Florida Tech is at an inflection point.
Under the visionary new leadership of President John Nicklow, we are poised more than ever for greatness. But achieving the lofty goals to which we aspire requires a plan. So, together with our community, we made one.
Forward Together, Boundless Potential is Florida Tech’s new strategic plan, a dynamic, living document that outlines a framework for decision-making based on the university’s future goals and the steps necessary to achieve them.
“The new strategic plan sets the course of our shared future by prioritizing our objectives and building on Florida Tech’s distinctive identity,” Nicklow says. “It is thoughtful; it is ambitious—it both honors our past and focuses our eyes firmly on the future.”
In July 2023, through electronic surveys, one-on-one interviews, a diverse 41-person steering committee and more, we captured feedback from five peer institutions, 716 students, 487 faculty and staff members, 14 board members and four of Florida Tech’s top employers, rounding out to about 1,200 voices.
This collaborative, transparent process generated a whole lot of valuable input, resulting in a comprehensive strategic plan with roughly 20 years’ worth of goals, tactics, key performance indicators and more—a blueprint for realizing all that we know Florida Tech can be.
Suffice it to say, there’s a lot to unpack. Here, we’ve broken it down to the basics—anchored by the plan’s four key pillars of success:
Read on for some insight into just a few of the ways we’ve already begun to move forward together with boundless potential.
People of Excellence
What it says:
“Florida Tech will empower and champion our students, faculty and staff, propelling them to attain unparalleled success at their highest potential.”
What it means:
Without our people, there is no Florida Tech. Attracting and retaining the sharpest minds—including clever, ambitious students, illustrious faculty and motivated staff—is and must be at the forefront of everything we do. Engaging, supporting and preparing them for success through the university’s processes, resources and overall collaborative environment will develop and maintain a diverse, thriving community devoted to advancing the university and its mission.
Priorities in action:
In fall 2023, Florida Tech welcomed 1,044 freshmen and transfers from 52 countries and 45 U.S. states. This was the university’s first-ever incoming class of over 1,000 students, and it is up about 8% from fall 2022 and 14% from fall 2021.
To continue this trend, the university seeks to both remove barriers that impede access to education and implement additional measures to mentor and engage new students, ensuring their smooth and successful transition to college life.
To assist with the former, Florida Tech recently launched the Brevard Boundless Opportunity Grant program. Starting in fall 2024, high-achieving Brevard County students who meet all eligibility requirements and enroll full time at Florida Tech on the Melbourne campus will receive additional funds to cover their tuition and fees.
“We hope that this grant opens doors for those really bright local students who might otherwise not be able to afford a Florida Tech education,” says Brian Ehrlich, Florida Tech vice president for enrollment management. “We want to be the school in Brevard County, so we’re continuing to build that reputation by fostering a strong sense of community.”
Because once we recruit the best students, we must support them through graduation, Florida Tech has taken strides in improving our student outreach programs over the last year. In fall 2023, about 50 students participated in the pilot Panther Peer Mentor program, which connected incoming students with upperclassmen who helped them integrate into the community. The program was such a success, it is expanding to include more students and will begin earlier in admitted students’ journeys this fall.
“Especially coming out of COVID-19, there may be more of a need today for our incoming students to have that support,” says David McMahan, vice president for student affairs. “So, helping them make an easy connection with a friendly face who they have once they get to campus is a big part of the objective. And providing them that foundation, that stability to fall back on, is key for us.”
We’re also harnessing technology to connect with students as they adjust to college life. Panthera—our new student-named, AI-enabled chatbot representative that reaches out to students at strategic times, such as a few weeks into the semester when homesickness might set in or the stressful couple weeks before exams—and a new Early Alert Network—a system that pulls GPAs, test scores, class attendance and more data into an algorithm to identify high-risk students—enable the university to be more efficient and effective in connecting with students how and when they need.
“When we have a record enrollment year, people always ask me ‘Why?’” Ehrlich says. “There’s no one answer. It’s not just the enrollment, admissions, financial aid or marketing teams, but every person who comes together to help build our reputation—our ‘People of Excellence.’”
