<p>What exactly will make FSU’s Engineering school better once it is not tide to FAMU’s?</p>
<p>Mission conflict.</p>
<p>“Mission conflict” meaning what exactly?</p>
<p>I’ll give you my opinion.</p>
<p>FAMU is and likely always will be HBCU-oriented. FAMU’s 2011 incoming freshman class remains nearly 97% single race and not post-racial at all. FSU desegregated in the 1960s and is now post racial and has been for decades. At FAMU, race appears to be everything, the reason for everything, the explanation for all failures, the justification for everything. Criticism of FAMU means you are a racist. FSU has been held hostage to this since the inception of this shared school in 1982. Every motive viewed suspiciously, every attempt to move forward viewed only from the perspective of race.</p>
<p>FSU and its alumni want every college to be nationally ranked, indeed competing with Berkeley for excellence in engineering. FSU alumni don’t care about race, or who represents the university. We celebrate all academic accomplishment. We want FSU in the top 10 of all public universities in the United States. </p>
<p>FAMU has been rocked with major scandal, keeping accreditation, managing money, whatever. Pretty tough competing for the best students in engineering when your partner has their accreditation at risk or some other scandal that speaks to quality published afresh in the media. The gulf between the stats of the FSU engineering students and the FAMU engineering students is huge. The graduation rate difference is equally enormous. </p>
<p>The CoE is shared, with FAMU managing all the monies. Some 80% of all faculty and students are from FSU. The students are held to different standards of performance. FAMU can go and run an HBCU-oriented CoE and FSU can go and compete at a different level with its own College of Engineering.</p>
<p>As a HBCU graduate from a independent Engineering school Tuskegee University. I welcome your opinion but, in my opinion I don’t think you know or understand the mission and or goals of Historic Black Colleges and Universities. </p>
<p>I would bet anything that there is not a lot of post racial anything happening on the campus of FSU. I also bet that that chip you have on your shoulder is found on the campus more times than not.</p>
<p>Just my opinion…</p>
<p>I have looked into the CoE and am not happy with what I see. The HBCU mission is fine…for HBCUs. FSU is not an HBCU, FAMU is an HBCU and the CoE is adrift between the two missions. </p>
<p>That is no way to run a college of engineering.</p>
<p>What exactly is different about a CoE at an HBCU versus a non-HBCU? In either case (as far as undergraduate students are concerned), the CoE’s mission is to teach engineering following an [url=<a href=“http://www.abet.org%5DABET%5B/url”>http://www.abet.org]ABET[/url</a>] specified curriculum (both FSU and FAMU have several ABET-accredited engineering majors).</p>
<p>Exactly my point, the mission of an HBCU is not tide to the mission of the Engineering school…</p>
<p>Ucb, I could not say what the difference would be if the program were HBCU or post-racial. This college is currently neither.</p>
<p>In the execution of the academic mission the most important things are the academics and the students.</p>
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<p>If there is no real difference that you can think of, does it matter?</p>
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<p>You did say that it is already 80% FSU, so any differences that you might think exist would be relatively small between an 80% FSU engineering school and a 100% FSU engineering school, right?</p>
<p>I guess this is when computer science not being in the CoE is a good thing since it would not be caught up in all of this…although in the case of FSU, there ARE differences between the BSCS and BACS degrees.</p>
<p>FAMU controls 100% of the CoE budget.</p>
<p>The partnership is not working. Time to split the college and let each university focus on what drives them. A CoE is essential to STEM and national competitiveness. The current division is not efficient.</p>
<p>Oh yes, I didn’t overlook your response in Post # 45…</p>
<p>tusk91:
Catering to one specific ethnic group is a problem in 2011 in my opinion, even with billions and billions of prior investment. I am willing to support HBCUs as the Legislature sees fit with my tax dollars, but no more. Let the public HBCUs go private and support themselves. There are no longer excess funds in the public fisc for specific identity support. Time to move on.</p>
<p>tusk91:
Typical response. Criticism of the racial spoils systems gets you immediately attacked.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus:
Giving this question some thought, I think the CoE should be post-racial as a public asset. The current affair has had difficulty moving forward under two universities since 1982. The goal should excellence in engineering first and foremost. This may mean the college becomes 80% Asian, but based totally on merit. I would agree to a single-digit percentage student slot apportionment to FAMU out of respect for the historic mission of this school. All from FSU on merit alone.</p>
<p>Why would FAMU object to any push to make the shared CoE better in any way? That’s what you seem to be implying, but never explaining.</p>
<p>parent2noles - You just have a problem with state funded HBCU’s in general it seems and in some way are trying to connect dots that are not there. </p>
<p>The point will remain that HBCU’s are here to stay and as long as they are producing and providing a resource they are not going any where, whether they are state or private. Combined together HBCU’s employes more personnel and turns over more dollars than a typical fortune 500 company. They would be the equivalent of a “Bank of America”. So whether you see them as relevant or not just doesn’t matter in the whole scheme of things. </p>
