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Teresa Valerio Parrot
Hello and welcome to the Trusted Voices Podcast. I’m Teresa Valerio Parrot alongside Erin Hennessy, and in each episode, we discuss the latest news and biggest issues facing higher education leaders through a communications lens. For these conversations, we’ll be joined by a guest who will share their own experiences and perspectives.
Oh, hi Erin.
Erin Hennessy
Oh, hi Teresa.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Happy birthday week!
Erin Hennessy
Oh, thanks. Thanks. Very excited about that. Very excited.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And it’s also pre-birthday week for me!
Erin Hennessy
I’ve heard. This is coming up a lot. Is this a milestone birthday?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
It is a milestone birthday!
Erin Hennessy
How exciting.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yes, I’m very, very excited. And for those of you who don’t celebrate my birthday, you should, and also my birthday is on the election. So really, all of us are celebrating.
Erin Hennessy
We can absolutely allow you to look at it that way.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yeah. So happy birthday to me and to you and, because we all are so sick of my birthday in one way or another, I kind of feel like we all are kind of a little bit in the dumps. You and I have been talking about it today.
Erin Hennessy
I taught last night, and it was the seventh session of my 14-week class, and at the end, we were all essentially just staring at one another in these little Zoom boxes. And it occurred to me that we’re all sort of hitting this mid-semester slump. I know you and I sort of joked around on Slack this week about how sick we are of talking about higher ed right now, second only to talking about the election. So I went and ran a quick Google search, and I searched, “Why is the middle of the semester so hard?” And there is a Reddit page. There are any number of articles, one from Harvard about sort of what the science is behind this mid-semester slump. And so my friends on campuses and those of you listening to this, know that we are in a bit of this slump with you, and it’s the Halloween candy and the birthday cake is not boosting me to the level that it has previously, but I know that better days are coming. The winter break is not that far off. We can do this.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And daylight savings time is coming, and we all get an extra hour of sleep. And I know it’s always hard to bounce back. I’m always an optimist, always an optimist. It’s always hard to bounce back, but we get an extra hour of sleep. It’s always the universe’s present to me. Yes?
Erin Hennessy
But then the sun sets at like 4:30.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Oh, turn that frown upside down, my friend.
Erin Hennessy
Anyway, so I’m thinking about the mid-semester slump. I’m also obviously, as we all are, thinking about the election, and I am absolutely not in a healthy place where I’m going out and I am tracking early voting data, and I am tracking the Real Clear Politics trend lines, and I am convinced that if I just get to the end of the universe, there in a pot of gold is information I need to be able to predict accurately the outcome of this and no. But also, I was really gratified to see a piece in Inside Higher Ed this morning about addressing election stress in the workplace, because it is real. It is particularly real for our employees who are part of historically marginalized communities, who are feeling, I don’t think we’re overselling it to say, feeling some real existential dread about the potential outcomes of this election. And so I highly recommend to everyone just clicking through to this piece. It’s an opinion piece in Inside Higher Ed to just think about how you yourself are handling your own election stress in the workplace, and then how those around you, on your team, above you and working with you might also be feeling a lot of that stress. To go back to your other theme for this season, it’s time to just give ourselves and everybody else a little bit of grace for the next couple weeks.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
That is my word for the year. Yes, and I actually had someone text me yesterday, and they said it was – see, it is all about my birthday – they were actually pleased to know somebody who does have a birthday on November 5, because they actually, this is a true story. They ordered a Costco cake for pickup on November 5 and it says, “Happy Birthday Teresa,” because it made them feel better. They are going to Tina Fey this, and they are going to buy a Costco birthday cake. And it made them feel better to know somebody who had a birthday on November 5, so they could eat their feelings. And so there you go. If you need someone to celebrate, celebrate me. You can buy a Costco cake too, and you, like Tina Fey, can eat your feelings on my birthday.
Erin Hennessy
I am a savory person, so I am planning a large pan of Martha Stewart’s mac and cheese. If anybody needs the recipe, send me an email. It is the best mac and cheese I’ve ever had.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
There you go. You could also get a big lasagna. You can get a Costco chicken. There are so many options.
Erin Hennessy
I don’t know that I need to involve Costco in this.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
There are so many options for how you can celebrate my birthday.
