USF: A Month To Remember

Sometimes we have to be reminded of what we take for granted. The holiday season always seems like an appropriate enough time.

A little perspective, then, on the University of South Florida. Believe it or not, there’s a lot going on at USF that has absolutely nothing to do with the hyper-emotional, overbearing football coach now in the cross hairs of unflattering national publicity.

Just this month we were again reminded of the implications of having a major, research-oriented state university in our midst.

In early December USF announced that it planned to develop a 60,000-square-foot medical training center — including a hotel — and it was zeroing in on the Heights, a 48-acre parcel north of the Hillsborough River. This would be the Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation. It would target surgeons – internationally – who would come to CAMLS for training and certification in high-tech treatments. Simulators would be the basis of much of that training. It’s a niche USF has been presciently carving out.

The economic ripples, especially during a no-to-slow-growth period, could be significant. Over five years, CAMLS is projected to have a local impact in excess of $240 million. It would create an estimated 600-plus construction jobs and more than 200 permanent positions. Officials also foresee CAMLS as a recruiting magnet that could attract medical-device manufacturers, among others, to the area. It could also serve as a critical Heights’ catalyst for restaurants, retail and residential development. And it would even provide a welcome forum (bond issue) for both city and county officials to collaborate.

Sure, nothing is guaranteed, especially in this economy. But the wherewithal of a major research university to energize its surroundings, while pushing the envelope on high-tech training, is a real-world scenario — not a simulated one.

USF’s “Gatorade”

The CAMLS/Heights news, however, had to share the media spotlight with USF research that could yield the university a blockbuster payoff from its patent on an antidepressant drug. If successful, the promising drug, now known as TC-5214, has the potential to make a significant impact on the $20-billion market for antidepressants.

While trying not to sound giddy about TC-5214’s prospects, USF officials have been caught using the “G” word. Intimating that this could do for USF what Gatorade did for the University of Florida.

Currently, USF has a licensing agreement with Targacept, a North Carolina company that is working with AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical giant. AstraZeneca recently announced a $200-million investment in Targacept in a joint effort to develop, win FDA approval and market TC-5214. Even bigger investments will follow if development, regulatory and sales markers are met.

USF could strike it rich if milestone payments and royalties max out. (By policy, USF keeps 45 per cent to support its research mission.) But it won’t happen overnight. The clinical-testing process will take at least two years.

But the opportunity and the upside are, well, “Gatorade” huge. And while the USF-Targacept partnership results are not a forgone conclusion, the involvement of AstraZeneca is key. The Big Pharma big shot is not known to lavish nine-figure, initial investments on long-shots.

SRI Synergy

Then last week we were further reminded of USF’s research reach when SRI International unveiled its new, 37,000-square-foot building in downtown St. Petersburg. SRI is the erstwhile Stanford University scientific research institute – and a coup for St. Pete and the Tampa Bay Area.

SRI, which has had a local presence before debuting its new facility, specializes in finding commercial – and national security – applications for maritime research. Current projects include developing better underwater security sensors for protecting ports, such as Tampa’s. Much of SRI’s work is funded by the feds, especially the Department of Homeland Security. It’s expected that SRI will partner with USF on a number of projects.

SRI’s eastward migration was hardly happenstance. Sure, proximity to the U.S. Geological Survey and the NOAA Fisheries Services were inducements. But what put it over the top for SRI was the marine science research reputation of the University of South Florida. SRI’s director, Larry Langebrake, was formerly with USF’s Center for Ocean Technology.

And one more research ripple. Draper Laboratories, an MIT spin-off, was encouraged to set up shop in the Bay Area, in part, by the SRI/USF synergy scenario. Draper now has two facilities in this market: one at USF in Tampa where it does applied research. The other is in St. Petersburg, where it does nanotechnology-related manufacturing.

Sure, these are tough, challenging times. We look at the scary unemployment rates and the downturns in construction and tourism and a tax system seemingly in tatters – and it’s easy to focus on what’s wrong. And hearken back to the way it used to be in the go-go days of inevitable growth.

Then keep in mind the critical role that high tech and innovation must play for this area – and this country – to successfully bridge to tomorrow’s more diversified economy. Universities, because of their charge, and USF because of its niche priorities, are necessarily on the cutting edge.

