Pictures: Haven and Rita retire

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The College of Sciences hosted a retirement party for Haven Sweet and Rita Greenwell last week. Professors, deans, staff, families and friends all came out to celebrate the years of contributions made by these two biologists.

Haven came to UCF in 1971 as an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences from his position as a senior research analyst for Brown-Root-Northrop in Houston, Texas. He received his Ph.D. in plant physiology from Syracuse University and quickly became a key faculty member in Biology, teaching not only advanced courses in botany but the increasingly large sections of Introduction to Biology.

In 1996, Haven joined the dean’s office in the College of Arts and Sciences as an associate dean for student affairs. He has continued in that role through the first six years of the College of Sciences. Haven became an invaluable member of the college team in overseeing curriculum development, undergraduate student advising efforts, and schedule building across the college. Haven’s technological savvy and expertise were instrumental in the early development, implementation, and usability of the PeopleSoft system at UCF.

He has also been invaluable through his development of database programs to assist the college with enrollment management and tracking student progress and success. He has further made a significant mark on universitywide efforts, including improving cross-college advising, block scheduling, and developing and maintaining the university’s course and catalog database (4D).

Rita began her career at UCF 27 years ago in the Department of Biology. In 1996, she was asked to work in the dean’s office of the College of Arts and Science to oversee curricular matters, catalog, and scheduling. When the college split, she stayed with the sciences in the same role.

However, as demand for classrooms soared universitywide, she devoted most of her time to scheduling classes and dealing with classroom problems. This year alone, Rita scheduled classes for over 150,000 students, many more than the combined enrollment of all arts and sciences! In fact, since Rita began scheduling for CAS, she has scheduled almost 60,000 sections of classes and provided seats for almost 2.3 million UCF students!

In addition to scheduling COS classes, Rita has become a resource for the whole university, lending help and advice to the Registrar’s Office as well as other colleges. And her willingness to help other colleges, even when it involves a great deal of effort to adjust the COS schedule, has generated a universitywide cooperation that allows scheduling to move smoothly.