I’m a Florida Gator – through and through. I graduated from the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business Administration in ’82 and earned my MBA there in ’84.
I’m a member of the UF Foundation and a lifetime member of the Alumni Association. I’m also on the Advisory Board for the Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies.
It’s safe to say I bleed orange and blue.
Now, UF is Florida’s flagship university, and I think Joe Glover is one of the key people at the helm. As Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, he is the chief academic officer and the second-ranking official at the school.
I recently had a chance to catch up with him during my annual broadcast from the campus, and what he told me about the direction of the university frankly blew my mind.
“What we’re really pleased about is that the governor and the legislature have recognized that the University of Florida is helping to build the state’s economy,” Glover said.
UF is well-known as a research university, and some key areas of research, he said, include:
– A $10 million grant to study metabolomics, the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites.
– Meeting food distribution challenges.
– Bioinformatics – or how to better track medical info for personalized medicine.
– How to make “Big Data” more efficient and reliable.
– Studying biodiversity and the changing Florida ecosystem.
In fact, UF got more than $700 million in federal grants this year, Glover said, making it the largest recipient in Florida.
UF welcomed 6,500 new freshmen this year, Glover said, and has a presence in every Florida county, primarily through the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) program.
So, I think the University of Florida is already fantastic, but I had to ask about when it reaches the level of, say, a UC Berkeley, University of North Carolina or University of Virginia.
Glover said UF is under way on a Preeminence Plan that includes the hiring of more than 120 new faculty and other changes to move the school forward.
“We think the state of Florida deserves a top-10 university, absolutely. All of the other big states have one, and we intend to become one,” he said.
“We want to be a university where you can send your son or daughter and know they’re getting access to the very best minds in America – doing some of the most exciting, cutting-edge things possible.”
One reason for the push to raise UF’s status is to better serve the residents of Florida by attracting high-quality businesses to the state and providing a solid resource for entrepreneurial alumni, Glover said.
Projects like the new Florida Innovation Hub business incubator on Innovation Square provide a real incentive for companies to set up shop in Florida, he added.
“This is where we’re actually growing the new companies that are going to be tomorrow’s new industries in Florida,” Glover said.
You can find information about all of this and more at the University of Florida web site: http://www.ufl.edu/. Look for the “UF rising” section, which will tell you all about the University of Florida Preeminence Plan.
Click here to listen to the full interview with Dr. Joseph Glover of the University of Florida.
