CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Andy Brown, Dick Monroe, Stan Harris, Chip Eickmann, Phil Schwartz, Claudette Stroble, Ben Ash, and Dave Wilson attend the first joint advisory council meeting in fall 2004.
Formidable foursome
The College’s advisory councils join forces
By Evan Starkman
The advisory councils, which work with the College’s four departments, recently held a second joint meeting.
The councils are autonomous boards of professionals who help faculty and students enhance the College’s education and prestige. They meet semi-annually.
Telecommunication Advisory Council Chair Gary Corbitt had grown discontent watching potential synergy among the councils go untapped. So the Jacksonville-based research director for Post Newsweek Stations spearheaded the joint meetings.
The advisory council chairs plan to hold conference calls later this year. But given the council members’ diverse priorities and living arrangements, fully attended joint-meetings will take place once a year, said Advertising Advisory Council Chair Claudette Stroble.
The president of the Orlando Conference Management Group describes
the spring meeting as “very preliminary” but enlightening.
Prior to mingling with the other council members, she had little idea
how often
students crossed over into different communication disciplines.
Gary Corbitt
“Now I can call Gary if I’ve got a student question in his area that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to address,” said Stroble, who earned her bachelor’s degree in communication arts from Pace University in New York. “This has always been about knowing the right people and getting things done.”
Joining forces isn’t new for the councils, noted Public Relations Advisory Council member Edward Albanesi, PR 1972, editor of FloridAgriculture magazine.
A couple of years ago, when a former UF president touted a strategic plan that “pretty much ignored the College of Journalism and Communications,” Albanesi said, the councils worked with Dean Terry Hynes to speak out in Tigert Hall.
“Some changes were made to that strategic plan because of that,” he said.
Joint subcommittees – which usually consist of a member of each advisory council and a student in each discipline – are particularly effective at advancing specific agendas, said Advertising Council member Phil Schwartz, who retired from the advertising firm Turkel, Schwartz & Partners in Miami.
”They bring meaningful change, and fairly quickly too,” said Schwartz, who earned his bachelor’s in business administration and an MBA from UF in 1969 and 1972, respectively. “[Change] often takes longer with bureaucracies at a large university.”
Meanwhile, Corbitt, who earned his bachelor’s in marketing in 1973 from Howard University in Washington, continually strives to spend more quality time with students. He’s worked to create more career workshops and one-on-one advising sessions. The 30-year broadcast-research veteran gravitated toward UF in the mid-1980s, taking on interns and speaking to research and management classes. Since then, he’s lent his expertise to several schools in the region, but remains especially loyal to the Gator cause.
“The more alumni and friends of the school put our heads together,” Corbitt said, “the better we can use our expertise to develop the College.”
