Florida Poly pilfers New College's woke provost; will it drop "Florida" and "Poly" next?

What happens now that Poly has a woke liberal arts academic leader and Richard Corcoran has nobody at New College who can do basic academic administration work?

Let’s recap why Devin Stephenson’s first act as Florida Polytechnic University president is so deeply funny — and quite portentous for the future of Florida Poly and New College alike.

1. In January 2023, Florida’s little dictator Ron DeSantis unleashed Richard Corcoran, Florida’s most notorious public sector grifter, to carry out an anti-woke grift/purge of Sarasota’s New College. In the year-and-a-half since, Corcoran has collected a ridiculous taxpayer-funded salary to destroy a functioning New College and replace it with fake version of fake Christian Hillsdale College. But it isn’t even close to a fake Hillsdale because Corcoran always has been and always will be incompetent at doing anything but grifting. I told everyone it would go down this way back in February 2023.

2. In October 2023, little dictator DeSantis appointed a different batch of anti-woke grifters to Lakeland’s Florida Polytechnic University Board of Trustees. Those anti-woke grifters then “railroaded” the Poly president search to hire retirement-age Northwest Florida Community State college president Devin Stephenson as the new president of the would-be “MIT-of-the-South.”

3. In his first official act, Stephenson apparently fired provost Terry Parker, the academic architect of the would-be MIT-of-the-South. (There is no indication Parker had planned to leave. He did not return an email I sent trying to confirm he was fired.) Parker built the engineering and STEM programs Poly likes to brag about and advertise in airports and on billboards. Those are the programs that make Poly “Poly” as far as anyone understands it.

4. Stephenson then stuck it to his own anti-woke board patrons by replacing Parker with Dr. Brad Thiessen — who was part of the old woke, liberal arts regime at New College. At the same time, he had also been doing all the basic functional work to keep New College from falling apart completely while Corcoran cashed very large government checks. Check out this interview with Thiessen from April 2023. Dude sounds worn out. Story-after-story about the grifter drama at New College goes on to quote or mention Thiessen in some thankless effort to pretend all this grifting isn’t grifting and hire some faculty and try to sorta help some of the grifted students. Thiessen seems to have finally tired of this and escaped to … Florida Poly. LOL. Out of the grift frying pan into the grift fire.

   That’s how bad it is to work for Richard Corcoran.

I did not have the “railroad”-riding Devin Stephenson pegged as a woke hero in waiting. But he has executed the kind of emasculating killing of two anti-woke birds with one woke stone that an AOC could only dream about. And he does seem to talk and act like an actual college president — as opposed to Corcoran. So this move makes sense for Thiessen.

In any event, Ilya Shapiro is gonna welcome the new woke New College guy and like it. That tickles me deeply.

The end of “Florida Poly” and New College?

Stephenson obviously planned the Parker-for-Thiessen trade long ago, which means either:

• Devin Stephenson doesn’t care what Ron DeSantis thinks, which would be interesting news.

• Either the little dictator or his people signed off on this. We know DeSantis and/or his minions have paid attention to the Florida Poly “railroad” because of what they did to Henry Mack. I’d be surprised if this wasn’t greenlit from the little dictator’s office.

Either of those realities suggest two other realities to me:

• Florida Poly is about to pull the plug on the “Florida” and “Poly” parts of its identity — although “polytechnic” doesn’t actually mean what people think it does.

• Bells are already beginning to toll for Richard Corcoran’s endlessly expensive and comically wasteful grift at New College. (It’s even been on GOP radar screens as a scam for a while now.)

Why do I think this?

I’ve developed some sources at New College. One of them gave me this assessment of Thiessen on background:

So, for years we played a game called, "Does Brad even work here anymore?" He was hired 3 Presidents ago and kept being assigned admin roles, but during this time he ALSO worked for U of Hawaii. How? Higher ups love Brad. Most people love Brad. He is funny, and is very, very smart and good at getting people to think he is on their side.

He is/now was also the only person left at New College who could respond to SACS (accreditation) complaints in a way they accepted. Legal … tried and SACS sent it back saying do it again with actual evidence, please. So I think part of why Coco kept him on is he did need someone to actually run the college until he could install all his unqualified cronies, which he has now done.

Anyway, I think it is interesting Brad is now going to help yet another unqualified, politically anointed President.

I like Brad, but he is mercurial.

As I said, Thiessen was part of the old “woke” New College, when it was actually a fairly elite, though small, liberal arts honors college. That’s back when it was full of curious, academically-accomplished students with much-in-demand liberal arts “soft skills” — not dozens of mediocre baseball players looking to get playing time and an AA so they can transfer somewhere else.

