Florida A&M University engineering students may soon have access to their very own college, without any joint agreement with Florida State University.
Speculations have been circulating throughout the Rattler Nation blog about FSU’s president, T.K. Wetherell and FAMU’s president, James Ammons, not getting along. The two have allegedly had an ongoing struggle over the shared school.
According to an FSU press release, although FAMU initially received authorization to open the school in 1950, the legislature failed to grant the school sufficient funding. In the 1980s this changed, and Florida agreed to fully fund the school. FSU also wanted an engineering school, and lobbied to be a part of FAMU’s.
Now, indications are that Wetherell wants FAMU out, because it will hold his school back from gaining recognition from the American Association of Universities. Gaining AAU status will reward FSU for excelling at the “ranking game.”
Wetherell addressed the FAMU/FSU College of Engineering issue in a speech he delivered last week.
“We need to have two engineering schools,” Wetherell said. “We are two separate institutions with two separate missions. They can not achieve their missions, nor can we achieve ours.”
He said he doesn’t think any school is losing by splitting up the college, but that both universities are winning.
Jeremiah Adjei, 20, a mechanical engineering student agrees that FAMU has nothing to lose if the two schools separate.