No, we cannot take USF for granted. Actually, USF — from the looks of what happened this month — won’t let it happen.

Bean Counting At The County Commission

Nobody seemed pleased – more like placated – last week as Pat Bean managed to cling to the job she has held for the last six years as Hillsborough County Administrator. The one that involves more than 5,000 employees and a $3 billion budget. The one that increasingly requires sophisticated, out-of-the-box, regional thinking. The one that shouldn’t have to tolerate ham-handed approaches to budget deficits. The one that almost nobody thinks she’s good enough at.

But to paraphrase James Carville, it’s about the salary, stupid.

By any measure except bond rating, Bean, 64, was not bargaining from strength. Not when most commissioners, among others, question her priorities, judgment, vision, initiative, leadership and innovation instincts. But they also know that the timing couldn’t be worse for taxpayers having to cough up Bean’s annual salary ($226,000) if she is fired. (Accrued vacation and sick-leave time would bring her severance package to more than $400,000.) Bean’s contract expires at the end of 2011.

The blatantly begged question, even in these turbulent economic times: But can the commissioners afford to keep her? There’s never been a greater premium put on the skill set of the County Administrator.

Finally, this was obviously not about pride – or Bean would have resigned rather than face further ridicule. The Commissioners ultimately decided to treat her like an intern. By next month, she has to prepare a list of goals and measurable objectives. She also had to write: “I will no longer be Exhibit A for dysfunctional county government” 100 times on a government-issue white board. Her evaluations will be quarterly – not annually.

In the end, it seemed that square one was being revisited when it came to the public’s perception of county government. “It’s critically important for them (elected commissioners) that they set the vision,” said Bean. “It’s not my job to set the vision.”

If you’re looking for a winner here, it would probably be the push for county mayor.

Panther Pride Prevails — Again

Well done, Plant High Panthers. Almost no one thought the two-time state 4A football champs would win a third state title this year when the school moved up to 5A. That’s the same rarified class as national powerhouse Lakeland High and the top-ranked team in the COUNTRY – Ft. Lauderdale’s St. Thomas Aquinas High. But in the end – at the Florida Citrus Bowl in Orlando last Friday night – it was Plant High that was the last team standing after its 21-14 win over Aquinas-conquering Manatee High. Plant is now a bona fide national heavyweight – and ranked in the top 10 in three national prep polls, including 4th by ESPN.

And well done, Plant head coach Robert Weiner. He coaches football. He teaches English literature. He instructs in life’s lessons.

Recall what Weiner inherited in 2004. The Plant program had fallen on hard times and had won one game the year before. Plus, the grade point average was nothing to brag about. Plant has now won three state championships in four years – and last year its GPA was the county’s best.

Hardly unimportant is what happens outside the white lines and the classroom. During the season, Weiner’s players report to Dad’s Stadium on Saturdays for “Panther Pride Challenger Football.” It’s all about helping disabled kids feel special in their own “adaptive games.” During the summer, Weiner brings along a host of upcoming Panther players to the Muscular Dystrophy camp he works at as a counselor.

To be sure, that iconic Plant High water tower will soon proudly proclaim another state title, but Plant is no less a champion off the football field.

State Of Happiness

First, the good news.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Florida ranks as the third “happiest” state in the country. Right after Louisiana and Hawaii and right before Tennessee and Arizona. New Jersey, Indiana, Michigan, Connecticut and New York were the bottom five and presumably not at all happy about it. The criteria that mattered most: climate, crime rates and air quality. Apparently, those residing in sunny, outdoorsy states are happiest.

Now, even better news. Florida is hardly maxed out. The Sunshine state can still get a whole lot happier. Just imagine how happy Floridians would be if construction and tourism weren’t down; the tax system broken, hurricane insurance dicey; the state budget in deficit and unemployment at 11.5 per cent?

Hall of Defame?

Once again the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is preparing for more inductees. Once again controversy will be revisited. It’s the nature of halls of fame. Everybody is not equally worthy. Perhaps asterisks need to be affixed or shrine space reduced for the non-iconic. Otherwise you get, as with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, membership that will soon include, for example: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Platters, the Drifters, the Temptations, the Rolling Stones and — Iggy Pop and the Stooges. 

