Jacksonville University is honoring Nathaniel Glover by naming its Master in Public Policy Minority Fellowship after the former Jacksonville sheriff and Edward Waters University president.
JU President Tim Cost and Public Policy Institute Shircliff Executive Director Rick Mullaney made the announcement Feb. 14.
“Nathaniel Glover is one of Jacksonville’s great community leaders,” Cost said at the ceremony in the Frisch Welcome Center at the Arlington campus.
The program is now the “MPP Nathaniel Glover Fellowship Program” and fellows will be known as “MPP Glover Fellows.”
Cost said Glover was one of the first people he met more than 10 years ago when he took over as president of the university.
“He is one of my closest friends and taught me about higher education and about Jacksonville,” Cost said.
The Public Policy Institute was established in 2015 to provide a nonpartisan, neutral gathering place and a resource for the city in solving the community’s problems, Mullaney said.
The MPP program debuted in 2018 to promote diverse and inclusive leadership development. Each year two students are chosen to receive a full scholarship, a stipend and an internship in the Jacksonville mayor’s office.
Glover, a founding member of the MPP Fellowship board of advisors, is a guest lecturer at the institute and “in the 200-year history of our city, one of the great role models,” Mullaney said.
“It is fitting to have this celebration on Valentine’s Day with the love for the community from President Cost, JU and Nat Glover,” said Mayor Donna Deegan.
“We need civil discourse and the ability to disagree agreeably.”
Glover was co-chair of Deegan’s mayoral transition committee and works with the city to develop new leaders.
“We are building a bench and holding the door open for a new generation of leaders. There is no more important work in our city than this,” Deegan said.
“To have a minority public policy program named after you is a blessing,” Glover said.
“I am honored to have an impact on the next generation of leaders. We are going to get them ready through knowledge and having the courage to do what is necessary to be done. We need people who will step up, stand up and speak up.”
Glover, the first Black Sheriff elected in Florida in the 20th century, retired from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in 2003 after two terms as sheriff and 37 years of law enforcement service.
He went on to serve seven years as the 29th president of his alma mater, Edwards Waters University, Florida’s first historically Black college.
Glover received a “Great Floridian” designation in 2016 for his dedication to law enforcement, higher education and the city of Jacksonville. He was inducted into the Florida Law Enforcement Officer’s Hall of Fame in 2021.