Campus Expansion, Research Highlight a Transformative Year at USF Sarasota-Manatee

December 20, 2023 – Sarasota

The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee continued on a path of transformative growth in 2023, highlighted by the start of construction of a first-ever student center and residence hall, which is set to open for the fall 2024 semester, and USF’s admission into the elite Association of American Universities.

Six months after construction started, USF Housing this fall began accepting applications from current students wanting to be among the first to live in the new six-story, $42.3 million student center and residence hall going up along the campus courtyard. (Incoming freshmen will be able to apply after they are accepted to USF.) The first two floors of the 100,000-square-foot building will include a dining hall, ballroom, bookstore and lounges and meeting rooms, as well as offices for student government and USF World. The top four floors will include suite- and apartment-style residences for up to 200 students, offering unprecedented views of Sarasota Bay, Longboat Key and other environs.

The building means USF Sarasota-Manatee will no longer be just a “commuter school.”

“The student center and residence hall are designed entirely to help our students create a new type of experience, a new type of community on the Sarasota-Manatee campus,” said Regional Chancellor Karen Holbrook. “I am thrilled that we are now able to offer our students this wonderful opportunity.”

Students who have signed up to live in the building are excited about the chance to make a new home on campus.

“I really like the community here a lot. Everyone knows everyone,” said Natalia Chersia De Leon, a sophomore psychology major from Miami. “Being among the first to live on campus is super cool because you’re making history.”

USF also selected architects and a general contractor for a new $61.7 million Nursing/STEM building that will allow USF to grow the campus’s nursing program, increase new majors in the health disciplines, engineering and other programs and fill the need on campus for more classrooms, teaching and clinical labs and research facilities. The building, which is currently being designed, will go up across the campus courtyard from the student center and residence hall.

Faculty research highlights

Other major stories at USF Sarasota-Manatee in 2023 include the awarding of a $2.6 million federal grantto the campus-based Florida Center for Partnership in Arts-Integrated Teaching (PAInT) to train social studies teachers in elementary and middle schools that serve low-socioeconomic status households and communities.; the naming of a new director for the Baldwin Risk Partners School of Risk Management and Insurance at the Sarasota-Manatee campus; a donor-supported College of Education literacy and mentorship program at a Sarasota middle school; and notable research and other work by faculty in business management; criminology; cybersecurity; education; hospitality and tourism management; refugee studies; and other disciplines.

A research highlight was Associate Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders Michelle Arnold’s work as part of a team that found that in older adults at heightened vulnerability for cognitive decline that strong hearing intervention efforts, including use of hearing aids, slowed the deterioration of mental awareness and acuity. The findings were published The Lancet, the world’s oldest and most respected medical journal.

Faculty and student success at USF was key to the university’s invitation to join the Association of American Universities this past summer. Regional Chancellor Holbrook said AAU membership recognizes USF’s long-held commitment to and success in growing as a research institution over the past decade and a half.

“The AAU’s recognition fits perfectly with our campus’s goal of creating a more vigorous, more prestigious academic experience for our faculty and for our students, and for supporting groundbreaking research,” Holbrook said. 

For a complete list of the top stories of 2023, read the story at the USF Sarasota-Manatee website.