Programs Driven by Innovation
What it says:
“Florida Tech will advance the knowledge and research capabilities in all disciplines by providing an experienced, professional, solution-oriented talent pipeline determined to succeed.”
What it means:
Florida Tech aims to be the “university of choice” for mentoring and training the talents and workforce of the future. That means offering professionally accredited, technology-driven curricula fortified by hands-on experiences in and out of the classroom. Enhanced research— accomplished in part by better supporting faculty as they identify research opportunities and prepare proposals and budgets through our reimagined Office of Sponsored Research—is a driving force.
Priorities in action:
While Florida Tech has long contributed to research related to cyberdefense, the intelligence community and signal processing, the university is establishing the Florida Tech Research Institute (FTRI) to substantially enhance its capacity to conduct applied research from the Department of Defense and the defense industrial base sector.
FTRI, which will be housed in facilities separate from Florida Tech’s operations that meet federal requirements for handling controlled information (physical access, network security and other safeguards), will be an independent, nonprofit entity fully owned by the university and will feature its own board of directors, its own networks and far more stringent security than the rest of the university.
“It allows our qualified and talented faculty and their students to pursue opportunities that directly help our government and its national security needs—from global sensing and national defense to protecting our society, infrastructures, operations and personnel,” says senior associate provost for research Hamid Rassoul.
Keeping FTRI and its research portfolio discrete also preserves the university’s overarching mission to prepare students from around the world for success and excellence.
“This initiative will enable our faculty and research staff to better serve and contribute to sensitive research activities that are critical for our nation and our defense industry base,” says Marco Carvalho, executive director of the L3Harris Institute for Assured Information, professor and L3Harris Chair for Assured Information, who will serve as FTRI’s executive director. “And it will help us provide new, unique education and training experiences to our students, supporting the university mission to create an open forum for discussions, scholarship and academic contributions.”
FTRI will primarily focus on five strategic areas based on Florida Tech’s research strengths and the government’s current needs: cybersecurity and cyberresiliency; space and applied electromagnetics; ocean/marine engineering and science; biomedical engineering and science; and social sciences.
“FTRI is an exciting initiative that will help us continue to build our research infrastructure at Florida Tech—thereby allowing us to continue to expand externally funded research so that we can achieve excellence in this important area,” says John Kiss, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.
Transformative Partnerships
What it says:
“Florida Tech will strengthen and expand university partnerships to provide more comprehensive experiences for Florida Tech students, faculty and staff, which will better prepare them in addressing economic, cultural and societal needs of local, state, national and international importance.”
What it means:
Florida Tech was founded on relationships, starting with those developed by founding president Jerome P. Keuper as he connected early missilemen at the Cape with the people and resources necessary to expand their educations and establish our first degree curricula. While the university has evolved in ways even Keuper could not have dreamed of, being a present, active, vital member of the Space Coast community remains at our core. By both seeking valuable community partners and serving as one, we will enhance student education, boost the local—and global—workforce and economy and, ultimately, advance the mission of the university.
Priorities in action:
As Florida’s STEM University,™ Florida Tech attracts some of the best and brightest up-and-comers in science and engineering to the Space Coast, where we cultivate their minds and connect them with local industry leaders eager to harness their cutting-edge knowledge. This “talent pipeline” is not new, and it is one of several contributing factors that Florida Tech has commissioned the Regional Economic Consulting Group to evaluate in an economic impact survey.
How many jobs do we create? What types of graduates do we produce? What are our local expenditures, and how are they multiplied throughout the area? Essentially, how are the educational opportunities we’ve been offering for over 65 years enriching the Space Coast and the entire Central Florida region? These are the types of questions the survey seeks to answer.
“Hopefully, it is easy to understand that an education is valuable, but the economic impact survey will quantify our value in a new way,” says Wes Sumner, Florida Tech’s vice president for external affairs. “It will provide actual economic data that will show what the university brings to the table in a dollars-and-cents kind of way.”
