Dr. Charlene Dukes Leaves Legacy of Compassion as President of Prince George’s Community College

While in the classroom, Dr. Charlene M. Dukes saw herself in many of her students and connected to them on a personal level. 

Dukes understood the challenges facing low-income and first-generation college students because she was one herself. 

Her older brother was the first in her immediate family to attend college as both her parents did not receive a postsecondary education. For support, Dukes turned to people close to her who had gone to college, community members and a school guidance counselor. 

“I had a number of people who were very much committed to my dad’s dream and my mother’s dream for their children that we would have opportunities that they did not have and that we would make the best of them,” says Dukes, president of Prince George’s Community College (PGCC) in Largo, Maryland.  

While at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), Dukes not only had to navigate the obstacles of being a first-generation college student but also of being a person of color at a predominantly White institution (PWI) in the late 1970s. 

“It was a tough time when you think about what was going on in this country, in the world and in communities at that time relative to race relations,” she says. “It hadn’t been that long since Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] had been assassinated, the Poor People’s Campaign and the March on Washington. All of those kinds of things shaped, I believe, who I was, who I was then and who I remain to be today.” 

Despite having positive experiences in the classroom with faculty members and excelling academically, there were still students who felt that people of color were getting a “pass” for earning their educations at a PWI due to affirmative action and the civil rights movements occurring in the 1960-70s. Dukes said it was perceived that people of color could not keep up with the “rigor” or “academic standards” of the university.