Former USF Lakeland CEO speaks out

Posted Nov 7, 2011 by Lindsay Peterson

Updated Nov 7, 2011 at 01:53 PM

The former CEO of USF’s Polk County campus, L. Preston Mercer, is urging the state Board of Governors and Chancellor Frank Brogan to “slow the pace” of efforts to separate the campus from USF.

It’s doing harm, he said, because students, professors and many in the community feel they’ve been excluded from the discussion.

Mercer works at USF Polytechnic as a biochemistry professor.

He supports the polytechnic concept, he said, but the campus hasn’t yet “jelled,” as an institution.

Without a delay “the current feeling of chaos held by faculty, students and staff, resulting from a perceived disenfranchisement and feeling of not having opinions valued, will grow, putting the future success of the campus in jeopardy.”

A vote is planned at the board meeting on Wednesday in Boca Raton, just 14 weeks after a group of community leaders proposed the idea.