About 200 community members — some in suits, some with kids and some fresh from class — packed into a ballroom at USF Sarasota-Manatee’s Atala Hall on Wednesday evening.
They had the same mission: Keeping the campus part of the University of South Florida.
Last week, the Florida House of Representatives passed a bill that would transfer theUSF Sarasota-Manatee campus’ land, buildings and debt to New College of Florida by July 1.
The House’s proposed budget includes a provision that would allocate$23 million of USF’s state funding to New College. The Senate’s budget bills do not include similar language, and Will Weatherford, the chairperson of USF’s board of trustees, posted on X that there is “a zero percent change that this will happen.”
The Senate and Gov. Ron DeSantis would need to approve both bills before they become law.
In a series of panels organized by Save USFSM, a group dedicated to keeping the campus part of USF, local employers spoke about their ties to the campus and former students explained why it was exactly what they needed. Former legislator Lisa Carlton encouraged attendees to call their senators.
“This is way not over,” she said.
At USF Sarasota-Manatee, 95% of graduating students live in the area, said campus board member Anila Jain.
Tracy O’Neill, managing partner of the accounting firm Kerkering Barberio, said she is a USF Sarasota-Manatee alum who grew up in the area. It’s difficult to recruit students from across the country to come to the Sarasota region, she said.
“We hire a lot of accountants that go on to become CPAs, and 30% of our staff are USF alums. Most are graduates from this campus,” she said. “Our industry is very difficult to recruit in and to lose that resource that’s right in our backyard is a significant impact to what we do.”
The same is true of HCA Blake Hospital, chief nursing officer Pariss Clark said. The hospital hires most of the USF Sarasota-Manatee nursing students that do clinical rotations at the hospital, she said.
About 20% of the workforce at the Sarasota accounting firm Carr, Riggs & Ingram is made up of USF Sarasota-Manatee graduates, partner Garrett Shinn said.
If the plan goes through, the firm will need to focus recruiting efforts elsewhere and potentially drop clients, he said. Shinn said it’ll also be difficult to recruit new companies to the area without a local university that provides STEM courses.
Campus board member Ernie Withers said he is worried about transportation burden on future students who would need to travel to Tampa or St. Petersburg if they want to go to USF.
Alum Kiarra Louis, a manager at the Patterson Foundation, a Sarasota philanthropic organization, said a huge draw of the Sarasota-Manatee campus was how close she would be to her family and social network.
Alumna Angela Perez Cruz agreed. She is a Cuban immigrant who has been in Sarasota since she came to the United States, and has volunteered locally since high school. USF Sarasota-Manatee was a no-brainer for her undergraduate education, she said.
“I really love this community,” she said. “I love Sarasota, and even after graduating from medical school, I can see myself working as a doctor in Sarasota.”
Students at New College are listening to what is going on, too, New College freshman Luci Pimienta saidfrom the audience.
“We stand with you guys,” Pimienta said to loud applause.
Karen Holbrook, the campus’ former regional chancellor, highlighted the campus’ nursing and insurance programs, and mentioned cultural events, including a symposium on Ukraine and a program by the Climate Adaptation Center. She said those events serve the community, not just the students.
Earlier on Wednesday afternoon, New College released an op-ed by David Rohrbacher, the college’s provost and vice president of academic affairs. He wrote that if the transfer goes through, New College will integrate the campus into its “academic vision.”
This would include sustaining the partnerships USF Sarasota-Manatee has built with local businesses and creating a new Bachelor of Arts in Hospitality program, Rohrbacher said.
“Sarasota-Manatee is one of the most hospitality-dense regions in the country, and Florida as a whole runs on this industry,” Rohrbacher wrote. “It makes sense that hospitality education should be strong here, and New College of Florida has all the tools to make that happen.”
At the end of the forum, attendees scanned a QR code on the screen to share their comments about USF Sarasota-Manatee’s importance to the community. Organizers said the responses will be shared with legislators and the university.
Carlton asked attendees to look around the room during her closing comments. There was a mix of people with doctoral degrees, people who are first-generation students, others who are parents, she said.
“That is what this campus is designed for,” she said. “Its mission was to serve this community and provide access to a better life, and that’s what it has done for the last 30-plus years.”
Lucy Marques is a reporter covering education as a member of the Tampa Bay Times Education Hub. You can contribute to the hub through our journalism fund by clicking here.
