Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian podcast, featuring the Sunshine State's brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida and its millions of weekly visitors. I'm your host, Chris Cate, and in this episode created by SalterMitchellPR, our guest is University of Florida President Kent Fuchs. In our conversation, we talk about President Fuchs's childhood in Alaska and what it was like for him to move across the country to Florida. We'll also talk about how the previous schools President Fuchs worked at compare to the University of Florida. Other topics we cover include free speech on college campuses, the rising cost of the college education, and much more. You can hear it all right now.

Chris Cate: President Fuchs, thanks so much for being on the show. I think it's safe to say that you're the first guest on our show who spent their childhood living in Alaska. How was it that your family eventually came to Florida?

Kent Fuchs: Thanks Chris. This is my first ever podcast interview, so I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for inviting me. I'm really proud of two things from my childhood. One is that indeed I grew up in Alaska, and the other is that I graduated high school in a public high school in Miami, Miami Killian Senior High School. My father was a farmer in Oklahoma when I was born. I was born in 1954. Farmers in Oklahoma at that time, and I think still today, were really struggling. He had a hobby, and that hobby was ... He had two hobbies. One, he was an amateur radio operator, and the other was he got a little airplane that he had rebuilt and flew around. He combined those hobbies and became a air traffic controller. The only jobs available in the 1950s were in Alaska, so that's where, after I was born, our family moved. That's where I grew up until tenth grade of high school.

Chris Cate: What kind of a transition was that like, and what did you think of Florida before you came here?

Kent Fuchs: Well, I didn't know anything about Florida, having grown up in Alaska. In fact, where I grew up, in a small town called Homer, south of Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula, you can imagine there was no television. There was certainly nothing that we have today like smartphones and internet, but the big thing is just no TV. I was not connected culturally, and this is now in the '60s, to what was happening in any parts of what's called the lower 48 or the Continental United States. It was like a culture shock to move from this very outdoors living in Homer, Alaska and a really tiny, little school that I attended to Miami Killian High School, which had a thousand students just in my graduating class. I was there for three years, tenth grade through twelfth grade, and I would say that if my parents let me, I would have moved back to Alaska. But now I'm proud that I graduated from Miami.

Chris Cate: You went on to major in engineering, and you have a master's in engineering. When you were at Duke getting your undergrad degree, could you have ever imagined yourself as a university president someday, or did you have other plans?

Kent Fuchs: Well, I thought when I was an undergraduate studying in engineering that I'd probably go into business someday, but then my senior year in college, I actually changed plans quite a bit and decided, no, I don't want to go into business. I want to be a pastor of a church. I finished my bachelor's degree in engineering, but then went off to Chicago to attend a divinity school and to pursue what's called a Master of Divinity degree. Then when I was there, and students love it when I tell them how many times I've changed my mind about what I should do, when I was there, I decided that, no, my real skills were not in giving sermons and preaching and doing the things you probably would do if you were a minister or a pastor of a church, but what I really wanted to do was to be a college teacher.

Kent Fuchs: I knew that my real abilities were more in the engineering area than anything else if I was going to be a college teacher, so I actually ended up finishing the seminary degree and then went down to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in central Illinois, which has a large and a very good engineering school, and that's where I did my graduate studies in engineering in order to become, as I thought then, a teacher of college students.

Chris Cate: Your bio says that you credit divinity school with teaching you communication and community building skills. Can you elaborate a little bit on how attending a divinity school helped you be a better leader?

Kent Fuchs: Well, it certainly helped in the communications area. That was not my strength when I finished my bachelor's degree and went off to divinity school. I would take these classes. They were called homiletics classes, and they were really about how to give a sermon. Now, this again was a long time ago in the 1970s now, but it was really good in helping me to be a public speaker, helping me in ... I took classes in counseling. I took classes in leadership of nonprofits and a lot of things that I now do in a different form in serving as the university president. It really helped, just rounded out my education in really broad ways, in addition to the fact it was good for my own personal faith, but it was quite different than the undergrad or the graduate studies that I then pursued for many more years in engineering.

Chris Cate: Prior to Florida, you held leadership positions at Cornell, Purdue, and Illinois. Now that you're at Florida, how does Florida compare to those universities you were at previously?

