Guest Author
One of the many wonderful attributes of New College of Florida’s bayfront home is the beautiful, historic campus on the former John and Mable Ringling Estate. The stylistic architecture stands out along the glassy, picturesque Sarasota Bay.
But what makes the present restoration of New College particularly special is the merging of that which is old with that which is new. Under the leadership of the Board of Trustees and Interim President Richard Corcoran, the New College of Florida campus is undergoing many design and engineering projects to serve as a launchpad into the future for our students, faculty, and staff.
These projects will provide opportunities for the students to stand on the shoulders of pioneering giants! Rather poetic since there were many giants of the live entertainment world on these very grounds during the time John and Mable Ringling ran the Greatest Show on Earth. New College students have never shied away from ascending to giant heights, as evidenced by the 56 Fulbright Scholar Awards earned in the last 15 years, more than every other Florida college and university combined.
Just as Archimedes promised he could move the world if given a firm place to stand and a long enough lever, New College has positioned itself on the firm ground of a classical education model in order to move higher education past the status quo and into the future. Change is often uncomfortable, especially when changes may be experienced at a pace that is unfamiliar; but, if Archimedes can move the world, then New College can proceed into the future.
You cannot successfully move forward whilst looking in the rearview mirror — you’ll crash. However, finding significance in, learning from, and being inspired by the past is so very important to our understanding of the present and future.
Illustrating the powerful ethos of that which is old inspiring and even paralleling that which is new is the famous match-cut at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s the scene of the bone tossed high into the sky — smash cut — to the space station. This simple match-cut communicates the relationship between two important tools in human history.
While New College’s physical campus will undergo a metamorphosis, it will remain a rigorous academic institution producing more graduates who go on to earn doctorates than Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.
New College is breaking ground on many projects that are serving as vessels to move the school into the future during this restoration of the decades-old academic institution. From academic to residence halls, the world is able to witness new life being breathed into the school.
“It is my hope that returning and newly enrolled students at New College will feel that they have a home here on campus during the course of their respective studies and after graduation,” said Interim President Richard Corcoran.
Crafting an ecosystem in which students and faculty thrive requires more than buildings. Any large plot of land can have an assortment of facilities. But an ecosystem is everything from the buildings to the services to both that which is visible and that which is more nuanced or empathic. It’s a combination of the tangible and intangible. And the leadership of New College of Florida is poised to thoughtfully craft an academic institution that inspires lifelong learners that will leave an impact in their chosen career field or their community.
The promise of such an ecosystem has proved inspiring, bringing a record class of new students to New College this Fall. With these record numbers have come vibrant diversity New College hasn’t seen in years, with brilliant students of all colors and socioeconomic backgrounds selecting Sarasota to spend their college years. The incoming class of 2022 was more than 75% White and skewed 2:1 female to male, while this year the genders have balanced substantially and the number of Hispanic and Black students have increased by nearly 90% and 300%, respectively.
When completed, the New College of Florida campus will be a formidable academic institution that will host scholars young and old alike. Students from a variety of backgrounds that each have their own individual dreams, ambitions, methods of expression, and specialization areas, coming to New College to learn from a heralded assembly of expert faculty, many who tout credentials from America’s most famous universities, including Harvard, Yale, Penn, and Stanford.
The Board of Trustees and Interim President Corcoran are eager to continue spearheading projects to restore the best of New College from its first 63 years while securing its future for decades to come.
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Ryan L. Terry is vice president of Communications and Marketing for New College of Florida.
22 comments
LT
August 21, 2023 at 10:18 pm
Stop it. You and your cronies have ruined a great institution.
Thomas Kaspar
August 21, 2023 at 10:19 pm
Rubbish he talked to Hannity
Bruce Davis
August 21, 2023 at 10:30 pm
Return New College to its previous administration.
My Taket
August 21, 2023 at 10:53 pm
Ģarbage. Distortional garbage,f
DeSSlantus openly bràgged he was creatimg baasically a rightwinģ madrassa, a la Hillsdale College.
My Taket
August 22, 2023 at 12:16 am
‘The Austrian ecosystem of the future”
Post-Anschluss
My Taket
August 22, 2023 at 12:20 am
Admit a lot of jocks.
–> More male, less liberal, less academic,less smart.
A Random Guest
August 22, 2023 at 5:34 am
And far less Fulbright Scholars.
Had to keep a barf bag under my chin while reading this steaming brown pile of poop.
My Taket
August 22, 2023 at 7:09 am
steaming brown pile
=======
That was written by a paid pròfèssionaĺ liar.
