Pictured Above: In its marketing, the newly consolidated university touts itself as “One University, Geographically Distributed,” and “one of the nation’s premier research universities.”
Courtesy to the University of South Florida
By Crow’s Nest Staff
When classes begin today, the St. Petersburg campus will embark on what may be the most challenging year in its 55-year history.
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on in Florida, the compact campus alongside Bayboro Harbor may seem more like a ghost town than a bustling mecca of higher education.
And since St. Petersburg was stripped of its independent accreditation on July 1, much of its authority – and some of its identity and traditions – has been subsumed by the huge Tampa campus 35 miles away.
Since it opened as a tiny satellite of Tampa in 1965, the St. Petersburg campus has faced challenges aplenty.
Consider just the last two decades: A legislative attempt in 2000 to sever the campus from USF and make it an independent university, which fell just a few votes short. Three major hurricanes that hit central Florida in 2004. The surprise ousters of well-regarded campus leaders Bill Heller in 2002 and Sophia Wisniewska in 2017. Then the stunning news in 2018 that the campus would lose the independent accreditation it had earned 12 years before.
But nothing compares to the hurdles that await in 2020-2021, says somebody who should know – Joan “Sudsy” Tschiderer.
“We’ve had challenges in our history, but they were not over such a broad spectrum at one time,” said Tschiderer, who arrived as a student in 1969, founded the The Crow’s Nest (a one-page flyer called the Bay Campus Bulletin) that fall and became the longest-serving full-time staff member in the university’s history. She still works part time and audits classes.
“In short, 2020 is nothing like anything we’ve seen before,” she said.
The huge challenges begin with the coronavirus pandemic, the country’s worst public health crisis since the flu of 1918-1919, which killed 675,000 Americans.
Like many colleges and universities, USF went to remote-only classes in March after the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 had become a pandemic. As the lockdown continued over the summer and Florida became an epicenter of disease and death, the state and USF administration readied options for the fall semester.
The USF faculty union and its state affiliate, United Faculty of Faculty, called on the university system to begin the year with only online courses.
“Faculty statewide have spoken out loudly and clearly that it is not safe to open our universities next month,” wrote education professor Arthur Shapiro, the president of USF’s union. “Statistics indicate that hundreds if not thousands of students, faculty, staff and administration may sicken and die should our campuses reopen.”
But USF decided to push ahead with what President Steve Currall calls “a gradual return to campus in a controlled and careful way.”
In St. Petersburg, 61.8 percent of this fall’s classes will be 100 percent online, according to Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock, while 14.9 percent will be mostly face-to-face, 15.9 percent will be a hybrid (50 to 79 percent online), and 7.5 percent will be primarily (80-99 percent) online.
The campus’ new residence hall, Osprey Suites, has opened, but with about 180 residents (instead of the 375 it was designed to hold), and the Pelican Apartments (formerly called Residence Hall One) will have about 212 residents (instead of 340), according to Susan Kimbrough, the campus’ director of housing and residential education.
Ibis Hall, the dormitory inside the University Student Center that is designed to hold 201 residents, will only be used “for isolation spaces as needed,” she said.
If USF has to return to online-only classes during the year, the residence halls will remain open under strict safety guidelines. But if their residents decide to leave campus, they will still be responsible for the full cost of housing, which ranges from $5,844 to $11,985 per year, according to the campus housing website.
Meanwhile, many campus activities will be curtailed, eliminated or – like the annual Tampa Bay Times Festival of Reading – moved online.
The students, faculty and staff who come to campus will have to follow rigorous safety rules that go beyond the now-familiar mantra of mandatory masks, social distancing, frequent hand washing and disinfecting work spaces.
Everyone is required to complete a return-to-campus COVID assessment, take an online training course and – starting today – undergo an online daily symptom check in order to get a digital campus pass.
A COVID testing site will be open every Wednesday – by appointment only – outside the Student Life Center, with the cost “100% covered by health insurance,” according to the university. There will be random testing as well.
The university also has issued a lengthy list of guidelines for students and faculty, including tips on teaching with face masks. A sample: speak louder and “project from the diaphragm,” “exaggerate your facial expressions,” and “rephrase instead of repeating” if students appear lost.
