“I said, ‘Are you insane?’” Artis recalls. “I can give one HBCU that you can give a million dollars.”
That one HBCU was Benedict College, a small, private nonprofit institution in Columbia, South Carolina, where Artis has served as president and CEO since 2017.
For Artis, the shrewd response was based on some simple math – that one million dollars divided four or five ways won’t go as far as a single $1 million contribution. The anecdote also reveals much about Artis’ leadership style, her vision, her advocacy, and how she makes sure Benedict is fulfilling workforce needs.
“I said, ‘Look, we want to make an impact. We don’t want to just make [it] a one-time gift,” Artis says. “We want to make [it] an investment.”
ServiceNow made what Benedict College materials describe as a $1 million “investment and partnership commitment” in 2021. The partnership involves a ServiceNow Tech Center on campus, scholarships for Benedict students, internship opportunities, and a ServiceNow Tech Scholars Program that helps prepare students for success in tech careers.
As the leader of a Baptist college, Artis is not shy about giving credit for Benedict’s success where she believes it is due.
“I would count that a modern-day miracle,” Artis says. “God is good. “He is better than we deserve most of the time.”
Benedict’s graduates may not earn as much as their peers – the College Scorecard says they earn about $41,000 – substantially less than the $60,000 that is the midpoint for four-year schools. But Artis believes Benedict graduates will be earning more in the years to come as they enter higher-yielding fields in STEM.
“I would dare say we have one of the strongest tech infrastructures of any HBCU our size,” she continued. Benedict is also the only HBCU in the state to offer an environmental engineering program – and the fact that the program is also accredited by ABET, originally known as the Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology. The school of business was recently renamed as the school of business and entrepreneurship to help people take their side gigs and hustles and turn them into “sustainable growth-oriented businesses.”
“We [want] to give our kids the best possible opportunities for economic success post-graduation,” Artis says. “So, the hope is that you’ll begin to see those [income] numbers moving in the right direction.”
The ServiceNow partnership has helped Benedict continue to advance its goals in this area – and results are not hard to find. For instance, on LinkedIn, one can find Benedict students and recent graduates who have not only interned at the company, but who are still employed at ServiceNow as software engineers and in similar positions.
“Several of our graduates have gone on to be employed by ServiceNow,” she says. “So, we consider that a real full circle partner.”
For those reasons, Artis moved to place a bigger emphasis on higher-paying jobs in in-demand fields, such as cybersecurity and engineering, which is a key driver of the “mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship” with ServiceNow, she says.
“They were struggling to recruit minority talent that could do application development, cybersecurity, computer science, programming and the like,” Artis says. At the same time, ServiceNow helped Benedict create new courses and enhance existing ones.
“Our students were a little bit weak in Java,” Artis says of the widely used programming language. “Rather than be offended by that, we took it to heart and fortified our curriculum to address that need. They partnered with us by providing employees who would teach a bootcamp to our students on the weekend to enhance their learning.”
The partnership with ServiceNow is just one of several with the college, which is located in what Artis refers to as the “port economy” of South Carolina. Other partnerships include BMW, Volvo, and Scout Motors.
That same desire to give students the best possible chance of economic success post-graduation led to the decision to scrap the religion and philosophy major.
“As you might imagine, we’re committed to the liberal arts and as a Baptist affiliated school, people weren’t terribly happy about seeing a sunset on religion and philosophy and sociology,” Artis says. “But the fact of the matter is the post graduate placement options for students in those majors are not as strong as they are for students in STEM or business or something else.”
Though Artis recognizes that her decisions won’t always be popular, she believes a leadership tenure anchored in faith in a higher power and strong relationships is key. She cites her membership with the National Black Empowerment Council as one example of how building and maintaining relationships helps support the work she is doing on Benedict’s campus.
“I have had the benefit of engaging with some of the sharpest, smartest, community-focused people of color in this country,” Artis says of her involvement with the council, which is an Atlanta-based organization with a mission to help foster economic mobility.
“We’ve been blessed in many respects, but we like to believe – I like to believe – that it is relationships that matter,” Artis continues. “People give to people. And from a philanthropic standpoint, that’s very helpful.”
Jamaal Abdul-Alim is a longtime education writer who resides in Washington, D.C. He occasionally teaches journalism and has completed fellowships at the University of Michigan, Columbia University and New America.
This story originally ran in The EDU Ledger's August HBCU edition.