For the record, I’d also have a problem if Cooperstown, whose enshrinees include Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Henry Aaron, Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays, were to add Pat Burrell.

Sports Shorts

*FSU football coach Jimbo Fisher just inked a five-year, $9 million contract that is packed with performance incentives covering more than a dozen categories. The bonuses speak volumes about priorities. They range from $250,000 if the underachieving ‘Noles, trying to win back a disgruntled fan base, bring home a BCS title to $25,000 if the team, still reeling from an embarrassing academic scandal, achieves a 75 per cent graduation rate.

*Can’t help but feel for beleaguered USF coach Jim Leavitt. Chances are one of his inimitably emotional rants has been mischaracterized as an assault on one of his players. Even the player in question says Leavitt didn’t hit him at halftime of last month’s Louisville game.  It’s likely that the AOL Fanhouse.com story will ultimately be seen as exaggerated, context-challenged and maybe agenda-driven.

But Leavitt still loses. The incident is another reminder that his hyper-emotional, often overbearing manner is wearing thin. His sideline antics are as familiar as they are embarrassing. And who could not but wonder if USF, a program that has acquired an unflattering reputation for playing without discipline and composure when the pressure is on in Big East games, might be channeling its histrionic coach on the field. 

*By all accounts, Tampa acquitted itself well as host of last week’s NCAA Division I women’s volleyball championship. It had never been held in Florida before. The final, between Penn State and Texas, drew more than 12,000. Last year the title game in Omaha, Neb., drew 14,000. And Omaha is a v-ball Mecca — and the University of Nebraska was one of the competing teams.

And while it didn’t offer vintage, chamber of commerce weather, Tampa, which has a solid national reputation for first-class hosting of sports events, looked good while so much of the country was being buffeted by awful December weather. Word is Tampa might be in line for a return volleyball visit as the sport continues to grow itself nationally – not just out West.

Quoteworthy

  • “Since the (Straz) Center was the first major cultural project, if it had not happened or had not succeeded, one could question whether these subsequent (major downtown) projects would have happened at all.” Judy Lisi, president and CEO, Straz Center for the Performing Arts.
  • “That’s how it works as a program. The one class leaves it to the next class. The most important thing is they leave a legacy of what we’re all about, their character, their academic record and just the intangibles of their leadership and the ability to make everyone around them better. In the end, that’s why a team is more than the sum of its parts.” –Robert Weiner, Plant High School football coach.
  • “If the Legislature gives us more, we should do something with it. And we should spend as much time on the other end bragging about how we used it and the outcome we saw.” –Eric Barron, FSU’s newly named president.
  • “Some things have changed on Wall Street. But plenty hasn’t. Much of the stock-market community is still just a marketing machine that happens to sell investments the way, say, a drugstore like CVS sells pills. (Unfair? Just a little: CVS, after all, won’t deliberately sell you bad pills.)” –Brett Arends, Wall Street Journal and author of “Storm Proof Your Money.”
  • “We need to take on the way the Senate works. The filibuster, and the need for 60 votes to end debate, aren’t in the Constitution.” –Paul Krugman, New York Times.
  • “Whatever he says carries the imprimatur of the office he once held, and speaking up at critical junctures undercuts the president before his policies can take hold.” –Michael Smerconish, Philadelphia radio talk-show host and columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, on the inappropriateness of recent commentary by former Vice President Dick Cheney.
  • “Compared with, say, the prescription drug benefit from a few years ago, this (Senate health care) bill is a model of fiscal rectitude.” –David Brooks, New York Times.
  • “I certainly don’t believe that the Internet will mean the death of news. Through innovation and technology, it can endure with newfound profitability and vitality.Video didn’t kill the radio star. It created a whole new additional industry.” –Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google Inc.

AP Controversy And Quality Control

Advanced Placement — or “AP” as it’s usually called — is now a hot-button topic in local and state pedagogic circles.

AP comes from a very good place. Why not properly challenge — and accommodate — your very best students by providing an opportunity for them to take college-caliber courses? They can get a GPA spike, and they get an opportunity to test out of general education requirements in college.

But there’s an enormous problem. To get that college credit, students must pass a rigorous, standardized AP test. Alas, an alarming rate of these students are not passing it. In Florida, it’s less than half (42.9 per cent). In Hillsborough County, it’s barely a third (36 per cent).