Kent Fuchs: Well, there are a lot of similarities, and there are some differences. That's for sure. I would say on the similarities side, the four universities where I've worked, the University of Florida, Cornell, and Purdue, and Illinois, as you mentioned, all four of those have been what's called the land-grant university for their state. Typically, a state will have one university that's designated where the primary agriculture programs will be, the college of veterinary medicine, and typically those are called land-grant universities. They usually have engineering as well.

Kent Fuchs: The University of Florida is that university for the state of Florida. Even though Cornell is a private university, it's that university for the state of New York, as well as Purdue for Indiana and the University of Illinois for the state of Illinois. There's something quite similar between those universities in the fact that each of them had extension offices around their states that they supported and oversaw and were part of the university, just like we have a extension office that represents University of Florida and what we call IFAS in every county in the state of Florida. There's that similarity in the programs and in sort of the breadth of the university and its engagement with that state.

Kent Fuchs: The differences, I think, are that we, here in the state of Florida, are blessed by an economy and a state that's growing. Not all states are. There are many states that are just trying to recover, even today, from the Great Recession, or they have a population that's declining. Our state is, I think, very blessed that our population is growing, not declining. Also, we're relatively a young state. A hundred years is, on average, about the age of our cities. Some of them are actually younger than that. When you think of Orlando, it's really grown most in the last 50 or 60 years.

Kent Fuchs: We're a younger, I would say, a more vibrant state than many of the others where I've lived in. My wife and I loved living and working in each of those other places, but this is a state that is not just growing and young, but it's also a very diverse state from the geography, from the Panhandle down to the Keys, diverse state in terms of its people, a lot of immigrants. I just love all of those facts, that it's vibrant, it's young, it's growing, and it's really diverse.

Chris Cate: You're the twelfth president of Florida, and I know Florida may not be as old as some of the earliest colleges in the US, but 12 doesn't seem like very many. Have you been able to look back at some of the presidents before you and their terms, and maybe learn about what they did that's helped you as a president?

Kent Fuchs: Yeah. You're right. 12 is not many. There are some universities that aren't much older than we are that have had twice as many or sometimes three times as many. That stability is a good sign. It indicates continuity of leadership and consistency, and I believe, looking at my predecessors, some really excellent leaders of the University of Florida. Interestingly enough, I will in a few days be giving a talk to our local Rotary Club. The Rotary Club in Gainesville, Florida was started by the second president of the University of Florida, President Murphree. Some of our buildings here are named after him. We're a university that has only one statue of a president, and that is of President Murphree.

Kent Fuchs: He was the second president of the University of Florida, but he created, and this was over a hundred years ago, he created, and obviously the people that were with him at the time, most of the colleges that we have today. By colleges, I mean colleges like the College of Agriculture or the College of Engineering, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He was instrumental in doing that. He really was at a time ... Actually, he was president also during the Great Depression and was instrumental in growing the university in size. It's fun to look back and see how circumstances affect a university, but also how the people of that university, presidents and others, also impact that university. I really believe that two things, one, I'm standing on their shoulders, and secondly, I'm blessed and the university is blessed by having each one of those previous presidents lead in the way that they led in the circumstances that they were given.

Chris Cate: What is the biggest challenge you face as a university president?

Kent Fuchs: I'm asked sometimes a slightly different question, and that is, what's the hardest part of your job? Every leader always wants more resources, and so that is sort of given. The hardest part of my job is the large number of different constituents and individuals and groups that I need to listen to and engage with and work with. Just to give you some examples, internal to the university, there are more than 2,000 faculty here in Gainesville. Overall, if you include our clinical faculty working in the hospital that the University of Florida has and the faculty that are in our teaching and research stations around agriculture across the state, we have nearly 5,000 faculty.

Kent Fuchs: When the faculty have things that they'd like the president to know about, to listen to, it's important that I engage with them. The faculty in one area have quite a different perspective on the university and their work than it may be in another area. It's important in just that one seemingly simple group of faculty that I indeed am responsive to and listen to them. The same is true with students and our employees, but it's even more so externally. There are just a large number of external constituents across our state and even nationally that it's important that I appropriately communicate with, that I appropriately listen to. Sometimes these are elected officials. Sometimes they're alumni, or they may actually be members of the corporate world.

