The word "witness" means more than one thing to Dr. Earle Traynham, dean of the College of Business and Administration.

Traynham has been a witness to many things in his professional life at UNF, his recent positioning as the executive in charge of the First Coast Technology Park, the reaccredidation of COBA, the building of the COBA building (Bldg. 42), and others. Being a witness means something else to Traynham, however, in his capacities as an expert witness in civil trials throughout Florida.

"I like the challenge of it," Traynham said. "It's a nice mental exercise." Traynham first started being called upon in the mid '80s to give his expertise in the field of economics in civil litigations. He gives his opinion in personal injury, wrongful death and wrongful firing cases and said he has worked for defendants and plaintiffs. Traynham said that he offers advice about how much money a person should be awarded based on the person's loss of quality of life and pain and suffering, among other topics.

"You take what they were earning before and after [an accident or wrongful firing], take the difference and projected income figures and take that over a lifetime," he said. "That's how you decide what money to give them." Attorneys that have hired Traynham have been from South Carolina, Washington D.C., Louisiana and Texas, to name a few, but most of the cases originated and are tried in Florida or Georgia.

"I have an opinion about most cases," Traynham said. "You get involved. You meet people who want to make a quick buck, but in most cases, the people have truly had their lives ruined." Traynham said some of the more interesting cases he has worked on involved infants damaged at birth and malpractice cases because sometimes the wrong limb was amputated.

"They are interesting cases because I can identify with the victim or the plaintiff; I have a family too," he said. " I can identify with those situations. It is just bad luck to have somebody ruin your life. "I'll tell you how it's impacted me: you look at your life," Traynham said. "You realize that you have your health and that gives you a sense of perspective. When I interview clients, a lot of times it's bad luck [when the victims are hurt or wrongfully fired]."

Traynham said the only difficulty he has when working on cases is the time aspect. He said he tries not to average more than four hours a week because he has to take leave from his UNF job for each hour he works on a case. "It has come a few times where I could not work on a case because of a potential conflict with my job as dean," Traynham said. "With a donor to the college [or university], I try not to get involved in those kinds of cases; in everything I do, I am dean of this college [COBA]." Traynham has been in COBA for more than nine years. He said that it has "been a really fascinating job for several reasons.

"You get to interact with the business community and it forces you to think about the business college and what we do from the perspective of the business community." Traynham said one of the primary responsibilities he has as dean is to bring money into the college to make COBA better.

"You go into the community to ask them [businesses] for money to make the college better and they ask you 'What are you going to do with it?'" he said. "If you tell them that you are going to give money to the faculty or for computers, they are not interested. You have to justify it. They have to see it as an investment, so I convince them to invest and that will help us do a better job of educating them [students] to make them better employees. It forces you to get outside the little world here."