A Campus of More Than Classrooms

The landscapers are still planting palms and laying sod. Construction workers in hard hats nearly outnumber students. And President Roy E. McTarnaghan is operating out of an office tucked into a small trailer parked out by the air-conditioning system.

But Florida Gulf Coast University is open “to change the culture of American higher education,” as McTarnaghan describes his mandate.

The nation’s newest university is embracing alternative teaching methods and technology that make college easily accessible to working people. So the state-run university’s first 2,690 students--

McTarnaghan calls them “clients”--can choose from a broad menu of classes offered on weekends, in off-campus venues, on videotape and over the Internet. Self-paced, independent study is emphasized, and students are encouraged to take competency exams through which they can earn credit for their work experience or other achievements.

“Certain principles permeate everything here, and access to education is one of them,” said Suzanne Richter, vice president for academic affairs. “Learning does not have to take place within the traditional four-walled classroom.”

Although many established universities, including UCLA, offer World Wide Web pages with course offerings, this is being billed as the first American university to open in the “cyberspace age” with such a presiding commitment to “distance learning.” Initially, 28 of its 339 classes will be conducted electronically, and other courses in career-oriented fields--such as health care, criminal justice and real estate--are to be offered in off-campus modules in the five-county area. Thus, although the university--six years and $40 million in the making--is situated on 670 acres of virgin pine forest and wetlands midway between the Gulf of Mexico and the Everglades, about 25% of all students will rarely set foot on campus, if at all.

“We look for partnerships with other universities, for space in hospitals for health care programs, to school systems where teachers can study in their own locations,” said McTarnaghan, 63, a former vice chancellor of the state university system. “We have to ask, ‘How are we to serve clients who need services?’ ”

McTarnaghan acknowledges critics who see “distance learning” and cyber-teaching as education’s fad du jour and a poor substitute for traditional classroom learning. “I’ve been a part of that [traditional] system for over 35 years myself,” he said. “But we in higher education profess that we want to experiment with alternative ways to deliver learning, and measure the results. So let us measure it.”

Although a big part of the university’s mission is to provide continuing and graduate education to residents of southwest Florida, it is not a trade school. Undergraduates enroll in one of four colleges--arts and sciences, business, health professions and professional studies--and all students are required to take a three-credit environmental education course. Seniors are also required to complete a research project or paper synthesizing their work in various disciplines.

To emphasize the university’s commitment to environmental studies, and to give newcomers an idea of where they are, faculty and students are offered a tour of the nearby Everglades, a visit to a seashell mound built by prehistoric Indians and a boat ride up the Caloosahatchee River. The program is called “A Sense of Place.”

The campus is the 10th entry in Florida’s university system, which includes the University of Florida and Florida State University, and offers state residents one of the nation’s educational bargains. At $56 a credit hour, students can take a 15-hour course load for $1,680 in tuition a year. Nonresidents pay $257 an hour while graduate fees are $124 an hour for residents, and $429 for nonresidents.

But the campus is not designed to become another University of Florida, home of the Gators in Gainesville, a traditional, residential university with 40,000 students, medical and law schools, along with a multimillion-dollar athletic program that annually produces contenders for national championships.

The university does have a nickname--the Eagles--and a master plan calling for an enrollment of 10,000 within a decade. But the Eagles won’t be fielding a football team any time soon.

What the university does want is to provide residents of this fast-growing area with a way to further their careers with course work or degrees, or simply enrich their lives by taking classes. The curriculum for the 16 undergraduate and 10 graduate degree programs reflects community desires as expressed in surveys since the university was authorized by the state six years ago.

To get an idea of where the university stands in U.S. higher education, the demographics are instructive. Although many people may think of college as the realm of 18- to 22-year-olds, the reality is quite different. Nationally, 41% of the 14.7 million college students are older than 25, according to 1995 U.S. Census Bureau figures, the latest available. And women make up 54% of the total.

Those tendencies are seen in the extreme here. Of the students enrolled, 64% are attending part time and only 200 are freshmen. About 70% are juniors and seniors, many with junior college degrees. And 70% of all students are female. The average age of campus students is 33, the highest in the Florida university system.

What’s more, the president of the Student Government Assn., Carolyn Kimes, is a 51-year-old grandmother, an undergraduate transfer student from the University of South Florida.

Tenure--a guarantee of position--will be offered to faculty only rarely. Instead, most of the 150 instructors have been signed to renewable contracts of two to five years.

Faculty and students are expected to take part in public service projects, and faculty research is to focus on state and regional needs, according to the university’s mission statement.

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Although 250 on-campus housing units are to be completed by next fall, the campus will remain a commuter school, a destination just off Interstate 75 between Naples and Fort Myers with plenty of paved parking but no reserved spaces for faculty or staff. “We have no reserved parking spaces for the same reason we consciously refer to students as clients,” said McTarnaghan. “We are here to make education accessible, on their timetable.”

There remains much to do. Several classroom buildings are unfinished, the 130,000-volume library is yet to open, and bright orange construction fences clash with the beige stucco walls and green tin roofs of the Spanish-style architecture. But those glitches did little to dampen the enthusiasm of students such as Carol Stewart-High, a public school teacher for 18 years who is taking courses in special education to meet certification requirements.

“This is perfect for me, because the class schedules are set up for late afternoons and evenings,” said Stewart-High, who was enrolled at the University of South Florida’s Fort Myers campus, which has been absorbed by the university. “It’s such a gorgeous setting. And everyone is still euphoric about the opening.”

The university will also work for Michael McCabe, 26, who moved back to Florida to join his family’s sailboat refinishing business after attending college in New Hampshire. He entered the university as a sophomore English major with some concerns about the limited curriculum. “I’m not here for the social aspects of college life,” he said, “so whether I stay next year will depend on course offerings.”

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