IRSC President Timothy Moore is moving fast in implementing changes. Should we be worried?

Indian River State College President Timothy Moore is sometimes called "Captain Velocity" ― a nickname he comes by honestly.

Charismatic, outgoing and energetic, Moore speaks in staccato bursts that remind me of Winston Wolf, the fast-talking underworld fixer from the movie, "Pulp Fiction."

Moore has been moving fast, too, implementing many changes and launching new initiatives since taking leadership of the college in 2020.

During a board of trustees meeting Tuesday at IRSC's Dixon Hendry Campus in Okeechobee, he vowed "to do whatever we have to do" to provide students in the four-county Treasure Coast region with the skills they need to thrive in a fast-changing world.

Moore taking seriously his role as a change agent

The college has opened a charter high school in Indiantown and expanded, a nursing program that offers four-year as well as two-year degrees. Planning is underway for a data-processing center in Okeechobee County, a master's in business program in health administration, and maybe even a medical school for the Port St. Lucie campus.

Clearly, Moore's vision goes far beyond just two-year associate's degrees traditionally offered by what used to be called "community colleges."

That's evidently what board members wanted when they were looking for a successor to longtime President Edwin Massey, the man for whom the main campus in Fort Pierce is named.

"Dr. Moore did not sound like any of the other applicants," said Anthony George, the board's chairman. "We hired a change agent."

Some of the changes, like switching to a new computer operating system and revamping the roles of individual campus presidents, are probably of little interest to those outside IRSC's community of students, faculty and staff.

Yet IRSC's operations are funded through state and federal dollars, which means even those of us whose school days are long behind us have vested interests in the college's success.

Change for change's sake isn't necessarily good

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is credited with the mantra, "move fast and break things," which seems to be part of Moore's philosophy, too.

There's been significant staffing turnover at IRSC under Moore's watch, including the dismissal of the college's in-house communications team. IRSC backed out of a plan to provide vocational training in East Stuart, prompting the city to negotiate a new partnership with Project LIFT. The college retooled some of its athletics programs, which included discontinuing a women's basketball team that had recent on-court success.

The decision to bench the basketball team was ostensibly made for financial reasons. However, it's not uncommon for smaller, less-popular athletic programs on college campuses to operate at financial deficits, which makes one wonder if there's more to the story there.

IRSC has quietly continued to pursue plans to build an event center, hotel, museum and restaurant on the Fort Pierce campus and entered into a partnership to have Audubon Development renovate and rent out the college-owned Coast Guard House on Hutchinson Island.

As I've written before, the development plans for the Fort Pierce campus seem questionable from a business standpoint. IRSC officials have told me they're really interested in having a center for events, not conventions, which is somewhat reassuring, given the competitive nature of the convention business in Florida.

IRSC officials say an event center would be great for graduation ceremonies and other on-campus activities. And they say market research suggests a hotel on or near campus would be viable.

I'm sure a hotel would do booming business on graduation weekends and when the college's vaunted swimming and diving teams are hosting major events. But what about the rest of the year?

IRSC's main campus is several miles away from the nearest beaches and downtown Fort Pierce, which are hubs for many non-school-related community events. Would hotel guests be willing to live with that inconvenience?

Would the on-campus event center compete for concerts and other entertainment bookings against other regional facilities like the MidFlorida Event Center in Port St. Lucie, which has expansion plans of its own? Or the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce or Lyric Theatre in Stuart?

If college officials see an untapped niche an on-campus center could fill, why not explain it to the public?

IRSC may have too many irons in the fire

As for the partnership with Audubon for the Coast Guard House, that seems like a distraction for both the developer and the college. Audubon is having a hard time fulfilling its obligations to build King's Landing in downtown Fort Pierce and IRSC has so many other irons in the fire.

At times, Moore seems to favor a go-it-alone approach to working with community partners. For example, when Brightline was considering different locations for a passenger train station in either Martin or St. Lucie County, IRSC teamed up with a proposal submitted by Audubon to build the station adjacent to the King's Landing site.

IRSC was proposing to build a culinary school as part of Audubon's train station development. As one of the incentives to Brightline, IRSC pledged to buy an allotment of train tickets its students could use.

IRSC's ticket pledge, the college later revealed, was good for any Treasure Coast site selected, although it seemed at the time like the college was trying to influence where the station would be located, even though its service area includes both counties.

Providing meaningful analysis for all of the programs launched or expanded under Moore's watch is like trying to catch the pellets from a shotgun blast.

There's also more that college officials might not be telling us. For example, IRSC parted ways April 19 with its chief financial officer, Marvin Pyles, and named business professor Edith Pacacha as an interim replacement.

Annabel Robertson, the college's interim media spokeswoman, confirmed the transition had taken place in a private conversation with me, but no mention was made during the board of trustees meeting, where dozens of other staffing changes were on the agenda.

Moore spent a considerable amount of time at the meeting discussing problems with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid computer system, which he candidly described as both "a disaster" and "an existential threat" to the college. He was up front about his desire to "drop kick" Workday, the internal system the college has been using to handle functions like enrollment and class registration, to the curb by August 2025.

But the loss of a top member of his leadership team didn't even rate a brief mention?

It's plausible Pyles' departure, for reasons unspecified, happened too late to be included in the board's agenda packet, but it seems strange Moore didn't at least give board members a heads-up about the change in a public forum.

We don't know what we don't know

It makes me wonder what else we're not hearing about operations at this taxpayer-funded institution.

I'm not prepared to call Moore a charlatan or anything like that. He seems very earnest about his desire to improve the lives of people who might not otherwise get more than a high school education.

However, I'm familiar with the expression "haste makes waste." I'm wondering if maybe in his race to build a better higher-education system, Captain Velocity might need to slow down a tad and allow some of his stakeholders to catch up to him.

This column reflects the opinion of Blake Fontenay. Contact him via email at bfontenay@gannett.com or at 772-232-5424.