Kent Fuchs: I think that's the most challenging part of my job. It's not the great intellect that's required to be a university president. It's not lack of resources or the great problems facing university. It's indeed manage your time appropriately so you do listen to and take into account and counsel the input that you receive, and also that you communicate on behalf of the university to this wide range of constituents. I think of myself as spending about half my time communicating on behalf of the university.

Chris Cate: Yeah, that communication is a good transition to my next question, because I wanted to ask you about a topic that's often in the news no matter what year it is, particularly on college campuses. That's free speech. We know people have lots of different opinions, especially on campus, but at a time when actual protests are so common, how do you balance the right of students to voice their opinions on campus while also ensuring a safe environment that doesn't get out of control for the students who are just going about their everyday business?

Kent Fuchs: I really believe, Chris, that this is one of the big issues of sort of our decade or of our era. Public universities, such as the University of Florida, are put in a unique position in that we do not get to control who it is or manage who it is that comes on our campus and speaks. We indeed, no matter what external group may want to come to our campus and address the campus, we have to allow that. In a private setting, you can require things like people have to be invited, or they have to be approved by the institution, but that's not the case at a public university, because we're an agent of the state. We're part of the state of Florida. 99.99% of the people that come to our campus, and they may speak on one of our plazas or they may rent facilities, these are wonderful speakers. They're wonderful people with a variety of messages, but sometimes these are not people that have messages that are welcome. I don't just mean political perspectives, but I mean horrific messages at times.

Kent Fuchs: Sort of wrestling with the freedom of speech is the topic of the era that we live in. I really believe that, sincerely, that universities are indeed the place where the voices of all indeed should be heard and that one of the sacred tenets of our nation is this freedom of speech. Most other countries, including most other democracies, have much tighter rules around speech than our nation does. Our nation said that it should be the thoughts that win the day, not just the speech, and therefore, that everyone's thoughts should be heard, and then the weight and the force of those thoughts and arguments that are the best will win out. I believe that. I believe that as well. That's important.

Kent Fuchs: What's really changed in the last couple of years has been the use of technology and specifically social media. I don't believe today most of our campus community has the same perspective on freedom of speech as did those that were involved in, say, protests around civil rights or the Vietnam War or things of that. The reason is because most of the members of our community, and I'm speaking primarily about students, believe that they're able to speak as they want with a lot of freedom just through social media and technology, which is true, and that didn't exist obviously in the past. We're all trying to understand, number one, how we can listen to each other. I think that's important and an important skill. How can we not just speak, but how can we also listen?

Kent Fuchs: Then secondly, how can I communicate my own thoughts and my perspectives in ways that will be respectful to other people, but yet I communicate them in an effective manner so they'll understand? Maybe even if I disagree with them, they may even be persuaded by my argument. I encourage our campus community to bring to campus a variety of speakers, and I include even our students, to celebrate these differences, not just political differences, but differences in culture, differences in religion even though we're a public university, or those that may not have any belief in a religion, but to listen to each other, learn from each other. Indeed, all of this is sort of rooted and grounded in the Constitution which guarantees this right of freedom of speech.

Chris Cate: You brought up the topic of resources for colleges earlier. A common complaint about college is that it's too expensive. Can you talk about some of the costs that you have at university and why there's such a demand for even more resources that people may not even think about?

Kent Fuchs: Yeah. Universities that are research universities are amazing enterprises. Most of the economic activity at a research university is not at all associated with, as this is a research university, associated with delivering classes or even teaching courses. But it's all of the things that are involved in the research enterprise that I believe has a positive impact on the educational mission. I'll give you an example. This year, we have a record number of awards from the federal government to the University of Florida to support research.

Kent Fuchs: This is a result of faculty writing proposals to the federal government, to agencies like the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation, and then they competitively decide who they will fund based on those proposals. The University of Florida is getting close to having nearly a billion dollars, nearly a billion dollars, of research activity that takes place. The vast majority of that funding comes from the external sources. Actually, it's funds brought to the state of Florida, typically from the federal government, sometimes from the corporate world or foundations from other parts of the nation.

Kent Fuchs: All of that activity does not directly impact the classroom, but it benefits the students, because they get to see knowledge being created and discoveries being made and solutions to global problems, whether they're in healthcare or whether it's engineering, or it's how do we produce food for the world's population, or work in discovery in the humanities and the arts, or new books being written. That is a very costly enterprise. It's very people-focused. That's where most of all this cost comes from is people. In some areas, it indeed is equipment if you're in the science area for your laboratory.

