Showing His School (E)Spirit

Dr. Carl Kuttler believes the entrepreneurial spirit drives growth in education and in our community .

Orchids are tender flowers. Those who grow them look for certain genetic characteristics, understanding that only the best plants ultimately survive and thrive. Once selected, an orchid requires nurturing and care in order to blossom and display its full beauty. A truly skillful gardener can produce a truly beautiful flower.

Ideas are similar to orchids. There are many ideas, but only a special few seem to have a predisposition for success. The proper idea, nurtured and cared for by a skillful entrepreneur, can also blossom into something beautiful…and beneficial.

Dr. Carl Kuttler, President of St. Petersburg College (SPC), an accredited, four-year degree-granting institution serving approximately 65,000 students annually, understands the care required to nurture both beautiful orchids and beautiful ideas. He has ample experience with both. However, it is his ability to take an idea and turn it into a reality that provides insight into his true talents.

A career educational administrator and President of SPC since 1978, Kuttler’s accomplishments at the college are many. Under his leadership, SPC became the first two-year community college in Florida to be awarded four-year degree status. Founded in 1927 as an alternative for those who couldn’t afford pricey and private University of Tampa, SPC today employs 1,000 people in full-time capacities. The college itself is located on approximately 385 acres parceled throughout the St. Petersburg area. On this land sits 11 learning centers and 66 permanent buildings housing 179 learning labs.

However, there is more to the school’s success and standing than plentiful land and numerous buildings. Viewed by many as an “entrepreneurial” college president, Kuttler is skilled not so much in the art of the deal as in the art of creating effective partnerships. It’s not a skill he picked up in a formal educational setting. It was instead fused into his make-up in the white-hot crucible of survival. “I think it’s the result of succeeding in survival,” Kuttler says. “There is a saying that always forces me into the entrepreneurial mindset: ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.’ Last night, somebody was undoing what I’ve done and they are about to do me one better. Therefore, I am driven not to wait for the competition, but to avoid a collision with the competition.”

His ability to form working partnerships has resulted in several successful undertakings. These include:

If it seems like an odd series of accomplishments for a college, remember: It’s all in keeping with Kuttler’s entrepreneurial bent, or his “e-spirit,” as he calls it. It is also a commentary on the entrepreneurial state of mind that is becoming more prevalent in modern educational institutions. “Fifteen years ago, they were saying that if you had entrepreneurship in higher education, you were likened to the snake oil salesman in the county fair,” he recalls. “Three and four years ago, the literature started proclaiming that if an administrator was not an entrepreneur, his school was headed for bankruptcy. So the institution of education has reversed itself in recognition of what is really happening in the world.”

Kuttler believes that the essence of e-spirit can be distilled into a few key terms: imagination, possibilities, dreams, visionary; parlaying, innovation, future, synergy; pioneer; and explorer. As Kuttler himself wrote in the chapter he contributed to the book, The Entrepreneurial Community College, edited by John E. Roueche and Barbara R. Jones, “These words help define an entrepreneurial enterprise and suggest that such an organization is not just entrepreneurially fueled or motivated, but spirited.”

He refines the concept more fully. “A word like innovation implies taking one item, adding 2 and getting 6,” says Kuttler. “In other words, I like to take one item, add two or three others, and parlay that into six, seven or eight, all developed out of that single source. I think that is a workable definition for entrepreneurship.”

Of course, few roads run smoothly from beginning to end. There are the inevitable bumps along the way, a realization that adds a new entry to Kuttler’s e-spirit keywords: perseverance, a quality inherent in other conceptual keywords such as pioneer or explorer. “Being e-spirited means the hurdles that are in front of you will not stop you,” he says. “They may only temporarily delay you until you can figure out a way around them under, through or over them.”

Kuttler’s e-spirit philosophy doesn’t trace its origins back to heated conceptual debate among high-minded academics or even in time spent collecting the counsel of corporate captains. Instead, its origins run to his childhood, harkening back to that drive to survive - and thrive. Carl Kuttler was born into a family that was poor in terms of material possessions, but wealthy in terms of family values. For some people, there is something about a hardscrabble, hand-me-down existence that ignites something in them. This internal fire makes them unwilling to accept present circumstance as their predetermined fate. Instead, they begin the hard work of achieving something better, something richer, something more fulfilling for themselves and others.

