Innovative program focuses on helping
students discover career success
MURFREESBORO,
Tenn. — A seven-figure financial gift from local real estate developer John
Floyd promises to boost the professional prospects of students preparing to
graduate from MTSU.
Floyd has pledged $1
million to help launch the Center for Student Coaching and Success (CSCS) at
MTSU, which was officially opened during a Tuesday, Feb. 21, ribbon-cutting ceremony
at its new home inside the Andrew Woodfin Miller Sr. Education Center on Bell
Street.
Facilitated by Health and
Human Performance professor and CSCS director Colby Jubenville, Floyd’s gift
focuses on helping soon-to-be graduates make a successful transition from
college classes to gainful employment.
“Students make a
commitment to higher education by investing their time, money and energy with
the belief that we have the people and resources to help them become gainfully
employed,” Jubenville said. “This center was built to do just that.”
Floyd, founder and owner
of Ole South Properties, the state’s largest independent homebuilder, said his
gift represents the organic relationship between the university as an economic
driver for the region and the success his company has enjoyed as a provider of
affordable housing throughout Middle Tennessee.
“It comes around,” he
said. “I’m just reinvesting in the community. I’ve done extremely well in this
community and MTSU in many ways represents a lot of my success.”
Floyd started his career
in real estate in 1983 at the age of 23. His Murfreesboro company recently
completed construction of its 10,000th home, and averages building
650 to 825 homes annually.
Professional accolades
include being named Tennessee Home Builder of the Year by the Home Builders
Association of Tennessee in 2007 and inducted in the HBAT Hall of Fame in
2015. He was recognized by the Tennessee Housing and Development Agency as
the “Builder of the Year” for 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. The Rutherford
County Chamber of Commerce honored him as the Business Legend of the Year
in 2015.
MTSU President Sidney A.
McPhee has expressed his desire to raise additional funds for the center that
would enable Jubenville to extend the size and scope of his student mentorship.
“Mr. Floyd’s investment
into our university with this very generous gift will undoubtedly advance our
ongoing reforms to help our students succeed in and beyond the classroom,”
McPhee said. “The addition of this center will be truly transformational for
our campus and build on our aspirations to be one of the most innovative
universities in the nation.”
Through individual, peer,
group and online coaching sessions, the center will help students make the leap
from college to career by developing their knowledge, skills, desire,
confidence, likeability and networks, allowing them, in Jubenville’s words, to
“win in the marketplace of ideas.”
Jubenville’s approach
reflects McPhee’s vision to help develop a new model for higher education. The
center aligns perfectly with the MTSU Quest for Student Success — a plan McPhee
launched in 2013 that emphasizes student retention and graduation in line with
Gov. Bill Haslam’s Drive for 55 initiative. That initiative’s goal is to
increase the number of Tennesseans with degrees or advanced certifications to
55 percent to meet the workforce demands of the coming decades.
Floyd said he strongly
believes in work the CSCS will accomplish.
“With this new center,
the vision is that students will become gainfully employed even before walking
across the graduation stage,” he said.
Jubenville said
traditional higher education focuses too much on imparting information and not
enough on building the critical thinking skills through which students find
their voice, gain confidence and become self-directed.
A former college football
coach turned professor, author, international speaker, blogger and consultant,
Jubenville offers an innovative approach to teaching that has led to remarkable
success stories. Graduates of his program now occupy front-office positions in
top-tier franchises like the Houston Astros, Tennessee Titans, and Talladega
Motor Speedway, as well as local organizations such as the Nashville Sports
Council.
“My focus at MTSU over
the last 15 years is about helping students find their voice. And voice is the
intersection of talent, passion, conscience and need in the world,” Jubenville
said. “There’s an old saying that ‘You can’t give away what you don’t have.’
These kids are starved for somebody to show them the way. And so I teach them.”
The new center he leads
as a result of Floyd’s gift will focus on five areas to help students
understand how to systematically bridge the gap from graduation to gainful
employment:
- Academic skills and critical thinking
- Emotional intelligence
- Personal branding
- Persuasion
- Career development
The close relationship
between Floyd and Jubenville played a crucial role in the development of the
gift. According to Floyd, Jubenville helped him think differently to work
through the 2008 recession that devastated many homebuilders.
“We all have challenges, and
when you work through those challenges together, it forms a bond,” Floyd
explained.
Floyd later attended some
of Jubenville’s on-campus classes where he was able to witness the professor’s
decidedly out-of-the-box approach to inspiring and developing his students.
Once Floyd saw Jubenville had a formula that worked and a proven track record
of student success, he said he “got on board.”
Joe Bales, MTSU’s vice
president for advancement, said the university greatly appreciates both Floyd’s
generosity and his foresight in supporting this unique project.
“As a successful
businessman, he fully understands the importance of being well prepared to
begin your career,” Bales said. “His support for this innovative program will
assure that our students will be ready to hit the ground running when they
enter the workforce.”
Harold Whiteside,
Behavioral and Health Sciences dean, said Floyd’s gift “enables us to take
students beyond traditional college education, to make them more impressive in
job interviews, teach them how to market themselves, how to understand
themselves and others, and to be more influential and persuasive.
“This takes student
success beyond graduation,” he said.
Visit the Center for
Student Coaching and Success website at http://www.mtsu.edu/cbhssuccess/ for more information.
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