August 1996

University's club to combine dining, teaching

By Judy Taylor Cramer
Managing editor, Florida State Times

Next fall, hospitality administration students can take what they learn in the classroom and put it to practical use in the dining room.
With the opening of the University Center Club at Florida State University, a city club for FSU faculty, staff, alumni and friends, students specializing in food and beverage management will have a "real world lab" just steps away, said Joseph J. West, chairman of the department of hospitality administration.
The University Center Club, to be located on the fifth and sixth floors of the University Center's new South Building, is a joint venture between the department of hospitality administration, the Seminole Boosters and the Club Corporation of America (CCA), a firm that develops and manages private clubs and resorts.
Although other universities manage and staff dining clubs and even hotels, FSU is the first university to form a partnership with its boosters and a "very successful company," West said.
About 30 management positions in CCA are held by FSU grads, including James A. Riscigno, executive vice president; Ken Kasten, senior vice president, new business/development; Charlie Cowart, regional vice president; and Robert Devitz, regional vice president.
Students aren't the only ones who will benefit from the new club. "There's been a desire for a faculty club for at least 50 years," said Douglas Mannheimer, chairman of the board of governors of the new club. "It's an outstanding opportunity for interaction that we haven't had before."
The club will be similar to one at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which has 900 faculty and staff members.
The FSU project is being supported in part by donations by Thomas F. Petway III, a partner in the Jacksonville Jaguars and founder, chairman and CEO of Home Builders Insurance Services; Pearl Tyner, who with her sister endowed an eminent scholar chair in the College of Human Sciences; and William D. and Carla Griffin. William Griffin is chairman and CEO of RISCORP, a member of the FSU Foundation board, and a partner in the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
Griffin and Petway are graduates of FSU's College of Business. Tyner is a graduate of the Florida State College for Women.
Club members must be at least 21 years old, and memberships provide equal privileges to spouses. CCA is also offering associate membership privileges to 200 private, city, resort and country clubs around the country. Mannheimer said membership and monthly fees "will be quite reasonable."
Plans call for formal dining rooms on the fifth floor and a more informal sports grill on the sixth floor that will overlook both the campus and Doak Campbell Stadium. A ballroom on the third floor and a rooftop patio and terrace will be available year round for private parties and special events.
Hospitality administration classrooms and offices will be nearby on the second and fourth floors of the south building.

A weekend in the life of a club member


Although the University Center Club is still just plans on a page, Seminole Boosters President Andy Miller sees it clearly in his mind:
Imagine attending a home football game in Tallahassee.
You arrive Friday afternoon and drive over to University Center to see what's going on at the club.
You find some Seminole friends on the rooftop patio, others in the sports grill on the sixth floor overlooking the football field. You go by the formal dining room on the fifth floor and meet an old college professor and his faculty friends. You're invited to join them there for an elegant meal later in the evening.
You go down to the third floor ballroom and dance to the nostalgic sounds of the '60s, '70s and '80s performed by a live band.
On Saturday morning, you arrive at the stadium early for pre-game refreshments on the deck and brunch in the ballroom. After the game, there's more dancing and fun with Seminole friends.
Finally, before leaving Tallahassee, there's time to join your fellow Seminoles for a Sunday brunch.

FSU and UM to do research together


By Amy Zukeran
Special to the Florida State Times

Schools across the nation grapple with dropouts, teen-age pregnancy and violence.
Farmers plow under perfectly healthy crops.
A thin web of tissue surrounding the brain blocks the passage of therapeutic drugs.
But help is coming. An innovative arrangement between Florida State and the University of Miami - with a few contributions from other universities in Florida - will allow researchers from different schools and disciplines to work together on medical, agricultural and social problems.
The collaboration is thought to be the first of its kind in the nation between a public and private institution.
"The wave of the future for universities is collaboration," said FSU president Sandy D'Alemberte. "It's a win-win situation."
One of the winners will be the universities, showcasing their research. Another will be the public, enjoying better food, medicines and health care - at lower prices.
Researchers hope that sharing buildings, equipment, ideas and brains will mean a greater return on each research dollar.
For example, FSU's meteorology department is regarded as the leader in predicting subtropical and tropical climate changes. UM and the University of Florida add their expertise in turning climate information into useful data. The benefit? Farmers who can predict adverse climate conditions while there is still growing time to do something about it.
Another project will look at school-safety techniques - uniforms, metal detectors, security guards - to see which ones work.
A third study will try to overcome the resistance of the blood-brain barrier to admitting medicines to the brain.
"Different universities have invested and built up expertise in different areas," said James O'Brien, director of FSU's Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies.
The exchange has already begun. FSU researchers have been working with UM's public-health researchers to uncover root causes of problems such as breast cancer, heart disease, juvenile crime and drug addiction.
Research teams are comprised of bio-medical, physical, psychological, economic and social scientists, said David Sly, sociology professor in FSU's Center for Population Studies.
Sly says the involvement of Miami means that population studies can include understudied minority groups.
One startling example of the neglect of minority-group studies involves depression, second only to cancer as the most expensive medical problem in the country. Few studies of depression have included minorities.
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory will also participate in the collaborative research.

