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Hello, everyone.

I'm Rameca Vincent Leary, and welcome to this edition of Pensacola State.

Today, in this special broadcast, we're honoring our past and investing in the future.

That's right.

In its 75 years of existence, the college has achieved some resounding milestones.

One of the most recent was a ribbon cutting of the Baird Jones Moore Reeves Center for Math and Advanced Technology.

You'll hear about that and much more, including achievements garnered both inside and outside the classroom.

As we start the discussion, I'm happy to welcome Dr. Ed Meadows, president of Pensacola State College.

I'm honored to have him join me for the entire show.

Dr. Miller.

It is always a pleasure, Larry.

It's a pleasure to be here.

And I know that you're doing so much.

Let's talk about the recent 75th anniversary celebration.

Well, to recognize Pensacola State as a fledgling junior college in 1948 that opened its doors and a boarding house on Palafox straight on September the 13th, 1948, to where we now have three campuses and four centers in our two county service area.

So it's been an amazing journey for the institution and the communities that it serves.

So we feel like that Pensacola State is on the pulse of the community.

We certainly are.

And we're so happy to be serving our two counties and the surrounding area as well.

Well, I must admit, it was a jam packed day, right, that day in September on the 13th.

So we started off with a cookout for our students.

Oh, my gracious.

You know, I walked over and and saw the students enjoying the hot dogs.

And so I had Shannon, the student, Octavius.

Right.

He came up to me and said, you know how many hotdogs we served?

And I said, No, but I bet you're going to tell me that.

So the students were were enjoying that day.

And then later that afternoon, we had the faculty and staff on all campuses celebrating, and we livestreamed the one celebration at the Pensacola campus.

And we had a number of faculty and staff at each campus that gave toast the culminating and my toast to the 75 years of the establishment of our our college in Northwest Florida and of course, the gala and the Jean and Paul Ames performance studio.

There were several proclamations.

Will you tell us about a few of those, please?

Well, they were trying to keep it a secret from the president, and but I found out about it ahead of time.

And of course, the city they raised from the city of Pensacola had a proclamation.

We had proclamations from the county commission.

We had a proclamation from the Santa Rosa County Commission.

And, you know, we had actually a proclamation we received later from the Chamber of Commerce.

So they took turns reading different segments of the proclamation.

And so we are framing those and hanging them in the hallway leading up to the president's office.

So it's a very nice gesture on the part of all those government entities to recognize us in that manner.

Lots of memories.

Current and former members of the college's district board of trustees, many of whom had amazing stories of their times when they were students here.

Some of them, you know, one of the most interesting stories is Charlie Sheen and his wife Fran were there and Jeremie Gard, who is an alumnus.

I had to ask him, would he make remarks?

And he told his story about not doing very well in in college and going into the military, serving in Vietnam, coming back home.

But while he was there writing our student advisor asking could he get back in college with and our our our advisor a friend back when you get back.

He made that point.

And so Jerry went on to graduate from our college and then university West Law and then later on to graduate school.

And so he he attributed much of his success to the foundation that he received at Pensacola Junior College afterwards, Charlie Schuler came up to me and said he told my story.

That's exactly what happened to me.

He said, I almost flunked out of college, but I came back to Pensacola Junior College, and they set me straight on the right path.

Sort of reminds me of Sandy Sands.

Same story.

And we know that he has an established scholarship right here.

And when he awards those, every year, he comes on campus and eats pizza with the awardees every year for the last 20 something years.

And he's been very generous to his alma maters university, West Florida, and in particular Pensacola State College, because his scholarship was worth $100 semester, which paid his total tuition for during that time and that BJC.

Amazing things.

Now, Dr. Meadows, we had a recent ribbon cutting here, the bare Jones Moore Reef Center for Math and Advanced Technology.

Actually, phase two.

We're going to start with that first.

Okay.

So tell us a little bit about that, What happened on October 30th?

Well, let me back up a little bit, if you don't mind.

Our oldest building on campus was built in 1956, the bar's building, and we named it the last building in honor of the bar's family who had donated a portion of this campus to the college.

Well, the it it became antiquated and very, very expensive to maintain.

So we tore it down.

We said about it took us nine years total to receive the funding the majority from the legislature and then Trump Gulf Coast also provided funding for us.

And we completed phase one and we named it in honor of the bar family.

Again, it was 25,000 square feet for our cybersecurity program.

