by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
There’s no deadline for moving Florida Coastal School of Law to more spacious accommodations, but the new owners are eager to get the process over with “as quickly as possible.”
“We’re on the path” of finding a new site, “but we don’t know where the end is,” said Tom Wippman, principal with Sterling Capital Partners. “We are very focused on making progress at the school on a number of different fronts, the new location being one of them.
“The sooner we get to a decision, the better we’ll sleep at night.”
Sterling, with headquarters in Northbrook, Ill., and Baltimore, Md., completed negotiations on Jan. 19 to buy FCSL, the only for-profit law school now accredited by the American Bar Association. Those negotiations began in early 2003, Wippman said.
“We were approached by a business broker representing the sellers,” he said. “From time to time you get descriptions of transactions that look interesting, and we came down to talk to management.
“We have a very deep passion about working in the proprietary education fields. When we looked at this opportunity, it looked like it had the making of something special.
“I decided at that point to pursue the opportunity.”
The other law school that had been accredited by the ABA was Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, Calif. The school lost its accreditation, however, and is suing the ABA.
Sterling Partners is a private equity firm that focuses on buyouts, venture capital and real estate. It has managed more than $700 million since its founding in 1983.
Wippman serves as general counsel for Sterling, offering legal counsel and management advice for a wide range of businesses.
When the company talks to prospective businesses, he said, “we talk about education and testing.” Those facilities include everything from vocational training to law schools.
A year ago, Sterling bought Professional Career Development Institute in Atlanta, which provides accredited degrees. Baltimore’s Sylvan Learning Systems, in which Sterling has invested, provides training and testing for adults.
Asked what his company does for schools and businesses that they can’t do for themselves, Wippman said, “We would never presume someone can’t do something. A lot of businesses are run by founders who have a certain skill set. We will look at the business and see if we can augment those skill sets. We help focus management teams, professionalizing their processes.
“At some point in each business career or life, you have to move on from your roots to become what I’ll call more professionally managed. The time for that had come at Florida Coastal.”
Florida Coastal had 60 part-time students when it opened in 1996 with an initial investment of $1.5 million from a group of private individuals. There are now nearly 700 students at the campus on Beach Boulevard.
Wippman declined again to discuss the sales price of the school, although one source put the figure at more than $15 million.
The biggest unkept secret in legal circles is the appointment of a new dean.
Dennis Stone, who taught the first class on the school’s first day, has been serving as interim dean since last August. The school has been without a full-time dean since Richard Hurt left in March 2003 to go to Berry University in Orlando.
The list of six applicants has been trimmed to one, General Counsel Rick Mullaney, who is expected to make a decision this week on whether he will accept the job.
Mullaney has been the City’s general counsel since he was appointed by former Mayor John Delaney in 1997. City Council unanimously reconfirmed him last August, at the same time FCSL was announcing its nationwide search for a dean.
One rumored sticking point has been salary negotiations. Mullaney currently earns about $180,000 a year.
“We are trying to finalize our process,” said Wippman. “We will finalize our process within two weeks.”
Sterling Partners is not considering any change from current teaching methods, such as starting up a distance learning center, Wippman said.
“Florida Coastal will continue to be a bricks-and-mortar school,” he said. “That won’t change.”
The goal is to increase student enrollment to around 1,000 students, he said. By maintaining the ABA’s recommended student-to-faculty ratio of 20-1, the school would have to hire about 15 more professors.
Not only will the Center for Strategic Governance and International Initiatives continue developing programs at FCSL, but similar departments will be started.
“We are looking at creating centers that are dedicated to a specific teacher’s skill set,” said Wippman. “For instance, we are going to be supporting development of a center to help Nancy Hogshead-Makar in her development of awareness of Title IX issues.
“I would look for some kind of announcement fairly soon.”
Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 bans sex discrimination in schools, whether in academics or athletics.
With no new site on the horizon, there’s certainly no moving day marked on the calendar. If the pieces can be brought together, Wippman would prefer to move downtown, to a place suitable for expansion.
“Personally,” he said, “I have a strong preference for the city. I’m a lawyer. If I were looking for a job right now as a lawyer, I would want to be in close proximity to where the jobs are.
“We are proceeding with the assumption that downtown is better. We’re hoping that we can find a suitable location to get there.”