Manatee School Board member Scott Hopes comes up short in bid for USF presidency

Despite filing an application to become the University of South Florida’s seventh president, school board member Scott Hopes was not among the four finalists named on Monday morning.

A search committee met to review dozens of potential replacements for President Judy Genshaft, who resigned in September of last year. She will step down on July 1, up to one year before the university consolidates its three campuses — USF Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee — under one accreditation.

Hopes described a “bullish green” passion for USF in his resume, and the diverse viewpoints of someone who learned, researched and instructed at the school.

As the first person in his family to graduate from a university, he earned three degrees from separate colleges at USF Tampa: a Bachelor of Arts in 1983, a Master of Public Health in 1985 and a Doctor of Business Administration in 2017.

He worked as a researcher in several USF colleges between 1981 and 1996, and he currently works at the Muma College of Business, in Tampa, as an adjunct instructor, according to Hopes’ resume.

Using skills he learned at the university, Hopes co-founded Healthcare Management Decisions in the late 80’s, drawing business from Rick Scott, the former governor of Florida and a current U.S. senator. Scott appointed Hopes to the USF Board of Trustees in 2013, and to the School Board of Manatee County in 2017.

“I want USF to have a great president, and it looks like they’re on track to do that,” Hopes said after the meeting. “Obviously, I’m a little bit disappointed.”

Each finalist hails from different area of the United States, with the closest being Mississippi, followed by Texas and New Jersey.

Before he officially resigned earlier this year, Jeffrey Vitter was chancellor for the University of Mississippi. Several weeks after he started as chancellor in 2016, the NCAA released more than a dozen findings linked to a multi-year investigation of Ole Miss Athletics, and it reached a verdict days before Vitter announced his resignation.

The search committee acknowledged several controversies surrounding Vitter’s tenure, noting that his portfolio outweighed the bad publicity. Vitter now serves as a distinguished professor of computer and information science.

Committee members then named Wanda Blanchett, the interim provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, in New Jersey.

The third finalist was Steven Currall, the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, followed by Debasish Dutta, a distinguished professor of engineering and the former chancellor at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

USF is scheduled to interview the finalists on Wednesday, and to pick the next president on Friday.

This story was originally published March 18, 2019 at 11:31 AM.