The cause? As basic as it conceivably could be. Fundamental questions about the quality of students and the quality of their teachers.

The genesis? The AP concept was meant to challenge, stimulate and reward the most talented students. Advanced courses for advanced students. Serious college-level courses are, by definition, only for a select, high school few.

Now, in the name of opportunity, inclusiveness and state grading formulas, the AP classes are no longer as selective as they used to be. Florida, in fact, is considered, dubiously, a national leader when it comes to an egalitarian approach to a merit matter. Middle-of-the-road students, including some with border-line reading scores, are more the norm than the best and brightest in many AP classes.

Moreover, it used to be that the best teachers were culled from the ranks and granted the opportunity — and privilege — to teach AP courses. You didn’t have to be Mr. Chips to appreciate the unique challenges – and rewards – of instructing smart, motivated students and not having to teach down to the lowest common denominator.

            Now we know that with so many more AP students, the need for more AP teachers has become acute. In truth, there are not nearly enough. No surprise, then, that schools can no longer be as selective as they used to be. Consequently, a number of AP students are being taught by those who wouldn’t have been asked previously. Some might eventually become proficient with workshop help and mentors. But a whole bunch of AP students, many of them non-traditional, are not being helped by teachers struggling with the process of gaining on-the-AP-job experience.

Here’s a suggestion: quality control. The concept’s been around for a while. In this case, it can only be implemented in the context of fewer, better-prepared students being taught by the best that high school faculties can produce.

AP needs to return to its Advanced Placement roots. For too long AP has meant Agenda Progress. In the good names of opportunity and diversity, AP has become like so many other facets of contemporary, secondary-school curricula. Diluted.

Bowden And Barron

Fortunately, FSU handled the successor-to-President T.K. Wetherell issue much more adroitly than it did the successor-to-Head Coach Bobby Bowden matter. 

The latter included an awkward, “coach-in-waiting” scenario and an agonizing icon watch while the football program morphed into embarrassing mediocrity. Belatedly, the no-longer-waiting Jimbo Fisher is now firing and hiring and recruiting to send the message that the schizoid days of uncertainty are over. Finally.

As for the former, FSU has named Eric Barron, the director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the former dean of the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas, to succeed Wetherell.

In an era when major research universities too often recruit retirees or escapees from the corridors of political power, FSU chose to go with an academician-scientist with people skills. The kind that can recruit scholars and convince donors. The kind that is expected to rally FSU research and lobby the prestigious Association of American Universities for inclusion.

And Barron, 58, is an FSU graduate, class of ’73.

Go, ‘Noles. Well done.

Leavitt’s Hands-On Approach

Much is being made — and rightly so — of the accusation that USF football coach Jim Leavitt hit one of his players. That was the story that ran on AOL Fanhouse.com. The incident is alleged to have happened during halftime of the Louisville game last month. The matter is under review by the university.

However this shakes out – and for what it’s worth, I think Leavitt’s actions as characterized by Fanhouse will be seen as exaggerated, context-challenged and maybe agenda-driven – Leavitt loses.

He loses because it’s yet another reminder that those qualities – he’s passionate, hyper-emotional, intemperately enthusiastic and overbearing – that helped fast forward USF from inception to the Big East – are now liabilities. Arguably, USF has regressed the last three years and is now a perennial also-ran in its conference. Leavitt’s histrionic antics on the sideline – as well as at halftimes – are familiar, and often embarrassing, lore.

Here’s the bigger picture. By now USF shouldn’t be so dependent on transfers. Nor should it be satisfied with a reputation for not handling pressure well. Too often the team has seemed to channel its rabid coach by playing without discipline and composure. Too often it has been outcoached by those who don’t have better talent.

Jim Leavitt was the perfect person to catapult USF from nowhere to a national name. But he is not the right guy to get them to the next level: bona fide Big East contender and participant in a bowl game that doesn’t require passports.

No, I don’t think he slugged his player. This won’t be a Woody Hayes moment. More likely this was perversely vintage, hands-on Leavitt, who’s been known to head-butt players wearing helmets, trying to fire up an underperforming, special-teams player. He didn’t, unfortunately, get the Gipper-speech gene.

Make no mistake, the Bulls certainly still need fire, but without the self-defeating combustion.