Florida Polytechnic's founding president reflects on university's decade ahead of retirement

LAKELAND, Fla. - Just as Florida Polytechnic University marks its 10-year anniversary, its founding president will be stepping down at the end of this spring semester.

Dr. Randy Avent was appointed president in June 2014, and he's led the university in Lakeland through a decade of growth and success.

FOX 13's Carla Bayron sat down with Avent for a one-on-one interview as he reflected on his tenure at the university.

Carla Bayron: Dr. Avent, how do you feel about stepping down after 10 years?

Dr. Randy Avent: Mixed emotions. It has been a wonderful opportunity, being here and not many people get the opportunity to do something like this. There's certainly a big challenge starting the university. That was one of the things that really attracted me to the position. You don't get too many times in your life to start a university from scratch.

Bayron: Florida Poly opened a decade ago. How did you help the university get its start?

Avent: The first five years, really, the focus was on building the institution and putting all of the back-office operations in place. Growing it, growing the student body. The second five years, the focus has been on quality and making it to be exactly what we wanted to be which was a strong engineering program.

Bayron: What were your goals at that time for the university and do you feel like you met, like, those goals have been met?

Avent: We have the second highest SAT scores in the state. We were ranked in U.S. World Report as the number one public college in the southeast.  We're top 20 public engineering undergraduate education among universities that don't have PhD programs. We're having deep conservations with other companies now to pull them into the area and start building a business innovation park around the university. We just have a tremendous amount of industry partnerships.

Bayron: Tell me about the highlights and challenges you faced during your tenure.

Avent: The first challenge was getting people not necessarily on board with it on board with it. Help them understand why it was important to do this and what the benefits were. I think where we are now with the second highest SAT scores and all of our rankings is the highlight. It's proof we did a good job, and of course, you couldn't do this without everybody here at the university.

Bayron: Where do you hope the university will be in the next ten years?

Avent: We're beginning to work heavy on our Master’s degrees now, and you'll see those grow over the next two years and next will be PhD programs and becoming a more active research university.

Bayron: So what's next for you, and how will you continue to help the university?

Avent: I'm transitioning to a faculty role, and the first year I'll be doing research. I have been awarded a Full Bright Schuman scholarship, and I'll be studying at the University of Barcelona doing research on the role of higher education research and academic research and what role it plays in economic development.

Avent will remain the school's president until July 6, and then Dr. G. Devin Stephenson, who is currently the president of Northwest Florida State College, will begin as Florida Polytechnic's second president.

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