Novel Ideas at Nova U.

Despite the financial obstacles facing most private universities (TIME cover, June 23), academe still has fearless optimists who figure they know how to beat the odds. No one is more con fident of ultimate success than Warren J. Winstead, president of the brand-new Nova University near Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Brashly aimed at becoming a Southern counterpart to Caltech and M.I.T., Nova U. is being guided by a blue-ribbon panel of top educators, will open its first classes this fall with just 21 graduate students, all on full fellowships--and also with 25 Ph.D. professors, $9,500,000 in assets, and $1,228,000 in promised research grants.

Winstead, 39, a Harvard Ph.D. (in education) who directed the U.S. Army's 510,000-student education program for servicemen and their dependents in Europe until 1964, has some novel ideas about how to create a university. Instead of starting with relatively cheap undergraduate liberal arts instruction and gradually acquiring expensive graduate specialists, he is luring major scholars with big salaries (up to $30,000) and complete freedom to research and teach only in their graduate-level specialties. Winstead shrewdly argues that "serious graduate students couldn't care less about the name of the school. They want to study under specific professors. The name Nova didn't have; the professors it could get."

Impressive Advisers. To gain academic respect, Winstead first acquired an impressive advisory board that will screen all faculty appointments and help set academic policy. Prestigious it is: members include James R. Killian Jr., chairman of the M.I.T. Corporation; Frederick Seitz, president of the National Academy of Sciences; Emilio Segre, Berkeley's Nobel Laureate in physics; Athelstan Spilhaus, former dean of the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology. That kind of backing helped Winstead overcome a handicap of most new schools: lack of accreditation. Impressed by the credentials of Nova's advisers, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools advised Washington that Nova should qualify for federal funds.

Winstead picked his professors partly on the basis of the federal research funds they could bring to Nova. Penn State's Raymond Pepinsky, an expert in crystal physics, arrived in Fort Lauderdale with $500,000 worth of research equipment. After more than a decade at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, William S. Richardson joined Nova, which expects to become one of the first "sea colleges" recently authorized by Congress to handle federal research in oceanography (a concept fathered, not coincidentally, by Nova Adviser Spilhaus). To complete his campus, Winstead persuaded the Government to give Nova 91 acres of a deserted naval air station, got a $1,100,000 federal loan for married students' housing, a $552,000 HEW grant for an educational center.

Jai Alai & the Derby Ball. While extending one open palm toward Washington, Winstead keeps the other cupped at home--and with equally impressive results. He got the Florida legislature to extend Broward County's race-track season by one day, wheedled the track operators into giving Nova the extra day's take from racing and jai alai. It netted $150,000, should yield $250,000 a year in the future. He talked social-set leaders of nearby Hollywood into donating the proceeds of their Derby Ball to Nova. Result: another $50,000 that he expects to pick up annually.

Turning to local merchants, Winstead asked them to donate "dog" merchandise that was not moving. Nova held a sale, netted $8,000--and that, too, will be an annual affair. He coaxed 17 area banks into donating 1% of their pretax profits, which netted another $50,000. Winstead convinced several local millionaire yachtsmen that there were tax advantages in giving their old yachts to Nova; by chartering or reselling them, the university made $100,000 this year. "My friends call me the Commodore," beams Winstead.

$1,000 for a Gold Key. As do most college presidents, Winstead has dotted his board of trustees with potential contributors; so far, the trustees have donated $4,400,000. Winstead named an honorary alumni association of 400 community leaders--who are expected to give generously--and a "Gold Key" society of 50 members, who must give $1,000 a year to Nova.

Why is everyone so generous to Nova? One big reason is that Winstead has been able to document, in a professionally researched, 34-page report, that the community will more than get its money back as Nova grows. The study concludes that the university will attract technically oriented industry to Fort Lauderdale, which, by 1975, will add 15,000 skilled jobs, 35,000 service workers, and a payroll of $630 million to the surrounding area.

Nothing if not ambitious, Winstead fully expects that, also by 1975, Nova will grow to 250 teachers and 500 graduate students. He figures that the school needs about $1,000,000 a year in nonresearch operating funds to get along. At the rate money is now coming in, a million dollars looks easy to the hustling creators of Nova U.

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