Pictured above: USF St. Petersburg Director of Student Life & Engagement Dwayne Isaacs has been a member of the USF community for 21 years.
Courtesy of Dwayne Isaacs
By Annalise Anderson
Director of Student Life & Engagement and devoted USF Bull Dwayne Isaacs is headed to the Swamp to pursue what he calls his “dream job.”
Come January, Isaacs will end his 21-year journey with USF to become senior director of the J. Wayne Reitz Union at the University of Florida, the top-ranking university’s hub for student life.
“Anyone who works with me knows how much I love student unions,” said Isaacs, a USF undergraduate and graduate alumnus. “It’s the living room of campus and I just thrive in that.”
In his first post-undergraduate job manning the front desk of USF Tampa’s Marshall Student Center, Isaacs discovered his passion for student life. It only grew stronger when he assisted with the construction and operation of the center’s redesign, which debuted in 2008.
USF St. Petersburg became Isaacs’s new home in 2012 when he assumed the associate director role of Student Life & Engagement, a department he was named the director of five years later.
A beneficiary of Tampa’s Student Support Services (SSS) program, Isaacs helped initiate the same program in St. Petersburg. Aside from launching the campus’s Diversity and Inclusion Conference with former Director of Office of Multicultural Affairs Tristen Johnson last year, Issacs said introducing the SSS program to St. Petersburg is “hands down” one of his proudest moments at USF.
“That was the culminating point for me,” Isaacs said. “That’s how I was able to come to USF Tampa in the first place, through the Student Support Services Program. Being able to turn around 20 years later to say that I helped to start that at another campus is so meaningful to me. I would not be here if it were not for the Student Support Services Program.”
Since joining the campus, Isaacs also helped oversee its opening of the University Student Center and led efforts to strengthen male student success, address food insecurity, support the LGBTQ+ campus community and foster inclusivity for all students of color.
Isaacs’s dedication earned him campus-wide recognition when he was named USF St. Petersburg’s Outstanding Employee of the Year in 2014 and 2016.
Isaacs credits his success at USF to the support of his colleagues and peers over the decades.
“In order for me to be successful, it has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with everyone else that I work with,” Isaacs said. “Nothing that I’ve done would have been possible without the support of the people around me. I’m going to lift people up because they’ve lifted me up. I’m only as good as the people that I’m working with.”
Though it’s unknown who will fill Isaacs’s role, he advises his future successor to “lean on” the St. Petersburg faculty and staff.
Jake Diaz, St. Petersburg regional assistant vice chancellor for student success and dean of students, announced Isaacs’s departure in an email to faculty and staff on Oct. 29.
“To say Dwayne has made an impact at USF doesn’t quite capture the broad array of ways he has left an indelible imprint on the hearts and minds of so many in the 21 years he has served our university,” Diaz wrote.
“Most of all, Dwayne’s positive energy, contagious spirit and willingness to add value to every conversation is what I will miss most.”
Featuring a larger scale operation with new construction, 24-hour study space, a 36-room hotel and other functional areas, UF’s student union is Isaacs’s dream come true.
“It’s a really large operation and kind of my dream role,” Isaacs said. “It’s not just a student union job to me. It’s my Student Life job again, but I just oversee the union component of it.”
Isaacs’s last day with USF is Dec. 17 and he begins his new role at UF on Jan. 3, 2022.
“I think because of my long tenure here, I’ll always will be a Bull,” Isaacs said. “When something matters to you, you find ways to make it a part of your life… I haven’t said goodbye to anyone, and I won’t say goodbye. I’m just moving up the road. I’ll see you around.”
