In January 1968, the USF College of Education became a member of Tampa’s Model Cities Program. The City of Tampa was one of seventy locations across the United States to be designated as a participant in the program, which was active from 1966 to 1974. The program was a part of a series of ambitious economic and social initiatives that were developed as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” and “War on Poverty” and provided federal aid to urban and low-income areas. It was administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and sought to improve the coordination of earlier programs developed in the “War on Poverty.” The Model Cities Program emphasized comprehensive planning, rebuilding, rehabilitation, and improved social service delivery and was guided by the input of a citizen advisory council.
A committee led by Dean Battle, and included Mr. Leadore Dubois, Dr. Bozidar Muntyan, Dr. Ray Patouillet, and Dr. Robert Shannon, prepared a report that proposed a school program for the model city area of Tampa, Florida.
The report was very advanced in its call for an innovative curriculum in which the humanities, sciences, and social sciences would be integrated into the daily lives of students. Notably, the report also stressed that the sciences should be learned through individualized experiences of investigations, inquiry, and discovery.
The report also emphasized the importance of the use of technology in education such as television programming and closed circuit broadcasts for lectures. It was noted that bringing the educational opportunities to where people live could become an important tool to successfully broaden access to education to a larger number of students. In addition, an intensive tutoring program, which involved approximately 1,500 students, many of which were from the College of Education, grew out of the Model Cities Program. USF students volunteered to tutor students in the Hillsborough County schools.