that became immediately available for “operational enhancements” and student scholarships at New College. An additional $15 million was contingent on the approval of the five-year strategic plan and is expected to be used for temporary student housing, additional scholarships, campus security and technology updates.

The school, which has experienced heavy faculty turnover during the past couple of years, has targeted increasing enrollment from 750 students to 1,200 by 2028 while keeping a 7-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio. That could require up to 148 potential hires over the next five years, with a projected potential loss of 84 professors.

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Jim Turner, the News Service of Florida

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September 19, 2024
Students, professors report chaos as semester begins at New College of Florida | CNN

Sarasota, Florida
CNN
—

Months after what critics have decried as a conservative takeover at New College of Florida, students and professors say a sense of confusion and anxiety looms over the start of fall semester in Sarasota, Florida.

Amy Reid, a member of the school’s Board of Trustees, said course options have dwindled after nearly 40% of faculty members have resigned.

Reid said the situation is quickly becoming “untenable.”

“Just before I came to this meeting, I received word that one more faculty member in biology is leaving,” she told CNN. “That’s going to make a challenge for students to complete their areas of studies here.”

Classes are scheduled to begin on August 28, but Chai Leffler is already struggling to navigate his fourth year at the school.

Leffler is an urban studies major, but he said most of his professors have resigned.

In order to graduate, Leffler said he has asked faculty in other subject areas to sponsor his thesis.

“It’s a little messy, kind of like a dumpster fire right now in terms of administration,” Leffler said. “At the end of the day, I want to get my degree.”

Once heralded as a progressive liberal arts school, New College of Florida has found itself at the center of the state’s culture war over education.

In January, Gov. Ron DeSantis replaced six of the 13 members on the college’s Board of Trustees. New members include Christopher Rufo, who who has been at the forefront of the conservative movement against critical race theory.

See college president’s frosty reception after appointment from DeSantis-backed board members

In May, Gov. DeSantis signed a series of higher education bills on the campus of New College, aimed at ending critical race theory and curbing diversity spending in higher education.

At a press conference following the bill signing, Rufo called the changes “the most significant higher education reform in a half-century.”

The new board has since voted to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and replaced the college’s former president with Richard Corcoran, the state’s former education commissioner.

“The New College Board of Trustees is succeeding in its mission to eliminate indoctrination and re-focus higher education on its classical mission,” DeSantis said earlier this month in a press release.

The governor also pointed to concerns about enrollment numbers and test scores at the school.

“If it was a private school making those choices, then fine, I mean what are you going to do?” DeSantis said. “But this is being paid for by your tax dollars.”

Earlier this year, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said state officials wanted New College of Florida to “become Florida’s classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”

Hillsdale College is a private conservative Christian college in southern Michigan.

Some students told CNN they chose to attend New College for its progressive values and because the school offered an environment where LGBTQ+ students could freely express themselves.

Earlier this month, the Board of Trustees began the process to eliminate the school’s gender studies program. The move prompted one gender studies professor, Nicholas Clarkson, to quit.

In his resignation letter, Clarkson described Florida as “the state where learning goes to die.”

“When you start banning terms and banning fields of study and arguing that the state has the right to tell faculty what they can and can’t say in the classroom that really hampers the learning environment,” Clarkson told CNN.

New College Trustee Matthew Spalding, who is also a dean at Hillsdale College in Michigan, disagreed. At a board meeting earlier this month Spalding said the gender studies program was “more of an ideological movement than academic discipline.”

In February, Florida legislators approved $15 million in funding for New College to increase faculty recruiting and fund new scholarships. Officials at New College said recruitment efforts are ongoing and more classes could soon be offered.

Hear Florida student protesters’ message to DeSantis following statewide walkouts

Ryan Terry, a spokesperson for the college, pointed to an increase in fall enrollment as a sign the school is appealing to more students.

Terry confirmed that there are 341 incoming freshman this year compared to 277 in the fall of 2022. The school has a total enrollment of about 800 students, he said.

It’s not just administrative issues complicating the return to school, students are also struggling to find on-campus housing. New College said in a press release that it is currently housing some students in Sarasota-area hotels after a recent engineering report cited air quality concerns in the Pei residential complex.

“Out of an abundance of caution, and for the health and safety of the NCF community, Interim President Corcoran has made the decision to shutter all of the Pei dorms,” the press release said.

Terry confirmed the school is now using other dorms to house the incoming class of freshmen, while returning students are being housed in hotels.

New College senior Galen Rydzik said the move to hotels was poorly planned.

“It’s more of a challenge for the students that were told last minute because a lot of them are not being housed here,” Rydzik said.

