RattlerGator Blog

Traveling to Havana, Cuba

Thanks to a sister who should have attended the University of Florida but got scooped up by the Ivy League (Penn) and never left Philadelphia after graduation, I'm headed with she and the Penn Alumni Travel group to Havana, Cuba on Saturday for a solid week of cultural exchange lectures and performances.

This trip was planned a year ago, long before Barack made his executive decision. My sister has now retired and come back to Jax; this trip is her retirement gift to herself and she invited me to tag along. I said, of course, heck yeah! We'll be staying at various times at the Hotel Saratoga and the Melia Marina Varadero and I'm very pleased with the looks of the accommodations.

I'm a fan of Marco Rubio and tend to agree with his position on American outreach to Cuba but I do see the other side as well. Greater interaction could be our friend, as long as we aren't primarily propping up the dictatorship.

More in the coming weeks.

Football Sneak Peak in College Station, Texas

It's the middle of August, and like many football fans, I'm getting really excited for the upcoming season -- college and pro.

Since the outbreak of college conference expansion, I've been a big advocate of Texas A&M. They are destined, in my honest opinion, to be the "University of Florida" of the SEC West. As such, I've become a very big fan of Kevin Sumlin too, so after viewing this recent video below the scene brought a big smile to my face.

It's hot and humid as hell all over the Southland at this time of the year. In fact, the average high in College Station, Texas this time of year is an incredible 97 degrees -- five degrees higher than the Tallahassee average. And as a native Floridian, I can assure you those five degrees make a big difference so I could really empathize with the players in this video.

Check it out:

That is real, that is genuine, and that was fun to watch.

Work hard. Play hard.

Football !!!

UF Presidential Search Update

Recently received eMail from the University of Florida Alumni Association:

PRESIDENT SEARCH UPDATE - June 16, 2014

To: University of Florida Family and Friends Re: Presidential Search Update

Dear UF friends and family, Thank you for your support and engagement as we proceed with the nationwide and worldwide search for the University of Florida’s next president. There is unanimous support on the Search Committee and the Board of Trustees to seek an exceptionally well-qualified leader with a distinguished academic career and the many other abilities needed to help UF become a top-10 public Association of American Universities institution and be strong in the coming years. I want to give you an update on other activities to date and planned for the summer. The busiest time for the search will be in the fall, when faculty and students return to campus. Conversations with Experts—AAU and APLU I met recently with Dr. Hunter Rawlings, III, the president of the AAU and former president of Cornell University, and Peter McPherson, J.D., the president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and former president of Michigan State University. From my outreach, I have learned there is excitement in the academic research world about UF’s preeminence hiring initiative and our state leaders’ alignment with UF’s goals. UF is well positioned to attract a pool of talented university leaders from around the country for the opportunity to be president of our great university.  Nominations Executive search firm Greenwood/Asher & Associates has received a number of nominations for the position of president. They are posted on the president search website at http://presidentsearch.ufl.edu under The Position tab and will continue to be posted there as they are received. Nomination alone does not mean an individual is necessarily interested in, or qualified to be, president. Anyone who applies will be considered at the appropriate time in the process under the comprehensive search criteria approved in May. Next Meetings The Compensation Subcommittee will meet July 7 and the Search Committee, Board of Trustees Governance Committee and full Board of Trustees will meet soon after to consider the market range for peer presidential compensation. The Communications and Marketing Subcommittee will meet later in July to review the advertisement for the president position. The full Search Committee will meet Sept. 5.   All meetings will be live-streamed. Please go to the search website for meeting notices and live-stream connection information. Board Update It is my honor to have been elected chairman of the Board of Trustees recently, and trustee and Search Committee Vice Chairman David Thomas was elected as vice chairman of the Board of Trustees. Our two-year terms of service begin July 1.  I want to recognize the exceptional leadership of C. David Brown, II, who served as chairman of the Board of Trustees for the past two years. UF is indeed in a strong position to recruit the very best leader for UF’s future. I hope your summer is off to a good start, and I look forward to the work this summer and in the fall on the presidential search. Your continued engagement is greatly appreciated. Best regards, Steven M. Scott, M.D. Chairman, UF Presidential Search Committee Chairman-elect, UF Board of Trustees

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Best wishes to you, Chairman Scott, on your difficult and very important task.

