Using Steve Jobs’ name to sell a tech school?

Posted Oct 14, 2011 by Lindsay Peterson

Updated Oct 14, 2011 at 05:20 PM

USF Polytechnic Chancellor Marshall Goodman brought up the late Steve Jobs at a meeting with students the other night.

He was giving his pitch for separating USF Polytechnic from USF, saying why a tech-heavy education was important.

Jobs truly understood the power of technology in people’s lives, Goodman said.

But wait.

Jobs went to a liberal arts college.

Goodman acknowledged that, saying that Steve Wozniak was the techy and Jobs was the “liberal arts guy.”

So why minimize the liberal arts? Goodman’s new polytechnic would set aside only 20 percent of its curriculum for liberal arts programs.

Jobs didn’t finish college, but what he learned while he was there helped him design the first Mac.

Consider another example, straight from USF in Tampa.

One of USF’s patents last year went to a dance professor in the College of the Arts, Merry Lynn Morris. She had an idea for a special kind of hands-free wheelchair and took it to the College of Engineering.

The dancer and the engineers figured it out together.

The engineers deserve huge credit, but the project began with the dancer, more specifically, the dancer’s idea.