Morehouse College president returns to rebuild ailing institution. To start the new academic year off right, Morehouse College psychology professor Bryant Marks offered students “some clarity” during Crown Forum, a weekly, all- campus assembly. I’m tired,’” said Marks, in a friendly mimicking tone. Find out who you are.”In the audience of nearly 2,0. John Silvanus Wilson Jr., M. T. S. He had heard this same message—cultivate intellect, character, and identity—as a Morehouse undergraduate in the late 1. Coolidge Professor Acting Director, MIT Engineering Systems Division Associate Director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, LIDS. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European. Atlanta institution. It has evolved into a four- year liberal- arts college with notable business and political science programs, but its curricular blend still carries an overt Judeo- Christian ethos, and a rigorous exploration of race relations. Martin Luther King Jr., Maynard Jackson, Donn Clendenon, Spike Lee, and political analyst Jamal Simmons, M. P. P. Wilson recalls working on the push to name a national holiday for King and winning honorable mention for his submission to a campus essay contest on the best way for black Americans to contribute to the revival of Africa. But,” he adds, “things were already shifting. We thought that if we got enough knowledge and credentials we could make progress by working in the system and, at the same time, being a counterpoint to it.”Today, he acknowledges, “the justice infrastructure for righting wrongs, to the extent that it is still there” through organizations like the NAACP and the National Urban League, “has lost its magnetism” for many college students. On vous propose de venir vous d Period.”The Morehouse motto, Et facta est lux (“And then there was light”), promotes the power of enlightenment—an internal process of growth that “merges learning with the heart and the head”—he says, in fighting the primordial battle “of dark versus light, good versus evil” set up in Genesis and portrayed in most world religions. Growing up in Philadelphia, where his father and grandfather were ministers, and his mother taught third grade, he reports, “The signal I got was: you must be a force for good.” Morehouse catalyzed his move away from Jesus as the passive standard- bearer of personal conduct, toward “a more empowering, active, and demanding Jesus,” he explains. And with that came the wider social obligations of Christianity. At Harvard Divinity School, he studied the mysticism of theologian and educator Howard Thurman, a pioneering proponent of nonviolent resistance. Willie, also a Morehouse alumnus. The men are still in touch. While there, he also researched the future of development at black and nonblack colleges, subjects he taught as an associate professor of higher education. That led to the 2. White House appointment, where he met with leaders of the nation’s 1. HBCUs—and delved into the problems they face in finding and enrolling qualified students, competing with now- integrated public universities, and losing students to private institutions with tempting offers of financial aid. Saint Paul’s College in Virginia, founded by a former slave in 1. Others, such as Howard, Hampton, and Clark Atlanta University have reported financial shortfalls. Underlying all of this, Wilson adds, “is the need to build endowments; less than $2. Part of the problem is also self- selection. Today, HBCUs educate only about 1. African- American males.” In his White House role, Wilson also worked closely with federal agencies and philanthropic groups trying to bolster HBCUs and raise college- graduation rates nationwide. Morehouse has seen significant money troubles, along with slippage in academic standards and enrollment (a loss of 5. Several violent incidents have also jarred the campus community. The day he arrived, there had been an armed robbery in a dorm overnight, and that Friday a student was shot (after a pickup basketball game in the gym) by a peer at neighboring Clark Atlanta. At a town meeting with students, Wilson stood on stage flanked by local officials and Atlanta and campus police officers and declared “zero tolerance for violence. Not on my watch.” The same day, students held a peace vigil with Clark Atlanta and the all- female, predominantly black Spelman College next door.
