HBCUs routinely get denigrated and their academic performance often gets unfairly judged, but that’s largely because leaders at the institutions have done a poor job of sharing their success stories with the public and the press.
That was one of the major themes that emerged Thursday during a gathering of half a dozen HBCU presidents who assembled to discuss ways to counter the longstanding and lingering notion that their colleges and universities lack when it comes to essentiality.
“We have to better tell our own story,” said Dr. Mary Evans Sias, president of Kentucky State University.
“We have not been good at all in coming up with the narrative that explains what we do and what we do very well,” Sias said. “And shame on us for not doing that.”
Dr. Sias made her remarks in Atlanta Thursday at a meeting hosted by the Southern Education Foundation in advance of the 2011 HBCU Governance and Institutional Effectiveness Seminar, which this weekend will convene more than 100 HBCU presidents and trustees to deal with the subjects of academic program innovation, fundraising and governance.
Dr. John Silvanus Wilson Jr., Executive Director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs, will speak at the seminar and praised the HBCU leaders for having “the right discussion,” particularly in light of the Obama Administration’s goal to restore the United States to being the country with the highest proportion of college-degree holders by the year 2020.
“This is a very different and refreshing panel,” Dr. Wilson said, adding at the end of his remarks that President Obama “understands very clearly the importance of HBCUs.”
