Life After the Acquisition: Delaware State and Wesley College

Laura Mayse and her daughter, Abbey, at Wesley's last commencement in May 2021.It was a warm day for May in Delaware. Abbey Mayse was sweating. Despite the heat, she was grinning from ear to ear—she and her team had just won the Atlantic Eastern Conference championship game. They swarmed the field to celebrate, then hustled straight to Wesley College’s football stadium in Dover to attend graduation. Mayse wore her softball uniform under her graduation robe.

Their victory meant so much to Mayse, not just because it was the last time she would ever play with her team, but it was the last game that anyone would play wearing the Wolverines jersey, ever. Two months later, on July 1, 2021, Wesley’s 147-year legacy came to an end. Its doors reopened in August under a new moniker, Delaware State University: Downtown.

For Delaware State (DSU), the acquisition of Wesley was a remarkable event: no other historically Black college and university (HBCU) in the country had ever acquired a private institution, much less one that previously held the title of a Predominately White Institution (PWI). For Dr. Tony Allen, president of DSU, bringing Wesley College into DSU meshed perfectly with his goals for expansion. It seemed a match made in heaven.

“It was an opportunity for us to transform the university,” said Allen. “We’ve been fortunate around our rapid growth over the last decade, but our infrastructure couldn’t support it. Where Wesley is located in downtown is where I believe our university needs to be.”

DSU announced its official acquisition of Wesley College on July 1, 2020, and the two institutions have spent the last year and a half on a rocky road to immersion. Faculty at Wesley worked to calm worried students, while waiting almost a year themselves to find out if they would be offered positions at DSU (eventually, 60% would be). Staff at both DSU and Wesley worked 12-hour days week after week to align the public and private universities’ programs and reassess financial aid packages.

All of this was made more complicated by COVID-19, which arrived at almost the same instant Wesley College was on the verge of signing an acquisition agreement with a different institution in another state. The pandemic tightened financial belts, and so when Wesley ultimately signed an agreement with DSU, some faculty felt caught off guard. As shock waves rippled throughout the Wesley community in May 2021, a few members of the faculty filed a lawsuit against Wesley President Emeritus Robert Clark II to stay the acquisition. The suit has since been dropped.