Despite the chaos, Leffler said he is determined to try to preserve the “unique student culture” at New College. Last year, students organized their own graduation ceremony to protest the governor’s changes at the school. Leffler said he is hopeful students will be able to do the same in the spring.

“We’re willing to do what it takes to keep the culture alive at this school,” Leffler said. “We are really focusing on just the students, the administration is out of my control.”

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August 27, 2023
‘Shame on You’: Over Fiery Protests, Florida’s New College Trustees Deny 5 Tenure Bids

The meeting of New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday afternoon began with a full hour of fierce criticism from members of the community, as dozens of professors, students, and parents lambasted what they view as a hostile takeover of the institution by a Republican governor with likely presidential ambitions. It ended with the chairman of the faculty resigning from the college.

The issue eliciting the strongest protest was whether five professors who had already cleared the usual hurdles to achieve tenure would be approved by the board — what is normally a perfunctory step. But the college’s interim president, Richard Corcoran, had let it be known that he didn’t want those tenure cases to be approved, citing general upheaval at the college and its new direction. The board acceded to Corcoran’s wishes, voting down the professors one by one, each by a count of six votes to four, before adjourning to chants of “shame on you” from those assembled.

The smallest college in the state’s university system has drawn outsize attention ever since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, installed six trustees committed to reshaping its curriculum and upending its image. At a recent Republican Party breakfast in Michigan, DeSantis bragged that his chosen trustees had fired the president and “eliminated DEI and CRT.” It’s true that the previous president, Patricia Okker, was shown the door, as was Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez, the college’s top diversity officer (though what exactly it would mean to eliminate critical race theory from a college is not clear). DeSantis also said he didn’t think anyone had heard of the institution before, referring to it as “New College of Sarasota.”

Corcoran, a DeSantis ally and former Republican speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, took over as interim president in February. Since then he has spoken excitedly about New College’s future, saying that he wants it to be the No. 1 liberal-arts college in the country, to more than triple its size — currently a little under 700 students — and to add an intercollegiate-sports program. A strategic statement submitted by the administration to the board was brimming with enthusiasm but short on details. The statement said the college should “add world-class faculty,” and its plan for enrollment growth offered the following call to action: “Students. Students. Students.”

The string of firings and pronouncements has been greeted with pushback from students and faculty members. At the beginning of Wednesday’s meeting, those wishing to make a comment were each given a minute to speak. One student told board members that “the student body does not support these things and does not support you.” An alumnus who graduated from New College a half-century ago said the board was “not just hurting my college, you’re hurting our state.” Two speakers invoked the Nazis. One student screamed an expletive at Corcoran and was asked to leave the room. A mother of a New College student said she had “faith that karma will come for all of you.”

The trustees absorbed statement after statement from those worried and angry about the proposed reforms at the college. Perhaps the best-known trustee appointed by DeSantis, Christopher Rufo — who has called for conservatives to “lay siege to institutions” in order to rid them of left-wing activists — attended remotely and was visible on a projection screen behind the other board members. He hovered over the proceedings silently, except for voting “aye” in lockstep with his fellow DeSantis appointees.

The most consequential votes centered on the five professors who were up for tenure: Rebecca Black and Lin Jiang, both professors of chemistry; Nassima Neggaz, a professor of history and religion; Gerardo ToroFarmer, a professor of coastal and marine science; and Hugo Viera-Vargas, a professor of Latin American studies and music. They were each up for tenure in their fifth year, technically one year earlier than usual, though they had all checked the necessary boxes, according to their fellow faculty members and the prior president.

We’re really nervous and uncertain. There’s a feeling of distrust. They say things, but what are they going to do?

Although they were denied this year, it appears that they might be granted tenure next year, assuming that they’re willing to stick around after being publicly turned down by the board. The president of the college’s faculty union, Steven Shipman, called the situation “uncharted territory” and pointed out that, in the last decade, about a third of faculty members had been granted tenure in their fifth year. But the decision on tenure for those five professors could have a ripple effect on faculty members deciding whether they still feel comfortable at New College. “We’re really nervous and uncertain,” Shipman said in an interview. “There’s a feeling of distrust. They say things, but what are they going to do?”

For his part, Corcoran played down the significance of the tenure denials, noting that they could come up for approval again and saying that it made sense to wait and see how reform at the college worked out in the coming months. “Change is scary, but there’s nothing that anyone can constructively point to from that podium that has done anything but protect New College and strengthen it,” he said, an assertion that was met with laughter from some in attendance.