Robert Halloran
August 24, 2023 at 4:23 pm
Looking at other results from it, more likely written by ChatGPT or one of its brethren.
fitebi
August 22, 2023 at 1:30 am
JHYO
Michael K
August 22, 2023 at 2:14 am
“ New College is breaking ground on many projects that are serving as vessels to move the school into the future…”
Listless vessels, toxic futuristic dystopian radical right-wing fantasies imported directly from Viktor Orban’s Hungary.
Creativity does not thrive in the sterile engineered “vessels” Corcoran and Rufo are hastily throwing up. These two clowns are the antithesis of the Ringling legacy: They are dangerous clowns who take perverse delight in cruelty and destruction.
My Taket
August 22, 2023 at 3:06 am
:
“They are dangerous clowns who take perverse delight in cruelty and d estruction.”
And smooth-flowwing lying.
“Schoen Duetschland; schoen shoen Deutschland” Goebbles, Christmas Eve
My Taket
August 22, 2023 at 3:14 am
Will there be a similar screed of sedàte psychostoogery àfter FAU’s final6 backstàbbing?
Robert Halloran
August 22, 2023 at 9:13 am
The school was starved for resources for YEARS, and only got them when the Governor targeted it as part of his “anti-woke” rant. This was the state’s honors college and the average test scores & GPA have slid this year with the introduction of athletics and recruitment of players who couldn’t get into existing programs. One-third of the faculty have left and over 10% of the existing students are leaving because they can no longer finish their degrees. HOW is this moving forward?!?
Michael
August 23, 2023 at 8:39 am
The left wing people pride themselves on being inclusive but only if you think the way they do. Their inflammatory rhetoric towards those who hold to a more traditional value system betrays their call to a more inclusive dialogue. If we are ever going to stand on common ground it will only happen if we can learn to disagree agreeably. The essentials of a quality liberal arts education isn’t an indoctrination in ideology to further social evolution but a pursuit of academic excellence based on the sciences. It appears that New College is pursuing the latter.
Natalie
August 23, 2023 at 8:22 pm
Wonderfully said! How exciting it is to see New College making the needed changes to be more geared toward academic excellence. This was a great article to read. So glad things are changing and people are stepping in to clean up the mess.
Grant A. Balfour
August 23, 2023 at 11:04 pm
Until now, New College was the top producer of STEM PhD students among American public universities. That’s number 1. If you include private, land-grant universities like MIT and Harvard, it was number 15.
Here’s a citation: https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/institutional-research/Doct%20Rates%20Top%20100%20Tot%20Sci%20Rankings%20-Summary%20to%202020.pdf
STEM means “science, technology, engineering, and math.” I’m not sure sports psychology qualifies, but maybe. Communications doesn’t, though.
One thing I’ve noticed is that people seem to think New College was a lot less rigorous and a lot more ideologically left-wing than it ever was.
Robert Halloran
August 24, 2023 at 4:31 pm
This is, you know, the state HONORS college? Average GPA & test scores have slid with the athletes brought in this year. NCF has been the top producer of Fulbright Scholars per capita for the last decade. Other top/high academic rankings as well. But because it’s a small, LGBTQ-friendly school the Guv put it in the cross hairs of his anti-“woke” rant as he tries to get his f(l)ailing POTUS campaign going.
Alumnus
August 23, 2023 at 5:41 pm
New College wanted its “independence” from USF. So, upon reflection, how’s that working out?
Douglas Christy
August 23, 2023 at 6:14 pm
Pretty sure it was the Charles Ringling estate you’re referring to but given how little the current admin. cares about facts and history, guess this as good as one can expect from the propaganda shop.
Grant A. Balfour
August 23, 2023 at 10:56 pm
This is fairly clearly written by ChatGPT – the “whilst” and “glassy, picturesque” are dead giveaways, as is the misattribution of the Ringling estate (“John Ringling” will appear in more of the texts used to train the Large Language Model.) “Match-cut” for “mash-cut” is also an indicator, I think, although less significant.
What’s really interesting is that Ryan Terry thought it was possible to get away with this with a bunch of academics.
Maybe I should try getting some bot-generated commentary published myself.
NCF Alumna
August 25, 2023 at 11:48 am
For a man who used to teach German cinema at the University of Tampa and likes to post lots of pictures of himself on vacation in Germany on the internet, Ryan Terry sure does seem to have forgotten about the Nazi Germany’s use of classical culture… As a film guy, has he not seen the opening sequence to Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia?! It would also be great if Mr. Terry and/or Florida Politics bother to fact check articles that are posted here. I know that Mr. Terry is new to New College, and it appears that, like many of the rest of Corcoran’s new hires, Mr. Terry has very little experience in the field in which he was hired, but it’s important to get basic information correct, such as where the campus is located. (Hint: not the John and Mable Ringling Estate.)
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