“With the increasingly negative news that continues to come
out of FAMU, it is becoming more and more difficult to be an advocate,” Powell
wrote. “On the bright side, I also received a degree from Florida State
University.”
Powell’s view of his FSU degree as being the “bright side”
over his affiliation with FAMU could help explain a lot. That might be a reason
why he hasn’t publicly voiced concern that FSU alumni hold most of the
appointed seats on their alma mater’s Board of Trustees (BOT) while there are
only two alumni in appointed seats on the FAMU BOT.
Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) decided to reduce FAMU alumni to a minority on FAMU BOT back in 2015. FAMU “advocate” Powell doesn’t seem to have a problem with this.
Powell also questioned whether politics played a role in the
exit of former School of Journalism and Graphic Communication Dean Ann Wead
Kimbrough even though he didn’t publicly question whether politics played a
role in the exit of former FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Dean Yaw Yeboah.
“I would like for someone inside FAMU’s administration to
reassure me that the plan to remove Kimbrough was not a political move,” Powell
wrote.
Yeboah, a native of Ghana, became the first black dean of the COE on July 1, 2012. He then abruptly announced his resignation less than
three years later amid a shakeup that helped FSU President John Thrasher take
hold of the direction of the school.
That shakeup followed a harmful legislative change that
Powell didn’t battle while he was in the Florida House of Representatives. FAMU
controlled millions for the COE from 1987 to 2015. But in 2015, the Florida
Legislature shifted the $12.9M COE appropriation from the FAMU general revenue
line to a new budget entity. Then-FAMU President Elmira Mangum joined Thrasher
in stating that a new Joint College of Engineering Governance Council would
call the shots on the COE operating budget. That made it possible for the FSU
representatives and BOG Chancellor Marshall Criser, III to out-vote FAMU on
budget decisions.
Powell showed no signs of caring about the calls by former
FAMU President Frederick S. Humphries, the chair and vice-chair of the FAMU Board
of Trustees, and the leadership of the FAMU National Alumni Association for
that budget control to be given back to FAMU.
Yeboah, who had previously served as an associate dean at
Clark Atlanta University, emphasized the diversity component of the COE mission
during his short time as the dean. He spoke on a regular basis about the need
to increase diversity at the college and in professional engineering jobs.
Yeboah was also advocating for more funds to help bring the average salaries of
FAMU engineering professors up to that of FSU engineering professors.
The work for additional funding for FAMU engineering
professor salaries has continued since Yeboah left. But the new top focus of
the COE appears to be Thrasher’s goal of helping FSU become one of the top 25
public universities.
Less than three years after Yeboah started, a June 2015
press release said that he, as a professor with tenure at FSU, would step down
on July 31. Mangum agreed to jointly appoint an FSU associate dean as Yeboah’s
interim replacement. She then agreed to jointly appoint former FSU presidential candidate J. Murray Gibson as the permanent dean on a FAMU tenure line.
At a July 21, 2015 FAMU BOT committee meeting, Mangum said
“our daily involvement in the College of Engineering will emanate from the
leadership position of Dean of the College of Engineering.” But if Gibson is
still working toward the goal of becoming the president of FSU, there’s little
chance that he will take any risks to help FAMU that might hurt his relationship
with the FSU BOT.
Yeboah’s exit from the deanship appears to have nothing to
do with how well he did his job and everything to do with the political
dealings helped Thrasher get what he wants at the COE. But Powell has been
silent about this.
In his op-ed, Powell added that: “I have searched for
damaging information related to Kimbrough, and unlike the other deans who were
dismissed, there is none.”
Back in May, Founding FAMU J-School Dean Robert “Bob”
Ruggles used his Facebook page to offer his thoughts on possible reasons for
Kimbrough’s dismissal. He cited the questionable credentials of too many of the
school's adjuncts, potential issues related to re-accreditation of the school,
and low faculty morale.
The op-ed by Powell also claimed (without any supporting
evidence) that the new interim J-School dean “was quickly provided funding to
fill six positions that Kimbrough was not allowed to fill.”
The fact that FAMU had multi-million dollar budget cuts each
year under the Mangum administration due to declining enrollment seems to be
lost on Powell. FAMU has a bigger hiring budget for 2017-2018 because it's
projecting its first overall enrollment increase in years.
A FAMU advocate is someone who is a reliable fighter for the
school’s interests. That doesn’t describe Powell. Powell is an individual who
sometimes supports his alma mater when it’s politically convenient and, at
other times, ignores attacks on FAMU.