Dr. Karla Stevenson-Mastracchio is a communications consultant, an off-and-on adjunct professor at USF, as well as an alumni of the Class of 2003. She has done crisis management consulting for the federal government, and received her doctorate from the University of Iowa in strategic communications.
Preeminent status is the golden carrot that the Florida State Legislature dreamed up a few years ago. It set benchmarks that few schools could meet, partly because there is limited funding so if every school achieves preeminence, every school would get the millions that go along with it. But it’s also partly because higher education is a caste system, even if no one likes to admit it.