I have another article for you. We talked quite a bit about the college presidency, as you know. There were a couple little “snackerels” that you might want to think about. The Chronicle had a series of small under 500-word pieces from current and former presidents called The College Presidency is Broken, they keep talking about this, How to Fix It. We’ll have it in the show notes. So under 500 word pieces that you can go and read. I love that they kept presidents to very short pieces of what they would do to make it better.
We actually worked with a president on one of these. He came in at 2000 words. He had to cut it to under 500 and then the Chron cut it even more. I kind of liked that they each had small, little digestible nuggets of how they would go about making presidencies more survivable. I thought they were kind of fun little, they’re not fun, but it makes it fun that they had to just give you a snippet.
Erin Hennessy
Did you call them “snackerels”?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Snackerels, yeah!
Erin Hennessy
Like mackerel, but for snacking?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Snackable little pieces, yeah!
Erin Hennessy
Okay, there we go. Yeah. Okay.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Have you not heard that word before?
Erin Hennessy
No, ma’am.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yeah, snackerels. So I thought those were kind of interesting pieces. They’re some of them policy-based pieces. Some of those are more personal pieces for how to make presidencies survivable. And then I did think there was an interesting piece. This was a PBS piece from Purdue, a “Purdue program works to revive liberal arts as key part of the college experience.”
So now we’re back in this pendulum swing. We all knew that this was going to happen, right? But the liberal arts are a key part of what we all need in higher education. So of course, we were going to cut the liberal arts, and now we know that the liberal arts are something that we need for a college experience to be that fulfilling part of what it means to be a college student.
So you might want to go and see this one. It’s going to be in the show notes as well. Cut it, bring it back. Cut it, bring it back. It’s going to be how we describe higher education moving forward. So take a peek at that as well. I’m sure that there are a number of liberal arts faculty members who are screaming into the void right now. But we’ll see this, I’m sure, on an ongoing basis that this is how we’re going to describe the value of higher education. So it’s part of the swing. Here we go.
Erin Hennessy
Everything old is new again.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Exactly. And I think part this is part of the stress, right? This is part of why we have this existential crisis ongoing.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, next up is going to be people realizing that perhaps higher education is worthwhile, and is both a personal and a public good, and maybe we’ll fund it and support it and…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And has value, and we should send our kids.
Erin Hennessy
Stop. Stop.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
But here’s what I’ll say, there are a number of champions that we have in higher education, and I think I’m always pleased that we have the honor of working with so many of them, and I’m pleased that you are bringing a new one to us.
Erin Hennessy
Yes, this is an absolutely perfect segue, you’re absolutely right, to our conversation with President Newkirk of Wilberforce University.
Musical Interlude
Erin Hennessy
We are absolutely thrilled to welcome to Trusted Voices today, Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr., who is the 23rd president of Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio. Wilberforce is the nation’s first private Historically Black College or university. Prior to this position, Dr. Newkirk served as Interim Associate Vice President at Alabama A&M University in Huntsville, and he is former president at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to his presidential appointment at Fisk, he was also at Fisk, the university’s Provost and the Vice President of Academic Affairs. He is an accomplished author, and we were just chatting before we started recording about a forthcoming book that we are all looking forward to, and we’re just absolutely thrilled to have him with us here today, President Newkirk, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Thank you for having us.
Erin Hennessy
Absolutely, we would love to just start our conversation today asking you to share a little bit about Wilberforce University, and particularly your path to the presidency there. Looking at both your education and your professional path, you’re really steeped in the experience of Black colleges and universities across the country, and we’d love to hear how you see Wilberforce within that larger HBCU landscape.
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Well, Wilberforce has a unique role. We were founded in 1856 a few years before the Civil War broke out, we were founded to educate children of planters who wanted their children to have an education, so they came north, just across the line. We also played a role with the Fugitive Slave Act, which came about as a part of the compromise of 1850 so we found a lot of people who were African American who wanted an education. They went to this institution because it was far enough away from the South, but close enough to the South that they could get an education, and they didn’t have to worry as much about slave catchers and some of the problems that they had in the South. The institution was able to grow and prosper after the Civil War ended because of its location.
