Community leaders focus on strengthening FIU as it grows

Building pride, expanding community partnerships, retaining top faculty and monetizing the university’s assets topped the agenda at the 2011 Community Leaders Summit.

More than 100 leaders from around South Florida gathered on Oct. 25 at the Coral Gables Country Club for the third annual summit. For two hours, the leaders participated in detailed discussions about how the university can best build affinity, raise money, engage in new partnerships and improve student learning.

Javier Hernandez-Lichtl, CEO of West Kendall Baptist, addresses community leaders.

President Mark B. Rosenberg emphasized FIU’s important role in creating employment opportunities through education. The university is the No. 1 producer of minorities graduates in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“At the state level, the value of an university education is being challenged,” Rosenberg said. “We feel FIU is fulfilling its responsibility to the community. Our goal is to graduate students who are not just going to take create jobs, but create great jobs.”

The university’s growth also fuels the local economy, Rosenberg pointed out. FIU intends to add 20,000 new students and 850 faculty members in the next 10 years.

“You won’t find that any place in the country,” Rosenberg said of the aggressive hiring strategy FIU has laid out. “It is bringing high value-added individuals into the community.”

One challenge in recruiting and retaining faculty is the high cost of housing in South Florida. FIU CFO Ken Jessel asked the Generating Revenue Committee, “What will it take to get the business community to build affordable housing for faculty?”

The university needs to do a feasibility study of the need and prepare a proposal, said F. Otto Busot, senior vice president of wealth management and senior portfolio manager for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.

“You will find a lot of people interested,” Busot said.

Others recommended the university minimize the risk to developers by doing a master lease on the housing. “You mitigate my risk if it’s an official, sanctioned entity by the university,” said Rick Rodriguez Piña, president of Rodriguez Piña and Associates. “This will be enticement.”

The Generating Revenue Committee agreed that as the university continues to grow, it needs to operate more as a business.  The group suggested convening a commercial committee that could review the university’s procedures, units and activities as a whole to determine what areas could generate additional funds.

“We are clearly moving away from public funding and into private partnerships,” said Gonzalo Acevedo, senior vice president of SunTrust Private Trust Management. “We really have to become more entrepreneurial, create assets that don’t exist, monetize intellectual property.”

The university’s new partnership with Florida Power & Light was praised by the leaders. At the beginning of 2011, FPL opened a new customer care center on campus staffed by FIU students. The partnership provides much needed on-campus employment opportunities for students, while fostering a talent pipeline for FPL.

“We were totally impressed with this partnership and think it has a lot of validity and opportunity to be replicated,” said Javier Hernandez-Lichtl, CEO of West Kendall Baptist.

Participants across the board noted that the university’s efforts on all fronts will be more successful if the FIU story is effectively communicated. The Building Affinity Committee emphasized that a personal touch is needed to build a community of loud and proud FIU alumni.

Alumni who are already engaged need to be ambassadors for the university, said FIU Alumni Association President Jack Gonzalez.

“This is a grassroots effort,” he said. “There is no substitute for that. Marketing and branding is extremely important; however, if there isn’t a face in front of them, it doesn’t work.”

Attorney Vicky Garcia-Toledo shared a story about discovering the Panther Pride that had been hiding in her law firm.

“One day, I was rather upset in my office because we are overrun by Gators,” she said. “I thought, ‘I want it to be about FIU.’ I sent out an email saying, ‘If you are an FIU graduate please let me know.’ I found out there were 32 graduates in my law firm.”