“FAU by the Numbers”
Good afternoon, and thank you so much for inviting me to be here with you today. I greatly appreciate the very warm welcome that you’ve given me as I begin my service as the sixth president of Florida Atlantic University. This is an exciting time for me, and a time that’s filled with challenge and opportunity for the University, for Palm Beach County and for all of Florida.
In a very real sense, FAU and Palm Beach County have grown up together, and both will feel the full power of their maturity as this 21st century progresses. As many of you know, FAU began life on an abandoned World War Two airfield in Boca Raton in 1964, three years after the Florida Legislature approved funding to create the state’s fifth public university and the first to be established south of Tampa. On a humid September day in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Cleo, FAU opened its doors to a founding student body of 867 upper-division students.
Today I’d like to fast-forward a half-century and give you a wide-angle view of how FAU looks in 2010 – a report that I’m calling “FAU by the Numbers.” Last month, as the fall semester got under way, we welcomed the largest student body in FAU’s history – 28,333 undergraduate and graduate students, ranging from first-time-in-college freshmen to those pursuing post-doctoral studies. They’re taking classes on the University’s seven campuses and sites, which stretch more than 100 miles along Florida’s Atlantic coastline from Dania Beach to Fort Pierce.
Our two residential campuses are both located in Palm Beach County – in Boca Raton and Jupiter. These campuses are rapidly taking on a traditional collegiate character and, to a greater and greater degree, they’re helping to make FAU a university of first-choice for incoming freshmen. In recent years, we’ve been dealing with a tidal wave of housing applications, and this fall our student residence facilities filled up well before the first day of classes. Believe me when I tell you that I’m not talking about the tiny dorm rooms that some of us remember from our own college days. FAU students on the Boca Raton and Jupiter campuses are housed in spacious suites that have many of the amenities of luxury apartments, including 24-hour front-desk service, cable TV and unlimited access to the Internet. Together our two residential campuses can accommodate just over 2,700 students, and that number will increase by more than 1,200 when a new mixed-use complex called Innovation Village opens on the Boca campus next year.
Currently, FAU’s 10 colleges are offering more than 170 degree programs to our growing student body, which I’m proud to tell you is the most diverse in Florida’s State University System. Forty-six percent of our students are classified as African-American, Hispanic, Native American, Asian and international. This level of diversity enriches our University community – and the greater community – beyond measure and makes FAU a model for other universities nationwide. People from all 50 states and more than 130 countries study, live and work at FAU. Last year, nearly $112 million was awarded to our students through scholarships, grants, loans and the work-study program.
With 4,499 employees working in four counties, FAU ranks among this region’s largest and most stable employers. More than 1,600 of those employees are members of FAU’s world-class faculty, who have been known for their great skill and dedication in serving students from the very beginning of the University’s history. This fall, we were able to add 69 outstanding scholars to the faculty. The majority of them came to us with doctoral degrees, some from exceptionally prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Cornell and Stanford.
The University’s alumni base has grown to more than 110,000 men and women, with the majority of them staying right here in South Florida after graduation to work, raise their families and make their communities better places to live. Virtually all major employers in this area, in both the private and public sectors, have FAU graduates on the payroll, and I venture to say that a substantial number of you in the audience this afternoon earned your degrees at FAU.
FAU is an exceptionally strong engine of economic growth, with a regional economic impact of more than $1.1 billion annually. That figure comes from a study that’s several years old. Another study is now under way, and we feel certain it will show that the University’s impact on the region’s economy is now even greater than that.
Right now, $240 million worth of “green” construction is taking place on FAU’s campuses, and those projects are providing employment for about 6,000 outside workers, either directly or indirectly – and that’s REALLY good news for people who are trying to make a living in construction right now!
It might interest you to know that the estimated value of FAU’s physical facilities – including buildings, furnishings and equipment on all campuses – exceeds three-quarters of a billion dollars. Among the major new facilities that are about to open on the Boca Raton campus is a state-of-the-art home for our College of Engineering and Computer Science. This could well be the most important building on any university campus in Florida because it’s a living laboratory of the highest and best sustainability practices. In fact, it’s the first academic building in Florida that’s designed to meet the highest Platinum LEED standard, and it includes such features as a rainwater recycling system, solar panels and a garden of native plants on the roof. One of the purposes of this building is to serve as a model of best practices for other new construction in our area and around the state.
Another very interesting facility that’s about to come on line is the Culture and Society Building, which will include four all-digital motion picture theatres. By day FAU’s film students will learn the art of making movies in the most modern image and sound environment, and by night members of the public will be able to enjoy first-run independent, art and foreign films in a comfortable, intimate setting. This unique addition to campus will make FAU the only university in the country to have a completely digital, four-screen motion picture theater complex available for both educational and entertainment uses.