It’s just in the southern part of Ohio, not far from Covington, Kentucky. So what we found is that there were a lot of children who wanted an education. The young people wanted education who came to this institution from the southern states. They came from the institution from states in the east because of its location and what the programs and programs that we offered. So we found that to be very, very unique. Now our institution, because of its early role in being here, early, early forerunner of many institutions, we played a role in founding institutions all around the world. We had students who were coming to this institution, as I talked about earlier, from South America. Some came from South Africa. As a matter of fact, one of our early graduates came from South Africa. She was the first person of African descent to get a college degree from South Africa. She went back founded her own institution, and it was called, ironically, Wilberforce College. Still exists, and we have a relationship with that institution which sends over college students to this institution. We educated students all along the coast of Africa, West and East Africa, so the university has a large following of people in those areas. We educated students who came from India, the subcontinent. So we have a lot of students who came out of that place, and we also had students who came from China in the early days. So you can see the university was one that was a trailblazer, because we were never an institution that was segregated. We were an institution that was open for all races from the beginning, and we played a role of educating people of all races throughout our history. So we talk about our role steeped in history, but it’s it’s also steeped in helping people to move forward. Now we talk about HBCUs. We played a role in founding three other institutions that are AME schools, Shorter College. We played a role in Edward Waters College and also in founding a small school called Paul Quinn College down in Texas. We had a big role in AME education and an education of African Americans in general.
Erin Hennessy
And tell us a little bit about how you came to Wilberforce. What about the institution attracted you?
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Well, you know, the institution was having some hard times. I have been around HBCUs all of my life, and I believe that those institutions play a critical role in our nation, and this was an institution that I thought was worth saving. So I took this opportunity to look at what we could do. I’d written a book a few years back called New Life for Historically Black Colleges, in which we looked at methodologies that would help HBCUs to dig out of some of the problems, and we put all of those things into practice at this institution. When I came here, I got a chance to come here because that was something that I believe that we could save. We looked at some of the critical needs, critical things that we could cut, critical things that we could add to make the university more attractive. And what we found is now going into the second year that the institution we’ve done a 180 in turnaround. Enrollment’s up by 49% when other institutions are really suffering, we have rented beds for our students around with other institutions. As a matter of fact, we have six institutions of higher education within six miles of this college. There are three, I’m sorry, and of those three institutions, we’ve rented beds on all of those kinds of campuses, they’ve had excess capacity, and we’ve rented all of the excess capacity that those institutions had. And so what’s unique about it is that that led us to build new buildings on this campus. We’re building new residential halls. We’re building new classroom facilities, and we’re starting new programs. Because look at HBCUs, we are the farthest north of any HBCU, and so we’re surrounded by a lot of large cities. We got Indianapolis two hours away. We’ve got Cincinnati, which is 40 miles away. We’ve got Columbus, 40 miles away, Chicago, three hours. So we have a lot of urban students who want to have an HBCU experience, and so we have built that experience right here. It’s close to home, and what you find is that those students now are turning back to this institution because we are offering the programs that they want, and those programs are going to lead to high-paying jobs.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Can we dig into that a little bit further? Because I think I was thinking quite a bit about your book. If elected officials write autobiographies to set the stage to run for political office, then I would argue that you foreshadowed your future leadership roles in academia with your book, New Life for Historically Black Colleges and Universities: A 21st century Perspective. And the goal for the book was to ensure that HBCUs continue to play an important role in the education of Americans of all races. And so much has really changed in the 12 years since you published the book. And if you were to update that book today, I’d be really curious to hear from you about what has changed based on our current climate and reality. And if you were to rewrite that book today, how would you approach it today? What would you have in that edited version today? So you’ve talked about where the institution, where Wilberforce is today, but where is America today, and what would be some of the new chapters that you would include in that book today?
