Bursting USF campuses look for room to grow

The Board of Trustees will look at several measures to help the university cope with a space crunch throughout the system.

By STEPHEN HEGARTY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published November 21, 2002

The University of South Florida, no longer the fledgling upstart, is looking more and more like the gangling adolescent who outgrows his clothes every few weeks.

USF St. Petersburg, with a faculty of 148, plans to hire another 54 before the start of next year's fall semester. That means the faculty will suddenly grow by more than a third.

The waterfront campus also is starting a national search for three new deans, who should be in place by the fall.

The Sarasota-Manatee campus is looking to double its enrollment in the next five years, and is moving ahead with plans to build on a 28-acre parcel near its current home.

USF Lakeland is looking to acquire 300 or so acres for its future home.

On the main campus in Tampa, student residences are going up soon, as is a $15-million athletics facility.

"Things are booming around here," said Carl Carlucci, USF executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Today the USF Board of Trustees meets in Lakeland and is expected to approve several measures that will help the university keep up with growth on its branch campuses and the main campus in Tampa.

USF is not unique in its growth spurt. But USF is at a distinct disadvantage in keeping up with that growth. Analysis of projected classroom and lab needs at Florida universities shows that USF is farther behind than most in meeting that need. USF has the space to meet 59 percent of its need in the next five years. By comparison, the University of Florida has the space to meet 89 percent of its need. The University of Central Florida can meet 68 percent of its need.

What that means is that USF has a lot of work to do just to keep up with itself.

"These growth issues are exhilarating, but they're also exhausting," said John Collins, executive director for campus advancement at USF St. Petersburg.

The St. Petersburg campus expects to host 200 or so job applicants over the next few months as it bolsters its faculty. That doesn't include the search for deans of the colleges of arts and science, education and business, nor the new associate vice presidents.

"For us it's sort of an unprecedented situation -- growing so fast," said Winston Bridges, associate vice president at USF St. Petersburg. "We're happy to have the problem, but now we have to figure out where everyone is going to go."

USF St. Petersburg will solve some of its space-crunch problems with modular structures -- a temporary remedy that other campuses are resorting to. The campus already has four modular structures of 7,000 square feet on the east end of campus. It houses the college of education. By May, the university plans to add more than 17,000 square feet of modular space on the west side of campus.

For both Lakeland and Sarasota-Manatee, the Board of Trustees is expected to approve measures that will enable them to move forward with expansion plans.

"It's difficult to know how quickly our campus will grow," said Bernard Mackey, associate vice president of campus planning and development for Lakeland. "But we're expecting quite a bit."

The Lakeland campus is just getting the ball rolling with its expansion plans. The Board of Trustees is expected to give the campus the go-ahead to explore ways of acquiring -- ideally through a donation -- 300 acres for a new campus.

Said Mackey: "Three hundred acres is our beginning target. But you know we'd consider 600 acres."

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