But for all his gentle manner, the new leader of the only historically black campus in Florida's public university system can strike as hard as the university's mascot rattlesnake.
Fred J. GainousBorn: July 6, 1947, Tallahassee.Family: Wife, Madie; three daughters, Tamara, Nikki and Kelli; and three grandchildren.Education: Bachelor's, agricultural education, FAMU, 1969; master's, agricultural education, University of Florida, 1972; doctorate, education, UF, 1975.Professional: Chancellor, Alabama College System Department of Postsecondary Education, 1988-2002; associate vice president, St. Petersburg College, 1987-1988; associate commissioner, Kansas State Department of Education, 1985-1987.Not Widely Known: Gainous is a fan of both country music and NASCAR. His favorite country singers: Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. "I love the blues, and I don't think there's a dime's worth of difference between country and the blues. It's the story." Favorite NASCAR driver: Jeff Gordon. "There's nothing like: 'Gentlemen, start your engines.' The earth comes to life."During FAMU's annual faculty breakfast this fall, Gainous thundered as he told a standing-room-only ballroom about plans by a "renegade" group of Florida's public universities to gain special tuition flexibility and five-year budgeting from the Legislature. "I believe that creates an unwarranted and unnecessary caste system in the state," Gainous said. He would confront the other universities' presidents about their "political misdeed," he told his faculty, and "look them in the face and tell them what scoundrels they are."
"That's what you learn growing up in Frenchtown," Gainous added, referring to the large African-American community on the northwest side of Tallahassee where he was born and raised.
Later that same day, Gainous indeed expressed his views at a meeting of the Florida Council of University Presidents in Orlando. He did not need to call anyone a scoundrel; the proposal had already been reworked to include any of Florida's 11 universities that wanted to participate. But he made clear that he is ever vigilant to threats and slights -- part of the job for a leader of a campus that has seen its share of both.
"There is no wondering where Fred is coming from," says Florida State University President T.K. Wetherell, who has known Gainous for 30 years. "This is not just a job for Fred, but it's family, it's tradition and it's history. He's been at FAMU as a student, an alum and now a leader. When you've done that, you bring a great deal of passion to the office."
Dream job
Gainous, 56, says he knew he would go to college at FAMU from the time he was a child. He earned an undergraduate degree in agricultural education there while working full-time as a janitor, cleaning FSU's library from midnight to 8 a.m. weekdays and a doctor's house on weekends.
Gainous dreamed of returning to FAMU's red brick and white-columned campus from the day he graduated in 1969. The school remained a constant presence in his life even as he left to earn a master's and doctorate from the University of Florida. Gainous married a FAMU grad, Madie. They sent two of their three daughters to FAMU. He collected newspaper clippings about his alma mater for years, during stints at the Kansas State Department of Education and the Alabama College System's Department of Postsecondary Education, where he served as chancellor for 14 years before taking the top job at FAMU.
The presidency "is literally a dream come true," he says. "It is a ratification of all those individuals who saw potential in me over the years."
Being steeped in FAMU culture is one thing; filling the shoes of Gainous' predecessor, Frederick Humphries, is another. When Humphries announced his retirement in 2001, many speculated his would be an almost impossible act to follow. During his 16-year tenure, Humphries led FAMU to become one of the top historically black universities in the nation, growing enrollment from 5,000 to 12,000 and attracting record numbers of National Achievement Scholars -- the best-performing African-American high school students in the U.S.
Humphries also put FAMU on the map with corporate America, persuading hundreds of major companies to provide internships and scholarship money in exchange for access to some of the brightest black college grads in the country.
The bespectacled, preppy Gainous may not match his gregarious predecessor in sheer personal wattage, but he has clearly begun to forge his own legacy of change at FAMU. "I believe we have more unused and underutilized potential than any other university in this state," Gainous says. "That is why we will continue to push for productivity, accountability, responsiveness and responsibility."
Remaking the campus
Gainous has told faculty he expects them to more than double FAMU's sponsored research take to at least $100 million a year -- a goal he plans to jump-start by filling the campus with new professors adept at pulling in grants.
This past June, more than 100 of FAMU's longest-serving deans and professors retired under Florida's Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP), a 60-month program launched by the state five years before. Those openings, along with his firings of some half-dozen senior administrators, will allow Gainous to remake his campus with people who can carry out his goals.
Among those goals is auditing and cleaning up the 115-year-old university's troubled finances. Recent revelations include overspending of grant and construction money, theft of financial-aid checks and sloppy purchasing practices.
