{"id":320339,"date":"2026-06-26T06:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/320339\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T06:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:09:10","slug":"tampa-professor-traces-path-from-kid-in-palatka-to-accomplished-academic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/320339\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa professor traces path from kid in Palatka to accomplished academic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

Kevin S. Fridy\u2013Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Tampa,<\/a> and slated after this interview to deliver a talk, \u201cHuman Bycatch in a West African Wildlife Corridor,\u201d as part of the Pints of Science lecture series offered monthly at venerable Tampa concert venue New World Brewery\u2014traces his path from kid growing up in Palatka, FL to accomplished academic.<\/p>\n

Explaining there was just one high school in Palatka, and characterizing it as \u201crough\u201d\u2014he noted a jarring attrition rate: 700-800 students would start attending, and four years later, only 300 would remain\u2014he recalls almost an intuitive inclination to study hard and excel academically.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It worked. He earned a scholarship, attending George Washington University, and when an opportunity arose to study abroad, Fridy selected Ghana. This, it turns out, launched a long, professionally and personally fruitful relationship\u2014Fridy estimates he\u2019s traveled to the West African country more than two dozen times.<\/p>\n

He recounts how his first trip there, in 1997, as a 20-year-old who\u2019d never traveled internationally, shaped him in multiple ways. Fridy<\/a> really took to Ghana, finding some notable parallels between the country and his native Palatka.<\/p>\n

Amidst return journeys to Ghana, and further strides down the road of academia\u2014he\u2019d followed his B.A. in International Relations by securing a Master\u2019s in the same field\u2014a mentor advised him to get a Ph.D. As it happens, the University of Florida, in Gainesville\u2014about 40 miles from Palatka\u2014runs the largest collegiate African Studies program. Fridy did indeed get his Ph.D from UF, in Political Science. (At one point in our conversation, he describes himself as a \u201cmainstream political scientist.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n

In something of a sneak preview of that night\u2019s Pints of Science lecture, he outlines how he and various colleagues came to formulate a slice of research anchored in Ghana\u2019s Red Volta\u2019s Forest Reserve. They recognized it as a significant wildlife corridor, but wondered what else might be learned by setting up 20 camera traps in that area for a year.<\/p>\n

Fridy says that yearlong assemblage of images documented the expected heavy elephant traffic\u2014the Reserve serves as a wildlife corridor for more than 90 percent of West Africa\u2019s elephants (though chiefly in the \u201cdry season,\u201d Nov. to March)\u2014but also an enormous presence of cattle, and comparatively little human activity: hunters, gold miners, and so on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Given the procession of pachyderms, I was struck\u2014and delighted\u2014that there seemed to be no evidence of poaching. Fridy explains that he and others involved in this camera trap exploration of the corridor plan to publish a paper on the endeavor. He observes that the animal emphasis here marks a shift in the direction of his work as a political scientist, and he anticipates he\u2019ll move further in that direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin S. Fridy\u2013Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Tampa, and slated after this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[12750,135,137,136,37150,3629],"class_list":["post-320339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-talking-animals","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-university-of-tampa","tag-wmnf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}