Home- College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
- Dr. Dick Puglisi
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Dick Puglisi
LB: So, I know that Gus was supportive of a new building for the Center for Economic Education. How did that come about?
DP: Yes. The way that happened was that we moved out of the sixth floor of the library. Bill Katzenmeyer arranged for us to move to an area on the first floor of the College of Education Building where the Institutional Materials Center was located, and the IMC moved to the sixth floor of the library. We were doing quite well. Gus Stavros at that time was serving as the volunteer president of the Florida Council on Economic Education, our state affiliate, and he wanted to visit the center. I was embarrassed to have him visit, quite frankly. The place was not very attractive. Everyone worked in an open area with their desks and boxes of materials. It was like a warehouse, but he wanted to come and see the center. When he walked in the first floor entrance to the College, he thought the whole first floor was the center. I corrected his impression by stating that we were located in the back. I took him to our area in the back. He asked, “Is this where you do your work? You can’t grow in this type of environment.” I said I felt fortunate to have the space as space on a university campus is hard to come by. He said we are going to have to build a building. I said, “Wow. That is a great dream.” He responded by stating that he and his wife Frances would start us off with a contribution of $150,000, and he and I would work together to raise the money. I said that I would have to speak with Dean Katzenmeyer, who of course, was supportive. We had to obtain President Borkowski’s approval to reserve the land until we could raise the money. Before I knew it, I was supervising a construction project to build a building for the center.
Because of Gus’s distinguished record of strong support for education, including his work with the Florida Council on Economic Education, providing funding for the Florida State Center, and for the Enterprise Village in Pinellas County, we decided to seek to having the center’s building named after Mr. Stavros.
University of South Florida representatives met with Governor Bob Martinez and several legislators, including Jim Davis. The governor signed the legislation naming the building the Gus Stavros Center for Free Enterprise and Economic Education. That was in 1989.
LB: Then the first floor was topped off with the second floor?
DP: Yes. When plans started for the new College of Education Building, the planning for the second floor addition to the Stavros Center was accelerated. We had anticipated that a second floor would be needed, so we planned for a foundation built strong enough to support a second floor. It turned out that we saved quite a bit of money on items like elevators by building a second floor and connecting the building to the College of Education building.
LB: I remember when the Stavros Center first opened. The furnishings were quite a bit more expensive looking than most furnishings on campus. I am sure that there was a reason for that. How did that come about?