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Well, you know, resources are always the key around HBCUs, we’ve had low resources. And we look at our graduates, we’ve only recently started having graduates who’ve been getting the high paying jobs. So we’re about 40 years out from getting some of the returns that we probably would want from some of the graduates of the institutions. What I would look at now was the board composition and board makeup, and also looking at the leadership paradigm. That’s something that we have not talked about. I think when you look at HBCUs, quite often, the natural pathway would be: I got a PhD., I worked in a college for a number of years now, I want to be president. That doesn’t work. I think when you start talking about HBCUs, there’s so much dynamics. The average tenure of HBCU president that I saw the other day was like 2.4 years. And the reason why it’s so short is because there are so many demands. You’ve got the demands of creating and maintaining quality education, finding the resources to run the school. I call it making pay, because you got to make sure that you make payroll. That’s an important aspect of schools, that are resource challenged. Then also making sure that what you’re putting out is accurate information. That is information that is exactly what you’re doing. And you find that you have all these different constituencies. You’ve got alumns who want institution that was from their childhood, from their college days. So when you start putting that together with a board that probably wants to move very, very fast, then you create this perfect paradigm, or this perfect pool to just pull presidents apart, and what you find is that these institutions churn out leaders all the time. You’re always seeing some institution. I think when I went to the UNCF meeting the other day, I think of 38 private HBCUs there might have been 11 or 12 who had interim presidents or who were looking for new presidents. So all of that is something that I think we have to cover more. And I think in that book, we didn’t really cover some of those issues that deal with finding the right fit. I think a lot of our leaders don’t look into that, but that’s an important aspect before you take a job as an HBCU leader and making sure that you have the skill sets needed beyond just having a PhD.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I would love to dig into that just a little bit more, because you actually are foreshadowing a question that I had shared with you. And I think this is so critically important that two plus year number actually gives me the chills. And I think this is, this isn’t just an HBCU issue. This is a leadership writ large issue, but it’s actually more acute when we talk about HBCUs. That number shrinks when we get to HBCUs, and this is something that this actually keeps me up at night, and I would love to dig into your experience a little bit more, because you have this unique experience that we can dig into, because you have been both an interim and you also have been promoted from within. So you have this duality that we can dig into and you can talk about how you’ve approached your leadership experience, because you can talk about both types of experience and how you’ve approached your leadership experience, how you’ve talked about community, and you’ve built your leadership team, and you’ve approached transparency, and you’ve approached leadership, and you’ve built trust among community from each of those perspectives, promotion from within and somebody who’s new and somebody who’s interim, all of these different approaches. How have you gone about that? And how have you settled into your own approach and your own leadership style from all of those different approaches, knowing that leadership is tough and leadership is not a one size fits all approach, and you’ve had all of these varied approaches.
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Well, I think you know you have to look at goodness of fit. When I had my first opportunity to be a president, I was just so glad to be a president. Sometimes you don’t look at all of the, what I want to say road signs that are around you to tell you caution! You go in, not looking at the sign that says it’s a sharp curve ahead. You’re going to take the job full speed ahead, because it’s something you always want to do. And I think too many leaders do that. I think what you have to do is, when you take these kind of jobs, you’ve got to know what’s on the end of the highway. You got to know before you get there. And that means not just taking the job. That means not just doing an exploratory look around before you take a job. That means taking a deep dive. And I think quite often, when people take these educational jobs, they don’t take a deep dive, they don’t ask the questions that you should ask. And a lot of that deals with, you know, how much money do you have in the bank? What kind of bank accounts do you have? Who’s controlling the bank accounts? Who’s signing off on the bank? What role does the board have? All of that has to be key and very, very clear for anyone taking these jobs, and then also looking at fundraising. I think we ask cursory questions about fundraising when you take these jobs, but you’ve got to ask those deep questions. Most colleges don’t get a lot of the million-dollar checks. Most colleges get a lot of the $10,000 checks, or occasionally the $100,000 checks. Who’s giving you consistently $100,000 and what are their demands? That’s something you’ve got to ask if you’re going to take these jobs. You need to have the answer to that before you even sit down at the table for an interview. And then if you begin to sit down the table in the interview, you need to find out also about the academic programs at an institution. What kind of resistance might there be if you decide to make some of those wholesale changes? Because institutions, as we all know they, are living, breathing beings, and things have to evolve if it’s going to remain. Think about this, and I always laugh about it. One of my mentors, she graduated from college in 1939 from my alma mater, and she lived up until about four years ago. She worked at a college. She taught at the college. She was a president. At the tail end of her career, she was still teaching calligraphy, and she had a major that she taught called calligraphy. That was a major. Now, I grant you, people need to be able to write and write very good but she talked about how the letters should be curved and all of that she had a whole major. Well, that was an outdated major, but she still was persisting in offering that major as late as 2002 when most people now don’t write letters, they use computers. And so we had to talk with her about evolving. She was so mad she evolved away from the institution. So we have to look at that kind of resistance. And she was a very strong resistor for any president who came in the door. So you got to know those things if you’re coming in as president of an institution, and those things are going to be key, and those are questions that we’re not asking. I think most of your presidents that come in now, they’re so glad to get an interview, they’re so glad to be able to move up, and most of them are first-timers. And I think of some of these institutions, as first-timers, this is not a job for a person who’s weak and fainted heart. You’ve got to have someone who’s been there before, because you’re going to have a lot of challenges that you’ve never heard of and never seen. You can think about it when you take the job,
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Erin Hennessy
It’s like you’ve done this before, sir. You’re setting us up for all these beautiful segues. One of the reasons, as I mentioned to you again, before we started recording, that we wanted to have you join us today is because I met with your vice president of academic affairs, Stephen Griffin, and he spoke about the ways in which you are really focused on finding differentiators for Wilberforce, and really focused on some of the STEM programs that you are bringing in to complement the liberal arts focus of the institution. Thinking about programs like kinesiology, sustainability engineering, civil engineering, aviation, science, and I would just love for you to build on what you were just talking about and sort of walk us through how you’ve brought your faculty and alumni and board and others who might not be ready to evolve along with that evolution at Wilberforce.