Even ahead of the results, we’re always seeking to enhance old and establish new partnerships. One example is customized education. For years, Florida Tech has partnered with Northrop Grumman Corp. (NGC) to make it easier for NGC employees to earn master’s degrees relevant to their careers and aspirations. The LevelUp program originally offered 11-week classes solely in person on NGC’s campus. After collaborating with a host of NGC employees and management, a revitalized LevelUp program launched with a cohort of about 50 students in January.
“It’s really designed with the input of our corporate partners—a model that works for their employees but that also works for the university,” says Ehrlich, who helped spearhead the program’s restructuring.
The new hybrid learning model features eight-week classes that bring students to Florida Tech’s campus one evening a week, with summers off, enabling students to graduate with a master’s degree in engineering management, systems engineering or business administration (MBA) in just 2 ½ years.
“Feedback has been great—people are engaged; they like coming to campus; they like that the online component enables them to maximize that eight-week timeframe,” Ehrlich says. “Now that we’ve tested the new model, the idea is to build additional high-demand, career-supporting programs for working professionals and then recruit from local companies. It aligns our programs with the local companies that need the expertise.”
Optimized Learning & Social Environments
What it says:
“We will serve as a leading educational and research-focused institution who provides an enhanced campus life and collaborative culture for the university community and beyond.”
What it means:
As the university— student enrollment, number of faculty members, amount and breadth of research, academic programs and student activities— grows, so must its physical spaces. From classrooms and laboratories to equipment and technology to housing and community gathering spaces, we will evaluate, renovate, modify, build and enhance campus spaces to provide the best possible environments and, subsequently, experiences to students, faculty, staff, alumni, community partners and visitors.
Priorities in action:
Enhancing campus facilities and equipment strategically and with intention requires a plan within the plan. To develop what is called a “master plan,” Florida Tech recently enlisted the services of Credo, a higher education consulting firm who will assess all the university’s physical spaces and determine what needs renovation and enhancement.
During the 10- to 12-month process, Credo will evaluate our current campus utilization—What percent of campus is used for research and teaching? Athletics? Student life? Housing? Etc.—compare it with benchmarks in academia and combine it with university goals and feedback from focus groups conducted with community members, alumni, students, faculty, staff and more. Once it identifies areas of campus that are the most opportunistic for growth, building removal or enhancement, Credo will propose a master plan, including some development documents, photos, renderings and estimates.
“In order to grow enrollment and academic offerings on campus, we must determine what resources and facilities we need to support that,” says Brian Leslie, Florida Tech vice president of operations. “Working with an unfiltered, unbiased third party who comes in to evaluate the needs of campus and compare that to industry standards helps us get a more realistic look at where we should be enhancing and for what reasons.”
Even as master-planning commences, the university continuously works to maintain, develop and improve campus environments through normal fiscal budgeting and operations spending.
To meet growing demand for student housing due to record enrollment numbers, Florida Tech is exploring a partnership to build a new 400- to 500-bed residence hall on campus. The university is also upgrading outdoor wireless across campus, as well as installing new fiber optic runs to ensure redundant capabilities campuswide, aiming to be complete by the time students arrive for fall semester.
“All of the pillars work in conjunction with each other, but I think this fourth pillar is the foundation on which all of the others can be built,” Leslie says. “People of Excellence, Programs Driven by Innovation, Transformative Partnerships—we can’t be as successful in those pillars unless we excel in this one.”
Forward Together, Boundless Potential is fluid. While the goals it presents promote a sense of excellence, innovation and transformation throughout Florida Tech, they will be continuously evaluated and refined each year to best reflect who we are, who we want to be and the most rigorous, yet realistic path forward.
“The strategic plan is just the beginning,” Nicklow says. “It is the launchpad from which our university— our students, our community and our refined vision for the future—will take off with new vigor and that signature Florida Tech tenacity.”
This piece was featured in the spring 2024 edition of Florida Tech Magazine.