<p>There are countless Engineering schools that are not tide in anyway to an HBCU and they also rank lower than University of Florida. My suggestion is if you are a concerned alumni, work to improve the Engineering school at FSU, and stop looking for an easy scape goat.</p>
<p>
They shouldn’t. It does not make sense. One would presume FAMU would allow FSU to push the performance of the E school to the stars, and simply hang on to FSU’s coattails, but that is not what happened. From the inception FAMU has reacted with suspicion, jealousy and neglect. Why? No idea. My impression is they simply like wielding power, even if it is against their academic interests, simply to frustrate the partnership. I am appalled by what I have learned. </p>
<p>Without reciting the entire history of the program allow me to say that in the 1970s both FSU (much larger state U) and FAMU (small by comparison public HBCU, that is really more a BCU, as they never integrated (2011 freshman class 97% single race?!) and there is nothing historic about it) both wanted an E school. The Legislature, seeing the expense, demurred, but FAMU forced the issue with a desegregation federal consent decree. However, to avoid alienating the powerful statewide FSU alumni constituency, the politicians decided the E school would be shared, and jointly controlled by FSU and FAMU. Neither FSU nor FAMU was happy with this solution. We should note that FSU and FAMU are physically a couple or so miles apart in Tallahassee.</p>
<p>FSU has been consumed with admission to the AAU for some years now. An accomplished E school is essential to the AAU as a part of overall STEM performance. See GTech’s recent AAU admission to the AAU. Not much else but STEM at GTech. Since FSU has a historic liberal arts character the E school is VERY important to stimulating STEM. I don’t believe FSU cares if FAMU is involved in the E school or not. FAMU is immaterial to the goal, but the diversity points are nice. FSU will try to drag or push FAMU, in the shared E school, towards national prominence in terms of AAU criteria. One would guess FAMU would let FSU drive without objection since this process is bound to make them look more accomplished and the HALO Effect will simply allow FAMU to look accomplished.</p>
<p>However, racial politics don’t seem to work that way. FAMU has drug its feet and holds FSU captive to a kind of racial tyranny, amazingly enough. An example of this is probably best described by a new faculty member, coming from the northeast U.S., to FSU, who with his wife decided to enjoy the FSU and FAMU sports scene by attending many sports activities. At FSU games, when a FAMU winning/leading score was announced to the crowd, the FSU crowed cheered for FAMU. When the prof attended a FAMU game and an FSU winning/leading score was announced, the FAMU crowed booed, to the shock of the faculty member and his wife. They were appalled; having never known FAMU fans harbored such ill will for FSU.</p>
<p>No administration or FSU faculty member will complain about FAMU as they fear being attacked as a racist. </p>
<p>So nothing moves fast, FAMU controls the pace and the budget, and decides what the E school will do. The E school sits, underperforming, to the great frustration of FSU alumni like me. I think they should split the school immediately according to population and move on or give the school to FSU and allow FAMU students guaranteed slots per year, as FAMU seems unwilling to run their own E school.</p>
<p>tusk, our conversation seems to be going nowhere. I’ll answer this last post of yours, however:
Actually, I am somewhat sympathetic to HBCUs, but do think they should integrate like every other state U. Yes, diversity points are nice, but performance is essential. I don’t care about UF. Thanks for your opinion.</p>
<p>FAMU like every HBCU or any other college or institutional in the United states is free to integrate. FAMU can not legal and does not keep white or any other race of students from enrolling.</p>
<p>The fact is that many whites do not wish to attend a Historically Black University, attend a Black church, go to a Black resteraunt or socialize in a predominately Black environment where they are the minority. </p>
<p>Something that is expected of Black folk but, found to be completely unacceptable to whites.</p>
<p>As far as FSU engineering school is concerned I just don’t think it is as high a priority for the administration.</p>
<p>I am going to throw this in here…</p>
<p>Let’s not tip-toe around the bush. FSU engineering grads (and the parents) are worried about the perception that a FSU engineering grad receives from employers since it is tied to a HBCU.</p>
<p>I get that because there are employers WILL have that outlook for various reasons (usually ignorant but that is another thread).</p>
<p>What I try to say on this board MANY times (but folks do not want to hear) is that it takes a WHOLE LOT of things after graduation and DURING your working career to define your career.</p>
<p>Now there will be those who want to point out all of the supposedly Big-4/Finance jobs and such but:</p>
<p>a) The number of those jobs pale in comparison to the number of the rest of the engineering jobs, and…</p>
<p>b) FSU probably would not be “privy” to those small percentage of jobs anyway.</p>
<p>As long as the FSU-FAMU ABET accreditation is in tact, then there should not be any worries.</p>
<p>PS #1: I know, I know, I am in software engineering…but hey, the schools (many) put CS in engineering anyway, so there is my $0.05.</p>
<p>PS #2: It’s all a hustle anyway when you graduate</p>
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<p>What specific things were attempted to make the shared CoE better that were resisted or blocked by FAMU? The sports team thing is not particularly relevant.</p>