President Bernie Machen Pays Tribute to Al and Judy Warrington

It was reported yesterday that Al and Judy Warrington made a gift of $75 million to the University of Florida, bringing their total contributions to the university over the years to an incredible $100 million. In honor of the remarkable donation, U.F. President Bernie Machen supplied an opinion piece printed today in the Miami Herald and I'm re-printing it in full below.

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BY BERNIE MACHEN
WWW.UFL.EDU

Friday night, Al Warrington, a UF alumnus, an accomplished businessman — and a Miamian — along with his wife, Judy, pledged the single largest gift ever to the University of Florida.

The $75 million, which, when combined with Warrington’s earlier support, makes him UF’s first $100-million donor. This gift will add momentum to UF’s accelerating campaign to rise among the nation’s top public universities. The Warringtons’ generosity will benefit Florida’s best and brightest students, its economy and all of the nearly 20 million Floridians touched by the work of UF researchers in fields ranging from medicine to agriculture to engineering.

Florida has invested heavily in public higher education for more than a century, and this taxpayer support has driven the growth and success of UF and our 11 other public universities.

Today, UF offers a world-class education at a price consistently ranked as one of the best bargains in the nation. We have built a legacy of medical and scientific discoveries; technologies that have helped launch more than 100 job-creating companies; and labs that attract almost $600 million in annual corporate, foundation and federal research funding to Florida.

The Warringtons’ gift and similar private support will allow UF to augment, amplify and diversify this legacy in ways that go beyond what is possible with public funds or tuition dollars.

Such gifts support:

• Scholarships for Florida residents, such as the Machen Florida Opportunity Scholars Program. Intended for first-generation students whose families earn less than $40,000 a year, this scholarship has enabled more than 2,900 students to attend UF since 2006.

• Endowed faculty positions that will allow UF to hire and retain world-class faculty.

• Student training and experience. A case in point: Business college faculty use these funds to hire graduate student assistants, who in turn focus on research questions and receive critical training as Florida’s next generation of entrepreneurs and scholars.

• The purchase of scholarly or scientific assets, such as immense sets of business and economic data — the raw materials from which faculty build new insights and knowledge. These funds also help UF researchers travel around the globe to collaborate with colleagues at other institutions.

The Warrington gift comes as our university moves forward with plans to hire as many as 130 faculty members as part of the Preeminence Plan to rise among the nation’s top universities. UF will match the state’s investment in this plan — $15 million annually for five years — through private donations, with the goal of raising $800 million before the next Olympics.

Al Warrington has been a regular on the UF campus for almost 60 years. He worked his way through school cleaning fraternity houses and subsisting at times on apple butter sandwiches. He rose in the ranks at Arthur Andersen in its Miami office and frequently recruited Gator grads to work for the firm. He has shuttled into town for decades to serve on the UF board of trustees, as president of Gator Boosters and the UF Alumni Association, and as a member of the UF Foundation Board of Directors. He considers Miami his hometown and has owned a home there for decades.

He knows UF as few do, and that knowledge has guided his giving. His past support helped transform the business school now named for him. His latest gift comes at a key moment in UF’s history as we combine state support with private funding to enhance the preeminent university in Florida, a national bellwether state soon to eclipse New York as the nation’s third most populous.

For students, the results will be more scholarships, state-of-the-art facilities and opportunities to interact with top-flight professors.

The state’s business community will gain new companies, skilled employees and expertise. And residents will see benefits ranging from disease-resistant crops to new consumer technologies to advances in cancer treatment.