Kent Fuchs: Then there are just the costs associated with being a community where people live in residence halls. There's dining and food and police and all of those things. Instead of an enterprise where you're, saying, manufacturing things and you can become more efficient in the manufacturing of that, or the cost of your computers, for example, decrease over time, in the university's environment, almost all of the expenses are associated with people. You have the cost of living increases that are associated with them. That's the main driver of cost. It's the people cost.

Kent Fuchs: We're blessed in the state of Florida by having great support from our state to our universities and our colleges. This is in contrast to most other states, but even in the context of where we are, we want to compete with the very best universities, public and private, around the world. We believe that's our mission. We work hard at using our resources real wisely and making sure that we're using all of those resources in ways that are economically the very best. Then secondly, the need for resources increases as you hire more faculty or as you provide a living wage to some of your employees. Then we work to bring those resources in.

Kent Fuchs: Those resources come at our university from four sources. I already mentioned the external grants, and that's almost a billion dollars. The other would be in the area of philanthropy. University of Florida typically receives nearly $400 million a year in new gifts and commitments from friends and alumni. Then there's the state resources that I mentioned. Then there is tuition. Then we have sort of enterprises that stand on their own. Athletics is an example of that. They're not supported at all by these other revenues, and they support themselves through ticket sales and through television agreements and through other revenues that they bring in.

Chris Cate: Yeah, Florida definitely has one of the most successful athletic departments in the NCAA. How much does the actual success of the athletic department, not just having a team, but the actual success of the collective teams, help the university?

Kent Fuchs: Well, it certainly brings a lot of visibility to the institution. We're very proud that not only have we had success in important sports, like football and basketball, but we're typically in the top three in all of the universities in the country in the excellence of the overall sports program. That's determined by how many of your teams or in your sports, you win national championships, how many are you placing in the top three, five, and 10, and there's actually a cup that is awarded. We've been in the top 10 more than any other university in the overall excellence of the sports. That really does bring visibility. It brings pride. We also work hard at having sports programs that are well-managed. You're always going to have mistakes that are made, whether it's on the field or off the field, but there's, and this is something I inherited here, a lot of pride in having an athletic association and departments that are just well-run. That's a tribute to the coaches, to the athletic directors, and all of the staff that work in that program.

Chris Cate: I know that you were part of the search to find your new football coach. When you're a part of that process in the coaching search, what kind of questions and characteristics are you looking for in a candidate during that process?

Kent Fuchs: Yeah. In our football coach's search, which brought Coach Mullen to the campus, and we're excited about him this coming year, my role was primarily to support our athletic director. Indeed, a couple of years ago, our famous, legendary athletic director, Jeremy Foley, retired. It was my job to recruit and to appoint the new athletic director, Scott Stricklin. Scott indeed was the chief lead on the search for the new football coach. Scott kept me informed, and he brought me in in some of the interviews.

Kent Fuchs: What I want is the same that I think our fans want, as well as leadership of our athletics, athletic director. That is that we indeed have a coach that we can all be proud of, and that he manages all that he does and his staff and his teams well, so that they follow NCAA rules and they do make the right choices when they're faced with different choices. Obviously, we also want to win games. The combination of those things, being well-managed and doing it with the highest standard, is what we call a championship experience. That is indeed what Scott Stricklin, our athletic director, wanted in the next coach, and I certainly supported that.

Chris Cate: Obviously, most people listening right now are very familiar with the football team, but what is something at UF that you're particularly proud of that most people don't know about?

Kent Fuchs: Wow. The University of Florida is distinctive in a way that I think we take for granted. That is the incredible, comprehensive nature of our programs. What I mean by that is how many different academic departments we have, how many different degrees we offer, how many areas students can get undergraduate degrees or advanced degrees, and that we're one of the top three universities in the entire country in terms of the breadth and the comprehensiveness. One of my joys is just to get out and about in our ... We have 16 different colleges, and to learn about things like audiology, speech, and hearing, or to get out in our programs in the natural resources, learn about water resources.

