by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Florida Community College at Jacksonville President Dr. Steve Wallace is a busy guy this week. Monday, he got on a plane headed for Austin, Texas where he’s making a pit stop on the way to Seattle for the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce’s annual Leadership Trip.
“I am giving a speech at the University of Texas,” said Wallace, who’s a guest lecturer on his school’s doctoral program.
While in Seattle, Wallace will participate in many of the events Chamber Chair-elect Mike Hightower has planned. However, he’ll also make a side trip to meet with a senior executive at Amazon.com to talk about making a Web-based product called “Kindle” available to every student at FCCJ, the state’s second-largest community college.
“Kindle is to reading what iPod is to music,” said Wallace.
Kindle is an iPod-like device that allows the owner to download entire books wirelessly through Amazon at a fraction of the cost of the paper book. The download takes about one second and the books range from $9.99 to free. Considering the cost of a modern printed textbook, the use of Kindle technology would allow his students to save hundreds of dollars every semester.
“In community college tuition, 70 percent of the cost is textbooks,” said Wallace. “The textbook companies play games with the versions and they are killing used book stores.”
At a cost of $359, the Kindle may seem expensive. However, Wallace says with textbooks costing upwards of $200 each and many professors requiring students have multiple books for a single class, the purchase of a Kindle would pay for itself within one semester. “We have got to find an alternative. It’s outrageous the cost of textbooks.”
Wallace said he’d like to have Kindle technology available to his students by the fall 2009 semester. By then, some of the books required may be available through Kindle, but Wallace is looking to localize the service. In addition to securing some kind of multi-Kindle purchasing deal, Wallace would like to incorporate much of the FCCJ curriculum into the Kindle software.
“We have teams of our best faculty that produce our own course material that we own,” he said. “There is no licensing. We flat out own the material. Students can get it on CD, DVD or on-line. We want to give the students an alternative — the Kindle version.”
All of this could culminate in the spring when Wallace expects to see the school go through a name change. He said the school has grown in size and number and types of degrees so much over the past decade, the community college moniker is no longer applicable. The school offers several bachelor’s degrees and is accredited to offer many more.
“We will be a state college this spring,” said Wallace. “In all likelihood, we will change our name this spring. We will be ‘something’ state college. Everything is happening very fast.”
Hightower said he thinks the move makes sense and would be good for the school and city.
“My hat’s off to Steve Wallace. I think it’s extraordinary,” said Hightower, an executive with BlueCross BlueShield of Florida. “It’s another engine to bring economic development to Jacksonville. That shows the extraordinary leadership of Steve Wallace and his board.”
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