Polk County Public Schools
Former Polk Community College president J. Larry Durrence, Ph.D., U.S. military intelligence officer Steven Flett, college engineering professor Mark Jaroszeski, Ph.D., and medical physicist Sanford Meeks, Ph.D., have been named 2008 inductees to the Polk County Public Schools Hall of Fame. They will be honored on June 4 at the Lake Ashton Country Club in Lake Wales along with the 2008 Polk high school valedictorians and salutatorians. The June 4 event is invitation only.
The Hall of Fame was started in 1985 and inductees are individuals who attended a Polk public school and made significant professional and career contributions in the arts, business, clergy, education, entertainment, government, law, military, medicine, sports or other fields. With the induction of Durrence, Flett, Jaroszeski and Meeks in 2008, the Hall of Fame will have 86 members.
Contact the Community Relations Department at (863) 534-0699 for further information.
The following are profiles of the 2008 inductees:
Dr. J. Larry Durrence was the president of Polk Community College from 1998 to 2006. At the time of his appointment, PCC trustees charged him with reversing a ten-year enrollment decline, building a more diverse student population and improving the college’s visibility and credibility. As president, he increased enrollment by 32 percent, secured state Board of Education approval for two new campuses and significantly increased minority enrollment. He created and added degree and certification programs including the Corporate College to expand training for business and industry. During his leadership, the PCC Foundation tripled its endowment to $18 million. Prior to PCC, he held positions with the Florida Department of Revenue, Florida State University, Florida Southern College, the Ridge League of Cities and Florida League of Cities. He is a graduate of Lakeland High, Lakeland’s Florida Southern College and holds master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga.
Steven Flett has a military career spanning more than two decades and includes high level positions with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Between 1985 and 1995, he conducted highly sensitive intelligence operations as a counterintelligence special agent and second lieutenant in Europe and the U.S. As a company commander, his forces conducted peacekeeping operations during uprisings in Haiti in 1997. He later was selected for the Army’s Battle Command Training Program, an elite warfighting training program. In 1998, Flett was named Watch Officer at the Army Intelligence Watch in the Pentagon. He routinely briefed senior members of the U.S. military. On September 11, 2001 he was at his post in the Army war room at the Pentagon and functioned as the senior intelligence officer present at the watch. Later that day, Major Flett traveled to the Capitol where he provided critical intelligence information to senior members of the U.S. Senate and Congress. He is a graduate of Auburndale High and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
Dr. Mark Jaroszeski is currently associate professor in the department of chemical engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa. In 2005, he was the USF Department of Chemical Engineering Professor of the Year, an award voted on by undergraduate students. In the 2005-2006 academic year, he was awarded the USF Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award. He competed for and won a $1 million grant for a USF program to provide underrepresented minorities better access to research careers in the biomedical sciences. His research has focused on the development of drug and DNA delivery methods for the treatment of cancer. He has been involved with work leading to 14 U.S. patents. He is a graduate of Kathleen High and Polk Community College. PCC honored Dr. Jaroszeski with a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2002. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of South Florida.
Dr. Sanford Meeks is currently chief of radiotherapy physics for M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Orlando where he oversees the physics, dosimetry and radiation therapy staff. Additionally, he serves as the facility’s chairman of the institutional review board ensuring the protection and rights of patients participating in clinical research. Prior to joining M.D. Anderson, Dr. Meeks was director of physics and associate professor in the departments of radiation oncology and biomedical engineering at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Prior to the University of Iowa, he was on faculty at the University of Florida at Gainesville in the neurological surgery, radiation oncology and nuclear and radiological engineering departments. He is a graduate of Auburndale High and Florida Southern College. He earned a master’s degree from Florida State University and a doctorate from the University of Florida.