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Well, I think what helps us a lot here is that the institution had a lot of issues when we came in, and our board was really ready to try anything to try to turn this institution around. But I think anybody who’s looking at an institution of higher education who needs to make that kind of move, you’ve got to first of all go out and you’ve got to show everybody exactly where we are. And sometimes the truth, it hurts. You know coming to this institution, I started a Tuesday series every Tuesday, and I’m going to after this meeting, I’m going down to my Tuesday series with our faculty, and I tell them exactly where we are. We don’t have any money. That’s when I tell them today, we have no money. If we have some money, I tell them we have some money. When we have a program that has no majors, I tell everybody, and I put it up on the board so they can see it. That’s important for people to actually get their minds wrapped around where we really are, not where they think we are.
Erin Hennessy
It sure does. Or hope they are.
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Yeah, and that helps us a lot.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Hope is not a strategy.
Erin Hennessy
Exactly.
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
And when we talk to our board members, I do the same thing. This is a consistent piece, because we want to make sure that we’re consistent about the messaging that we’re giving people. And our alums also, it’s the same message, our students also. So our students, they realize that this institution was in a precarious state. So any majors that we try to put on, I think our faculty, they embrace it, because this is something going to be new. We looked at how we added more technology to our liberal arts programs. We stopped just offering plain humanities. We now offer digital humanities because we want our students to have the new technologies incorporated in their programs to give them the new opportunities out there in the world. Did the same thing with the digital media so that they could get the same kind of umph for the degrees, and so that’s helped us to kind of move this whole empire forward. But we’ve been very, very truthful. We do it every week, and I think so often presidents and leaders of institutions, they don’t make any type of announcements unless there is some particular called meeting. I do it every Tuesday, once a month. We do it so they all know exactly what’s happening. Good news, bad news, any kind of news they know. And it helps them to kind of stay abreast and stay current where we’re going as an institution.
Erin Hennessy
I love that, and I also love the way you phrased, you phrased it earlier that someone just evolved away from the institution. It’s not a bad breakup, it’s just we’re looking for different things. And I think you hit on the core of it, that when things are really, really tough, that is when folks are suddenly willing to be more experimental. But so many institutional leaders aren’t being upfront about how tough things are, and so their community doesn’t know that it’s, I don’t want to say, a last ditch effort, but that this is the time to try the things we’re going to try, because we may not have an additional opportunity to jump in there. There’s so many things that you’ve raised. I want to go back and pick up all of these different threads, but one of the things I also wanted to ask you about, this feels like it’s been such a moment for HBCUs, not just because we have the first vice president who is an HBCU graduate, the first presidential candidate who is an HBCU graduate, but certainly lawmakers and policymakers from both parties at the federal level, have really been looking to boast about their support for the HBCU sector and to talk about their goals for funding and infrastructure support. And I just wonder, setting aside campaign rhetoric, is that helpful to this sector of institutions? What do HBCUs really need from federal policymakers, federal lawmakers to ensure that this sector stays strong and robust and sustainable for the long term.
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Well, the one thing I can say we need is resources. Everybody knows we need resources. I really hate election years, because during election years, everybody comes to our campuses, they’re talking about, oh, we need to get the students out, get out the vote. They talk to all the presidents, they take photo ops, and then they go away. Then the next four years, they come back again. And then between that time, every now and then, a politician will do something to help a university. But what we need is real help. We need legislative help. When we start talking about our graduates and what our graduates are able to do, we need, you know, different types of resources when we talk about aging infrastructures. Now, this campus is a little bit different than many of the other HBCUs in that this campus, by and large, was built in 1974.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
That was a fantastic year, by the way. Fantastic year.
