Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
What Happened 2012 HBCU Week Conference?
HBCU Week Conference: Black College Leaders Urged to Improve Institutional Performance
WASHINGTON – In order to attract donors in a time of declining revenues, HBCUs must discard old ideas about uplift and focus boosting productivity and performance in ways that rival the most prestigious institutions.
That was one of a series of exhortations made Tuesday during an HBCU Week Conference panel discussion devoted to the contemporary demands of serving as an HBCU board trustee.
The whole approach toward “helping poor Black children” is becoming outdated and dwindling in its appeal, said Jeffrey L. Humber Jr., trustee at Gallaudet University and the University of Virginia Law School Foundation, as well as a former trustee at his alma mater, Virginia Union University.
“The board’s responsibility is to create the environment so that you have something to sell,” Humber said. “You either sell performance or you sell the plan to get to performance.
“If you don’t have any of those, you can knock on all the IBM and Xerox doors you want. They’re not going to be interested.”
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| William H. Gray formerly served as president and CEO of UNCF |
Such corporations may purchase a $10,000 table at a fund-raising banquet, Humber said, but that’s only a pittance of the kind of money that institutions need to operate effectively in today’s environment.
Humber made his remarks during a panel discussion titled “Trusteeship: What Every Trustee Should Know Before and After Signing Up.”
A common refrain at the discussion is that trusteeships should not be seen as “honorific” but rather as positions that demand the same kind of attention that it takes to run a business.
“I’m always amazed at the number of trustees who may not have read materials given to them before the meeting,” Humber said. “”You have a responsibility to read and ask questions that those materials raise and demand additional information that may not have come.”
“That’s not only your responsibility but your protection as well,” Humber said, affirming to a questioner that board trustees are potentially subject to litigation for how they execute their responsibilities.
“Can you be sued? Yes, you can be sued,” Humber said. “It all depends on what happened.”
He advised individuals who are tapped to serve as trustees to confer with a board’s outside counsel to get an understanding of the trustee’s obligations, potential liabilities and whether a board carries insurance that is adequate to cover its members.
“At the end of the day you’re going to have to make judgments about all of that stuff,” Humber said. “But those are questions you have to ask.”
While the panel discussion on trustees’ responsibilities comes at a time when boards of trustees—including some at HBCUs—are increasingly finding themselves in the news for all the wrong reasons, such as the Penn State sex scandal or last year’s hazing death at FAMU, leaders at the White House Initiative on Black Colleges and Universities said such cases were not the impetus for the panel discussion on trusteeship.
Rather, they say, the panel was meant to educate trustees and prospective trustees on how to build capacity pursuant to executive order of President Barack Obama.
“We can’t think about, much less talk about, strengthening the capacity of HBCUs unless you consider issues of leadership and leadership at the top,” said Dr. John S. Wilson Jr., Executive Director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs. “The best capacity issues get resolved at the board of trustees level because it’s at the board level you talk about the endowment of the institution, the quality of infrastructure at the institution.”
At the panel discussion, Humber identified a list of questions individuals should ask before agreeing to become a trustee. They include blunt questions such as whether there have been controversies and whether the institution is broke.
Humber stressed the need to focus on having institutions remain competitive.
“We have to put ourselves against the best and brightest of our competition,” Humber said. “We cannot compare ourselves to ourselves. And any organization that compares itself to itself is a dying organization. If we say, ‘We’re doing so much better than we did,’ we’re not.’”
Trustees also have to be cognizant of admissions practices and policies and how the current business model, which is based on tuition, is not sustainable but may nevertheless induce schools to accept many students who are not ready to do college level work, which in turn elevates costs due to the need for remediation.
Other speakers at the panel included Richard Legon, President of the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities, and Terence Murchison, Chair of the Board at Fayetteville State University.
At Tuesday’s luncheon speech, William H. Gray, III, chairman of Gray Global Strategies Inc. and a former congressman and former president and CEO of UNCF, challenged HBCUs to appeal to a broader base of prospective donors who have an interest in the nation’s prosperity.
He also urged HBCU leaders to become more creative than they’ve already been and to focus on marketing to make sure their story is known to younger generations who may not know what value HBCUs bring to higher education.
“Marketing is so important,” said Gray, who oversaw $2.3 billion in fund-raising during his tenure at UNCF. “One of the things I learned at UNCF is you have to tell your story.”
Gray spoke of how contributions to UNCF, which he said were falling off due to older White donors dying, increased after he started having students tell stories about “how they got over” with help from HBCUs and went on to graduate schools at prestigious institutions.
“Soon the money started climbing,” Gray said. “Why? Because people don’t give to buildings. They give to stories, they give to people.
“That’s what we’ve got to do and when we do that people will be (ready) to give to something that is as productive as that.”
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Quote of the Day 10/4/2012
"We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort."
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who specialized in the sprints and the long jump. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 meter relay team. He was the most successful athlete at the 1936 Summer Olympics.Friday, September 28, 2012
Quote of the Day 9/28/2012
“You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.”
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore. He was also one of the first African-American professors at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University. Thursday, September 27, 2012
HBCU FAMOUS ALUMNI: Herman Cain
Herman Cain
Cain, who recently threw his hat in the ring for the Republican presidential nomination, graduated Morehouse in 1967. He studied mathematics
Ouote of the Day 9/27/2012
Richard Wright
Fayetteville State University’s 2012 Fall Convocation
Fayetteville State University (FSU) will kick off the 146th academic year with Fall Convocation. The event is scheduled for Tuesday, October 4, at 2:00 p.m. in the J.W. Seabrook Auditorium. The public is invited to attend.
Keynote speaker for the event will be John S. Wilson, Executive Director of the White House Initiatives on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). In that role, part of Wilson’s duties is to ensure that HBCUs are a significant force in helping the nation to reach the goal set by President Barack Obama of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020.
Before working with the White House Initiative, Wilson was an associate professor of higher education in the Graduate School of Education, and an executive dean at the George Washington University. He spent the first 16 years of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he ultimately served as director of foundation relations and assistant provost. He received a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University, and both a master’s and a doctoral degree in administration, planning and social policy, also from Harvard University. While working at MIT, he served as a teaching fellow in Harvard University’s Afro-American Studies Department as well as in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
Presiding over Fall Convocation will be Chancellor James. A. Anderson. Chancellor Anderson was named the 11th Chief Executive Officer of FSU on March 7, 2008. He comes to FSU from the University of Albany in New York where he served as the Vice President for Student Success and Vice Provost for Institutional Assessment and Diversity. He also was a professor in the department of psychology.
Raised in Washington, D.C, Anderson majored in psychology at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1970. He later earned a doctoral degree in the field (1980) from Cornell University in New York. Early in his career, Chancellor Anderson chaired the Department of Psychology at Xavier University in News Orleans (1976-1983) before joining the Indiana University of Pennsylvania as a professor of psychology.
In 1992, he began an 11-year tenure as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs at North Carolina State University. In that role, he was credited with leading a revision of the general education curriculum, as well as the development of the First Year College, the Honors Programs, the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, the Minority Engineering Program, and the North Carolina State Diversity Initiative, among others.
In 2003, Anderson was recruited to Texas A&M University, a major land-grant institution serving more than 46,000 students, as Vice President and Associate Provost for Institutional Assessment and Diversity. He held that post until joining the University of Albany in 2005.
Founded in 1867, FSU is the second-oldest public institution in North Carolina. It offers nearly 60 degrees in the arts, sciences, business, and education at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels. It serves a student body of nearly 6,000 students and has a faculty and staff of approximately 900.
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