And speaking of additions to campus, I’m sure you’re all aware of the fact that last week the statewide Board of Governors unanimously approved the financial plan for FAU’s 30,000-seat football stadium. A lot of people have been waiting a very long time for this project to move forward, and the big day has finally come! We expect to break ground for the stadium on October 15th and to play the first game on our home turf at the start of the 2011 season. Whether you’re a football fan or not – and with Coach Schnellenberger sitting right here, we’re ALL football fans, right? – this $64 million project will give a big shot in the arm to Palm Beach County’s economy. During the peak construction period, about 200 workers will be employed on-site. For each one of those on-site jobs, about five off-site support jobs will be created, increasing the total number of people employed to about 1,200.
FAU is maturing very rapidly in a wide variety of ways, including as a center of cutting-edge research that’s attracting funding from many sources. During the 2009-2010 fiscal year, FAU’s dedicated faculty researchers received $42 million in sponsored research awards, an achievement that stands as a tribute to the high importance of their work during these lean economic times.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching now classifies FAU as a “High Research Activity” university, and that’s a very prestigious designation.
Our Office for Technology Transfer has been working to move inventions and discoveries from the University’s laboratories to the public marketplace since 1991.
Every year, FAU researchers generate dozens of new ideas for commercialization, resulting in a continual flow of patent applications and issued patents. Our technologies have been licensed to many businesses, from Fortune 500 corporations to small companies, including recent start-ups. The University currently holds 136 patents on innovations ranging from 3D television and imaging technology to therapies to prevent skin cancer.
For decades, visionaries in South Florida have nurtured the dream of making this area a center of biomedical discovery. As we all know, that vision is well on the way to becoming reality as the Max Planck Society, the Scripps Research Institute and the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies have moved ahead with plans to establish major research centers here. They’re all working in close partnership with FAU, and two of the three – Max Planck and Scripps – are permanently housed on our Jupiter campus.
FAU researchers are also immersed in the effort to find environmentally safe sources of energy. Recently the University became the home of a major new national research center, based in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Last month the U.S. Department of Energy announced the selection of our Center for Ocean Energy Technology as the third national research center focused on the development of ways to tap the power of the Earth’s oceans as a source of clean, affordable energy. Our center, designated the Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center, joins research facilities in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii that are working toward the same goal.
Also, we learned very recently that FAU is among the Florida universities that have been selected to receive part of a $10 million block grant from British Petroleum to conduct research on the effects of the Gulf oil spill. Our researchers will focus on issues that include the extent of the spread of crude oil and dispersant in the Gulf and the effects of these agents on marine life.
No discussion of FAU’s growth as a center of research would be complete without a report on the University’s research and development parks in Boca Raton and Deerfield Beach. The mission of the parks is to serve as a bridge between FAU and companies that can benefit from a close association with a research university. The parks currently have 28 tenants, most of them in the information technology and software industries. Additionally, the park on the Boca Raton campus is home to the only Technology Incubator in South Florida. At any given time, the incubator is hosting 25 to 30 start-up companies and helping them get off the ground. So far, FAU’s research parks have generated about 600 jobs at an average salary of $75,000.
A lot more is happening at FAU, but my time is limited today, so I’ll close by simply saying, “Stay tuned.” Many more exciting things are on the horizon! It’s easy to see why I’m so enthusiastic about becoming the sixth president of Florida Atlantic University and leading it into a future that holds such tremendous promise. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who’s here today for your continuing interest in and support of FAU. If you haven’t visited your local FAU campus in a while, I urge you to drop by to see an art exhibition, attend a lecture or just stroll around. FAU is your university, and you’ll always be welcome there!
A special concert called “Waves of Blue” is being planned to kick off my inauguration week, and I hope that you’ll be able to come to that event and bring your whole family. It will take place on the Boca Raton campus on Sunday, Oct. 24, at 3 p.m. This will be a really marvelous concert that will showcase some wonderful performers, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. All proceeds will benefit the President’s Scholarship Challenge, which is my first outreach project at FAU. If you’d like to look into attending the concert, go to www.fauevents.com.
Strong partnerships hold the key to the future, and I assure you that FAU will continue to work hard to be a productive member of the economic development team. FAU is here to serve you and the entire community, to do its part to bring clean industry to this area and to educate the workforce that will help new ventures succeed here and contribute to a steadily increasing quality of life. I look forward to working with you as together we take FAU and Palm Beach County into the best of all tomorrows.
Thank you very much.
