SRQ May/June 2022- In Conversation with SCF

In

MAY/JUNE 2022 EDITION

Conversation

DR. CAROL PROBSTFELD, STATE COLLEGE OF FLORIDA, MANATEE SARASOTA

WHAT IS AT STAKE THROUGH THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS FOR YOUR COLLEGE? It’s a very big time of the year for us. This year, there was a big statute about accreditation that is going to impact educational institutions. Hopefully, we’re coming out well out of this legislative session, so we’re excited about that. College is doing well, students now are thriving and they’re coming back. We’re not at our pre-pandemic numbers yet, but it’s looking hopeful as we go forward. So it’s good. One of the things we’re really excited about is this performance funding for nursing because nursing is our strong suit, has been for a while.

We stand to do very well through that process. There are not enough nurses. And not only are we looking to create new nurses, but we’re working on a plan that would help nurses who maybe retired or let their license expire to get re-certified and get back in the game. So we’re trying to attack it from both ends.

IN CONVERSATION WITH DR. CAROL PROBSTFELD ON INNOVATION IN EDUCATION AND LEANING INTO THE FUTURE. INTERVIEWED BY WES ROBERTS | EDITED BY BARBIE HEIT

YOU KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE GROWTH OF THE STATE AS A WHOLE AND CERTAINLY OUR REGION. WHAT ARE YOU SEEING IN TERMS OF PEOPLE RELOCATING HERE? We’re monitoring the high school enrollments, for example. We monitor the demographic changes in our community. We do know that we have great opportunity to expand our enrollment of students right out of high school because those numbers will be increasing. We know our Hispanic population is growing significantly, we also know that our South County region, which would be in the North Port, South Sarasota County, is a fast growing area. So we have initiatives this year, for example, specifically targeting South Sarasota County for enrollment and also identifying high schools where we think we have the greatest probability of attracting students. And that’s on the traditional side. Then of course, we have our adult student population as well.

WHAT ABOUT THE OUTREACH TO MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOLS? We have children on our campus that are as young as first grade who are participating in our coding camps. We started the coding camps last summer. So we have children in elementary, middle, and high school that are participating in that. We have our own collegiate school on our Bradenton campus where we have middle school and high school children. And then on our Venice campus, we also have a collegiate school where we have high school students. In those collegiate schools, the goal is by the time they’re in the 11th and 12th grade, they’re dual enrolled on the college campus. So when they graduate with their high school diploma they’ll also be graduating with their two year AA degree.

IS THERE A BOOK OR A PODCAST THAT’S GOT YOUR ATTENTION RIGHT NOW ABOUT EDUCATION? Actually, when it

comes to my own professional development, I attend a lot of seminars, I listen to a lot of information, but to be perfectly honest, where I get my greatest intel is walking out on campus and talking to students, understanding what they need, what they want, what we can do to help them become successful.

They’re going to tell us straight up and with that, we can use our own ingenuity to come up with some interesting strategies. And also I’m very lucky. I think if I’ve done something well, it’s, I’ve hired really outstanding staff and faculty, and they’re always out learning what’s state of the art, what’s working at other institutions, and then trying to figure out how we can adapt some of those things to the State College of Florida.

WHAT IS THE MAKEUP OF YOUR STUDENT BODY? We have an incredibly diverse student body. Our Hispanic population exceeds the percentage of Hispanic people in our two-county region. Our Black

ENGAGING READERS THROUGH STORYTELLING.

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IN C O NVERSAT I ON

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANT DR. CAROL PROBSTFELD Dr. Carol F. Probstfeld is the sixth president of State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota.

She has served in this role since January, 2013. Established in 1957, SCF is the area’s oldest and largest public college with more than 50,000 graduates.

population, same thing. So we’re kind of that open access institution that welcomes everybody. We have students who are the third generation in their family coming to the State College of Florida and we have students who are the first in their family to ever come to college. So when you come to the State College of Florida, don’t be surprised, you see everybody from that sixth grader in our collegiate school to the 67-year-old person who wants to just stay engaged and sit in a biotech class to keep their mind involved.

HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF AS COMPARED TO OTHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS? I think what makes the State College of Florida unique is that we like to think of ourselves as everybody’s college. So whether you are experiencing college for the first time, right out of high school, we’re here for you. If you’re looking to change careers, we’re here for you. If you’re looking to take various classes that will help you accelerate in the career you’re in, we’re here for you. If you want to start a business, through our Entrepreneurship Center, we’re here for you. So we like to think of ourselves as that sort of one stop for people who are looking for a place where they can continue their education, regardless of where they are in that educational pathway, we’re here for them.

