WASHINGTON — When Michael Sorrell assumed the presidency at Paul Quinn College, one of the first things he did was examine what successful small colleges were doing to achieve their results.
The exploration led him to visit similarly sized institutions throughout the country, from Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., where they “give you one year to prove you can cut it,” to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., a school that has a 90 percent retention rate and a high rate of alumni giving.
“You don’t get to Walla Walla by accident,” Sorrell said. “But it was worth the trip.”
After the campus visit, Paul Quinn began to adopt some of the most successful strategies that he discovered, from personalized recruiting like other institutions use to recruit athletes, to “intrusive counseling,” in order to turn things around.
Retention rates at Paul Quinn subsequently increased to 83 percent from about 60 or 65 percent “because we engaged and we intruded,” Sorrell said.
“Some students don’t like it,” Sorrell said Tuesday during a panel discussion held on Capitol Hill as part of the NAFEO 39th National Dialogue on Blacks in Higher Education.
“I don’t like the fact that you don’t graduate,” Sorrell said was his response. “So we’ll see who wins. It will be us.”
