Interview: Frank Ghannadian

( ) The construction boom is also creating more demand for construction-related professions, which were relatively understaffed pre-pandemic. ABC Florida Gulf Coast is a construction trade association that provides training in eight fields and is now seeing many four-year college graduates change tack and seek a career in a construction trade.

Remote Learning While remote learning has been a concept that has been floated for some time, when the pandemic struck and schools closed, virtual learning became a priority. Schools had to scramble to ensure that they and their students had the materials at home to access classes, which created a new problem for schools: the digital divide. According to the Tampa Bay Partnership’s 2020 Regional Equity Report, the Tampa Bay area comes in at the bottom of a list of 20 comparable cities in

the percentage of households with a computer and a broadband internet subscription. This meant that for some of the most disadvantaged families, the learning disparity was exacerbated. Solutions were quickly rolled out to ensure students had access to the tools they needed, with agencies like Computer Mentors Group and Digital Inclusion St. Pete working to close the gap. Pinellas County Schools provided students with devices and mobile hotspots and Digital Inclusion St. Pete partnered with several internet providers to offer service at reduced rates. The Tampa Housing Authority and PBX-Change also offered access to data for residents.

But the digital divide was not the only problem teachers and students faced. Maintaining a child’s attention in class is very different from doing so in person, and so teachers had to become more creative with their lesson content. Evidence shows COVID-19

Frank Ghannadian

Dean Sykes College of Business-University of Tampa

I think there will mostly be a return to the classroom. We have a new Master of Science in Business Analytics that is completely online and this can be taken on demand. Virtual classes stick to the in-person timetable but students can plug in remotely. I think that going forward, we’ll see around two-thirds of learning taking place face to face, with the remainder broken up between online and virtual. Some of these courses lend themselves to staying in this format because it can be more efficient in some cases than others. We like to have the students work in groups and the technology enables this.

We have several outreach centers at the college. We have the TECO Energy Center for Leadership, which focuses on making sure our graduate students receive the leadership material they need for their careers. We also have the Entrepreneurship Center, which is a 30,000-square-foot plus facility with incubators and accelerators. We also have the Naimoli Institute, which connects with over 300 businesses. Every student graduate at the College of Business needs to work with a real company before they graduate. Groups of graduates go to companies and solve some of the problems they are facing. That is something we do that no other business school we know of does.

Regardless of who is in power, I don’t foresee any regulations changing drastically. After 2025, we will have a reduction in 18–22-year-olds around the country, which will affect the whole of the education sector. I think we need to get ready for that coming up in the next five to 10 years. Some institutions will not survive as a result. Unless we can attract more foreign students, that will hurt us as institutions.