Hitt prepares for stretch run at UCF
As his retirement nears, president talks about ‘doing more with less’
University of Central Florida President John Hitt won’t slip quietly into retirement this year, saying he expects to tackle challenges such as providing an affordable education with limited state funding.
Hitt is leaving at the end of June after 26 years as the university’s president, and UCF has started a national search for his successor. The Board of Trustees plans to select the university’s next president before Hitt’s last day.
Now 77, Hitt said funding will yet again be a key issue for the university during his last six months at UCF.
“There doesn’t seem to be an abundance of money this year, and that’s probably putting it mildly,” he said. “So we’re going to be entering another round of trying to teach even more students with what could be declining resources.”
Gov. Rick Scott has recommended keeping state
funding for universities at $2.46 billion next year, but statewide enrollment is expected to climb from 293,380 to 297,240, according to a presentation last month during a Senate higher education appropriations subcommittee meeting.
“We keep doing more with less,” Hitt said. “That’s not always a bad challenge.”
One example of that type of progress, he said, is the growth of online classes at UCF. More than 40 percent of the university’s credit hours are now taught online, including courses that also have in-person components. Without relying on online coursework, the university, which is among the country’s largest, wouldn’t have the capacity to serve as many students.
While undergraduate programs have been a priority for UCF, Hitt said he hopes to add more graduate programs, and double grants and contracts for research.
Faculty and student leaders say the university could do more to reward top talent.
Lietsel Richardson, who is working toward a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, said she’s been impressed with the research coming out of the engineering department and the College of Medicine. The university has, she said, “cultivated an environment for innovation.” But Richardson, president of the Graduate Student Association, added that she hopes to see UCF increase stipends for graduate students. Some of her classmates who have assistantships feel overworked.
“We are contributing a lot to UCF research and on top of that, the cost of living in Orlando is not particularly low,” she said. “I know there are a significant number of graduate students, myself included, who have to commute from an hour or two hours away because they can’t afford to live in the city and their stipends can’t cover the cost of living.”
And Scott Launier, the president of UCF’s faculty union, said he’d like to see UCF close the gap in compensation for women and minorities, and hire more faculty to offer relief from large workloads and class sizes.
“Faculty work really, really hard,” he said. “Student learning depends on faculty’s ability to do their jobs well.”
And the state is turning up the heat on universities to produce employable graduates by tying part of their funding to student performance, based on measures such as graduation rates and percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients working or continuing school after one year. For the current year, UCF finished fifth out of 11 eligible universities, earning $36 million in state performance funding, $3.6 million less than the previous year.
After he retires from his role as president, Hitt will continue on a part-time basis, focusing on fundraising for UCF. As president emeritus, Hitt plans to help the university with the IGNITE campaign, which seeks to raise $500 million for scholarships, research and more by June 2019. UCF has raised $340 million thus far through the effort, which started in 2011.
Hitt, whose annual salary as president is $515,844, will be paid $300,000 annually in his emeritus role. The contract is for a year, but can be renewed.
Aside from worries about funding, UCF and other colleges nationwide have grappled with how to police Greek life over the past year. Fraternities and sororities have been roiled with controversy, with Florida State University becoming at least the third school nationally in 2017 to suspend all Greek life after the suspected alcohol-related death of a pledge and cocaine charges for another fraternity member.
In 2013, UCF shut down most fraternity and sorority activities for about six weeks while it investigated two organizations for alleged hazing and alcohol abuse.
For years, Hitt said, universities went through “a rather painful period,” when the old philosophy of in loco
parentis, when institutions almost tried to assume the role of students’ parents, was torn down earlier in his career.
Later, universities started treating students like fullfledged adults. Hitt said he thinks universities need to find a middle ground between the two extremes, and members need to take responsibility for their Greek organizations.
“We’re limited in what we can do — you’re a young adult now,” he said. “That’s all true, but there’s got to be more than that. You’re away from parents for the first time. The manifestations of authority have changed, they’re diminished, if not absent. We have to develop a system where there is mutual accountability.”
Many times, the university’s top student leaders are members of Greek organizations, Hitt said, and it’s important not to lose those opportunities.
At UCF, student-run councils that oversee Greek life decided earlier this month that fraternities and sororities won’t host social activities or any events with drinking for at least the first six weeks of the spring semester. Hitt said it’s better that message come from peers rather than administrators, like Vice President of Student Development and Enrollment Services Maribeth Ehasz.
“If Dr. Ehasz had gone to students and said, ‘here is what we’re going to do,’’’ he said, “it wouldn’t have nearly the impact that it had coming from the students.”