Otto: USF already a beast of the East

[Jim Johnson]

USF already a beast of the East

By STEVE OTTO Steve Otto

sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: October 14, 2009

Big game Thursday night!

It's that time of year again around here. Big Game ... Big East ... Big Time ... Big ... Big ... Big!

There will be a lot more of that leading up to and during the game as broadcasters point out how young the USF program is and that a win over nationally ranked Cincinnati will yada, yada, yada ... push us into the big time.

It gets a little old, if only because, you know, USF reached "Big" a few years ago.

And I'm not talking about football.

I remember when the University of South Florida was little more than sand and scrub pine and a few buildings that looked like a warehouse district. That's long gone.

USF was designed to be an urban university that not only would provide research but also would serve the community. It is there. Everywhere you look you see USF, from its medical school that has transformed our health care community to its College of Education's influence in our schools. Here are a few gems I dug out, and they are only a sampling of what is going on:

•USF has a $3 billion annual economic impact on the Tampa Bay area. Last year, its faculty secured more than $380 million in research grants.

•Just last week, USF inducted inaugural members of its Academy of Inventors, which includes more than 130 members of the university community who hold U.S. patents on their inventions. Among them is professor Richard Gitlin, who is the co-inventor of the DSL, that high-speed cable linkup that allows your home computer to work at incredible speeds, assuming your kid hasn't cluttered it with junk.

•Former Miss America Nicole Johnson (1999) now works in diabetes research at USF Health.

•USF's Power Center for Utility Explorations is apparently a national leader in developing new energy technologies. Closer to home, some of their beneficiaries are the elephants at Lowry Park Zoo. They soon will be able to cool themselves off beneath shelters that will convert solar energy into the power needed for the park's sky ride and power the zoo in case of a hurricane or other major outage.

•Another measure of growth is in this year's annual Chronicle of Higher Education almanac. It says that between 2000 and 2007, no university in the nation increased its research funding as fast USF.

•USF is well known in the arts and entertainment community. My high school buddy Leo Gallagher graduated from USF in 1970 with a chemistry major, which helped him smash all those watermelons onstage. Soap star Mark Consuelos, married to Kelly Ripa, graduated in 1994. USF's Graphicstudio has an international reputation. Included in its list of luminaries are Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist.

•.The USF Bull Runner buses run on biodiesel fuel.

•The USF Polytechnic campus is about to be built in Lakeland as part of the Interstate 4 high-tech corridor. Internationally known architect Santiago Calatrava is designing its cornerstone building.

•Finally - and I think the best insight on the good taste of today's students - when they asked students in the new Juniper-Poplar residence hall what kind of restaurant they wanted, they voted for barbecue.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/oct/14/na-usf-already-a-beast-of-the-east/sports-colleges-bulls/

[Kyle]

I'm a little disappointed. I thought this would involve Otto from Syracuse.

[mutt]

Read "The Octonion"...      "Moonbeams and jilly-blossoms"

[gobulls83]

•.The USF Bull Runner buses run on biodiesel fuel.

This is good, I guess, but it doesn't quite seem as important as "$3 billion annual economic impact" and other things on this list when assessing the university's ascension to the "big time."