Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock (left) praised state Rep. Chris Sprowls and Pinellas legislators for putting “their trust in us, our USF colleagues and this community.”
Courtesy of Martha Rhine and Grace Cunningham
By Nancy McCann
The Florida Legislature has spoken: When the three campuses of the USF system are consolidated in 2020, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee will be full branch campuses.
That designation is guaranteed in 11 lines in a 65-page higher education bill that both houses approved on May 2 and sent to the governor.
The Legislature’s definition of “branch campus” matches the definition of the agency that accredits higher education institutions in the South and the language adopted by the Consolidation Task Force in its recommendations to the USF system Board of Trustees.
That means that St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee will have their own budgetary and hiring authority and their own faculty and administrative organization.
It also apparently ends efforts by USF system President Judy Genshaft and her administration to establish a governance structure that would give Tampa more authority over the smaller campuses.
The branch campus designation was not the only welcome news from Tallahassee.
Lawmakers also approved $3.5 million to support USF St. Petersburg as it moves to become an R1 – or “very high research activity” – campus.
The allocation, which Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock called “the largest state investment in our operating budget in 15 years,” will help the campus address funding gaps and needs for new programs, staff and research facilities.
Tadlock said he was “elated with the support of our legislators who put their trust in us, our USF colleagues and this community” by ensuring that St. Petersburg will operate as a full branch campus.
He praised Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, who as chairman of the House Rules Committee and House speaker-in-waiting in 2021-2022 apparently helped steer the legislation to passage.
“We still have a lot of work to do, and the tremendous support from Chairman Sprowls and other members of our delegation renews our energy and enthusiasm and provides resources needed to get that work done,” Tadlock said.
As president of the USF St. Petersburg Faculty Senate, history professor Ray Arsenault was an outspoken proponent for status as a full branch campus. In a statement, he praised legislators.
“I am hopeful that this guarantee will blunt some of the most onerous effects of consolidation,” he said. “At least we will have the chance to have some significant influence in reorganizing our campus in a manner that will preserve some measure of local autonomy and intellectual freedom.
“The spirit of USFSP, which has always stressed quality over quantity, challenging the centralizing corporatization of university life, will now live on, to the delight of our students, faculty, community supporters, and loyal alumni.” (See Arsenault’s full statement below.)
‘More than bureaucratic language’
The Legislature’s mandate means that, as branch campuses, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee will each:
- Be permanent in nature.
- Offer courses in educational programs leading to a degree, diploma, certificate or other recognized educational credential.
- Have its own faculty and administrative or supervisory organization.
- Have its own budgetary and hiring authority.
“This is more than bureaucratic language,” the Tampa Bay Times said in an editorial. “This is a big win for the St. Petersburg campus, and it should end any lingering efforts to micromanage from the main campus in Tampa.”
In recent months, Genshaft has said more than once that the best governance structure might have the two smaller campuses “somewhere in-between” a branch campus and an “instructional site.”
An instructional site is considered less prestigious than a branch campus and has less budgetary and administrative authority.
Although she told the trustees in February that “it’s fine to call them (St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee) branch campuses,” she has not embraced the list of features recommended by the Consolidation Task Force and inserted in the education bill approved by the Legislature.
Asked to respond to the legislation, Genshaft said in a statement on May 3 that she and the USF system Board of Trustees “continue to support USF St. Petersburg and USF Sarasota-Manatee moving forward as branch campuses.”
“As consolidation implementation continues,” she said, “our focus is on maintaining accreditation and strengthening our stature as a Preeminent Research University as we ensure that students are best positioned to receive a world-class education in Tampa Bay.”
The legislation did make a concession to Genshaft and Tampa professors who fear that St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee will pull down Tampa’s numbers on key performance metrics and jeopardize Tampa’s newly won designation as a preeminent state research university.
Under the legislation, the smaller campuses’ numbers will not be added to Tampa’s until 2022.
It started with Sprowls
It was Sprowls – the lawmaker whom Tadlock praised May 3 – who helped set in motion months of angst, anxiety and sometimes bitter debate on the St. Petersburg campus.
