Winfred Phillips stood in front of about 100 students who wanted to have their voices heard Tuesday at UF’s Levin College of Law.
Phillips, the executive chief of staff to UF President Kent Fuchs, updated students on the president’s goal-setting task force’s progress and allowed them to provide their own input at the student town hall meeting.
The 17-member task force — which includes Phillips, Student Body President Joselin Padron-Rasines, former Student Body President Cory Yeffet and 14 UF faculty members — is responsible for gathering information from stakeholders in order to set goals and metrics for the university to accomplish in the next five to 10 years, Phillips said.
The task force is setting goals in eight different categories, which include excellence in the academic experience, operational support and research and faculty excellence, among others.
“These are not the goals,” Phillips said. “These are the things that need goals.”
Phillips said he plans to have a draft of the goals submitted within the next two weeks. They will be posted online for students to give their feedback and add suggestions.
A final report is expected to be ready for presentation to everyone on campus and the Board of Trustees by September.
Fuchs said he likes what the group has accomplished so far.
“We are setting that platform,” Fuchs said. “We are setting that trajectory. We’re setting those aspirations for the future.”
Once Phillips finished his presentation, about 30 students, from freshmen to doctoral candidates, had the opportunity to voice their concerns. Among those students were:
Denae Campanale, one of about five students who brought up the topic of preserving and improving diversity among students and faculty on campus.
Second-year law student Reina Saco and anthropology junior Van Troung, who
both discussed how they would like UF to re-evaluate its process for giving professors tenure.
Will Moor, a construction management senior who wanted to make sure UF continued to keep class sizes at a reasonable number in order to make sure students have the opportunity to build relationships with their professors and not get lost in the mix.
Padron-Rasines said she was excited about the large turnout and was appreciative that students took advantage of the opportunity to express their concerns.
“You can see that a lot of goals overlapped,” she said. “It’s just interesting to see that even though students come from different background that they had the same concerns.”
Padron-Rasines said she took down three pages of notes based on the student feedback.
“I really want student participation so that the goals reflect all the stakeholders,” she said, “not just a specific area of campus.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 7/9/15]
UF student Denae Campanale (right) addresses her concerns about diversity to Winfred Phillips, chairman of President Kent Fuchs' goal-setting task force, at the student town hall meeting on July 7, 2015, at the UF Levin College of Law.