Neither the old New College or the grift New College seems to offer any meaningful provost preparation for tackling Florida Poly’s current needs. But if you’re going to remake Florida Poly into something less Poly and less Florida …

“Even the food service guy got a longer email send off”

Moreover, Corcoran seems peeved to lose the guy from the former woke regime who was doing all the work to keep the anti-woke grifter regime from destroying itself completely. (Funny how often that happens. There’s power in that operational reality, my dear competent wokes. You should use it without mercy.)

Corcoran sent a tersely “grateful” farewell Thiessen email to staff. Anyone who has ever worked in an institutional or corporate setting will recognize the spirit behind this heartfelt “join me in wishing him well.” He even passive aggressively hung an incorrect “interim” on Thiessen’s new title at Poly.

As one of my New College sources said about the note: “He mad.”

The source added:

My colleague [said] ‘Even the food service guy got a longer email send off’."

That Corcoran seems both ambushed by Stephenson and unprotected from losing a rare competent guy in his orbit suggests the New College grift comeuppance may be creeping nigh — and DeSantis may be inclined to let it happen. We’ll see.

“Look for engineering programs at Florida Poly to lose their accreditation”

Another state higher education source, not at New College, noted Thiessen’s background and told me this:

Look for engineering programs at Florida Poly to lose their accreditation during the next cycle now that the new provost has no experience with that process. The engineering accreditation process is really demanding. The new Poly leadership will not know what hit them. Anybody who knows anything about engineering education knows how rigorous it is. Having no experts on it in the administration is so dumb.

I disagree with my source here. I don’t think it’s dumb. I think it’s a choice. The MIT-of-the-South thing is history. I don’t think they care what happens to the engineering programs. They’re going to pivot to health care-focused workforce education and call it “STEM” or “Poly.”

This is from the Florida Poly press release introducing Stephenson. Note the bolds:

As he hits the ground running, Stephenson has already identified several immediate goals. Primary among them is increasing student enrollment, which then necessitates an increase in infrastructure and in funds.

“That puts a real challenge on my back,” he said. “That growth has to be done to make this a vibrant campus for 3,000 students, and if we can make it to 5,000 – that’s great.”

Additionally, Stephenson said he plans to clearly outline what academic programs are needed to increase campus enrollment.

“I was thrilled to see the NSF grant that came to Dr. (Chris) Kelley to work with Parkinson’s,” he said. “We need to innovate and develop more programming in health sciences in partnership with the medical community, but it has to be done methodically and with quality.”

Stephenson said he also plans to work with the academic team and Board of Trustees to examine current state performance-based funding metrics for the University and consider ways to improve Florida Poly’s statistics.

Quite frankly, that reads like a direct answer to the stuff I’ve been writing about Poly, which boils down to:

• It’s 80 percent male. (That whole passage above reads like: “Here’s how we’re gonna recruit women at scale.”)

• It has Florida’s worst public college/university graduation rate.

• It has no campus life or connection to the community.

The Stephenson hire and Thiessen hire feel like the final nails in J.D. Alexander’s spoiled inheritance baby fever dream and power play (incepted by Marshall Goodman) that killed USF-Lakeland 15 years ago and replaced it with the Florida Poly grift.

Stephenson and Thiessen seem to herald a pivot to UCF-Polk or UF-Polk, which is what might actually be helpful to the people of Polk County — even if the college keeps the “Poly” name, which it could in the most literal sense.

If that happens, the leaders of Polk County and Florida will have taken the stupidest, griftiest, most time and money-wasting path imaginable to get started on what we could have had operational 15 years ago.

At least we’ll get to dunk on J.D. forever.

Weirdly encouraging until you remember you’re paying Kelli Stargel $175,00 to do nothing

Tempering these maybe positive — but definitely funny — presidential developments is this fact, as reported by Gary White:

Stephenson also announced a promotion for Kelli Stargel, the former state senator from Lakeland who joined Florida Poly last year as senior adviser for strategic relationships. Stargel is now associate vice president of strategic relationships.

In that role, Stargel will oversee legislative affairs, local government relations, strategic partnerships and international relationships, Stephenson said in the release. Her salary increases to $175,000.

“As our University continues to evolve, these adjustments will be key to strengthening our administrative framework, elevating our academic programs, solidifying our rising reputation, and ensuring we remain at the forefront of technological advancement and ingenuity,” Stephenson said.

You can check out my previous look into Kelli’s work ethic and performance and calendar in this article. She is still exhibit #1 that no one actually cares what happens to Florida Poly — and that Polk County is not a meritocracy.

So no matter what weirdly beneficial woke triple bank shots Stephenson is hitting to try to remake Poly, I still have to say this about it:

Ya’ll hired Kelli. Then you promoted her. Now you pay her $175,000 with taxpayer money. You’re not serious.

Come talk to me when you are.