By Neil Offen
June 3, 2010
DURHAM -- The leaders of many of the nation's historically black colleges and universities were gathered Thursday in a large conference room of the Sheraton Imperial Hotel.
But if they wanted to be "transformational leaders," they had better get out of their conference rooms and offices and walk around their campuses, a top African-American academic leader told them.
"Your best tool is walking around your institution," Belle Wheelan, president of the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, told more than 400 academics at a two-day symposium on the future of HBCUs. "You have to get out and find out what's going on. You can't stay in your ivory tower, or whatever color your tower is," she said.
Wheelan, the first American American and first woman to lead the association that accredits Southern institutions of higher education, said leaders of HBCUs must get out and talk to everyone on campus, starting with the custodians. "When you talk to the custodians and tell them how good the lawn looks, they will take better care of the lawn," she said. "They will tell you things because you have shown you care about them."
Being out on the campus is particularly important during difficult economic times, Wheelan emphasized. "You can't go hide in your office when budget cuts come along," she said. "You have to show your staff and your faculty that you care about them, that you're with them."
The symposium, the culminating event of NCCU's year-long centennial celebration, attracted HBCU leaders from across the South. The leaders, Wheelan said, must have a passion for what they do, and most importantly, for their students. "If you're not passionate about students, leave, please," she said.
During the symposium session devoted to leadership, Duke University professor Paula McClain added that it's not just chancellors and presidents of schools who can provide leadership. It also comes from the faculty, she said. Many HBCUs, McClain pointed out, "take their faculty for granted."
But now HBCUs compete for faculty on a national market, and "you can't assume you can hang on to your faculty or recruit quality new members," she said. "You have to be willing to invest in your faculty. Strong faculty governance is not the enemy. They are the partners."
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