SRQ M AGAZ I NE T RE ND S AND I NNOVAT ION I N E DU C ATION : : MAY/J UN E 2022

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE AREAS OF STUDY THAT YOU’RE BEST KNOWN FOR AND WHAT ARE SOME OF THE NEW AREAS GENERATING EXCITEMENT? In general, we offer the two year AA or AS degrees, the four year BAS degrees and certificates. So it’s a number of different things, but our flagship program, as I said, is nursing. That’s been with us since the day we opened our doors. New programs that we’re starting are music production technology is coming online in the fall. We’re working on introducing two new baccalaureate degrees in education, elementary education and exceptional student education.

We’re working on also launching hospitality management in the fall. So it’s not the culinary aspect, it’s the management part of hospitality that we’re looking to launch.

And all of those are in response to requests that we’ve received from our partners out there in the workforce, through the EDCs, the chambers and employers. Business analytics is a really exciting one that we’re also looking to launch in the fall. And all of those so far have had a great number of interests from students as we’ve been recruiting for fall.

MUSIC PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY. WHAT CAUSED YOU TO FOCUS ON THAT NICHE? We would be the only institution in the Suncoast region that would be offering that. It is aimed at those individuals who have an interest in music, but are interested in the production thereof. So we have about a hundred students who participate in the music program.

Not all of them are looking to be part of performance or teaching.

This gives them another alternative to participate in the music industry, but through that music production aspect of it, whether it’s creating music videos, sound engineering, all of those things that go into producing music, whether it’s live or recorded.

DO YOU HAVE AN ANECDOTE FOR A STUDENT YOU’VE SPOKEN TO ABOUT YOUR PROGRAM OFFERINGS? One gentleman that I’ve been spending some time talking to lately, Nathan, is a music student and through his connection with the State College of Florida and our faculty, he’s been able to meet a number of other people in the music industry. And he has learned how to be a good composer. We’ve had him compose and conduct for us. And now he’s being commissioned to write music for other institutions in the area and, too, is being hired to conduct, which is really quite unusual for a two-year student to have that kind of experience and have that kind of success and expertise in this area.

ARE THERE SPECIALTIES FOR NURSES THAT ARE PART OF YOUR PROGRAM? One of the things that we’ve been able to do in our nursing program is incorporate telehealth. Not all programs have the opportunity to do that, but we’ve been very fortunate with support from some of our local grantors and funders to have equipment so we can work with our student nurses, so when they graduate with us, they have that experience, that capability. We have one of the best simulation centers in the state. So our nurses are able to simulate various scenarios that their counterparts may not have ever had the opportunity to do before they get out and practice in the field. But when you talk about surgical nursing or pediatric nursing or that sort of thing, that would come more in the field than it would in their two year AS nursing program.

TELL US HOW THE COLLEGE CONSORTIUM IS DOING. The Cross College Alliance is a consortium of five educational institutions in the region. It’s the State College of Florida, USF Sarasota-Manatee, Ringling School of

Art and Design, New College, and Florida State University at the Ringling Museum. And collectively what we do is create critical mass for our student bodies, so that they have a larger number of potential colleagues to work with when they partner on projects or to become familiar with in their professional capacities, when they graduate. We also create that opportunity for faculty so they can conduct research beyond their own institution with their own colleagues. So they can have a greater critical mass of, say, science faculty working together on projects. We also look at efficiencies that we can find together by sharing. We still have our cross-registration where students can take courses at another institution with no money changing hands from the students. We’re very pleased. We have a couple of things that we’re working on now with a special program about training students to be able to participate in internships with the arts community. We also have something in environmental science where students can do internships, paid internships, to be working on environmental science projects over the summer.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE LESSONS THAT HAVE BEEN LEARNED IN THE PANDEMIC THAT WILL STICK, THAT WILL CHANGE THINGS IN A POSITIVE FASHION? Well, I think obviously telehealth is one. We’ve started a new modality of instruction, which we call Go Live. So it’s a format similar to this in our platform called Teams where students can actually virtually be on with a faculty member and their classmates in this forum. So it’s a synchronous virtual experience versus the typical asynchronous online. That’s a new modality.

Students like that, so we’ll continue to do more of it. SRQ

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