And because of Senator Braxton and our other legislative delegation members, they were able to get us the rest of the money for completing phase two, and that is a 47,000 square foot facility for math and advanced technology.

During our capital campaign.

We had Mr. Jim Reeves take the initiative to ask three others if they would contribute toward $1,000,000 for it to be established, just as scholarships for the naming right of that new phase two.

So the Bare Family Foundation, William Jones, now deceased.

Unfortunately, he and his wife established a quarter of $1,000,000 scholarship.

The the Pete Moore family, a Laura Carter, a Lauren Carter, who now is the general manager for the Pete Moore Chevrolet dealership, and then, of course, Jim Reeves.

So we name the building in their honor.

Mayor John Small, Reeves Center for Math and Advanced Technology.

It's just so interesting.

From phase one to phase two, that takes so much work and belief in people out there sharing our dream.

Phase one I think about our STEM programs science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

We transitioned over to phase two and all that.

His it has to offer us in the fact that in that new facility for phase two, that classes will start in January.

Yes, the building is a beautiful I call it the center stone of our campus.

It's it's a three story facility where the third floor is an event space and it has a outdoor terrace that the builder, a limerick company, has donated.

$100,000 to our foundation.

So we have named that in honor of the Merit Company, the Scott Terrace, and then what I call the Grand Hall, which is a beautiful meeting facility that is contiguous with the outdoor terrace.

So we had our our initial meeting for the program, the ribbon cutting, and then afterwards our board meeting.

So we got to use it.

The very first thing, even before our faculty staff moved into the facility.

And it will be a much sought after space.

I understand we already have two major events that are scheduled to occur on that third floor.

Well, just to let our viewing audience know about phase two and what is in that building, some of the things that are Meadows 19 faculty offices, a department head suite, complete with individual offices, prototyping area, so much space for emergent emerging technologies.

And we could talk about it because the list goes on and on.

But what an amazing accomplishment.

There were several people there that day who spoke.

Would you like to talk specifically about maybe one or two of them may have said on that momentous occasion?

Well, I think the common theme during the groundbreaking and the ribbon cutting was their love of the institution and the impact that it had made in our community and in many cases individually with many of the speakers actually being an alumnus of our institution.

So I think that by and large, the majority of people in that room, if they were not employees of the college, they were community members that had enjoyed the benefit or their families had enjoyed the benefit of the education and training that Pensacola State historically has provided to Northwest Florida.

There are a lot of people who came together as far as the funding was concerned, and I read an article recently that talked about Triumph Gulf Coast.

Would you like to tell our viewing audience a little bit about them?

Trump Gulf Coast is the organization that was established by our legislature to dispense over seven county region.

The billions of dollars that our state and our region receive for the damage caused by the old the BP oil spill.

And so we have two local board members that David Bair was there.

He is current chair of Trump, Gulf Coast and Collier Merrell served on the Trump Gulf Coast Board.

And so through an application process, those funds can be dispensed to entities that are developing workforce or advancing economic development in the seven county region.

We have such a marvelous man.

And Dr.

Troy Tippett The PSC Board of Trustees chairman does quite a bit and has an infectious smile.

Will you just take a moment to tell us a little bit about him and what he has done?

Well, Dr. Tippett is a retired neurosurgeon.

He began serving the college by being on the foundation board of sorry for a number of years.

And then somehow we talked him into applying to be on the board of trustees and I past board member that was also on sorry, Mr. Ussery.

She recommended Dr. Tippett to be a member of our portions Days.

He is currently the chair of our Board of Trustees.

He's a remarkable individual, really, in different ways.

He's very politically astute.

He has traveled with me to Tallahassee to talk to the legislature about the needs of not only Pensacola State, but of our 28 college system.

He'll be going with me again next week to Tallahassee to speak with legislative leadership about the need for our system to be under the state health insurance plan.

All right.

We have seen a lot of him.

I even saw him at the 75th anniversary, celebrate Nation.

So we're going to pause for a moment, Dr. Meadows.

And folks, as we head to break, take a look at these memorable highlights from the ribbon cutting of the Baird Jones Moore Reeves Center for Math and Advanced Technology.

We'll be back right after this.

I know that this effort yet again with Pensacola State, who does it the best in terms of trying to help build our talent pool that allows us to grow our businesses, to have businesses attracted here to the city of Pensacola.

Senator Doug Brock.

And case you don't know, he is virtually totally responsible, along with the rest of our legislative delegation, of having the money to build this building.