Kuttler came to this realization early in life, and set about changing his circumstances. “In the 4th grade, I went to work in the county school system to earn my lunch,” he recalls. “In those days, there were no free lunch programs. So I scraped plates from 4th grade through 12th grade. That teaches you the value of every string bean and everything when you see other people throwing them away. It was, I think, a very educational background to be raised in an environment where you had to perform, and you had to do it differently.”

By the time he was roughly 11-years-old, he had earned enough money by redeeming soft drink bottles and mowing lawns to loan his father the $300 needed to enter a new business venture. Carl learned the value of money the old-fashioned way: He earned it. “I never threw money away,” Kuttler states emphatically. As a result of his thriftiness, SPC is one of the strongest institutions financially in the state.

Underpinning Kuttler’s e-spirit philosophy is an essential set of premises based on what he refers to as “eternal truths.” He points to the Book of Proverbs as one source for these truths. “It’s a profound book,” he observes. “It says if you’re not careful in what you do, everything is folly. Everything isn’t folly, but only if you are careful to do the right things. Every action we commit results in forces. From the moment of birth to the time we enter the grave, there are forces that we have put into effect that affect others. (The book) says if you do right, then your children will experience certain positive things. If I (choose to) do right, then my extended family-my college family- will receive blessings and good things.” The implications of Kuttler’s e-spirit philosophy often play out both locally and globally.

As a local example, consider SPC’s recent involvement with the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg, an effort Kuttler refers to as “urban entrepreneurship.” Formerly an old downtown church that had been renovated and turned into an 800-seat performing arts center, the Palladium’s board approached SPC, offering the college ownership of a property valued at roughly $12 million. Accepting the offer, SPC also received a $3 million endowment from one of the theater’s board that qualified for $2 million in matching funds from the state.

At the same time, The American Stage Theater Company, having recently sold its aging facility for $1 million, received a $2 million loan from SPC’s foundation. With the loan in place, plans were drawn up for constructing a new home for American Stage. As it turns out, the $2 million loan amount also qualified for matching one-to-one funding from the state.

Then, SPC was approached by representatives of the Florida Orchestra, a world-reknowned orchestral company. Anyone who has followed the history of the Florida Orchestra understands that it can best be characterized as “nomadic,” performing in all three of Tampa Bay’s central cities and working without a permanent practice facility. SPC offered up the Palladium as well as 11,000 square feet of downtown campus space for the orchestra’s offices.

Who benefits from this effort to build a centralized performing arts complex in St. Petersburg? Well, for starters, Tampa Bay does. The Palladium Theater and its accompanying components offer our area a truly world-class, unified facility for innovative presentations of theater, music and dance. Secondly, SPC benefits from its ownership and partnerships in the new facilities. Lastly, and most importantly, the student body of SPC benefits. Students inclined toward the arts have the opportunity to be involved in facets of the theater arts, from its operational aspects to actual performance. In fact, a current rumor in circulation is that SPC has been contacted about bringing a premier Russian ballet school to the new complex. This is all part of Kuttler’s vision of SPC as a “cultural” college.

Russia looms large in Carl Kuttler’s thinking. He has well-established ties and a friendship with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, formed during Kuttler’s 1989 participation in a people-to-people program founded by President Eisenhower. When he looks down the road toward the day he leaves SPC, a possible diplomatic position appeals to him. “Depending on the politics at that time, I could enjoy an ambassadorship,” he says. “There are people - both the Russian and American sides- who have encouraged me to pursue that someday.”

Until that day arrives, he continues his work in building partnerships, pushing the limits of what a college and community can achieve together. “People inspire me,” he says. “One of the biggest joys in the world is putting arms and legs on other people’s dreams and entrepreneurs do that. Few entrepreneurs do it alone.”

Spoken like a truly e-spirited individual, someone who remains true to his school.