In addition, Gainous wants to eliminate the poor "customer service" that plagues FAMU -- and for which Humphries was severely criticized.
Perhaps most important, Gainous aims to raise the school's low graduation and retention rates. Only 47% of students who entered FAMU as freshmen had graduated six years later, according to the latest statistics from the Florida Department of Education, compared with a 60% average among all 11 public universities in Florida.
To keep first- and second-year students in school, Gainous has created a Freshman and Sophomore Year Retention and Research Office. The goal is self-preserving as much as altruistic. FAMU receives about $4,000 per student from the state for each freshman and sophomore, $9,000 for each junior and senior. Gainous wants to flip-flop FAMU's percentages of lower- and upperclassmen; now, the campus is made up of 60% freshmen and sophomores.
"We cannot afford to lose students -- not just as a university, but as a state and as a nation," he says.
Possibly the biggest difference between the current and previous administrations is Gainous' focus on nurturing disadvantaged students and their families. Gainous is "very concerned about our merit scholars, and we have lots of them, but he is equally concerned about our struggling students," says the university's provost, Larry Robinson.
Gainous often tells faculty and staff to "remember Grandma," a reference to the many grandparents raising their grandchildren and sending them to FAMU.
Larry Eugene Rivers, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, says "the previous leadership was very good at bringing in students, but we had not put in place the mechanisms to retain students and graduate them." A historian who wrote the definitive book on slavery in Florida, Rivers is also the father of FAMU's student body president, Larry Rivers.
Fund raising and football
With his first year behind him, Gainous is turning more attention to the world outside FAMU. He has launched a $251-million capital campaign -- the largest of any historically black university in the nation -- and expects to spend as much as half of his time this year on fund raising. Gainous chose the odd-numbered amount to make a point: Prestigious, historically black Howard University had launched a $250-million campaign; Gainous went so far as to hire away the head of that campaign, Love Collins III, to serve as FAMU's vice president for development.
Florida A&M University --Established 1887
FAMU awards more bachelor's degrees to black students than any other university in the country. It leads the nation in the graduation of black teachers and pharmacists and ranks fifth in black engineering graduates.
The university consistently ranks among the top U.S. recruiters of National Achievement Scholars, the country's top African-American high school students.
FAMU this fall landed the largest research grant in its history: $14.8 million to the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The grant will fund biomedical research development.Meanwhile, Gainous has shepherded the university's football team into Division I-A, a move he says will improve both student recruiting and fund raising. The reclassification makes FAMU the first historically black university in the upper tier of Division I.
Though FAMU won't play in Division I-A until next fall, many of the university's supporters already are swept up in a football fever that Gainous hopes will spread to student recruits, industry leaders and others. Billboards in Tallahassee proclaim "The Rattlers are movin' on up." FAMU already was a perennial Top 25 program in Division I-AA and has a significant fan base -- packing in crowds from Cincinnati to Miami. "This is going to bring together the constituents of this university like no other activity could," Gainous says.
Other Rattlers on and off campus, particularly professors, are ambivalent about the reclassification, and some are disturbed that Gainous pushed FAMU to make it happen in one year rather than taking it slowly. Troy State University, the last school to make the move, took four years to build its new program.
"Faculty understand the rationale on the one hand, but they are worried about the drain on the budget on the other," says Rivers. "They worry that the drain will come at the expense of some academic programs."
FAMU estimates the additional coaches and scholarships and facility improvements needed to cover the costs of reclassification will be at least $4 million the first year. In addition, the total athletics budget will be hiked from $6 million to $9 million.
Gainous maintains the investment will pale in comparison to returns. "I see it as a move of not just athletics to I-A, but every aspect of the university to I-A," he says. "Yes, it's an uphill climb, but FAMU has successfully climbed uphill for the past 115 years."
Collins says doubters will be reassured as they watch Gainous carry out the "cultural transformation" that he envisions for FAMU. It was Gainous' vision of dynamic change that persuaded Collins to leave Howard for Tallahassee. Bettering service, academic outcomes, donations, research funding and even the university's football fortunes all will impact Gainous' bottom line, Collins says: "Touching as many students as possible."
Ever polite, Gainous remains ready to shed his accommodating demeanor when the situation demands. "I believe FAMU rules. It trumps everything else," he says. "When it comes to this university, it doesn't have to be a democracy. It simply has to be in the best interest of the university."