South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Kelly, president of Florida Atlantic University, has a passion for students
John Kelly owes his success to plants. In fact, you mightevensay he’shada plant-based career. Kelly hashada longacademic career thatbeganin 1982, when he served as an assistant professor atTexas A&M University. Three years later, he went to Clemson, moving up the ranks to become a professor and department head by 1991. During his 28-year tenure at Clemson, the universitymoved from 78th to 20th in U.S. News and WorldReport’s rankings of public universities.
Although you might expect Kelly’s background to be in education, it’s actually in horticulture. He holds a bachelor’s in plant science from Clemson and both a master’s and Ph.D. in plant science fromThe Ohio State University.
“When I was around 12 or 13, my family moved to the countryside, and Iwas 10 miles away from almost anybody,” Kelly said. “So, to entertain myself, I started my own business, a pick-your- own strawberry operation.”
As a freshman at Clemson studying engineering, he quickly decided the fieldwas not for him. So, he returned to his passion, the world of plants, believing he would become a landscape architect. Then a faculty advisor suggested he attend grad school, and, later, armed with a Ph.D., Kelly began his academic career.
Nowpresident of FloridaAtlantic University — he was named the seventh president in January 2014— Kelly arrived with plans to transform the institution from a commuter school to aworld-class university.
“At his final interview, he told the selection committee that he
sawFAU becoming a ranked Top 100 national university with a Top 25 athletics program,” said Abdol Moabery, chairman of FAU’s Board of Trustees. “Upon his hiring, he went right to work on both, among other things.”
In the years to follow, FAU was ranked by U.S. News for the first time in its history, and the athletics department blossomed, with several women’s and men’s programs winning Conference USA championships, Moabery said.
In his first year at FAU, Kelly hired 26 academic advisors, made advising services more accessible to commuter students, introduced a summer program to help incoming freshmen and encouraged students to declare majors early. AsFAU’s metrics improved, the school averted a $7 million budget reduction and qualified for an additional $11.3 million in funding.
In recognition of his achievements, Kelly has been named winner of the South Florida Sun Sentinel Excalibur Award as LargeBusiness Leader of theYear in Palm Beach County.
Kelly said his greatest achievement at FAUwas to build a strong team around him. “Alot of universities have a tremendous number of higher paid administrators, and I’ve tried to keep that number low,” he said. “It’s a team ofmyself and nine vice presidents, and that way we aren’t administratively overburdened so we can put greater resources into the faculty and students.”
Indeed, it’s passion for higher education and students thatKelly credits as the key to his success. “One of the great gifts ofworking in academia is watching young people go on and do extraordinary things because of the intervention you had in their life that gave them the skillset and emotional maturity to take their ideas and dreams and make something out of them,” he said.
Kelly is equally committed to serving the community. Since arriving in Boca Raton in 2014, he’sbeen active innumerous organizations and served on several boards. In 2018, Kelly and his wife, Carolyn, served asHonorary Event Chairs for the Connected Warriors Stars of Honor Gala, a fundraiser for a nonprofit veterans’ service organization.
But despite a long career in which he’s achieved many successes, Kelly said he couldn’t have done it alone. “I can’t over-exaggerate the importance of a team,” he said. “I played sportswhenIwas a kid, so I know the value of individual achievement. But team achievement is so much more meaningful. When you have a group who works collaboratively and uses their diverse skillsets to do something better than any one of them could hope to do alone, that’s extremely rewarding.”
“One of the great gifts ofworking in academia iswatching young people go on and do extraordinary things because of the intervention you had in their life that gave them the skillset and emotional maturity to take their ideas and dreams and make something out of them”