Pictured Above: Glen Besterfield, the university’s dean of admissions (left), predicts the campus will have 650 first-time-in-college freshmen next summer and fall. The new “academic clusters” championed by state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, should also boost enrollment.
Courtesy of USF and Deanna Salt
By Annalise Anderson
The USF administration has a four-pronged plan to boost the St. Petersburg campus’ badly sagging enrollment to 650 first-time-in-college freshmen next summer and fall.
Glen Besterfield, the university’s dean of admissions, said he is confident that USF can dramatically improve its numbers, which have fallen from 647 in 2016 to 421 this year, according to the latest figures from the USF InfoCenter.
“I’m going to start routing students to (the) St. Pete campus,” Besterfield told the USF St. Petersburg Campus Advisory Board on Dec. 2. “I have some beautiful options in biology, marine biology, environmental sciences, blue/green business that would be coming about. I can get the 650 … I’ve just got to pull the levers at the right time come January.”
Besterfield detailed four ways to bring 650 freshmen to St. Petersburg by next summer and fall:
** Continue a campaign to encourage students to change their home campus from Tampa to St. Petersburg. The campaign, which prompted 45 students to voluntarily switch this year, will target in-state, out-of-state and international students.
** Maintain a summer change-of-campus campaign that changes admitted students’ home campus from Tampa to St. Petersburg. The campaign brought 80 enrollees to the campus this summer.
** Offer a $500 housing scholarship to incoming Latin American freshmen and make out-of-state recipients eligible for in-state tuition rates. If it weren’t for COVID-19, that would have yielded 15 to 20 students this year, Besterfield said.
** Implement a change-of-campus plan for students applying after the Jan. 1 priority deadline. This will include students applying for majors in biology, marine biology, environmental sciences, business, health sciences and psychology.
The Campus Advisory Board, seven Pinellas County residents who help oversee the St. Petersburg campus, had little reaction to Besterfield’s plan. When the board last met in October, two members expressed disappointment that the administration had few specifics on boosting enrollment.
The startling decline in enrollment has drawn the attention of the powerful Pinellas County legislators who led the move to strip USF St. Petersburg of its independent accreditation in 2018.
Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, who is now speaker of the Florida House, and Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, have signaled that they are displeased with the way USF leaders are treating St. Petersburg in the implementation of consolidation.
On Oct. 8, Sprowls and Brandes announced that USF leaders are “committed to growing enrollment” in St. Petersburg, with a goal of 650 freshmen next year.
A month later, Brandes was the driving force behind a new five-year plan by the USF administration to create five “academic” clusters designed to give the campus nationally distinctive academic offerings and improve enrollment.
At the Dec. 2 Campus Board meeting, Besterfield and Provost Ralph Wilcox emphasized that the new clusters — if adopted and funded — would drive up enrollment.
The proposed clusters are projected to eventually bring 990 new undergraduate students to St. Petersburg, which would be a 30 percent enrollment increase, and 317 new graduate students, a 76 percent increase.
The clusters will focus on environmental and oceanographic sciences and sustainability, STEM education, visual and performing arts, business and finance, and health sciences.
Wilcox presented projected costs for the clusters, with preliminary estimates for years 1 and 2 of the five-year plan.
$26.6 million would be allotted to “recurring needs” and would cover new faculty and staff investment, program operating costs, postdoctoral fellow support and new student support.
$50.9 million would cover costs of “non-recurring needs,” with $22.7 million for laboratory buildout and faculty startup costs of $28.2 million.
The new academic initiatives for St. Petersburg come at a financially fraught time for all of Florida’s 12 public universities.
Because of budget shortfalls caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the state has told each university to plan for an 8.5 percent cut ($36.7 million for USF) this fiscal year, with a deeper cut of 10 percent likely in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
But Wilcox ticked off seven potential sources of funds for St. Petersburg’s new initiatives: “strategic reinvestment” on the St. Petersburg campus, new recurring and non-recurring state funds, new tuition revenues, new local government investments, new philanthropic gifts and new public-private partnership investments.
Besterfield said admissions so far this year show lagging numbers for summer and fall FTIC admittance in 2021 because of a delay in standardized test scores amid COVID-19. He said that a number of test scores came in over Thanksgiving break and plans are to bring the number of admits up before January.
As of Dec. 2 at the St. Petersburg campus, 88 of the 181 summer 2021 applicants have been admitted and 189 of the 948 fall applicants have been admitted. Compared to last year, the total number of applicants has declined by 309 and admits by 100.
Of the fall applicants, 198 students applied for majors specific to the St. Petersburg campus, like graphic arts, forensic studies and justice, education, and mass communications. The other 750 applicants applied for majors with classes that are also offered in Tampa.
Paul Dosal, the university’s vice president of student success, introduced plans for USF’s Black Leadership Network Pathways Planning Initiative to help increase first-time-in-college enrollment among black students across all three campuses. This fall, St. Petersburg enrolled only one new black freshman.
The initiative aims to expand the pipeline of black students from Tampa Bay high schools to all USF campuses, strengthen pre-college programs and services, enhance current recruitment and marketing efforts in the area, and develop an action plan to boost black student enrollment.
It will complement St. Petersburg’s existing diversity initiatives, such as the Multicultural Organization Development program, which aims to promote an inclusive campus environment and was introduced to the campus in summer 2019 by Patricia Helton, the regional vice chancellor of student success.
Besterfield said St. Petersburg enrolled 420 FTIC students in summer and fall this year, exceeding its goal of 331 students.
But that prompted a rejoinder from Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock, who said that he never had a say in the 331 goal for his campus and, in fact, recalls the number being higher.
“I want to clarify that I did not agree to a target of 331 students.,” Tadlock said. “We did plan our budget for a more substantial number both in (2019) and in (2020) … So, I’m not sure where the target number came from … I was not part of the conversation to set that target.”
Wilcox said that the lack of communication between campuses was something to “iron out.”
“A big part of (this lack of communication) was navigating the uncertainty and, frankly, the disruption and working through to consolidated accreditation and how that impacted our lives on all campuses whether our vision was university-wide or campus-based,” Wilcox said.