After the five professors were denied tenure, the crowd erupted into chants of “shame on you.” Just before the meeting was adjourned, Matthew Lepinski, a board member, faculty chairman, and associate professor of computer science, unexpectedly announced his resignation from all of those positions. Lepinski has been at New College since 2015. “I’m very concerned about the direction that this board is going and the destabilization of the academic program,” he said. “So I wish you the best of luck, but this is my last board meeting. I’m leaving the college.” He then stood up and walked out of the room.

Tom Bartlett

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April 26, 2023
DeSantis Asked Florida Universities to Detail Their Diversity Spending. Here’s How They Answered.

In late December, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office asked Florida’s public colleges and universities to detail their spending on diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory, sending institutions into a hurried accounting of programs and classes that might qualify. Now the numbers have been submitted. Among the four-year universities, all reported amounts for those activities that came to 1 percent or less of their budgets.

Through a public-records request, The Chronicle obtained data that the State University System of Florida sent to the Republican governor’s office. They include activities at the 12 public, four-year universities in Florida. They list individual programs, offices, and courses, and the staffing and funding for each. Examples ranged from entire diversity offices to small student programs, like a “Friendsgiving” for international students. Efforts aimed at increasing the diversity of the faculty or the student body were common.

DeSantis’s request represented the latest escalation in the governor’s campaign against what he sees as liberal bias in higher education. He recently sent a request for information to the universities on students seeking gender-affirming health care. Earlier this month, he announced a new slate of trustees at New College of Florida as part of an effort to transform the system’s small liberal-arts college into the “Hillsdale of the South.”

The governor’s diversity-funding request alarmed some Florida faculty members who view DeSantis as a hostile actor bent on restricting instruction related to race on college campuses through his championing of HB 7, known as the “Stop WOKE” Act. Amanda J. Phalin, chair of the University of Florida’s Faculty Senate, said in a written statement that, “in the absence of transparency,” the diversity-spending directive sends a “chilling message that anyone who engages with topics that elected officials deem controversial is not welcome in the state of Florida.”

The total amounts the universities said they had spent on diversity-related programming ranged from as little as $8,400 (as reported by Florida Polytechnic University, which enrolls about 1,500 undergraduates) to $8.7 million (reported by the University of South Florida, with a student body of around 50,000). For 10 of the 12 universities, the amounts represented a fraction of 1 percent of their estimated expenditures in 2022-23. Florida A&M, the system’s only historically Black university, reported spending about 1 percent of its budget on relevant activities, as did the University of North Florida. On average, the universities reported that three-quarters of their diversity spending came from state funds.

Exactly what programs and activities universities reported ran the gamut. Florida A&M included its Centers for Disability Access and Resources and for Environmental Equity and Justice, and did not mention any courses. The University of West Florida was more specific in its response, even reporting the $4,800 it spent on phones and office supplies to support its diversity programs and the $100 it spent on World Religion Day.

Of the two days of orientation programming, “40 minutes could be considered DEI,” Florida State University reported.

The University of Florida, the state’s flagship, reported its chief diversity officer; programs aimed at improving the diversity of students and employees in different departments; and a few programs described as fostering more-inclusive environments. It reported 10 courses out of a catalog of thousands.

The universities also reported an array of training, such as the University of Florida’s “Gators Together Diversity and Inclusion Training Program,” an elective program for employees, and the University of South Florida business college’s online certificate in “DE&I in the Workplace.” Some institutions reported student programs. Florida State University reported the “Power of We,” a student-run initiative that “fosters civil discourse.”

The chancellor of the State University System of Florida, in communicating DeSantis’s wishes to the university presidents, had also asked for lists of relevant required courses. If they reported any, the universities listed, at most, a few dozen courses. Often they sent in exact course ID numbers. The courses span many subject areas, including theater appreciation and religious intolerance in America.

The Chronicle also obtained many responses from Florida’s 28 state and community colleges. In one of them, a president expressed support for DeSantis, presaging an extraordinary joint letter a week later in which he and his colleagues pledged not to support any program that “compels belief in critical race theory.”

“Frankly, I applaud the Governor’s Office for investigating how higher education institutions spend their state appropriations,” G. Devin Stephenson, president of Northwest Florida State College, wrote in an email to Kathy Hebda, chancellor of the Florida College System, on January 11. “I believe taxpayer dollars allocated to NWFSC must be spent to maximize quality of life for all students, their families, and people of Northwest Florida.” Stephenson then angled for more money for his college, writing that its funding was “out of balance with comparable peer institutions.”

Francie Diep and Emma Pettit

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January 19, 2023