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Week of January 10, 2023

I’m delighted to welcome our students, faculty and staff back to campus for the start of spring classes and another excellent semester at USF. I hope you all had a restful winter break and a well-deserved opportunity to relax and recharge.

The beginning of a new year can be filled with new opportunities and exciting possibilities. There is plenty to look forward to in the months ahead as we prepare to open several new world-class facilities and host exciting programs and other activities for our university community.



I hope to see many of you at next week’s Inauguration activities, as we come together to celebrate our institution and look ahead to the future. We will be hosting events across all three USF campuses to mark the occasion, and I hope you will join me in recognizing one of higher education’s most time-honored traditions.  

Together, we will ensure that USF remains a university on the rise.

Updates

• I'm pleased to share that we're moving forward in the search for our next provost. In case you missed it, our search committee has selected a fifth candidate to advance to the next stage in the process: Prasant Mohapatra. The town hall meetings with the next candidate begin today and more information is available here. Your engagement in the process is important and I hope you can continue to participate.  

• As we prepare to celebrate MLK Commemorative Week at USF, I hope you’ll join me in reflecting on the enormous contributions of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his dedication to advocating for civil rights in America. The USF community will honor Rev. King through a series of programs and events, which you can learn more about here. We are also very fortunate to have the MLK Plaza so prominently featured on our Tampa campus as a permanent reminder of Rev. King’s remarkable legacy. If you aren’t familiar with the history and features of USF’s MLK Plaza, please take a few minutes to read about it here.

• I enjoyed my conversations last week with staff members from several offices across USF’s Student Success unit, including Financial Aid, Admissions, Academic Advocacy, Career Services, the Student Ombuds Office and the Registrar’s Office. The employees serving on these teams are making a tremendous difference by providing front-line support and service to our students, and I greatly appreciate their efforts to positively impact the student experience at USF. 

• At Florida’s Women in Energy Leadership Forum, I was honored to host a fireside chat with some of our state’s top business leaders. We explored women’s representation in leadership positions and how their unique perspectives can provide significant value to the companies they serve. Having served on numerous boards throughout my career, I enjoyed leading this discussion for both experienced and aspiring leaders in the energy field — including some of our own USF students who attended.

Xiomara Montes Gil to become first in her family to graduate college, lands job offer from JP Morgan Chase

Boundless Bulls is a collection of stories about what truly makes USF great – the people. It is a focus on our community footprint, our impact and the trajectory of where we can go together.

Popular Science featured a USF geosciences research team in a story about how scientists are identifying new ways to track lava flow from volcanoes.

ABC Action News published a story about a program in the USF College of Nursing that is reducing the number of non-emergency ambulance calls made at The Salvation Army’s Red Shield Center in Tampa. 

NPR interviewed USF marketing Professor Dipayan Biswas in a segment about the factors contributing to businesses asking customers to tip more often.

The Judy Genshaft Honors College has selected Elisabeth Condon, an award-winning artist and former USF faculty member, for a Florida Art in State Buildings public art commission. Scheduled to open in May 2023, the state-of-the-art facility will feature two new large-scale paintings by Condon. The landscape paintings will be installed in the public café space of the 85,000-square-foot building and contribute to the welcoming atmosphere of the Honors College's new home.

Inside USF: The Newsletter is published every other week.

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