When alumni of Concordia College in Selma, Ala., converged in late June on the school for their annual gathering, an enthusiastic round of cheers erupted at the group’s closing banquet as university President Rev. Dr. Tilahun M. Mendedo formally announced the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) had removed Concordia from “probation” status after approximately two years and given it a clean bill of health.
“Everyone was ecstatic and pleased,” recalls Phyllis Richardson, director of Concordia’s freshman transitional programs.
The good news capped what many involved described as a gut wrenching three years of uncertainty at Concordia, a small Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod supported college in the middle of Alabama’s Baptist dominated Black Belt.
During that time Concordia saw enrollment nosedive, its historic good credit standing vanish as it began to accumulate a deficit nearing $1 million, fundraising grind nearly to a halt, relations fray between veteran staffers at the school and an interim administration, and SACS placing the school on “probation” after citing more than 30 instances in which Concordia failed to comply with the agency’s accrediting standards.
The ordeal also forced Concordia’s leaders to get on with selection of a permanent president to replace the Rev. Dr. Julius Jenkins. A widely admired administrator, fundraiser and recruiter for the school, Jenkins retired in 2007 after 27 years at its helm. A permanent president was appointed 18 months ago. The probation circumstances also forced the school to rethink its business plan, one that ensured all students got enough money for tuition and other costs to graduate debt free. It doesn’t do that any more.
Most importantly, officials said, the ultimate solution for getting the school out of trouble was a decision to get the school leadership team on the same page at the same time, involving them more in the process of addressing and solving the school’s problems, a practice many say had been lost during the leadership transition years.
“It was a bad situation, but you can turn a bad situation around,” says Kevin Stewart, vice president for development at Concordia Selma, the only historically Black college in the 10-school Concordia University System.
