Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday the reappointment of two UF Board of Trustees members, effective Jan. 7 and subject to approval by the Florida Senate.
Both Richard Cole and Rahul Patel have terms that expire this month, and DeSantis has selected them to remain on the board.
Patel is vice chair of the Board of Trustees and currently leads UF’s Presidential Search Committee, tasked with finding a 14th president for the university. He has served on the board since 2015.
He is a lawyer at King & Spalding and lives in Atlanta. Patel graduated from UF with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1994 and his law degree in 1997.
Find more information about Patel at the UF Board of Trustees website.
Cole joined the UF Board of Trustees in 2020 and is also a lawyer. He serves as managing partner for Cole, Scott & Kissane, based in South Florida. He received his law degree from UF and served as student body president during that time.
Find more information about Cole at the UF Board of Trustees website.
When is this this board going to be investigated? It broke it’s own rules when it appointed Sasse and then decided to pay him $1 million a year when he quit – he wasn’t laid off. Sounds more like “hush and get out of here” money for his disastrous term.
Ladapo was another case of rule breaking with political overtones. He lives in Tampa, never comes here, yet is supposedly paid as a member of UF. His appointment was rushed and forced with the chairman’s thumb heavily on the process. In the meantime he endangers the lives of Floridians, including our kids, with his crackpot and political “medical” theories.
These both stink and so does this board.
Agreed. I propose three changes:
1. If there has to be a Board of Trustees (and I’m not sure that’s the case!), the governor should appoint half the members, minus one; the university president designates two (faculty senate president and the student body president); the university’s tenured faculty selects the remainder.
2. The Board of Trustees sticks strictly to setting policy; they do NOT micromanage the university. The president (not the board chair) runs the institution within the policy set by the Board and makes all important announcements about the University.
3. Mori Hosseini be shifted over to chair the UCF board of trustees. The University of Central Florida NEEDS Mori.