Tapia College of Business Hosts Webinar Series to Help Struggling Businesses

Realizing there was a need to assist the Tampa Bay-area business community, Saint Leo University’s Tapia College of Business offered a free, four-part webinar series, Business Re-Imagined: Insights for Small Businesses in the COVID-19 Landscape in June and July.

Saint Leo University faculty and members of the Tampa Turnaround Management Association organized the sessions, engaging with other regional industry experts to provide operational, financial, human capital, and strategic guidance for small businesses.

“We recognize that this is a challenging time and the COVID-19 pandemic has caused some really unique challenges for small businesses,” said Dr. Robyn Parker, dean of the Tapia College of Business. “We thought we would gather together a set of experts and resources to help you as you think about what some call ‘re-ing business:’” Reopening, going remote, restructuring, refinancing, rethinking, replanning, and redeploying.”

The four parts in the webinar sessions were:

The COVID-19 Factor: An Overview of How COVID-19 is Impacting Businesses;
Addressing the Pandemic Recession: HR, Business Operations, and Supply Chain Impact;
Your Business Model: Strategic Direction for Pandemic Recession Recovery; and,
Financial Frenzy: Financial Options and Resources Related to COVID-19.

Phase 2 of the series was Workplace Re-Imagined on October 8, which featured experts from three of the university’s colleges presenting a multidisciplinary look at helping employees in the “new normal.” The webinar focused on “human capital and the return to the workforce.”

Business Re-Imagined webinars may be viewed at saintleo.edu/business-events.

“Saint Leo and the Tapia College of Business wanted to do something to give back to the community,” Parker said. “’Community’ is one of Saint Leo’s core values, and we thoroughly embrace the idea of helping others. We hope to hold more webinars in the future to assist not only the community, but also as a learning experience for our students.”

Saint Leo University Students Volunteer at Food Distribution to Help In COVID-19 Pandemic

Saint Leo University students joined in the Farm Share food distribution on May 20 with Florida Representative Randy Maggard and Pasco County Board of County Commissioners Chair Mike Moore at the Shops at Wiregrass mall in Wesley Chapel, FL.

Cars lined up near the distribution point as Saint Leo students joined others to distribute much-needed food as Pasco County, FL, residents deal with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Many are out of work and need assistance. True to the university’s core values, Saint Leo students stepped up to help.

More than 50 volunteers, including the Saint Leo students, handed out 33,000 pounds of food to about 700 people. The volunteers wore masks and followed Centers for Disease Control protocols as they loaded the food into recipients’ vehicles at the drive-thru event.

“I greatly appreciate the hard work the Saint Leo students put in volunteering with the Farm Share food distribution,” Moore said. “They worked in roles from bagging food to directing traffic to placing food in vehicles. Pasco County is a community that cares and volunteering to help others shows that.”

MBA Students Help Ybor Businesses

Students in the Master of Business Administration program at the Tampa Education Center present their analysis to Lee Bell, president of the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce.

In the spring, the Tampa (FL) Education Center’s MBA-599 class, taught by Dr. Helen MacLennan, assistant professor of management, worked in small teams to conduct their capstone project, a business strategy analysis they created free of charge for local businesses. The students assisted Tampa-area businesses, including the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce; the Ybor City Visitors Information Center; Centro Asturiano de Tampa; and the Ybor City Saturday Market.

The analyses included an internal and external assessment, competitor and marketing analysis, and financial projections. It offered possible alternative strategies for these businesses, along with suggestions for implementation.

Lee Bell, president of the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce, indicated that the information contained in these analyses was valuable and that the chamber had started the process of implementing some of the suggestions.

Health Education and Health Promotion

The university announced the start of a new four-year degree—a Bachelor of Science in health education and health promotion—that will prepare graduates for a growing number of health education positions at community organizations, healthcare agencies, and workplaces.

Health education specialists help the public understand how to cope with health challenges they face, whether as individuals or as concerned family members. “Health education specialists are bridging an important gap between what individuals, families, and communities know and understand, and the increasing amount of knowledge available,” said Dr. Kathleen Van Eerden, associate dean of Saint Leo’s College of Health Professions.

For instance, the specialists develop and adapt group education programs, offer instruction in healthy habits and preventative measures, and provide information on what kinds of health care services are available to the public. The coronavirus is a vivid example of a situation where health education specialists have played a positive role, Van Eerden noted, by providing reliable instruction on correct handwashing techniques and social distancing. Diabetes and heart disease are two other examples of conditions where health education specialists can make a difference in individuals’ lives, she added.

Psi Chi International Honor Society

Psi Chi members early in the Spring 2020 Semester, during an induction ceremony for new members.

Over the summer, the Saint Leo University chapter of the Psi Chi International Honor Society in psychology learned it had been named a model chapter for the 2019-2020 academic year. Only 23 chapters of the 1,180 in the society were selected for the honor. A model chapter is distinguished by the high level of interest and activity of members, as well as sound organizational practices. The chapter had 33 members in the most recent academic year, led by chapter president Caitlin Walsh ’20. Psi Chi offers lifetime memberships.

