P: You are saying that to both students and faculty.

R: Absolutely. The second thing was academic standards. In the beginning there was
 a lot of joking about Santa Fe, and it was a long hard battle, but I believe that in
 the end we won that battle. That is why I was so proud of our solicitation of good
 students. When we first offered the scholarships to the upper 10 percent of the high
 school graduating class of Alachua and Bradford counties, people sort of snickered.
 Well, we never got less than 20 percent, and a few years before I left, we got half,
 including four of the eight valedictorians. That is something we were very proud of.

 Then the third thing that I was very proud of is that the campus was truly a pleasant
 place for anybody to come and visit. A lot of people said to me, "There is an aura
 about this place which we do not find when we go somewhere else. There really is."

P: What percentage, would you say, of Santa Fe students go on to a university?

R: That is such a hard figure [to establish], Sam, because of the nature of the
 enrollment. The kid who takes the A.S. degree does not need to go on. The person
 who comes out and takes a one year program in cosmetology does not need to go
 on. As you get over to the arts and sciences side, which I guess was 60 percent of
 our enrollment, I would guess that probably half [go on to a university]. Because,
 you know, [with] community college enrollment, a lot of kids are in and out. They
 come for a term, or they come for a year.

P: They go to work.

R: They drop out and go to work, or something happens. Then they come back. So
 it is really very difficult [to answer]. We keep all kinds of records. I know that year
 in and year out we graduated somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 kids a year. Out
 of that group that graduated, almost all of them went on.

P: As I understand, their records were just as good in their junior and senior years as
 were [the records of] the students who started at the University in their freshman
 year.

R: That is the phenomenon of the state of Florida, not just Santa Fe. The only thing
 you sometimes saw was the first semester blip.

P: Was what?

R: There would maybe be a blip the first semester. But after that, quite often, they did
 better. Once they got their second wind, they did better.

P: Alan, talk about the miracle of 34th Street, how that came about, the performing arts
 center. That involved you and that involved the college.


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