Were it not for him, we wouldn't be here.

This building is going to be here for many, many, many years and generations, unlike the old 50 plus year old building that was torn down will be here for many generations of students because of new standards, new codes and so on that have been put in place to withstand aging and natural disasters like hurricanes.

1987, I came to PSC.

It was my first college experience and I went on and transferred and got my degree from a four year institution.

Two of my three kids are working, got their A's here.

And what I like most about this and what it does for the community, there's a wide variety, of course, offerings and it's still affordable.

for its part, Triumph has provided for these two buildings.

This program, $12 million to help fund this $43 million project.

And I want to be sure to also thank Senator Braxton for his part in making sure and the other local delegation members, for their part, as they brought in $27 million for this one project.

So that's pretty outstanding.

I'm so proud to be standing up here Dr. Mathers, Pensacola State staff and Pensacola State Board of Directors.

Thank you for taking on this wonderful project and making these math and advanced technology courses available to students in our community.

Here we are in a new building that took a lot of time, effort and hard work to construct.

And it feels like we're completed now.

We're at the finish line.

However, this is the beginning for so many as they walk through this door.

It's the beginning of them doing a better job for themselves, for them, for their families, for their communities, and this is what really is the future.

if you want to think of something about Pensacola State College and Dr. Martin is the word I use exciting time.

I mean, it's just everything about it is exciting Hello, everyone.

During this segment, I'm continuing my expansive conversation with Dr. Ed Meadows, president of Pensacola State College.

Indeed, there are some exciting and innovative things transpiring right here, correct?

That's right.

Let's talk about CTE, Charter Academy and CTE.

Please tell our audience what that is.

That acronym means why not leery of an expansion of our current charter academy that is housed at the Washington campus?

We have plans to initiate a career and technical charter here at our Pensacola campus and maybe a couple of programs at the Washington campus.

But career and technical meaning students will have the opportunity for a dual enrollment charter academy Academy experience where they can achieve a certification and a social science degree in a number of fields like cybersecurity, I.T., computer science, Accounting, Business Administration, and even some of our technical fields like culinary, as well as a drafting advanced manufacturing in applied engineering, those kinds of programs that actually will help the student accelerate their pathway to a career once they finish college.

And certainly if they want to work concurrently with attending college once they graduate from high school.

So as far as the grades are concerned, could it possibly enroll ninth and 10th graders?

Would that be an option?

Funny you ask that.

We ask that.

We actually are going to expand in the fall, the charter academy to include ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th grade, both at the Warrington campus and in the CTA charter.

So this is an exciting time for us to look forward to helping students and parents financially because this is free to the parents get a leg up on their career and technical skill sets while strangely pursuing their high school degree and right that tremendous.

We love the word free.

We don't hear that a lot, do we?

Well, monetarily free.

Exactly.

Of course, you know, there is a lot of effort that the student will have to put into college level coursework.

So the the grade point average for getting into the program for career and technical is different than it is for the degree.

So we'll be accepting applications very shortly for the career and Technical Charter Academy, as well as our traditional charter academy at the Warrenton campus.

This is so exciting.

And speaking of more exhilarating things that are coming down the pike, Aviation Maintenance Training Academy.

When I talk about that and I've heard it, I'm so excited.

So please share that's happening with.

Well, of course, S-3 Engineering is here in Pensacola because they ran out of a workforce over in Alabama and they are in dire need of people that are trained in airframe and mechanics in the aviation industry.

Georgetown offers a program, but there is such a high demand that we have agreed to also offer that program.

This is a tremendous partnership, not only with the on our helicopter tour in Santa Rosa County and study engineering here, but also with the city, the airport, the legislature, the county.

All of these entities have to be involved to help make this happen.

Currently, what we're looking at is constructing a facility at the airport to do the training and other aviation related training in addition to the airframe and mechanics program.

But these jobs are well above $40,000 a year and much higher than that with overtime.

It's a there is a good possibility for internships and apprenticeships that will allow students as they progress through the curriculum, to actually be earning some money while they're doing that and guaranteed a job in the industry if they do well under their apprenticeship and classes possibly could start sometime in 2024.

We will definitely keep our eyes and ears open.

We are going to temporarily offer the program, study engineering and it will be for both Escambia and Santa Rosa students in high school and the adult population as well.

And it is our understanding that there will be perhaps military people that are mustering out that want to stay in our region because they know that if they get this expertise and some of them already have it so they can be on a fast track to get certified to actually work in the field.

