FAMU President James H. Ammons’ restructuring plan shifts more of the university’s limited financial resources into health science fields and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. This strategic revamping will help FAMU get "more bang for its buck."Health science and STEM-trained workers are in heavy demand for today’s economy. A recent article by Associated Press reporters Christopher S. Rugaber and Michael Liedtke (“Future Hiring Will Mainly Benefit the Highly Skilled”) stated that these fields will be the biggest sources of job growth in America.
“The [health care] sector is expected to be the leading job generator adding 4 million by 2018, according to Labor Department data,” wrote Rugaber and Liedtke. “An aging population requires more doctors and nurses, physical therapists, home health aides and pharmacists.
FAMU’s restructuring plan creates a new College of Health Professions to “contribute to the University’s mission and produce a significant percentage of the state and the nation’s African American health care professionals.” The college will house a “School of Allied Health Sciences; a School of Nursing; and a School of Public Health.”
“As a result of housing these health programs in a common unit, it is anticipated that the synergy between these disciplines will increase,” Ammons wrote in FAMU’s restructuring report. “Collaboration will be able to occur on multiple levels including shared teaching, which will contribute to the reduction of duplication in course offerings and increased collaboration in research, which will increase sponsored research and scholarship.”
FAMU’s College of Health Professions parallels the University of Florida’s College of Public Health and Health Professions and the University of Central Florida’s College of Health and Public Affairs.
The FAMU College of Arts & Sciences, which currently includes more than half of the student body, will also undergo a major change. It will be broken down into two separate units. One will be a College of Science, Technology, and Mathematics (CSTM). The other will be a College of Behavioral Sciences, Art and Humanities.
Ammons says that CSTM will aid the process of making FAMU into “the premier University for the production of African American graduates in the STEM disciplines.”
“Clustering [FAMU’s STEM] programs in a standalone college would reinforce the STEM arena as an identified strength of the university and facilitate focused collaboration within the disciplines,” Ammons wrote. “Increasing African American graduates in the STEM fields is a goal of FAMU’s strategic plan and opportunities for cross-disciplinary involvement will contribute to increase successes in this arena.”
CSTM will include FAMU’s new information technology degree program. IT work is a critical, expanding field of employment.
“Companies will need people to build and secure [their] networks,” wrote Rugaber and Liedtke. “That should boost the number of programmers, network administrators and security specialists by 45 percent to 2.1 million by 2018, the government forecasts. Most of these jobs will provide above-average pay.”
FAMU’s strong health science and STEM programs will boost the university’s financial health by attracting more students and helping FAMU qualify for more federal research grants. These programs will also be powerful selling points for the university as it seeks greater investment from private companies and the Florida Legislature.