SPJC leader quickly setting priorities

The new Clearwater provost wants to spruce up the campus and reach out to Hispanics in the community.

By MONIQUE FIELDS

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 3, 2001

CLEARWATER -- Patricia Rowell, the new provost at SPJC's Clearwater campus, has a few things she would like to change.

For starters, she wants to attract more Hispanic students, faculty and staff members to the two-year St. Petersburg Junior College campus because she is sure the number there now is not keeping pace with the number of Hispanics flocking to Clearwater.

"That's our community," she said. "Our job as a community college is to serve the community we sit in." In the coming months, she said, she will sit down with local Hispanic leaders and groups and solicit their help in achieving her goal.

Rowell, 46, began her new job in November, but the holidays delayed her orientation. She is now settling into her new post, which pays $94,000 a year.

She had been a 12-year administrator at Seminole Community College; her most recent job was as the college's legislative and economic development liaison and assistant to the college's president, Ann McGee. She succeeds Steve Johnson, who resigned in July to become chief operating officer at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

SPJC President Carl Kuttler said Rowell was chosen from seven semifinalists because she has a varied background.

Rowell, who has three degrees from the University of Florida, including a doctoral degree in education administration, has worked as a lobbyist in Tallahassee. She also has established partnerships with businesses in Seminole County, and she has been a teacher.

"She knows all of the hot buttons in higher education today," Kuttler said.

In the late 1980s, she served as a curriculum specialist for SPJC. During her tenure she is likely to transform the college's overall look. The school's stone walls need a good washing, and more colorful plants are needed on campus, she said. She also would like to see more student and faculty artwork on display.

She intends to help SPJC students and faculty achieve national recognition and hopes to organize a workshop that will help students apply for -- and win -- national scholarships.

But for now, she won't tweak the academic program "because it's the strength of the campus."

Rowell believes in servant leadership. She wouldn't send her staff to do something she wasn't willing to do herself. As she walked around campus this week, she picked up a sheet of newspaper and threw it in the trash.

She is affable and easy to approach, but she doesn't want anyone to misinterpret her style.

"I don't think I'm weak; don't test me," she said. "At the same time, I don't throw my weight around. I don't need to."

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