Many faculty members had never seen a budget for the school until he presented one in April, announcing: “This is a period of repair.”For this year, he cut $5 million in mostly administrative costs, including 7. Future fiscal health, however, depends on restructuring the school’s financial model by reversing three main threats: over- dependence on tuition revenue (about 5. Morehouse’s budget, with 9. Other pressing priorities are raising academic standards and improving the campus infrastructure which, he says, “is basically the same buildings and landscape that I left in 1. Wilson’s new provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, Garikai Campbell—formerly a math professor and academic strategist at Swarthmore—arrived in August with mandates to implement pedagogical innovations, upgrade teaching technology, explore a probable foray into online courses, and replenish the faculty—a third of whom are about to retire. So they have been working with total compensation packages that are smaller than would be required to hire top young faculty today.”If this sounds like a total makeover, it is. With his background in higher- education fundraising and at the White House (President Barack Obama was Morehouse’s commencement speaker in May), Wilson is prepared to pursue the philanthropic support the school urgently requires. A $3- million gift from the Ray Charles Foundation received in February endows the school’s music- education building. Coca- Cola, based in Atlanta, committed $1. August. The philanthropist and farmer Howard Buffet (Warren Buffet’s son), gave another $1 million in September for the Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership, which Wilson intends to develop as “a portal for advancing international exchanges, curriculum, and internships with an emphasis on Africa.” The school’s 1. Wilson, who is identifying “specific investment targets.”Among them could be the school’s rising debate team. At a weekend competition with rival Howard University in September, Morehouse lost in football but won in debate. Newby, an attorney, assistant professor, and alumnus who has made the award- winning speech and debate program a personal project. He drives debaters to many tournaments, often pays their costs, and was looking to fund a student trip to train and compete in India—all in an effort to make Morehouse a center for collegiate debate culture. After Newby leaves, Wilson asserts, “There’s no reason a professor should be driving kids by himself in a van for 1. That’s why I asked him for a blue- sky proposal: . The affluent minorities, he says, do not necessarily get that “free ride.” Instead, “It’s the African- American males who are from poorer families with attractive academic profiles that get bought by the Ivys and MIT and Stanford because we cannot compete well for those kids.” The students, he reports, are often drawn more by the brand names than the tuition discounts, “but I don’t blame them.” He and his wife, Carol Espy- Wilson—an electrical- engineering professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and founder and CEO of a start- up company, Omni. Speech—have three children. Twin daughters Ashia and Ayana graduated from Harvard and Stanford, respectively, in 2. Son Jay, who was admitted to Morehouse and also plans to spend a semester or a year there, just began freshman year at Princeton. All represent, perhaps, close- to- home examples of HBCUs’ admissions dilemma. Of his own Harvard experience, Wilson says the resources “do matter. They make your life easier; I could study and think freer from monetary distractions.” That said, what he got was more of “an institutional education than a personal one,” he adds. I concluded that Harvard needed more of what Morehouse has—character preeminence—and that Morehouse needed more of what Harvard had—capital preeminence. I want to use my presidency to combine the two.”Morehouse sophomore James Parker, from Virginia, is the campus- news editor for the student newspaper, The Maroon Tiger. He says the lack of capital does affect morale. Friends, teammates, and roommates who cannot keep up with school payments have to leave campus. The campus amenities are not as nice as those at fancier schools he has visited. Despite occasional “dorm envy,” however, Parker says, “Morehouse is working well for me. The only way I can explain why I am here is fate.”He studies philosophy, religion, and political science, and enjoys discussions with friends, among whom race and identity—and the writings of black leaders such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Outside of academics, Parker appreciates the emphasis on dignity and self- respect. The “no- sag” rule, for example, requires “never letting your own or a brother’s pants fall too low.” And he now drinks water instead of juice or soda, he reports, “because I learned in Crown Forum about the health problems that particularly affect me as a black man.”Identity questions led senior Anthony Simonton, president of the student government and an aspiring lawyer, to choose Morehouse, “specifically what W. E. B. Du Bois called a feeling of . He grew up in a middle- class family with college- educated parents, and was a top student at his Jesuit high school outside Indianapolis. A campus visit clinched it. Critical, too, is this admissions season. He and his new associate vice president for enrollment management, Terrance Dixon (an alumnus who was at the College Board), are taking a data- driven approach to targeting and fighting for students on new frontiers. That means strengthening elementary- and middle- school pipelines, Dixon says, drawing even more from the South and Southwest (where the overall birthrate is higher), and increasing international outreach, particularly in southern Africa and Brazil.
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