And so it's a it's a great opportunity for this particular industry sector.

We have a lot of great programs that are being launched at the college.

Wonderful ideas.

Let's talk about diesel mechanics.

You know, diesel mechanics is a program that has evolved in particular with the state of Florida, who now has mandated that their all their diesel vehicles be a hybrid between natural gas and diesel fuel.

And so this is a tremendous opportunity for us to not only serve the state of Florida and state government, but also the private sector and the local county and city government as well.

As you well know, we started the CDL program for our training program.

So this will be a complement to that.

And we're working now with in partnership with local governments to to start this program up.

So we're hopeful, hopeful that we can get this program started by at least enrolling students next fall.

The nice thing about the new programs that we're looking at, it is it is individuals that are in the industry that have pointed out the need for a workforce.

And because of the generosity of the legislature, we now have the money to begin not on data mechanic mechanics, but also the respiratory therapy assistant program to augment the other health science programs that we have cabling technology.

That's another interesting one.

It is.

You know, finally, and fiber optics is a big deal right now.

It really is.

And so they need workers in that field as well.

I tell you what, it just makes me feel so good, Dr. Meadows, that we're able to work collaboratively with so many entities out there.

But from the classroom to sports and recreation, right?

We have to talk about athletics, folks.

And let's start off with volleyball.

Okay.

I'll back up and say there there are several things that help students stay engaged with the college besides the curriculum, visual arts, performing arts, athletics and intramurals student activities.

And with volleyball, we had a stellar year.

This year we won the state championship and we're going to our to compete for the national title.

So our young ladies have just done a remarkable job under Coach Pachi and her last name is Grant.

Follow.

You did a good job with that.

But we but we call our coach patchy.

Yes, we do.

And she has a wonderful assistant coaches as well.

So they've they have made history this year by winning the state championship.

And we're so very proud of them.

All right.

2023 Sun Lakes Conference champions.

Go pirates.

Okay.

They'll tomatoes.

Let's transition over to soccer.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Our first season.

Talk about it.

Oh, my gracious.

You know, they just missed by a hair getting to compete in the end in the state championship.

But they just did a wonderful job under first year coach Jeff Ashton and and his assistant coaches.

They won their first home game.

And those young ladies, it is amazing to be able to walk around the campus and be able to identify because they're so proud to be on the soccer team.

You know, they wear their soccer jerseys to class as well as volleyball players and softball players and baseball players and basketball players.

They all just so they're that all those young people, they're such good students and they're such good athletes.

And good people.

Region eight Champions First season.

That is so remarkable.

I just love it.

But we also have Pensacola Sports talk about that right on the Pensacola campus.

We're talking about EA Sports, Right.

Pensacola Sports Nonprofit.

Oh, they got something, right?

Yeah.

Well, in addition to the sports, we love these sports.

Pensacola Sports has it is a nonprofit that promotes sports and a Pensacola area.

And they have a rich history with us and co-sponsoring different events for young people, you know, very young people all the way through high school and then into college.

And then there what probably the major reason we had the SCC women's volleyball championship here last year and again this year.

So they are going to locate on our campus.

They've also made a huge investment in our athletic program and have donated a quarter of $1,000,000 to support athletics at Pensacola.

State President and CEO Ray Palmer is excited to partner with us right here at PSC, Exciting Times at Pensacola State College.

We'd love to also talk about our enrollment, our enrollment increase overall at Meadows, we have a 10.44% increase in enrollment this fall, and that is a surge in enrollment post-pandemic.

The national trend for our colleges since the pandemic began has been downward.

And so now there are a number of the 28 colleges that are seeing positive growth in enrollment to Pensacola State being one of those.

Also, we have a larger number of full time students this year than what we have had in the past.

And of course, you know, 59 to 60% of our student population is female.

The average age is 26.

So about half of our students are traditional age university transfer, but the other half are in workforce, technical and career programs.

And we love our students, don't we?

Dr. Meadows?

That's why we're here.

Absolutely.

And I'm so blessed to be faculty as well.

In the business department, we sort of pack a lot into this show.

Dr. Meadows It's been such a rewarding experience.

I'd like to thank Dr. Meadows for joining me on this special edition of Pensacola State today, I'm sure.

Thank you, Dr. Meadows.

I'm Rameca Vincent.

Larry, thanks for watching.

And remember to keep it locked in right here on wsre, PBS for the Gulf Coast.