“There will be zero tolerance and serious consequences for individuals who don’t comply with our expected behaviors and who jeopardize the health of others,” Currall said in a message to students. “We’re all in this together.”
As of Aug. 20, the university has had more than 220 reported COVID-19 cases among students, faculty and staff since mid-March. More than 200 of the cases were at the Tampa campus or USF Health.
An awkward time
Around the country, the pandemic comes at an awkward time for both institutions of higher learning and their students.
Some of the nation’s 5,000 schools were already struggling financially, with Moody’s Investors Service estimating that 30 percent were running operating deficits, according to The New York Times.
Now, they face additional expenses as they adjust to online learning and buy mountains of virus safety equipment while many traditional revenue sources, like athletics, dormitories, bookstores and study abroad programs, decline or disappear.
Almost every day, schools that had planned to fully or partly reopen have switched gears, announcing that most classes this fall will be fully or mostly online.
Last week, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sent students home just 10 days after reopening; North Carolina State University in Raleigh switched to fully online instruction (but allowed students to remain in residence halls); and Michigan State University, which was scheduled to open Sept. 2, announced that all undergraduates will be learning remotely instead.
Notre Dame and the University of Pittsburgh were among the schools that switched to online-only for several weeks. Their administrations blamed reckless student behavior for spikes in COVID cases, but some students pointed to poor planning by college officials.
“Don’t make us write obituaries,” a student newspaper that serves Notre Dame and two nearby schools declared in an editorial on Aug. 21.
The Chronicle of Higher Education and Davidson College’s Crisis Initiative project are tracking the reopening plans of nearly 3,000 schools.
According to this project, as of Aug. 22, 2.5 percent were planning fully in-person instruction; 20 percent, primarily in-person; 6 percent, fully online; 27 percent, primarily online; and 15 percent, a hybrid approach. Thirty percent had not made an announcement or had not listed a mode of instruction.
The financial fallout from COVID will apparently mean big budget cuts for Florida’s public universities.
The state board that oversees them was required to submit a proposed budget reduction of 8.5 percent for the fiscal year that began July 1, with scenarios of deeper cuts of up to 15 percent over the next two years.
The Legislature is expected to meet in special session – after the Nov. 3 general election – to address an estimated shortfall of $5.4 billion in the state budget over the next two years, according to the Miami Herald.
If colleges are struggling financially, so are students and their parents, who were already grappling with the high cost of a college degree long before COVID-19 hit.
Now, thousands of students around the country are signing petitions contending they are not getting their money’s worth and seeking reductions in tuition and fees and more financial aid.
Some, like USF student Jarrett Lafleur, have filed lawsuits against their schools. In his suit, filed July 21 in federal district court in Tampa, the mechanical engineering major contends that he was deprived of the full benefits of an in-person education.
Because USF did not lower the cost of tuition and fees for online education, it amounts to a breach of contract, Lafleur’s attorney, Joseph Brown, told the Tampa Bay Times.
The changes of consolidation
The students who have returned to the St. Petersburg campus will find things a lot different this year because of consolidation.
Gone are the standalone Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Business and Education and their deans.
Those colleges have turned into schools with less lofty titles (the Kate Tiedemann College of Business is now the Kate Tiedemann School of Business and Finance and the College of Education is now the School of Innovation), and their leaders have become campus or associate deans who report to Tampa, not the regional chancellor in St. Petersburg.
Gone is the Student Government structure that helped guide student activities for decades.
Instead of a president, vice president, 20-member senate and supreme court, St. Petersburg has a governor, lieutenant governor, a circuit court for local matters and a six-member Campus Council (which is vacant and awaiting a special election this fall). Much of the authority has passed to a system-wide Student Government that is based in Tampa and dominated by Tampa students.
Gone is the St. Petersburg Faculty Senate, which fiercely championed the campus during the long, contentious months of planning for consolidation.
And gone is the cherished independence that St. Petersburg had enjoyed since gaining separate accreditation in 2006, a development that triggered a surge in growth and swagger in the years that followed.
