Yeboah became the fifth dean of the COE on July 1, 2012. Bruce
Locke, former chair of the COE Department of Chemical & Biomedical
Engineering and currently FSU associate provost, will assume the role of
interim dean on Aug. 1. A national search for the next dean of the College will
begin in the fall.
According to the press release: “the tenure home for the
next dean will rotate to FAMU.”
Back in 1987, FAMU President Frederick S. Humphries and FSU President Bernie Sliger signed an agreement that said that FAMU would permanently manage the operations budget for the College of Engineering.
The joint press release did not specify whether the decision
to “rotate” the next dean’s tenure home means that FAMU and FSU are set to
switch the roles established by the 1987 agreement. The FAMU Board of Trustees
has not taken a vote to approve a change to the 1987 agreement.
FSU has been working around FAMU’s control of the operations
budget for years by lobbying the Florida Legislature to appropriate more and
more money into a separate budget that goes into FSU’s general revenue.
A Tallahassee Democrat article from last year reported that: “The
joint budget is about $11 million, while the FSU budget is $5 million ‘and has
been growing,’ Yeboah said. There are 23 FAMU and 27 FSU tenure-track faculty
in the joint budget, and 36 tenure-track faculty in the separate FSU budget.”
The Florida House of Representatives and Senate both voted to take the
increased COE operations budget of $12.9 million out of the FAMU general
revenue appropriation this year and put it into a new budget entity entitled: “FAMU/FSU
College of Engineering.” The separate FSU budget is still part of that
university’s general revenue and is not specified in a line item.
If FSU becomes the new fiscal agent/budget manager for the
COE, then it will manage at least $17.9 million for the college and FAMU will
manage $0.
Note: This post contains corrections made on October 19, 2015.
Note: This post contains corrections made on October 19, 2015.