The FSU campus is rich with disciplines that can contribute to the future of the FSU-Ringling-Sarasota collaboration. Many are involved in the interdisciplinary museum studies program. Others simply recognize the importance of partnering with museums. With history and ethnographic programs at the Ringling, museum programs will branch out to new cultural areas.

FSU’s Experience in Collaborating with Other Florida Institutions of Higher Learning

Related Link: International Programs

FSU contemplates collaboration with other Florida universities and community colleges and there is a great deal of history to demonstrate FSU’s openness to collaboration. One example is the flourishing group of international study centers administered by Florida State University, with extended cooperation between the universities in the state university system (SUS). These centers provide a wonderful opportunity for students and faculty from all the SUS institutions to study and travel abroad.

This rewarding program offers year-round study in London, Florence, Panama, and Valencia, as well as summer programs in many locations such as Costa Rica, Prague, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Paris.

The university is currently examining the possibilities of adding a year round study center in Paris. International Programs represents collaboration on a grand scale, and dotted throughout this proposal are references to ways in which the strength of International Programs through study abroad and museum programming can open opportunities for the Ringling Museum.

FSU also has forward-looking relationships with the community colleges. An excellent example of that relationship is the 2+2 program for distance learning, which FSU is conducting with 18 Florida community colleges, offering upper division and graduate courses leading to full degrees.

Finally, there are dozens and dozens of programs through which FSU collaborates with the K-12 schools. Examples of these programs include the Florida Institute for Art Education, art education and arts administration internships, and Appleton Museum K-12 outreach, such as Family Fun Days and children’s museum education.

Before July 1, 2000, Florida State University will send a letter to colleges, universities and school systems seeking their ideas for collaborative activity.

Another Sarasota Collaboration: FSU and Mote Marine

Related Link: Mote Marine Laboratory: www.bio.fsu.edu/mote.html or www.mote.org

Mote Marine and FSU collaboration demonstrates the possibilities that can be achieved when a strong community interest is united with university goals and shared resources. Mote Marine carries on important, ecologically valuable work, which benefits from a truly impressive volunteer network and support throughout the Sarasota area.

The Florida State University and the Mote Marine Laboratory have a shared interest in marine biology. Together they sponsor and organize the Mote Symposium in Fisheries Ecology, a semi-annual meeting that brings to Sarasota experts from around the world. The next symposium will be Oct. 31 - Nov. 2, 2000, and will feature scientists from Finland, Spain, England, Canada, and from throughout the U.S. The keynote address will be given by the Mote Eminent Scholar 2000, Marc Mangel, from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Participation by scientists from the Mote Laboratory and from FSU will also be central to the meeting.

Florida State University is home to the William and Lenore Mote Eminent Scholar Chair in Fisheries Ecology and Enhancement, an endowment that helps sponsor the symposium as well as supporting undergraduates from FSU who spend summers in Sarasota working at the Mote Marine Lab, among other activities.

FSU’s Program in Public History

For more than twenty years, FSU’s History Department has offered a program in Historical Administration and Public History for students who want to work in history museums, historic sites, or historic house museums. History has also joined the efforts of museum studies to forge a deeper multidisciplinary bond between the two museum-oriented programs. A successful collaboration between this program, the museum studies program and the Ringling historic site and Ca' d'Zan would result in an ideal training ground for tomorrow’s museum professionals. It is likely that Ca' d'Zan would provide an excellent resource for a combined history and museum studies project.

Public history is also the potential focus of a collaborative project investigating the people, traditions, families, and diversity of the circus. The project could bring together students and faculty from FSU Departments of History, Visual Arts, Education, Anthropology, Film, and Folklore, with curatorial and education staff of the museum. It would draw on the extensive circus archives and collections of the museum and expand on the oral history project with the circus community already initiated at the Ringling. It would result in educational installations, curriculum materials and a symposium, "Three centuries of the American Circus."

Anthropology

Anthropology is closely associated with Art History in the study and exhibition of non-Western art and artifacts, and it holds a unique collection of Pre-Columbian objects and an additional ethnographic collection. Students and faculty are involved with collections work, archaeological fieldwork and ethnographic studies. The Ringling would offer a site for anthropological skills and activities which could be facilitated by a visiting scholars program and student fellowships.

Historical Ornament -- the FSU Master Craftsman program

Florida State University’s unique Master Craftsman program offers credit hours to students of art and interior design as well as others with a keen interest in historic ornament. The program makes semester-long apprenticeships available to students wishing to develop skills that have applications in architecture and interior design, as well as in the fine arts. The Master Craftsman program coincides with the emergence of new materials and techniques that are changing the economics of creating ornament. Students will work in the studio performing crafts and producing ornament and architectural detail that will be used on the Florida State University campus and/or for restoration of buildings within the Ringling complex.

Other Opportunities

There are other areas of collaboration and educational opportunities for students that could make use of the resources of the Ringling Museum and the expertise of its staff. These include undergraduate and graduate internships in the museum's archives; in its 50,000 volume library, one of the most comprehensive art libraries in the State; in the collections management department which handles everything from rights and reproductions, to art handling and exhibition installation; and in the conservation laboratory, the only such art conservation laboratory in a Florida museum.