New USFSM regional chancellor expected to take off at full speed

The new regional chancellor at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee drives one of the coolest cars on the planet.

Karen Holbrook’s ride, which was parked in front of the USFSM Rotonda on Monday night while she was inside being introduced as USFSM’s new leader before an enthusiastic crowd of 125, is a Audi R8 two-seat supercar with a V10 engine and the sleek looks of a Lamborghini or Ferrari, which are among its chief rivals.

Asked how she and the car are alike, Holbrook grinned and said, “Never still.”

That answer might reveal everything that nervous USF campus board members, students, teachers, staff and fans of the school located near the Manatee and Sarasota county border need to know about how Holbrook plans to tackle her new job.

Holbrook has set her goals squarely on building new buildings on campus, making lots of new connections for USFSM locally and nationally and never taking her eye off the fact that students come first.

“It’s always going to be student success first,” Holbrook said. “I want to make sure our students have the right opportunities and right backgrounds so they can go out and have great careers. And happy lives. We want to set them up for that. That’s our biggest goal.”

“To do that, though, you have to keep building your own enterprise,” Holbrook added. “So, we’ve got to continue to build our physical plant. We do that by building a Science and Research Building. We also have to build partnerships where we connect to other universities, connect to government and connect all over the world. Diversifying our funding will be essential so we have the resources to help the students who really need help. It’s all focused on student success.”

Before Holbrook was introduced to the crowd by USF System President Judy Genshaft, USFSM Campus Board members, including Chairman Byron Shinn, Dr. Anila Jain, Rick Piccolo and Bill Mariotti all said they expect Holbrook, who was president of The Ohio State University 2002-07, to take USFSM to a new level of national and global prestige.

“You can feel in the community the surge that is about to happen,” Shinn said. “To bring a lady of this talent to lead us I can only think of what it will do. She is a visionary. This is a landmark day.”

Said Jain: “She is very strong in the STEM area (science, technology, engineering and math). Her wealth of knowledge is going to be a tremendous asset to USFSM.”

Holbrook earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in biological structure at the University of Washington School of Medicine, where she also served as a post-doctoral fellow in dermatology and as a faculty member.

Holbrook replaces Terry Osborn, who served as interim regional chancellor for roughly nine months. Osborn replaced former regional chancellor, Sandra Stone,who resigned in March after starting in the fall of 2014.

This story was originally published December 18, 2017 at 9:28 PM with the headline "New USFSM regional chancellor expected to take off at full speed."