As we work toward those goals, donors such as the Warringtons give twice. Once to UF, and again to the people of Florida.

Bernie Machen is the president of the University of Florida.

UF's Soon-to-Be New Gateway to Campus

I'll never forget my first trip to the University City: Orange Park High School's football team was taking a bus down to one of the early season Gator football games (my recollection, with the aid of Google, says it was September 13, 1975 which, oh by the way, was a 40-14 victory over SMU -- yes!) and I was wide-eyed as we turned right from Waldo Road and commenced that 1.7 mile drive west on University Avenue.

Then, all of a sudden, there it was. At the corner of University Avenue and 13th Street, a simple and unpretentious brick structure that still stands (perhaps not for long, though) said it all: UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA.

Even as a kid this was my dream school, and at a then-unknown date in the future it would be the only university I applied for admission to, and I had been a fan of Florida Gator athletics for what seemed like years and years by then. But I had not visited the campus, and I was genuinely in awe. People filled both sides of the street, all walking toward Florida Field, and the excitement on the school bus (yes, we bussed down the 55 miles or so from Orange Park in a Clay County School Bus) was palpable. I don't know, maybe it was just me but I don't think so. But I was especially excited.

That trip, that game, was a special memory for me and remains so. That's why I'm intrigued by Florida's decision to update that (for me) iconic gateway to campus. I have for years wondered when this would be done (the sign was understated and insufficient even in 1975) and the time, apparently, is now.

The following images help tell the story.

The gateway to campus (certainly for folks coming from Jacksonville and northeast Florida; Gators coming from other parts of the state might think of other spots as equally iconic gateways) is being revised as an ancillary benefit arising from the growth of our Warrington College of Business. The undergraduate program, the Heavener School of Business, is getting their own dedicated building and it will directly front that University Avenue / 13th Street intersection. This is what the current aerial overhead shot of the construction looks like:

Heavener Hall is HUGE and it's going to be a significant addition to campus that will clearly add some distinct spaces to an already distinctive location. This is what tonights construction webcam presented:

And, when it's all finished, this is what that gateway should more-or-less look like:

Beautiful.

The next decade for the University of Florida is going to be phenomenal, academically and athletically. And our physical plant is going to reflect that advance, too.

Decorum? Not so much!

There's a number of videos making the rounds of Fall Commencement this year at Grambling State University in Louisiana. It's ummmm, uh, well -- the fact of the matter is, you have to see it to believe it:

Video 1

Video 2:

Wow.

I am so incredibly conflicted by that video. I love the celebration, the collective party (and that "Neck" tune has become EXTREMELY popular with almost all black college bands these days and the fact of the matter is that I love it, too) but -- Grambling !!! -- this makes a mockery of the graduation exercise.

How in the hell does the administration at Grambling not understand that?

What the hell are they doing allowing the band to play "Neck" at graduation !?!

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries !!!

So many folks these days can't quite seem to grasp the necessity of not only boundaries but the wisdom of the all-important social conventions of time, place, and manner. In short: decorum. I say this all the time to friends and acquaintances when we're bitching about the sorry state of so many kids these days. This video, however, says many folks in my generation and niche culture (adults in their 40s and 50s who are either administrators at black colleges or married to folks who are) can be faulted for being just as guilty.

Damn.

The problem, of course, isn't limited to black culture (although I honestly can't imagine a white university having this kind of problem display at graduation -- a different kind of problem display, yes, but not this). It's just that "Neck" bubbled up out of black culture and, well, sadly it has to be admitted that there's something very familiar about this kind of excess.

That said, check out the problem they have at LSU with the playing of "Neck" at their football games. They, too, have fallen in love with the song and their irreverent kids have changed the lyrics from "heyyyyyyyyyyyy ohhhh, talking out the side of your neck" and "neckkkkkkkkkk, you talking out the side of your neck" to something quite, quite different:

Once again, boundaries. Once again, decorum.

