University Beat

Last week, Tampa Bay Rays Principal Owner Stuart Sternberg said a plan to build a new baseball stadium in the Tampa neighborhood of Ybor City was dead.

The Wall Street investor and other team officials said it wasn’t clear where most of the estimated $892 million for a new ballpark would come from, but a University of South Florida sports marketing expert said Sternberg should shoulder much of the blame for the failure.

If what he says is true, Samuel Little would be one of the worst serial killers in U-S history.

The 78-year-old claims that between 1970 and 2005, he murdered 90 people, mostly women, around the country. That includes some in Tampa, Plant City, and elsewhere around Florida.

Now investigators, including University of South Florida forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle, are trying to determine the validity of Little’s claims, as well as the identities of some of his victims.

Last month, the first installment of our series, "Telling Tampa Bay Stories," took us to Plant City, where we heard stories about the history and development of the Hillsborough County community.

This week's Florida Matters highlights some of the places and events that make Plant City special.

This week on Florida Matters we focus on the places and events that make Plant City special, like the Plant City Photo Archives and History Center.

When the first Publix grocery store on a college campus in the country opens at the University of South Florida in Tampa Thursday morning, customers will notice a few differences.

Near the start of the school year, the University of South Florida held a volunteer fair in the Marshall Student Center on the Tampa campus.

While dozens of different clubs and organizations used whatever methods they could to get students’ attention, all four furry members of the Puppy Raisers Club had to do was sit there and wag their tails.

With sea level rises, global warming and more, the Earth has been affected a lot by climate change in the last few decades.

For example, NASA reports that Antarctica lost about 119 billion tons of ice between 1993 and 2016 -- a rate that continues to grow exponentially.

Michelle Guitard, a PhD student at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science, is going to see these changes first-hand on a two-month expedition to Antarctica.

African-American history in South St. Petersburg dates back over 150 years. The area known today as Midtown is a community full of native residents who have passed down stories from generation to generation. But, as people pass and memories fade, so can the rich history which lies there.

Vernice Gumbs-Crunk is making a career change. After two decades as a call center manager, the 49-year-old native of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands is doing an internship at Sarasota-based Informa in their payables department.

The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee senior says the last few years at her job weren’t a lot of fun – something she’s experiencing at her new position.

The University of South Florida Muma College of Business is home to a new laboratory that doesn’t consist of beakers and microscopes. Instead, it’s a high-tech virtual lab where students are learning the latest techniques in the fast-evolving, fast-growing world of cybersecurity.

If you've ever dined out and wondered why you chose a cheeseburger over the salad, the choice may not have entirely been your own -- you might have been influenced by the music the restaurant was playing. 

That's one of the findings from a study by a University of South Florida researcher. 

A $145 gift from the country’s oldest and largest study abroad organization could make a huge difference for 175 University of South Florida students.

The present - a free passport - is giving them the opportunity to travel, study or even take a job in a foreign country.