When Governor Ron DeSantis signed off on the state budget last month, the University of West Florida was a big winner, with over $130 million dollars total. That includes a base budget of just over $93 million and nearly $40 million to expand programs and facilities, such as construction of a new science and engineering research wing.
“We had a really good year. This was the largest appropriation ever in the history of the university,” said Dr. Martha Saunders, UWF president.
Support Local Stories. Donate Here.
Saunders said the funding will go a long way toward enhancing and increasing academic and research offerings from nursing to engineering.
“First of all, we’re going to expand already existing strong programming,” she explained. “This will be home for our new civil engineering program. We’ll be able to expand the research that we’re doing that particularly serves the region. And, bring in partnerships that will be assets to the community, economic development and the region.”
Funding includes $4.8 million for nursing education, $1.3 million to start the civil engineering program, and $1 million to expand mechanical engineering.
In addition to a $10 million appropriation for a new satellite utility plant on campus, the largest share of the project funding, $21.1 million, will add more square footage for science and engineering.
“This building is currently about 80,000 (square feet); we grew out of it several years ago,” stated Dr. Jeremy Kuhl, dean of the Hal Marcus College of Science and Engineering, which opened just 13 years ago.
“We moved in back in 2010, and it didn't take long for us to build out more office spaces, build out more research spaces,” Kuhl said. “We currently have no student spaces anymore because that space was designated for office space once we needed it. We're down to one or two conference rooms because all the other ones are used for research now.”
According to Dean Kuhl, the college has about 100 faculty members and has had approximately 3,600 students for each of the last two semesters. He’s hoping that number get closer to 4,000 in the fall.
“We are seeing growth in areas of cybersecurity, data science, robotics, even other areas of engineering, information technology,” he said. “Really, in the high tech sectors, we are seeing quite a bit of growth and because of that growth, we're having to hire more faculty. And that brings with it new research opportunities. “
RELATED:DeSantis signs a record Florida budget and vetoes millions in local projects
All that means the need for more space for students and faculty to work.
A short tour of the existing science and engineering building includes a look at one of their design labs, where mechanical engineering students have been working in teams to on their enterprise projects to design and build an unmanned airplane.
Around the room are several small aircraft in various colors and states of completion.
Dean Kuhl also showed off some spaces he’d like to enlarge, including a robotics lab and cybersecurity battle lab, where students can — among other things — learn to protect against hacking.
It’s pretty quiet throughout the building because of summer, but in the science and engineering autonomous systems lab, two mechanical engineering students are hunkered in a corner in front of computer screens helping their professor with his ballistics research.
“For the past, like, 20 years or so, he's been developing doing the math and developing a program to figure out how to put basically, an aerospike on the back of a bullet to help produce drag,” explained Kobi Menser, a junior. “We're basically calculating the curve of the spike using code and stuff like that to help reduce drag and effectively extend the range of bullets.”
The planned expansion of the Hal Marcus College of Science and Engineering is expected to add about 40,000 square feet. But the process is just getting started, which means the finished project is still a few years and several million dollars away.
For 2023-24, the $21.1 million approved by Governor DeSantis was less than half of the $45 million what was requested. Also, the one UWF item to be vetoed was a funding request for $5 million to demolish the Southside Residence Halls on the main campus.
President Saunders said she’s not deterred.
“Well first of all, we are grateful for what we received. But we do have contingency plans to keep us moving for these items and we’ll be back next year requesting it again.”
“If you look at the numbers, of course, we had some big numbers we were working with,” said District 1 State Senator Doug Broxson, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. “But if you look from Tallahassee to Pensacola, we did extremely well.”
Across the region, Escambia will receive more than $52 million for various projects, including some of those at UWF and a $7 million appropriation for the Pensacola State College Career and Technical Charter Academy.
Santa Rosa County will get $13.2 million for local projects, with about $9 million going to Okaloosa.
Broxson said it was a $20 billion budget surplus and a special appeal to the governor that made this year’s ‘historic appropriations’ possible.
“Our position is that we're over there about six months out of the year. And people love policy, but they love money more than policy,” he explained. “And the only thing that members really can show back home is if they've been effective, is how much money they bring back to the community. And so I think he appreciated some of the issues that we supported him on and was able to justify not cutting like he did last year.”
Broxson acknowledged that he’s savoring this moment, before legislative budget requests for next fiscal year start to come in next month.
For UWF, next year’s budget requests will likely include more money to help with construction of the new research wing to address the rapid growth of the College of Science and Engineering.
From the perspective of Dean Kuhl, this student demand is a good problem to have.
“It means more opportunities, more research opportunities, more hiring opportunities, especially in areas of cybersecurity and data science,” he said. “We know our students are going to get a good job, and it's always nice to know that you build this program, there's interest, it's relevant, and then they get the jobs. That's a nice feeling.”
