SARASOTA — Life hummed quietly on the first day of the semester at the University of South Florida’s Sarasota-Manatee campus.
In Atala Hall’s second-floor student lounge, three girls huddled around a ping-pong table helping one another fill out financial aid forms. Afternoon sun streamed through the windows, glinting off watches and wallets left behind by students playing capture-the-flag on the quad below.
People leave their stuff all the time, sophomore Victoria Simard said, pointing to the backpacks hanging lopsided off the chairs at her table. Everyone knows each other, she said.
But the roughly 2,000 undergraduates could become the last few classes to graduate from the campus. Caught in bureaucratic limbo, some, including Simard, aren’t sure what will happen to their tuition or scholarships. Hundreds of faculty may soon need to move elsewhere, and the community could lose a pathway to filling key local jobs in insurance and nursing.
In December, Gov. Ron DeSantis filed a proposal to the legislature to transfer the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus’ land, buildings and debt to New College of Florida, which sitsa mile away. New College’s 900 undergraduates already share a dorm and campus security with the USF students.
Students would not be pushed out of classrooms until they’ve had a fair chance to graduate, but no more students would be able to enroll there.
Proponents believe the entire campus and its academic programs will be seamlessly absorbed into New College, saidCharles Baumann, a former USF Sarasota-Manatee campus board member and donor who opposes the proposal.
“That’s just not right,” he said. “It’s not possible.”
USF faculty will be protected, said Scott Perry, a history professor at USF Sarasota-Manatee since 2007 and vice president of the USF faculty senate. Faculty will likely either be eventually transferred to the Tampa or St. Petersburg campuses, he said. But many live close by with young children and struggle to pay their bills.
USF Sarasota-Manatee faculty can’t promise incoming students much right now, Perry said — including that their campus won’t disappear.
“In many ways,” he said, we’re already doomed.”
A growing regional campus
USF Sarasota-Manatee started when USF faculty began teaching evening classes at local high schools in the 1970s.
New College, which initially was privately funded, merged with the school to join the State University System, and the two schools began sharing a campus.
After New College became an independent public university in 2001, USF Sarasota-Manatee moved to its current location, across from Sarasota Bradenton International Airport, in 2006. One academic building housed every program for nearly 20 years, said Karen Holbrook, the school’s former regional chancellor. It was still a commuter college.
“Many of (the students) have been people with families, with children at home,” Perry said. “Many of them were working full time, so we had a lot of night classes. We still do. Many of our students drive from Venice or North Port, which is another hour south of here.”
The campus grew under Holbrook’s leadership.
It’s now home to a six-story student center and residence hall, and a $6.5 million lab is set to open next year. The original academic building is more of an administrative building now, Holbrook said, but it also hosts a recreation center and quiet study spaces.
Last year, the state Legislature began floating a merger.
“There’s a lot of different scenarios that can still play out,” Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, said last year about the initial plan, which fizzled. “But I think the leading scenario for sure is certainly New College ruling the day.”
DeSantis has prioritized growing New College from a small liberal arts school into a larger conservative college focused on classical education. The college’s president Richard Corcoran, a former Republican house speaker, said the proposal will fix a shortage of student housing, offices and classrooms at the college.
But it could leave some locally geared programs in the lurch.
USF’s Sarasota-Manatee campus offers accredited programs that New College would not be able to immediately assume, said former USF Sarasota-Manatee campus President Laurey Stryker.
“(New College) would have to go through the process of demonstrating that they have the faculty, the resources to offer the program that meets that accreditation standard,” she said. “So it’s something that costs money. You have to have the faculty in place before you actually get the program accredited.”
Students could continue to access the programs at the Tampa or St. Petersburg USF campuses, Stryker said, but they would no longer exist locally.
New College spokesperson Jamie Miller said if the proposal is passed, New College would work with community partners to discuss the educational resources the region needs.
Holbrook said USF-Sarasota Manatee is best known for programs that support community interests. About 95% of USF Sarasota-Manatee students live in either Sarasota or Manatee counties, Perry said. Many stay in the area to work.
USF Sarasota-Manatee’s Risk Management and Insurance major was a year old and enrolled only a handful of students when Holbrook started as regional chancellor. To take advantage of the field’s demand for new professionals, Sarasota-based FCCI Insurance Group and other companies in the area partnered with the school by hiring interns.
In 2022, the Baldwin Group, an insurance company based in Tampa, donated $5 million to the school, which is housed within the Muma College of Business.
“Students go in and basically know they have a job,” said Charles Baumann, a former USF Sarasota-Manatee campus board member and donor.
In 2020, USF Sarasota-Manatee created the first Bachelor of Science in Nursing in the Suncoast region.
The campus joined forces with Sarasota Memorial Hospital and other organizations to form the Suncoast Nursing Action Coalition in 2013. The effort expanded pathways to nursing careers, said hospital spokesperson Kim Savage.
The hospital still provides training for nursing students to finish their clinical rotations through the emergency room, operating rooms, intensive care unit and other areas of the hospital, Savage said.
New College does not currently offer degrees in nursing or risk management.
“We just hope that the state will understand the importance of some of the local programs that are here,” Savage said. “Each one offers an important piece in that puzzle.”
Two schools, shared spaces
New College and USF Sarasota-Manatee’s histories have always been intertwined.
The schools share a police force, Holbrook said, and Sarasota-Manatee students used to make the trek to the New College campus to use their library.
Many New College students live in the only residence hall on Sarasota-Manatee’s campus.
When the dorm opened last year, it housed about 100 students from each school, Perry said. Holbrook said filling the rooms with New College students helped USF Sarasota-Manatee pay the bills.
“We’ve not been a residential campus,” Holbrook said. “We’ve been a community campus. This is the same thing that happened at St. Pete. When they built their first residence hall, they had to backfill it with students from Tampa.”
Now, 144 of the 200 beds in Atala Hall are used by New College students, said Miller, theNew College spokesperson.
New College students don’t pay USF fees, so they can’t participate in USF student life events or other programming, Perry said. Atala Hall functions as an extension of the New College campus and students are supported on-site by New College resident assistants, Miller said.
Simard, the sophomore, works at the fitness center. She said she’s picked up on a tension between the two student bodies, which live on different floors. Perry said the students don’t have reason to interact much other than in common areas.
DeSantis said at a recent news conference that the expansion would bolster New College’s success.
“I think for USF, the sky’s the limit,” DeSantis said. “They’ve got great momentum, but that momentum is really in Tampa Bay. It’s Tampa. That’s what I think they want to focus on. You’re going to see that there’s pretty strong agreement on that.”
USF Board of Trustees chairperson Will Weatherford said the proposal will be discussedthis legislative session, which ends March 1, and that it’s up to lawmakers, not the university.
Judith Ramos, a USF Sarasota-Manatee freshman heard about the plan over winter break. She remembers thinking: Why?
“They should invite more people instead of shoving them away,” she said. “I think this campus has so much to offer.”