EDITOR'S NOTE: To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Florida Gulf Coast University, WGCU Public Media presents "FGCU: The Beginning." The series chronicles the key founders and events that led up to Aug. 25, 1997, when the campus first opened. As the finale for the series, a half-hour television documentary will air on Aug. 24 at 8pm. Learn more about the series here.
In 1991, Charlie Edwards had lunch with Gov. Lawton Chiles to get support for a bill that would establish the state’s tenth university in southwest Florida.
Both native Floridians, the two had crossed paths a few times over the years, so they talked about snook fishing and turkey hunting. As the governor’s assistant told them it was time to wrap it up, the conversation finally turned officially to higher education.
“And that’s the first time formally we were able to point out the concepts of the new university and what it would do and why it wasn’t just another one like we already had,” Edwards recalled. “And, we left that meeting with a firm commitment from him that he would help us all that he could.”
Getting to the point of having a bill sponsored in the legislature that a governor could even support had taken nearly a decade. And, having Fort Myers attorney/ seventh-generation Floridian Edwards as the chair of the state’s board of regents was very intentional.
How Edwards ended up in the room with the governor is the beginning of the story behind what would become Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU).
Early Lobbying Efforts
From 1965 up until 2001, a board of regents governed the state university system in Florida. In the 1980s, a group of citizens from Lee County began lobbying for representation of southwest Florida on that board.
As the reporter who covered all things FGCU and the legislature for the Fort Myers News-Press from the university’s earliest inklings, Betty Parker recalled just how vital a step it was.
“For a long, long time, we did not have a member on the board of regents,” said Parker. “And getting someone on that board was one of the first steps. It was one of the earliest things that happened. And, that was critical.”
As Bob Martinez was running for governor in 1987, he made a campaign promise to southwest Florida voters that the region would finally get representation. And, he fulfilled that pledge by appointing Edwards as a regent.
“Charlie Edwards is a very strong, very powerful individual,” said Parker. “He’s very politically savvy. He’s very persuasive. He’s not, he’s not a yeller. He doesn’t scream and jump up and down. But he’s that classic steal-eyed I’m going to get it done.”
The lobbying efforts to get Edwards on that board had been led by Fort Myers banker Tommy Howard, who was legendary for attending the regents’ meetings and making a case for higher education in southwest Florida.
“I think Tommy and some of his friends were instrumental in getting Gov. Martinez to appoint someone from this area…and he was instrumental, I believe, in getting the opportunity for me to be on that board,” said Edwards. “And in those days, the board of regents controlled all of our universities. There was no other governing body. In order to relocate or to locate a university in our area, the first thing that we had to do was get on the board of regents, which was a several-year task.”
Fight Against Broward County
Once Edwards got on the board, he assessed the political climate for creating a new university.
“There was no formal procedure in the state as to how you go about establishing a new university,” said Edwards. “All of our new universities up to the establishment of Florida Gulf Coast and since have been based on politics. It didn’t take me long to realize that although we had excellent representatives from our area, we were fighting Broward County and the Melbourne-Fort Pierce area -- both of which had much larger legislative delegations than we did.”
Reporting on the process, Parker remembers a real challenge from legislators representing those East Coast counties.
“They wanted another university themselves,” said Parker. “They already had two. And they wanted more. So, there was some push back from those members who would’ve preferred to see them get it. But by and large, there was pretty solid recognition in the fact that there was no university here at all.”
The state’s Post-Secondary Education Planning Commission, which was chaired at the time by Bob Taylor, who had developed South Seas Plantation on Captiva Island, was charged with establishing a procedure for assessing the need for where the state’s tenth university should be located.
“That procedure clearly showed that after the Fort Myers area, that the next area that would meet the criteria - assuming the growth continued in the same fashion - would be Fort Pierce Melbourne area,” said Edwards.
Those results swayed legislative support to southwest Florida, he added.
A 21st Century Concept
But, that wasn’t enough to ensure a plan for what would become FGCU.
“The concept that we had to sell was not that we would be the tenth university,” said Edwards. “We were going to be a different university, a new university for the 21st century. We weren’t going to have tenure. We were going to push -- which I had in my day -- Saturday and night classes. We wanted to create an opportunity for students who worked a full-time job to still be able to graduate in four to five years.”
Ultimately, the board of regents, the legislature, and the governor all supported the concept and location. At the capitol, the bill passed without too much fanfare in the end.
“I remember the passage of the bill,” said Parker. “And it was, it was sort of last minute. And it was not that big of a deal up there. And I was up there. It was at that time the News-Press had me in Tallahassee all the time covering it. Everyone was happy. They were glad. That was a big deal. But it was here at home -- there was a lot more uproar about it.”
Having Edwards as chair of the board of regents, southwest Florida representation on key legislative committees and on the education commission made the region quite a tour de force. “Broward county is still trying to figure out how that happened,” said Edwards. “But we won’t give up our secrets. I have ever since then been trying to help them get a 4-year university. It hasn’t worked out for them yet even though the demographics for that area certainly would support one. “