In spring 2018, Governor Rick Scott signed the Florida Excellence in Higher Education Act of 2018. This state law requires each of the campuses of the USF system – Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota-Manatee – to come together under one accreditation.
As consolidation chugs slowly on, the faculty of the three campuses are charged with the colossal effort of interweaving major and minor programs, removing discrepancies in curriculum and merging the duplicated efforts of many campuses into one.
So is the case for the undergraduate leadership programs. The USF Office of Corporate Training (Tampa campus) and the Bishop Center for Ethical Leadership (St. Petersburg campus), and their sister program in Sarasota are in the process of merging into one program and into their new home on the St. Petersburg campus, housed alongside the Open Partnership Education Network (OPEN).
A 2,000 pound pilot whale, Jonah was the “star attraction” at the Aquatarium, the $3.5 million marine park that opened on St. Petersburg Beach in the summer of 1964. Flipper, a series of hit family movies, would soon be all the rage as a Saturday night TV series, and tourists would surely pay good money to see bottlenose dolphins leaping through hoops, tossing beach balls and towing little dogs around on little surfboards. Why not a whale?
Jonah, 16 feet from snout to tail, was netted by a Palos Verdes Marineland crew and sold to the fledgling park across the continent. For two years, the Pacific short-finned pilot whale – a deep-water species not made for swimming in endless circles inside a circular tank 26 feet deep – rocketed out of the water on command, snatching a frozen smelt from the outstretched hand of an employee. That was his “trick,” and he did it a dozen times a day.
- Nielsen Holdings has named David Kenny as its new CEO, effective Dec. 3.
Kenny will succeed Mitch Barnes, who is stepping down as CEO at Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN), a market research and data analytics firm with a major office in Oldsmar.
- Greenleaf Capital, a subsidiary of HCI Group Inc., has put its property on John’s Pass on the market. The asking price for the 10-acre waterfront property is $40 million, HCI (NYSE: HCI), a Tampa-based property and casualty insurance company, said in a filing with the SEC.
- Nearly 100 jobs could be coming to Pinellas County in two corporate expansions. The Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners approved applications for tax incentives for the two unidentified firms at its meeting Tuesday.
After living in New Hampshire, New York and Tampa Bay, Joelle Slaybe combines her favorite elements of her favorite cities into the concepts for her jewelry. Slaybe grew up in a family of jewelers, recognizing and developing her passions from a young age. She now puts these to use with Peach + Pair, an online jewelry shop devoted to classic and minimalist designs.
We’ve all seen that blue envelope in the mailbox, loaded with money-saving coupons (and $100 for some lucky recipients) from our favorite local businesses. But you may not know Valpak envelopes reach 37 million households nationwide each month plus another 110 million online users.
Together with the developer Cameron Decker, she has developed a tool to promote better local reporting. It is Shoeleather, a database aimed at connecting journalists outside the nation’s media hubs — New York City, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco — with editors across the country for the purpose of reporting on their home regions.
History shows that we tend to choose political and business leaders who are stoic, predictable, and unflinching, but research indicates that the leadership we need is characterized by the opposite: creativity and flexibility.