Erin Hennessy
Second only to 73, but I digress.
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Our old campus was across the street. One of our presidents, they built the campus here across the street was built very quickly. Then we had the terrible tornado of 1974 which tore up Xenia and our competing campus, Central State, across the street. Here’s the problem. Although our campus is relatively new in terms of other HBCUs, there’s been very little money available to pour in to maintain the campus, so we got a lot of deferred maintenance. That’s what’s key for HBCUs, federal dollars to help with the deferred maintenance, federal dollars to help with student matriculation. Think about it. This year we had 50 students on our campus who actually checked into the residential halls, who actually came here and did everything they were supposed to do, but had to leave because they couldn’t afford to be here. And we’ve taken a more business-like approach on the campus. In the past, years ago HBCUs, your mom may have a cow, and she bring the cow to school, and the cow became dinner for a couple of weeks that helped pay tuition. We no longer do anything like that. So we need students who can actually pay their bills, and we just can’t maintain so we need more federal dollars. We talk about federal financial aid because we educate the students on many of our campuses, and they’re just like this. About 85% of our students are Pell eligible, meaning that they are low-income students, and that really makes it difficult. You know, you can raise a lot of money, but it’s difficult to raise enough money when tuition is where it is now. Our tuition, believe it or not, out of 52 private institutions in Ohio, we have the second lowest cost, and we still have students, 50 students, I can tell you that this past semester, and we’re boasting our highest enrollment that we’ve had in almost 20 years. So that’s letting you know what kind of a problem that is. So if you can multiply that 50 by all of the HBCUs out there, there are 98, some schools are much larger than us, but you can kind of see what that problem would be. So once you get them to campus, let’s let’s give you an opportunity to talk about the successes that you have. For many years, I worked on a Lumina Foundation-funded grant, and we identified retention practices from HBCUs and MSIs that could be applied across all of higher education to increase graduation rates. If I were to ask you for tips from Wilberforce, would allow you to shine light on student successes. What are one or two that you would want other campuses to learn from? Well, you know what we’ve done, we’ve gone back to a traditional setting. All of our classes now, for the most part, are face-to-face, and we’ve hired a person that I call him the chief door knocker, right? So when students don’t come to class, he’s out knocking on doors. And he said, Hey, you got to get the class. And so what we found is that this year, our class attendance is about 80% of the students in the class, they’re there because the door knockers came into their room if they don’t come to class. And that’s been a really, really something we heard of in the past, but we actually re-implemented and put a person in. We plan to hire someone to help him next year, but that’s helped us tremendously. Our retention rate right now is in the mid-70s. We believe that at the end of this year we check next year, we’re going to be somewhere close to 80.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
That’s fantastic!
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
But our students are coming back, and they’re coming because going to class is the number one predictor of whether you’re going to do well in the class. And so I think that’s what’s helping us, also helping us as an institution, our faculty. We have a dynamic faculty, very small, but our faculty are also, you know, they’re in the cafeteria all the time with our students. The students get to know our faculty, one on one, face to face, and so when they don’t come to class, the faculty members in their eating lunch saying, Well, you know, I didn’t see you this morning. So what helps is that having that piece of familiarity with our students, making sure that our students are getting the support that they need all across this university and when they don’t come to class, as I told you, we have students living on three campuses, having that person go across the street to Central State, where we’re leasing a dorm, knocking on the door. That is a surprise to many students. We feel good about that. We feel good about making our students go to chapel. We are old-fashioned, so our students go to chapel once a week. They’re required to go. This year, we’ve had the highest attendance that we’ve had in our chapel in some time. We’ve had to open the gym up so we have enough space. But that’s been good for us, because now we can actually go back and pinpoint what a student looks like, who’s going to succeed at this institution, and we’re keeping students active in different organizations.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I think that’s fantastic.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah. This has been just such an enjoyable conversation. It’s been a real pleasure to speak with you and to hear more about Wilberforce and to share more about Wilberforce and the HBCU sector with our listeners. So we so appreciate making time. We are sending all good thoughts for all of you as we hit this sort of mid semester slump, the toughest part of the semester, but we just are so grateful for your time today, sir. And thank you so much for chatting with us.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Thank you.
