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Week of October 24, 2023

Greetings from Washington, D.C., where I'm joining other presidents from across the country for our AAU fall membership meeting.

Our agenda is filled with discussions on important, timely subjects that USF and our peer institutions are facing every day, including how to increase federal support for research, opportunities and challenges associated with artificial intelligence on our campuses and the constantly evolving landscape of college athletics.

AAU has released a very helpful resource, “AAU by the Numbers,” which provides new insight about how member universities boost the nation’s economy, conduct most of the critical research in America and provide tremendous value to students. The revised data reflects the recent addition of USF and five other new AAU members. 

We know that AAU universities transform lives through education, research and innovation — and the numbers prove it. 

Updates

• I was delighted to participate in last week’s Fulbright Awards Breakfast, where we celebrated our faculty and student recipients of these prestigious awards, and recognized the people who work so hard behind the scenes, in USF World and the Office of National Scholars in the Judy Genshaft Honors College, to help enhance our reputation on the global stage. USF has been one of our country’s top producers of faculty Fulbright awardees for seven of the past eight years, and we were named as a top producer of student Fulbright recipients for the first time last year.

• Community outreach is an important priority for our university, so I appreciated the recent opportunity to speak with the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership, an economic development and advocacy group that is a strong supporter of our university. I provided updates on a variety of topics, and we discussed how we can work together to continue to fuel growth in the city and our region. This also was a great opportunity to introduce Provost Prasant Mohapatra to an important group of business and community leaders.

• We recently announced a leadership transition in the Office of Business and Finance, with Jennifer Condon now serving as acting chief financial officer in addition to her duties as vice president and controller. In this new role, she will work with the executive leadership team to support USF’s strategic priorities. Throughout her 17 years at USF, including 10 years as controller and the last year as vice president, Jennifer has worked tirelessly to improve USF’s financial business processes. We’ve built a strong foundation for our new budget process and budget model and that will continue with Jennifer’s leadership.  

Additional University News Sources

•  USF Newsroom

•  St. Petersburg campus

•  Sarasota-Manatee campus

•  USF Health

•  USF Athletics

Fortune reported on USF's partnership with the Tougaloo College Research and Development Foundation to help increase HBCU access to federal and private sector research grants.

83 Degrees Media published a story about USF researchers developing a new app that will use photographs of post-storm flooding and other information to better identify flooding threats from hurricanes.

The BBC quoted USF Professor Dipayan Biswas in a story about how tipping at businesses has changed through the growing use of touch screen systems.

A new street mural was unveiled this month on the USF St. Petersburg campus. Jay Giroux, a visiting faculty member in USF’s Graphic Arts Program, and a group of students painted the mural outside of the University Student Center. You can learn more about the project and its connection to the community here.

Inside USF: The Newsletter is published every other week.

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