Dr. Jonathan Gueverra, president and CEO of the College of the Florida Keys, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on at the college.
The summer semester is underway right now at the College of the Florida Keys. It’s a six week condensed term with on campus classes and a 12 week term that is completely online.
Dr. Gueverra said, “We really do try to meet our students where they are to provide maximum flexibility without diminishing the quality of the education that we provide. Some years ago, we did a study and we looked at the data and looked at student performance, and we also talked to our students about their desires, and this approach that we’ve taken where we do six weeks and six weeks and then a full 12 weeks gives students a variety of options. For one thing, if you choose to you can do only the first six weeks, and then that leaves you the remainder of the summer, if you want to work full time or travel or do other things. Similarly, you can do the second six weeks and still have that flexibility in life, or you can just do the 12 week online, or you can do a combination of a little bit of each, because some of the students, they may have gotten to a place where they only need 12 or 14 or 15 credits to finish out an associate degree, or to finish one of the bachelor degrees, so they will try and mix and match during the summer so that they can be done by the time August rolls around, or they can just do enough and still get more hours in for work. So those options are geared for both success as well as flexibility, because we know our students. They have complicated lives.”
The CFK graduation was held last Thursday, celebrating the first graduation of CFK Academy, the tuition free public charter high school that opened in August 2023.
Dr. Gueverra said, “Mrs. Axford and I have partnered on many initiatives, and we’ll continue to partner with the Monroe County School District under the new leadership, with the new superintendent. This was our inaugural graduation. I was pleased as punch as they say, to see our students, they all had their stoles that said inaugural graduation and they are part of that pioneering group. There were three students that spoke, and they mentioned that in their talk, because in our first year, the school earned an A and we are likely to be there again with an A grade because of the student performance. In addition to those young people earning associate degrees, I was so pleased with the things that they had to say. It was so encouraging to hear the speeches from these students. They talked about being decisive, they talked about putting in their time. They talked about not giving up. They talked about just being there and having the kind of stick-to-it-tiveness that will help you to make it in life. I was just so pleased all of these students are going to go on and do something in life. One is going all the way out to Colorado, but everything from going to CFK to finish up a bachelor degree, for those who already have associates, University of Florida, FAU, just a number of places getting full bright scholars. Congratulations to all of the Monroe County students at whatever high schools. We do have a number of high schools in our in our system, so congratulations to all the students and their parents for getting them to this point. It is more important now than ever that people get a good education.”
Scholarships are still available for the fall semester for CFK.
Dr. Gueverra said, “The Key West Women’s Club, they recently donated to the CFK foundation a $5,000 award, and that will be turned into five new scholarships, and those are available now. The other scholarship that was recently added, the Caldwell Banker Schmidt Charitable Foundation sent us, and they came by and brought a check for $32,500 to establish and endow a scholarship in memory of AJ Hally. He’s a young man who was very, very passionate about the ocean and the marine environment, and he passed away suddenly, and they endow the scholarship, and a portion of the donation is invested, and the earnings will remain and provide scholarships for as long as we can keep the money invested and get an earnings. It’ll be there into perpetuity, and it will cement a place in history for Hally and have his family see the lasting legacy that they would like to see and would support marine education and training. This $2,000 scholarship is available to students in our degrees or certificates in the marine science and technology divisions. They can be majors in marine science, engineering, diving, Engineering Technology, marine resource management. So if you are interested in any of those programs, or you are still out there and have not applied for a scholarship between the AJ Hally and the Key West Women’s Club, we still have monies available. The applications are online, the criteria there, and if you look for the tab that says paying for college, that’s where you’ll be able to go. You must first be admitted to the college to be eligible to apply.”
Dr. Emily Schulten Weekley has received a Fulbright US Scholar Program Award in Literature and Creative Writing from the US Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Dr. Gueverra said, “It is an extremely distinguished award and my prayer at this point is that, with all the craziness happening in DC, that they don’t do anything to get in the way of this, because it’s a real life changing honor, because they only award about somewhere between 40 to 50 or 60 of these a year, and it is a very, very competitive program and Dr. Weekley is very, very deserving. She will head to Hungary in the spring, and the research project she will pursue centers on Hungarian folk and fairy tales and how it is adapted in the tradition of generational narrative. This dovetails really well with the work that she does, because she is a poet, and she will teach while she’s there, two courses at the bachelors and masters level, a seminar in creative writing, focusing on poetry, and another title, teaching literature and American children’s literature in the department of literature and cultures within the institute at the University in Hungary. We are thrilled that she is both a representative of the college and of the Keys, and she is an exemplary professor, and I know she represents us well in Hungary.”
The 29th annual swim around Key West is happening Saturday, June 14.
Dr. Gueverra said, “Lori Bosco, who is our athletic director, coach for our athletic swim team, coach for the Key West High School swim team, and just one of the hardest working people you will find anywhere on this planet, she has been putting this event together, and it brings in swimmers from all over the globe. Over the years, she’s had as many as 200 plus swimmers, and it is a fantastic event. She puts together a great program. I get involved when I’m in town, and I start the race. I remember saying that to a friend of mine in another city and they said, oh, you’ve done the 12 and a half miles. I said, no, listen to me carefully. I start the race. I go out there and I blow a horn or a whistle. The mono fin, you can do both fins, just one fin, you can do the mermaid. But people need to remember it’s a great event, but you need to know more about yourself. One year we had a guide, somebody in a kayak who was assisting one of the swimmers who called us for assistance and when I spoke to them on the radio, I said, what exactly are you telling me? They said, well, I realize I’m having some motion sickness. I said, you’re doing what? You’re in a kayak. You have motion sickness. Did you not know this before? So any and everything happens and as a result, we are very, very concerned and put safety as our highest priority. So we get assistance from the Coast Guard, from local boaters, from our own swimmers at the college, from a variety of people who are engaged to make sure that all of the swimmers are safe and that we have a great event.”
This is the first week of the College Summer Adventure Camps on the Key West campus.
Dr. Gueverra said, “The summer rolls around and we also have the young people seven through 14 who come to campus for a variety of things. We’re starting this week with our future heroes camp, and they get to see all the bells and whistles, the shiny machines, the red fire trucks. So we get assistance from Key West Police Department, the fire department, Monroe County Sheriff, Trauma Star. We also get SOS Foundation and the Navy branch health clinic gets involved and what we try to do is to give our campers as much hands on as possible, because they’ve been in school up until this point, and while it is important for kids to continue to learn, they do want to be engaged. They don’t just want to be sitting in a classroom. So we do all of those things to help them learn what it might be like to be a police officer, an EMT, a firefighter, a nurse and other first responders in the community, and later on, we have other kinds of camps, and they’ll run through August 1. There are still spots available in the tropical hobbyist, we have the young writers, code breakers, where they learn how to program and we also have an art camp. All of it’s available on the college’s website, and it’s just fantastic, ages seven through 14. Summer is still a busy time. My two grown daughters used to ask me, where are you going? Because I’ve been in education for a long time, and it’s summer, there are no students. One day, I had to say to them, I said, do you think that something magical, where somebody out of the Harry Potter book waves a wind and when students show up in mid to late August or early September, the grass is cut, the buildings are painted, the rooms are cleaned, the instructors are all prepared. I said, you realize that some of us work through the entire summer to make sure it looks like that when you all get back? We continue to prepare during the summer for the event of the fall, and this year is a little difficult for us, because we are still awaiting our state budget, which we have no idea what it’s going to look like until it happens. So I am fingers crossed and praying that our legislature and our elected officials can hammer it out and have us a budget so we can have some stability in what we do for the fall semester.”
For more information, click here: https://cfk.edu/