During the 2018 legislative session, Sprowls led a move to abolish the separate, long-coveted accreditation that St. Petersburg achieved in 2006 and Sarasota-Manatee in 2011 and fold them into a single, consolidated university with Tampa.
The Legislature also created a 13-member task force to hold public meetings and issue recommendations on how to implement consolidation.
That task force ultimately recommended that St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee become full branch campuses, as defined by the regional accrediting agency.
While the task force was holding a series of public meetings, however, a group of 86 professors, administrators and staff members appointed by the Tampa administration and trustees were meeting internally as a Consolidation Implementation Committee (CIC) to come up with their own recommendations.
In late January, university system spokesperson Adam Freeman said that the administrative structure of the consolidated university was an “unresolved key issue” in the CIC report.
Consistent with his statement and Genshaft’s less rigorous viewpoint on branch campuses, the consolidation implementation plan submitted by the trustees to the Board of Governors of the State University System on March 13 indicated that the task force and the CIC did not agree on how the campuses should be structured.
The language in this year’s legislation ends the debate about what it means to be a branch campus, but there are still months of important decisions and fine-tuning before consolidation takes effect on July 1, 2020.
It’s already clear that profound changes will be coming to the St. Petersburg campus.
The campus is already raising its admission standards and taking steps to improve metrics like student retention and graduation rates.
Curriculum and class start times must closely match Tampa’s, and “colleges” will become less prestigious “schools” because a consolidated university can have only one college of business and one college of education.
An uneasy relationship
The branch campus legislation is the latest chapter in the long, uneasy relationship of the St. Petersburg and Tampa campuses.
St. Petersburg has labored in Tampa’s shadow since the first students enrolled here in 1965, five years after the Tampa campus opened.
For years, St. Petersburg was a tiny outpost – a cluster of buildings on 14 acres around Bayboro Harbor that served only upperclassmen and master’s candidates.
Almost all of the classes met at night. Almost all the shots were called by administrators at the rapidly growing main campus in Tampa.
As the years passed, however, St. Petersburg’s footprint and ambition grew. Faculty and administrators often bridled at the decision-making in Tampa, which retired St. Petersburg financial administrator Herman Brames once called “the guillotine that is in Tampa.”
In 2000, a Pinellas state senator led a drive to sever St. Petersburg from Tampa and make it an entirely separate school called Suncoast University.
The effort narrowly failed, but it spurred legislators and administrators on the Tampa campus to begin giving more authority to administrators and senior faculty in St. Petersburg.
That culminated in 2006, when USF St. Petersburg took a giant step forward, winning separate accreditation – a development that gave the campus a jolt of energy and started a decade of growth in admissions, academic programs and prestige.
Even with separate accreditation, the St. Petersburg campus still fell under the ultimate control of USF system President Genshaft and the system’s 13-member Board of Trustees.
That relationship has been rocky. Six times in Genshaft’s 19 years as president, she has changed the leadership of the St. Petersburg campus.
So when the Legislature voted last year to abolish St. Petersburg’s separate accreditation, some senior faculty in St. Petersburg and their allies in the Pinellas business and political communities warned that consolidation might return the campus to the unhappy days of yesteryear.
Genshaft is scheduled to retire on June 30.
‘Spirit of USFSP … will now live on’
This is the statement of Ray Arsenault, a history professor and president of the USFSP Faculty Senate.
I was very glad to hear that the legislation mandating branch campus status for USFSP and USF Sarasota-Manatee passed both houses, and may soon be law.
I am hopeful that this guarantee will blunt some of the most onerous effects of consolidation; at least we will have the chance to have some significant influence in reorganizing our campus in a manner that will preserve some measure of local autonomy and intellectual freedom.
The spirit of USFSP, which has always stressed quality over quantity, challenging the centralizing corporatization of university life, will now live on, to the delight of our students, faculty, community supporters, and loyal alumni.
USFSP has represented a model of balance within the SUS system—a campus devoted to serious research, close student-faculty interaction, and enduring community engagement—and as such it deserves respect well beyond a demeaning designation as a mere instructional site.
By voting unanimously for our branch campus status, the legislature has wisely expressed faith in our capacity to sustain and enhance our special contributions to higher education in Florida.