Kent Fuchs: There's a lot at the University of Florida that is specific to the state of Florida. Whether it's even in the areas of history, or whether it's in areas, as I mentioned, around agriculture, there's just a lot that's specific to the state. I love it when that comes together. Then we also have this breadth of the arts and the humanities, in addition to my own field, which are in this area of science and engineering and technology. That's what I love is to get out and just explore the breadth. We have this one central campus with 2,000 acres. Exploring it is not just learning about the programs, but actually seeing the different physical parts of the campus. Almost every week, I find some different corner of the campus, whether it is part of the landscaping with the trees or a pond, or a new part of a building that I've never been in or seen before. I've been here almost four years, but I think I've only explored a tiny fraction of what I have yet to see.

Chris Cate: I want to close now with the four questions that I ask every guest at the end, the first being, who is a Florida leader you admire? It can be someone from the past or the present.

Kent Fuchs: I'll actually mention two. The first one that I'll mention I did not have the privilege of meeting, but I went to his memorial service. His name is Michael Gannon. Dr. Gannon was a faculty member at the University of Florida, but before that, he had been a Catholic priest. He had served here in the state of Florida and had also been a Catholic priest at our student Catholic center called St. Augustine, here just on the edge of campus. Then he became a faculty member, and he became one of our most superb teachers, one of our most beloved leaders on campus, and actually one of our most famous scholars. He was a historian of early Florida history and of Spanish history, was one of the world's experts on Augustine, the city, St. Augustine, and I just had the amazing privilege of learning from the people that knew him about him. He was here for many, many, many decades, so a huge part of the history of the University of Florida.

Kent Fuchs: The other person I'll mention, we have a center named in his honor here on campus, and that's the Graham Center, which is focused on encouraging our students to be civically involved in their community. The individual that it's named after is Senator and former Governor Bob Graham. He is frequently on campus meeting with students and talking to them. I didn't know him when he was an elected official as governor or a United States senator, but I've really appreciated getting to know him now in his retirement and his real engagement and love for our students.

Chris Cate: What is an issue in Florida that you think deserves more attention than what it's getting?

Kent Fuchs: This one that I'll mention is something that the state is blessed with, but there's an aspect of this that I would change if I had the powers. It's specific to higher education. The state of Florida provides wonderful financial aid to students that attend universities in the state of Florida, particularly state universities. One of the prominent programs is called Bright Futures. If I could, I would change that and other programs so that they were still merit-based in how they were awarded, but the amount of the award was need-aware.

Kent Fuchs: Right now, the awards are not given based on a need of the recipient. I would keep them to be merit-based, but I would increase the amount of financial aid that focuses on the need of the recipient. It's something we're trying to do within the university to raise funds so that those that have financial needs can access it for their housing, for their books, for their food. We're proud that we have tuition that is virtually the lowest in the entire nation, but I think having more need-aware financial aid is an area that if I could change that magically, I certainly would.

Chris Cate: Do you have a favorite place in Florida to visit?

Kent Fuchs: Boy, this state has this wonderful combination of water, of coastline, both lake and gulf and Atlantic coastline, that I just love. I love to find new places that haven't yet been discovered by too many other people. For me, that means a lot around the Gulf Coast. I've been over to Cedar Key, which is just west of Gainesville, and I enjoy the combination of sort of the people that are working there, living there, many of them for many generations. Then further down the coast, you'll just find these little towns or communities that haven't been explored by too many other people. I've been to Palmetto several times on my way to other places, and it's very much a blue-collar kind of community, but it has this coastline again that's not filled with beaches, but it's filled with mangroves, and a place called Snead Island that is a beautiful county park. I just love those kinds of areas, and this state is filled with them, from the Keys all the way up through the Panhandle.

Chris Cate: The last question should be an easy one for you. What is your favorite sports team in Florida?

Kent Fuchs: Okay. Well, anything for which the logo is a gator head. I root for any of those teams.

Chris Cate: Good answer.

Kent Fuchs: Now, Chris, aren't I ... My research says that you may have attended another SEC school, and you may have another degree from another university in Tallahassee. Is that right?

Chris Cate: Yeah, I did my undergrad at Auburn, and I got my master's at FSU, but I love going to Florida. It's always a really fun place to go and visit. My sister is a graduate of Florida, so I have the connection there.

Kent Fuchs: Okay. Well, those are all wonderful universities, but we love to compete with them in athletics. That's for sure.

Chris Cate: Great. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time for this interview.

Kent Fuchs: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchellPR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchellPR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communications, social media, advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchellPR at SalterMitchellPR.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com, or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.