Dr. Vann R. Newkirk, Sr.
Thank you for having us.
Musical Interlude
Teresa Valerio Parrot
He was delightful!
Erin Hennessy
Beyond!
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And I feel like we have a theme this season. Here’s the theme.
Erin Hennessy
Break it down.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
It is first-year presidents so focused on interviewing for the job. Year-in second, third, presidents are like, “No, you need to interview the institution to see if they are a fit for you.” He was so clear on that, and I was just about to jump in and be like, sir, what you’re telling us is and you’re like, we need to move on, because I would have gone down a rabbit hole on that he was so crystal clear in projecting to other presidents, don’t just interview for the job that you want make sure it’s the long term fit for you, or you’re going to get sucked into this 2.4-year conundrum.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah! Yeah.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
it’s real. It’s real. Everybody listen to what your peers are saying.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, I also loved his approach to going back to just retail. We all talk about we have this platform and that platform, and we have so many platforms, we’ve run out of words, and so we’re making up words to name them. And he just has a guy going door to door to say, hey, you need to be in class, or just the things that we know work. And instead of having to buy a platform, let’s strip it away and just send somebody to knock on doors like this is the oldest of old school.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And also we’re gonna put up a screen in front of the faculty: Here’s the majors that people are in. We’re gonna knock on students doors, get your butt to class, and, faculty, here’s what students are signing up for. Like, we don’t need all of this fanciness. Can we just call things for what they are?
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, and I’m sure… Hi, let’s just be honest. …that President Newkirk would swap balance sheets and endowments with any number of institutions, but on some level, being this small and in a really constrained financial position means you’ve got to figure out how to do it without all the bells and whistles and the fancy and the what have you. You just have to get butts in seats.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And do the work!
Erin Hennessy
Yeah. And communicate!
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yes! Ah, Jeez Louise.
Erin Hennessy
Mind-boggling.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I love it.
Erin Hennessy
I am hopeful that this conversation brings attention to Wilberforce, yes, but also opens a conversation about what leadership looks like when it is really mission-driven and is really focused on just getting places healthy again. It isn’t about am I top 50 US News & World Report or selectivity rating? It is doing the work that’s really important for our students, our communities, and doing it no matter what the resources are, we’re going to do it in the way that we can and need to do it. And it’s just, I am without words. I just was so impressed.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And also looking around to see the resources that are available to you, period, including, there is a campus near me that has extra rooms, and rather than me building a new dorm that’s going to cost a gajillion dollars, I’m just going to go rent some of their rooms, because they need the money and I need the rooms. And so let’s just broker a deal that helps both of us and solves my immediate need, and solves their immediate need. Done. It doesn’t have to be as complex as sometimes we make it.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, and I did love his comment that he hates election years and I…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
God bless America.
Erin Hennessy
I mean, yes, me too.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And me three.
Erin Hennessy
I loved that he in a very elegant way, called out the ways in which HBCUs have been used by both political parties as pawns and mechanisms without the resulting support and commitment that these institutions really need.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Right. All of this.
Erin Hennessy
Well, the good news is that, Dr. Newkirk, you have fixed my mid-semester slump, at least for today, and I am leaving this conversation a lot more energized than I was during the earlier part of our chat at the beginning of this episode.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And the better news is the next time that everybody hears from us, we will be post-election. And on that note, everybody will hear, you’ll all hear from us post-election.
Erin Hennessy
Thanks for listening.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Thank you for listening, and have a great day. Bye, bye.
Erin Hennessy
Buh bye!
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Thank you for joining us for this episode. You can find links in the show notes to the topics and articles referenced, as well as a copy of the show’s transcript on the Volt website, voltedu.com. Remember that you can always contact us with feedback questions or guest suggestions at trustedvoices@tvpcommunications.com. Be sure to follow trusted voices wherever you get your podcasts, and we invite you to check out Higher Voltage, another podcast on the Volt network that is hosted by our great friend Kevin Tyler. Kevin explores the evolution of higher education that is happening right before our very eyes. Until next time, thanks to Erin Hennessy, DJ Hauschild, Aaron Stern, Nicole Reed and the Volt team for a great episode. And thank you for listening.