As for the song that inspired the college compositions, here's the version released by Cameo:

Talkin' Out the Side of Your Neck

The college stuff is much better, wouldn't you say? They took a very catchy riff, played it up, and left all the rest alone. It may be stretching things beyond all genuine comprehension but I suspect (wish?) there's a broader decorum lesson found in the musical process by which an average, at best, song was transformed into something quite memorable via the contemplation -- in part -- of time, place and manner restrictions.

Beautiful Student Parody of FAMU Theater Faculty

The theater is a jealous mistress.

That's what I was told a couple of decades ago by a theater faculty peer of my wife and it has certanly been proven to be true. It (drama, as a discipline) is a labor intensive craft; add in the requirements of academia and the demands strain the hell out of a marriage.

There are side benefits, however. A few, to be sure, but they do exist. One benefit is seeing kids interested in the field struggle through a brazenly subjective arena populated with remarkably bold personalities that often mask equally insecure (bipolar?) personas. Educational theater is uneven at best, and if you're going to get some enjoyment out of it, you have to learn to be charitable with your critiques and revel in the progress you see on stage as freshmen become seniors.

That's why the parody presented below was so enjoyable. I'm not sure the beauty of the end-product will come through to the uninvolved viewer but if you're familiar with the Essential Theatre at Florida A&M University -- well, these kids freakin' nailed it. The writing is crisp, and definitely on the money. The acting is fun and the students bring their faculty to life as they lovingly savage them in this piece. 

That's the way I see it anyway. Take a look and see for yourself:

Yes, wifey is the Dean and yes they zapped the hell out of her (Sweetie!). But they got after every single one of their professors and that's what makes the video work so damn well.

I love mementos that serve as snapshots in time and that's exactly what this is. Years from now it could be that one or two of these students (or one of the faculty members they portrayed) will have gone on to bigger and better things on the big screen, scriptwriting, backstage or on Broadway. At that future date we'll forever be able to reflect back on this piece and say with great pride . . . I remember when !!! Which is exactly what I felt a few years ago watching Anika Noni Rose tear it up on Broadway.

Among a cast that included Terrence Howard (Brick), Phylicia Rashad (Big Mama), James Earl Jones (Big Daddy), Lou Myers (Reverend Tooker), and Giancarlo Esposito as Gooper, it was our own Anika in the leading role of Maggie who stole the show, as the New York Times itself admitted.

Anika exhibited Rattler Pride in that Broadway performance and, similarly, these students have done the same. Congratulations to all of them on a job well done, especially Stacy Mosby who played herself in the parody and was the writer / director.

To Being A Gator - For Life

It's college graduation time in Florida once again. Like many others, the older I get the more nostalgic I get. This congratulatory video produced by UF for her newest crop of graduates hits the mark:

The love of alma mater, it's a beautiful thing. Congratulations Gator grads and to college graduates everywhere.

UF Students Add Some Gator Flavor to the Harlem Shake

Maybe the buzz has faded but some UF students organized a pretty impressive flash mob at Turlington Plaza to add some Orange and Blue Gator flavoring to the Harlem Shake. Check it:

Yeah, baby. I know I'm extremely biased but that's the best one I've seen. Except for that effort by what appears to be some unit in the Norwegian Army.

Here 'tis:

The military uniforms, the snow, dude falling out the window with the flag -- good stuff. At the time of this posting, that thing has nearly 10 million views !!! That, ladies and gentlemen, is the best one I've seen. I'll give UF the win in the university competition. Go Gators !!!

Incredible Animation from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Thanks to Michael Yon, I was prompted to watch this incredibly good animation from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that does an outstanding job presenting a visual display of what makes NASA's Curiosity Rover so amazing -- including how it got to Mars, and what it will be doing there. Check this out if you haven't seen it:

 

If you aren't geeked by that you must be working far too hard at ignoring what it takes to get from the initial idea to the reality on the ground.

Congrats to all involved who made this happen.