Dr. Tammy Zacchilli, an associate professor of psychology, has been the chapter advisor for 10 years. She said she was both excited about the recognition and proud of the Saint Leo chapter members. “They worked so hard last year and continued to hold meetings in Zoom after classes moved online [because of the virus]. We had a creative group of officers who led interesting activities all year.”

Alumnus finds value and application in a popular Saint Leo University course on terrorism in Israel.

Charlie Bird ’05 ’11 ’14 followed a time-honored path over the course of three decades to emerge as the head of law enforcement in his Central Florida hometown. He started as an outdoorsy, active young man who was introduced to the career through a friend who was a police dispatcher, and found the work suited him. He earned his degrees near home and advanced through the ranks.

Now, as the director of public safety for the same small city, Winter Haven, FL (population: 43,000), Bird is a proponent of providing police and other emergency professionals with an international educational perspective. Even in smaller-population cities such as his, the threats to public safety and well-being are real, he said. Parkland, the Florida city victimized by the infamous Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, estimates its current population at 32,000, he pointed out.

Through his experiences at Saint Leo, Bird came to the conclusion that approaches to keeping the public safe now have to be researched worldwide, and not just within our country’s framework.

Bird earned an associate degree from Saint Leo in 2005 and later earned his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the university, studying part time, while working and raising a family. Then he followed that degree with a master’s in criminal justice with a concentration in critical incident management.

That was all sound training, he says, but what made him a more forward-leaning leader was his participation in an eight-day group trip to Israel. The tour is a learning experience that is organized periodically by Saint Leo’s departments of public safety administration and criminal justice in partnership with a respected security training company for law and safety students and professionals. The group learned about Israel’s approach to counterterrorism through its public infrastructure, various protective agencies, and planning capabilities.

“It was one of the best things I ever did,” Bird said of his 2014 experience. While many fellow travelers on the trip were from large-city police forces, Bird encountered many lessons that he applies in directing safety operations for Winter Haven, and that he thinks could work for other smaller municipalities.

New perspectives

What meant the most to Bird was the emphasis placed on the prevention of attacks and cooperative measures, along with strong tactical response capabilities. For instance, he realized in Israel, police and firefighters may coordinate and act immediately at a mass casualty, rather than in a sequence with police first, then firefighters. “You’re looking at it from a different perspective,” he said.

Charlie Bird, left, with Saint Leo faculty member Dr. Robert Sullivan on a tour during a study trip in May 2014 to Israel.

The Israeli thinking about keeping schools safe from intruders and active shooters also intrigued Bird. “Their security layers for schools are not just on campus,” he said. “They are outside that. They patrol the perimeters outside the school property.” His department could examine and adjust patrol routes, he immediately realized.

When he returned to Florida, the ideas stayed, and advancement opportunities followed. Bird became Winter Haven’s police chief early in 2015 after the previous chief, a mentor, left for another position in the region. After another few years, the city’s fire chief retired.

The local city manager in 2018 proposed a new organization bringing the fire and police departments, along with code enforcement, under one city department overseen by Bird. Bird agreed and was appointed the director of public safety, a new position. He now oversees 91 police employees and a force of 71 firefighters and emergency medical personnel.

One of Bird’s current initiatives involves taking police, fire, and code enforcement officers on team walks through neighborhoods where some of the homes and yards are out of code compliance or are about to be because of overgrown grass, debris, or other deficits. Team members walk and knock on doors to talk to residents, Bird said, taking an informative approach first, and asking what the public servants can do to help the residents bring the property into code compliance.

Community members who help agency personnel may come along, too, Bird said, and sometimes identify easy solutions. Firefighters look for features of buildings that might be fire hazards and add to their knowledge of the properties under their protective watch.

Cross-functional teams

The police presence also reassures residents the department is serious about keeping the area safe from personal and property crime and fighting drug dealing. This cooperative venture is also a data-driven exercise that will track results, including numbers of code citations and calls to police for help, Bird said.

He has his eye on the longer term, too. Now that some safety department managers have been working more holistically for more than a year, he would like to send six of them on the next Israel trip that Saint Leo is able to arrange. (A May 2020 date has been rescheduled for November 2020 in hopes of better travel conditions domestically and internationally, in light of the coronavirus outbreak.)

Bird wants the group to be able to see for themselves the kinds of things he did and develop more ideas for improving the safety and well-being of the residents of Winter Haven. An anonymous foundation board has come forward to fund most of this training so that taxpayers will not have to foot any costs. The donating board—unknown even to Bird—considers the donation a way to help the 53-year-old public safety director have strong successors in place when he eventually retires. Bird said he is “extremely appreciative.” The foundation’s board is “making a heck of an investment into the future of this department and into the future of this community.”

For More Information

If you are interested in learning more about the course and trip, please contact Dr. Robert Sullivan, faculty member with Saint Leo University’s Department of Public Safety Administration and Department of Criminal Justice, at robert.sullivan02@saintleo.edu.

Photos courtesy of Charlie Bird