Last week the Florida Senate Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee sent a seven-page conforming bill sponsored by Senator Evelyn Lynn to the full Budget Committee re separating USF Polytechnic from USF Tampa. That move had been pushed for months by Lake Wales Republican state Senator J.D. Alexander, until the Board of Governors agreed last year to a gradual transition, monitored by USF.
But that arrangement never seemed to mollify Alexander, and last Wednesday the bill calling on the Polk County campus to acquire its independence immediately was slipped in at the last minute — bypassing the specific requirements that the Board of Governors listed as necessary.
There's now a new development in the ongoing drama: a letter sent by the Faculty Senate at USF-Poly on Saturday that expresses "great dismay" over Lynn's proposal, specifically for assuming that separate accreditation for the campus is now going to happen.
"This measure seems to have been introduced based on two primary assumptions," USF Polytechnic Faculty Senate President Sherry Kragler writes in a letter to Lynn and other members of the Florida Senate.
"1) that USF Polytechnic faculty and staff are NOT currently working toward separate accreditation and independence in a timely manner; 2) that achieving accreditation for the new university through Valencia College/University of Florida will be faster/easier than the current process for USF Polytechnic's separate accreditation. While we cannot speak definitively to the second assumption, we, as engaged faculty members, can attest that the first assumption is erroneous."
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2012.