<p>An interesting analysis of the FSU Pathways of Excellence plan in the St. Petersburg Times. (Complete</a> article)</p>
<p>TALLAHASSEE — Plenty of people questioned whether T.K. Wetherell, the Florida State University football player-turned-politico, had the academic heft to lead his alma mater.</p>
<p>Faculty balked four years ago when FSU’s trustees, led by Wetherell’s former lobbying partner, chose him as the school’s 13th president.</p>
<p>“We can do better,” one professor, Sharon Maxwell, said shortly before he was selected.</p>
<p>But with an expensive new program aimed at vaulting FSU into the spotlight, Wetherell is winning over the naysayers who feared he would care more about the football team than what goes on in classrooms.</p>
<p>At a cost expected to exceed $100-million, Wetherell says he wants to hire dozens of top professors to do cutting-edge research and create more doctoral programs.</p>
<p>He hopes that will accomplish something none of his predecessors could: Get FSU into the prestigious Association of American Universities, an invitation-only group of 62 top schools. The only Florida school currently in the group is the University of Florida.</p>
<p>“If we get to the AAU, great,” Wetherell said. “And even if not, we’re still going to be doing a hell of a lot better. This will have the most lasting impact if we can do it right.”</p>
<p>The plan, dubbed “Pathways of Excellence,” calls for the hiring of 200 professors regarded as “superstars” in their fields.</p>
<p>They will work with existing faculty in about three dozen interdisciplinary “clusters,” all of them dreamed up by faculty and endorsed by a committee of professors.</p>
<p>Each cluster will consist of five to eight faculty members who do research and teaching centered around a common theme, such as genetics or extreme weather events.</p>
<p>The goal is to bring together great minds to tackle societal problems and scientific mysteries.</p>
<p>“It’s not like everyone wants to live in North Florida, but I am getting e-mails from all over the world from professors who want to come here and be part of this,” said English professor Gary Taylor, director of a cluster that will study how changes in communication have affected literature and culture.</p>
<p>Universities often talk about going after top-notch professors. But few have been so daring as to go after 200 of them in five years, as FSU plans. Harvard administrators are just starting to talk about a proposal to hire 75 faculty members for science research.</p>
<p>“The best way to make a public university a significant player nationally and internationally is to cluster-hire,” Taylor said. “It’s not like these top people are looking at want ads all the time. So you have to be able to tell them you’re going to be part of a team that the university is really investing in. That’s an enormously powerful recruiting tool.</p>