The Legislature voted in 2018 to abolish the separate accreditation of the St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses, effective this summer, and roll them into a single accreditation with Tampa – an architecture that administrators call “OneUSF.”
Later in 2018, USF Tampa became the third public university, after the University of Florida and Florida State, to be designated a “preeminent state research university.”
That designation brings prestige and extra state funding, and legislators said the smaller campuses would get both under consolidation.
St. Petersburg did get an extra $6.5 million in “operational support” from the Legislature that is being spread over the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 fiscal years.
Although the university administration has produced reams of plans and paperwork on consolidation, the process remains a work in progress. And while the shakedown cruise continues, St. Petersburg is already feeling the impact of consolidation.
The St. Petersburg campus also began rapidly raising its admission requirements two years ago to match Tampa’s and comply with the conditions of consolidation.
That led to dramatic plunges in the number of first-time-in-college applications and enrollment, including the number of minority students.
USF administrators call the declines an anticipated consequence of consolidation and predict that the numbers will rebound as the admissions process is refined.
But others are worried. History professor Ray Arsenault, who was president of the now-defunct St. Petersburg Faculty Senate, said last year that the numbers “look catastrophic,” another tear in the fabric that has made the campus distinctive.
In fact, consolidation is already changing the mission and feel of the campus.
For decades, it was a school that embraced non-traditional and minority students, especially students from Pinellas County.
If those students had borderline high school scores, wanted to experiment and change majors, and take longer to earn their degrees, that was fine.
Remaining preeminent is a top priority of the USF Board of Trustees and administration, and some have fretted that St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee will pull down the metrics and jeopardize the consolidated university’s standing.
A new president
Preeminence was a particular passion of longtime USF system President Judy Genshaft, an often controversial figure in St. Petersburg who changed the leadership of the campus six times in her 19-year tenure.
During the rushed, helter-skelter planning for consolidation, Genshaft repeatedly declined to embrace St. Petersburg’s wish to become a full branch campus as defined by the regional accrediting agency, with its own budgetary and hiring authority – not a less prestigious instructional site. Her stance rankled many on campus and their allies in Pinellas County government and business circles.
Genshaft retired effective July 1, 2019, and the challenge of completing consolidation fell to her successor, Currall.
Currall has gotten positive coverage in the news sections of the region’s daily newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times, including a glowing profile marking his first year at the helm.
But on the St. Petersburg campus, there are reasons to be wary.
Shortly after Currall took office, he assured St. Petersburg and its allies that the campus was “a gem and a jewel” that would continue to prosper under consolidation.
In the months that followed, however, Currall sometimes seemed to be tone deaf. He twice released tentative organizational plans that would have dramatically undercut St. Petersburg’s identity and autonomy.
In August 2019 and again in January 2020, Currall floated blueprints that would have shifted much of the authority of the regional chancellors in St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee to administrators in Tampa.
Both plans appeared to violate provisions added to state law in 2019 ensuring that St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee would become full branch campuses.
And under pressure from key lawmakers, the Times editorial board and St. Petersburg faculty leaders, Currall backtracked both times.
Tadlock and Karen Holbrook, the regional chancellor in Sarasota-Manatee, report to Currall “on all administrative matters.” Their responsibilities for their branch campuses include implementing the budgets, assessing faculty hiring needs and collaborating with college deans.
Despite widespread angst in St. Petersburg throughout consolidation planning, university leaders have been upbeat, stressing the positives.
On July 1 – the day single accreditation became official – a USF news release said that consolidation would provide “new opportunities” for students on each campus, including “additional majors, scholarships, support services and study abroad.” For faculty, the added benefits would include “interdisciplinary research collaborations and access to more community partnerships.”
Arsenault, the St. Petersburg faculty leader who repeatedly criticized the premise and particulars of consolidation, has said the final plan – while flawed – is better than earlier versions.
At least now, he said in June, “at long last there is a certain amount of clarity which will allow us to face the future of the university with our eyes open.”
A key early challenge, he has said, is to address salary equity for professors.
Nancy McCann, Sophie Ojdanic and Trevor Martindale contributed to this report, which includes information from the Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald and New York Times.
