Published: January 19, 2018
UT’s Leadership Speaker Series Welcomes Richard Gonzmart on Jan. 29
On Monday, Jan. 29, The University of Tampa will welcome Richard Gonzmart, president of the Columbia Restaurant Group, as part of the TECO Energy Center for Leadership Speaker Series. The presentation, titled All in the Family … Success and Succession in a Fifth-Generation Restaurant Group, begins at 4:30 p.m. in the Trustees Board Room on the ninth floor of the Vaughn Center and is free and open to the public.
Gonzmart is the great-grandson of Casimiro Hernandez Sr., the founder of the world-famous Columbia Restaurant in Tampa’s historic Ybor City. Founded in 1905, the Columbia is the oldest restaurant in Florida, and the largest Spanish restaurant in the world.
Under Gonzmart’s direction, the Columbia has expanded from two locations to seven. He also created Cha Cha Coconuts in Sarasota. In August 2014, Gonzmart opened Ulele, located on the Hillsborough River. A second location opened at Tampa International Airport in 2017.
In August 2016, Gonzmart opened Goody Goody Burgers. A Tampa landmark since 1925 and closed since 2005, the iconic Goody Goody restaurant was reborn under his direction in Tampa’s Hyde Park Village. Gonzmart’s newest concept, Café con Leche Ybor City, also opened in 2017 at Tampa International Airport, serving coffee from Naviera Coffee Mills, Cuban toast and sandwiches.
The TECO Energy Center for Leadership Speaker Series is dedicated to bringing outstanding leaders from the private, government and nonprofit sectors to campus to discuss business topics and corporate strategies with students and members of the community.
The University of Tampa is located at 401 W. Kennedy Blvd. in Tampa. Please RSVP at www.ut.edu/cfl/speakerseries. For more information, contact Whitney Vance, coordinator of College Business operations, at wvance@ut.edu or (813) 257-3782.
On Sunday, April 8, The University of Tampa’s 2017-2018 Sykes Chapel Concert Artist Series will conclude with a performance by the Philadelphia Brass, called “one of the gems of Philadelphia’s cultural life” by NPR’s Martin Goldsmith. The concert begins at 2 p.m. in the Sykes Chapel and Center for Faith and Values and is free and open to the public.
The concert will have a special emphasis on American music, featuring works by Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington and Frank Loesser, among others.
On Friday, March 30, The University of Tampa will welcome pianist Frederick Moyer — hailed by The New York Times as “first-class” and The Milwaukee Journal as “a superstar pianist” — for a guest recital. The concert, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Plant Hall Grand Salon.
The program for the performance will include works by Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Oscar Peterson.
“There are a lot of stereotypes and studies that say boys aren’t as good in second language acquisition as females,” said Harrington, who worked with Assistant Professor Andrew DeMil on the research project, “Gender differences in Spanish Language Learning: Speaking Exams,” which they presented at the Florida Undergraduate Research Conference in February and to the UT Board of Trustees March 22.
“We wanted to do a study of our own here at UT. In the previous year (DeMil) had studied reading comprehension of girls versus boys, so we wanted to study speaking this year,” said Harrington, of Maple Grove, MN. “The results were the same though. The boys aren’t any worse, if not the same, as females. They are just extremely underrepresented.”