Building a College and a Legacy

Like his encounter with Marilyn Monroe and his days at Cornell, Rosen has a way of casting even the largest efforts in a decidedly low-key light.

“I was having lunch with UCF Professor Abe Pizam, and I told him, ‘One day Abe, I will build you a new school.’ At the time, the hospitality program was part of the business school. There were about 75 students,” says Rosen.

Five years later, Rosen made good on his promise, pledging $10 million in cash and 20 acres of property at his new resort, Rosen Shingle Creek. His contribution, however, came with certain conditions.

“I told President Hitt that I would really prefer the new college be out here near the theme parks, convention center and International Drive … closer to where all of the action is.”

Rosen and his team were invited to help design the building. So he invited the deans from the top hospitality colleges in the nation—Cornell, Michigan State, UMass, UNLV—to be his weekend guests. Armed with their input, Rosen’s team of architects developed “a tremendous plan based on the best of the best of the best.” And in 2004, the Rosen College of Hospitality Management opened on time and on budget.

“I didn’t want to make a fuss out of the UCF donation,” Rosen says. “I was ready to just send a check in the mail. But President Hitt implored me not to do it that way. He said, ‘Let us make an announcement. Let us use your name. If people hear that you’re doing something, it might encourage others to do something.’ When he put it that way, I had to say okay.”

Today, with founding Dean Abe Pizam at the helm and 3,500 students enrolled, the UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management is the largest hospitality program in the nation.

 

The Rosen College of Hospitality Management has grown to the largest college of its type in the United States.

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Adopting a Whole Neighborhood (Tangelo Park)

Just a quarter of a mile from the tourist centers of Orlando, Florida, sat a squalid neighborhood plagued with drug problems and lousy schooling. Harris Rosen, who had made his fortune building and operating hotels in the area, decided to personally do something about this. He developed and funded a simple approach to improving the lives of local families.

First, Rosen created a string of good quality, small, home-based preschools across the neighborhood—by offering to renovate space in residents’ houses and provide all operating funds if they would become trained as teachers. All two-, three-, and four-year-old children in the low-income neighborhood may attend these schools free of charge. Then Rosen offered an incentive at the other end of the childhood spectrum: a full scholarship, including books and travel, for any neighborhood resident who graduated from high school and got accepted into a Florida two- or four-year public college or vocational program. Support was recruited from other philanthropies and civic groups in the neighborhood like the Tangelo Park Baptist Church, the local YMCA, and the area schools.

The results are impressive. The neighborhood’s elementary school has earned “A” ratings on the Florida standardized annual exam for five of the past seven years—one of only two or three low-income schools in the state to earn the top rating. High-school graduation rates, which were below 50 percent when the program started, are now close to 100 percent. More than half of neighborhood youngsters go to college. Crime rates are down, property values have tripled, and new families are moving into the neighborhood. As of 2015, Harris Rosen had injected $11 million of his money into improving Tangelo Park, and he continues to spend about $500,000 per year on his program. source

Microsoft purchased Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion

Microsoft’s Skype has finally shut down, concluding its 22-year tenure as the once-dominant internet calling and messaging service.

Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion in what was then its largest-ever acquisition. At its peak, Skype had more than 300 million monthly active users and was synonymous with internet-based voice and video calling. For many, Skype was their first experience of speaking to someone halfway across the world for free, a radical shift from the dominance of telcos and expensive long-distance calls.

The service steadily declined in relevance in recent years, with its active user base shrinking to approximately 36 million by 2023 as competitors such as Zoom, WhatsApp, and Microsoft’s own Teams platform gained traction.

Teams has since grown to 320 million monthly users, far surpassing Skype’s remaining user base. The company’s decision to discontinue Skype is apparently part of a broader effort to prioritize artificial intelligence features within Teams. Employees who worked on Skype will be reassigned to other projects rather than being laid off.

Skype played a key role in popularizing VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology, enabling businesses and individuals to connect around the world with minimal costs. It also served as an early testbed for AI-powered real-time language translation, a feature Microsoft showcased in a widely publicized demonstration in 2014. However, its frequent UI changes, reliability issues, ill-conceived social media-like features, gradual shift toward enterprise, and inability to keep pace with newer competitors, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, ultimately led to its obsolescence.

Existing Skype users had until May 5 to migrate their data and contacts to Teams or seek alternative solutions. Skype’s legacy lives on in the VoIP technology it helped to normalize—but as a product, it stands as a case study in how brand recognition alone can’t save a stagnant platform.

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RIP Skype (2003–2025), survived by multiple versions of Microsoft Teams

Skype is no more, as Microsoft is retiring the once-popular video calling service on Monday.

Shutting down Skype will help the software giant focus on its homegrown Teams service by simplifying its communication offerings, Microsoft announced back in February.

To ease the transition from the platform, its users will be able to log into the free version of Teams using their existing credentials, with chats and contacts migrating automatically.

“Skype has been an integral part of shaping modern communications and supporting countless meaningful moments, and we are honored to have been part of the journey,” Jeff Tepper, Microsoft president of collaborative apps and platforms, said in a statement.

Businessman discussing work on video call with team members. (iStock / iStock)

Those who do not want to use Microsoft Teams Free can export their Skype data. Those who do nothing will have their data deleted in January 2026, Microsoft’s website says.

Skype first launched in 2003. When Microsoft acquired it in 2011 for $8.5 billion, the service had around 150 million monthly users. When the popularity of Zoom surged during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, that number had fallen to roughly 23 million.

The decline was partly because Skype’s underlying technology was not suited for the smartphone era.

January 29, 1946 – December 5, 2024