James Annarelli, President, Eckerd College

August 2026 —Invest: spoke with James Annarelli, president of Eckerd College, about the institution’s recovery following the 2024 hurricane season, the role of liberal arts education, and Eckerd’s growing partnerships within the Tampa Bay business community. “We need to demonstrate that a liberal arts education is not only great preparation for a meaningful and purposeful life and engaged citizenship, but also a wonderful foundation for a career in what will be an economic landscape that is continually changing,” Annarelli said.

What have been the key changes for Eckerd College over the past two years?

One of the defining developments was our recovery from the two major hurricanes that impacted the Tampa Bay region in 2024. Eckerd College sustained approximately $24.5 million in damages from storm surge and hurricane-force winds. The campus was closed for more than a month while we operated remotely, and our faculty adapted quickly to deliver coursework digitally despite our not being a distance-learning institution. We were proud of how our faculty, staff, students, and families responded, and we are grateful that the campus has fully recovered and all facilities are now open again.

We also opened the new John R. Saunders Dining Facility, a fully FEMA-compliant building overlooking Boca Ciega Bay. It provides modern dining space while also serving as a gathering place for collaboration and community life. It replaced the original cafeteria built on campus in the early 1960s.

Another major milestone was the advancement of our global education program. Once again, Eckerd was recognized by the Institute for International Education’s Open Doors report as the number one baccalaureate institution for participation in short-term study abroad programs. During winter term, students travel around the world on faculty-led programs, including a return this year to Antarctica after nearly two decades. We also received a $5.5 million gift from emeritus trustee Bud Risser and his wife, Fran, to support the affordability and long-term sustainability of our global education initiatives.

Academically, we introduced several new minors and programs designed to connect liberal arts education with evolving workforce needs. These include programs in AI, environmental filmmaking, and public health, and are developing embedded certificate programs that create stackable skills within a traditional liberal arts framework.

On the recruitment side, we introduced new digital and AI-supported tools to improve efficiency and strengthen student engagement. These tools allow staff to focus more directly on personal outreach while streamlining administrative processes. We have already seen strong results, including meeting our incoming class goal of 560 students.

Sustainability also remains a major focus. We signed the Break Free From Plastic pledge, continue reducing single-use plastics on campus, and launched a living shoreline project using native plantings rather than traditional hard seawalls. We are also advancing rewilding efforts and micro-forest development on campus.

How would you describe your role within the broader Tampa Bay economy and community?

We always have tried to be good citizens of the Tampa Bay region, but over the last several years we have worked intentionally to deepen our relationships with educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, government partners, and the business community.

When I first arrived at Eckerd in 1990, many students from outside Florida would leave the area shortly after graduation. Today, that has changed dramatically. St. Petersburg and the broader Tampa Bay region have become very attractive places for young professionals to live and work. Many of our graduates now remain here after graduation or return after graduate school, contributing to the cultural and economic vitality of the region.

We are increasingly introducing students from across the country to Tampa Bay through their Eckerd experience, and they are becoming part of the long-term workforce and leadership pipeline for the region.

How is Eckerd balancing the value of a traditional liberal arts education with increasing demand for workforce-aligned skills and career readiness?

That balance is central to our mission. We need to demonstrate that a liberal arts education is not only great preparation for a meaningful and purposeful life and engaged citizenship, but also a wonderful foundation for a career in what will be an economic landscape that is continually changing.

The traditional strengths of liberal arts education, including communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and adaptability, remain essential. What we are doing now is combining those soft skills with more focused technical and professional competencies through embedded certificates, minors, and experiential learning opportunities.

We are building partnerships with employers that help connect classroom learning to workforce preparation. For example, we are in discussions with a major local financial services firm  about creating cooperative education experiences where students would spend a semester working directly within a business environment as part of their academic journey.

We have also redesigned our Career Center so that career preparation is integrated directly into the academic experience. We want students to graduate with both the intellectual foundation and the demonstrable skills necessary to succeed in a rapidly evolving economy.

What role do partnerships play in creating opportunities for students and graduates?

They play an absolutely pivotal role. We have long maintained a reflective service-learning requirement where students engage directly with nonprofit organizations and community partners through courses across multiple disciplines. These experiences allow students to apply classroom learning in meaningful real-world contexts.

The same applies to internships, career shadowing opportunities, and employer partnerships. These relationships are essential to preparing students for employment and helping them understand how their liberal arts education translates into professional opportunities.

We remain committed to our liberal arts identity. This is not about transforming into a trade school. It is about combining the strengths of a liberal arts education with practical experiences and focused skill development that prepare students for both careers and lifelong learning.

How do you maintain Eckerd’s strong campus culture and student-centered approach as the institution evolves?

The community has always been at the center of Eckerd College. I spent many years in student life leadership after beginning my career as a professor and academic administrator, and I have always believed that community cannot be engineered from the top down.

I often use the metaphor of placing sidewalks where students have already worn paths into the grass. The goal is to support the ways communities naturally form rather than forcing artificial structures onto them.

We have grown cautiously and intentionally because we do not want to lose the intimate and connected environment that defines Eckerd College. Preserving and strengthening that sense of community has been one of the most important priorities throughout my career here.

How is technology, including AI, influencing how Eckerd prepares students for the future?

The emergence of AI created understandable concern across higher education, particularly around academic integrity and the possibility of technology replacing meaningful human learning experiences. Those concerns are valid, but we believe it would be shortsighted to respond only with fear.

Our approach is to leverage technology thoughtfully while remaining attentive to its risks. We are using AI strategically in administrative areas to automate repetitive tasks and free staff to focus on more meaningful personal interactions with students.

Students increasingly expect colleges to prepare them for a world shaped by AI and digital technologies. That is one reason we created an AI minor and appointed an associate dean focused on AI and academic integrity. We want students to understand these tools critically and ethically while developing the skills necessary to navigate a changing technological landscape.

What opportunities do you see for Tampa Bay’s higher education institutions to contribute to the region’s continued economic diversification and innovation ecosystem?

I believe there is tremendous opportunity for greater collaboration among higher education institutions across Tampa Bay and Florida more broadly.

While colleges and universities may compete in some areas, we also have complementary missions. Strengthening the overall higher education ecosystem benefits the entire region and contributes to long-term economic growth and innovation.

We are actively building partnerships with institutions like USF to create pathways from our undergraduate programs into graduate and professional programs. For example, we recently signed an agreement that creates direct pathways from Eckerd into USF’s education programs leading to teacher certification.

At Eckerd, we remain committed to our core mission as a residential liberal arts college. We do not intend to move into graduate education ourselves, but we do want to strengthen partnerships that expand opportunities for our students.

We also see ourselves as a center for lifelong learning within the Tampa Bay community. Through our Leadership Development Institute and continuing education programs, we work with CEOs, business leaders, and professionals from across the country. These programs reflect our belief that higher education institutions should contribute not only to undergraduate education, but also to leadership development and professional growth throughout a person’s career.