Q&A with Florida State President Richard McCullough: On football, faculty, the future

 

Q&A with Florida State President Richard McCullough: On football, faculty, the future

On August 16, 2021, McCullough took over the president's post to lead Florida State University, a key economic engine in the region and one of the largest universities in the state with over 44,000 students.

The highly-ranked school, which is currently placed at No. 19 among public universities in the U.S. News & World Report's rankings, is home to many acclaimed professors and research leaders, as well as national sports titles, including the women's soccer team that won the NCAA National Championship game in December 2021.

With an operating budget of over $2 billion — a 9% increase in funding from last year — McCullough has also successfully navigated his first legislative session with the university hailing it as "the most successful in university history."

Among other things, the Florida Legislature appropriated $125 million to FSU to construct a five-story academic health center with 130,000 square feet of research space and laboratories on what is to become a sprawling TMH campus between Midtown and Capital Circle. About $6.6 million in recurring funds was also set aside for the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, $16.8 million for the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and approximately $90 million in capital funding for deferred maintenance at the Tallahassee and Panama City campuses.

At the same time he's overseeing about $1 billion in upcoming construction work, McCullough is assembling his leadership team and shoring up his relationship with the Board of Trustees as the university's 16th president, succeeding John Thrasher, who served from 2014 to 2021.

In his first year, he tapped Provost James Clark, who was previously professor and dean of the College of Social Work, for his “patience and calmness.” He also brought in Vice President of Research Stacey Patterson, who was previously vice president for Research, Outreach and Economic Development in the University of Tennessee system, for her “effective leadership” and “likeable” nature.

He said more than 150 additional faculty members are joining the university this fall. His main refrain to faculty is to assure them that he “has their back,” which he sought to demonstrate with salary increases to faculty and staff this year. 

The offer on the table during a recent bargaining agreement was a 4% salary increase for faculty across the board, plus a .75% merit increase decided by departments and a .50% merit increase decided by deans. 

The United Faculty of Florida chapter for FSU started out by proposing an 8.6% salary increase across the board in May when negotiations began, according to UFF-FSU President Matthew Lata.

Chicken referred to goals such as increasing research support and faculty hiring, increasing research funding and reaching the top 15 in U.S. News rankings.

Q. With one of the largest classes of freshmen attending FSU this fall semester, what do you believe this says about the university? 

A. We're a university that is on the rise and everybody's taking notice. The number of students we admitted last year was the biggest, with 7,200 enrollments. This year, we had almost 80,000 applications for our target of 6,000 slots. This was the most competitive year ever in the history of the university. The students usually know ahead of everyone else what's going on in the world. They know what subjects to take, they know what jobs to get and they know what universities are on the rise. If we have almost 80,000 people applying to our university, they know something is going on, and they want to be a part of that.