Dr. Joe Travis (right) discusses research with Jeff Leips (left) and Tony Shriner.

Good news for Joe Travis: He's an "800-lb. gorilla"


By Judy Taylor Cramer
Managing editor, Florida State Times

Joe Travis' first reaction when he learned he was the 1996-97 Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor: "Are you serious?"
Even a month after receiving FSU's highest faculty honor at spring commencement, Travis, 43, chairman of the department of biological sciences, is still in awe of the esteemed company in which he now finds himself.
"When you look down the list of people who have won this award, they're the titans, the 800-pound gorillas intellectually," he said. "I never thought I'd be in that class."
With the title comes responsibility, Travis said. "To get an award named after him (Lawton), someone so well-respected and admired, well, it says you're following in his footsteps, and they're awfully big footsteps."
Since 1957, the Lawton professorship has been presented annually to an FSU faculty member for excellence in teaching, research and service. During the presentation, Travis was cited as "an exemplary teacher, academic statesman and renowned scholar."
Juggling research and teaching isn't that difficult, he said, because "they're really not separate jobs.
"You don't turn your brain off from one thing to another."
When he attends major conferences, he sits in on presentations on subjects outside his research and takes notes to use in his classes. Sometimes research projects grow out of questions a student asks.
"Having to explain things to students, you learn how to organize ideas logically and distill massive amounts of information down to the important elements," he said. "And that's exactly what you have to do when you write research papers or grant applications or make presentations."
The recipient of a University Teaching Award in 1992, Travis said he teaches because "it's fun. If you put a lot into it, you'll get a lot back.
"Oh, there are times when I wonder what I'm doing it for. A student will come in and complain that a test is too hard. But you have to weigh that with the times when a student comes up to me after the course is over and says, 'I had to take this course, but I learned a lot and now I know why it's required.'
"I want the students to come out with their world view changed, to say, 'I think about this course differently than when I went in.'"

The best job a bird watcher could have


By Judy Taylor Cramer
Managing editor, Florida State Times

Gary Graves says he has the best ornithology job in the world.
As curator of birds at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, he spends part of his time managing the national bird collection - some 600,000 specimens accumulated since 1846.
"We have about 100 Ph.D.s in one building," says Graves, who received his Ph.D. from FSU in 1983. "It's the greatest accumulation of brain power in natural history."
The rest of Graves' time is spent on research, taking him away from the tourist-and-traffic-clogged streets of the nation's capital to tropical Caribbean forests in search of endangered species of wood warblers.
A bird-watcher extraordinaire, Graves was fascinated by birds as a youngster. In fact, he became so immersed in bird watching that he almost flunked out of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
"I found my field notebook from my sophomore year, and I spent 270 days in the field," he says. "It's amazing that I passed at all. I had a few professors who saw that I had some promise."
Graves' preference for field work over class work fit right into the master's program at LSU. Within a few weeks of enrolling, he was on an expedition to the Peruvian Andes, where a few months later, he and his fellow explorers discovered a new species of birds.
"It was pretty intoxicating," he says. "It was high adventure, the kind of thing that you dream about."
After four years of expeditions and research at LSU, Graves arrived at FSU with little knowledge of how to analyze all the data he had been collecting. "I spent the first year taking statistics courses," he says.
Graves recalls that FSU's biological science department had "one of the most exciting ecology programs in the country."
"The faculty was first class," he says. "It was a very vibrant place."
After he earned his Ph.D., Graves received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Smithsonian that led to a permanent position.
"I was at the right place at the right time," he says. Just like any good bird-watcher.



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