Dr. Henry N. Tisdale, the president of Claflin University—the oldest historically Black college or university in South Carolina—has announced that he will step down from his post next year.
Tisdale, who was selected as president of the private liberal arts university in 1994 during the school’s 125th anniversary, will be one of the longest-serving HBCU presidents in recent history when he retires after 25 years on the job.
“Ten years is a long time to be president. Five years is a long time to be president,” said Tisdale in an interview with Diverse. “When we got to working and started having great results for the university, the years when by so quickly. It does not feel like 25 years.”
Tisdale, who is also an alumnus of Claflin, has received high marks for his efforts to raise academic standards, refurbish the campus and ensure that all of its programs were nationally accredited, while actively competing against other institutions across South Carolina—and indeed the nation—for top students.
“President Tisdale is a terrific leader who moved Claflin to new heights,” said Dr. Marybeth Gasman, the director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions and the Judy & Howard Berkowitz Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. “His fundraising work and engagement of alumni is a model for others.”
In 2013, Claflin’s alumni-giving rate of 52.2 percent landed the school first for alumni contributions among HBCUs in U.S. News & World Report. Three years after his arrival, the university kicked off its five-year Capital Campaign with the goal of raising $20 million. The university surpassed the goal, raising more than $30 million and later raising over $105 million in another campaign.
Student enrollment has doubled under his watch and by 2014, the university secured national headlines when Emmanuel Pressley beat out other students across the state to become South Carolina’s only Harry S. Truman Scholar.
