October 13, 2011
By Reginald Stuart
NEW ORLEANS — When Norman Francis arrived at Xavier University of Louisiana in 1948 as a first-generation college student fresh out of high school from the poor side of Lafayette, La., his drive, intelligence, discipline and winning personality quickly earned him election as freshman class president. It was the start of something big.
Today, Dr. Francis is in his 43rd year as president of Xavier, having parlayed what he brought to the table into what is widely regarded as one of the most successful leadership careers in the history of American higher education. He’s been adviser to eight United States presidents and, while not a Ph.D., has been awarded more than 40 honorary degrees in addition to the juris doctorate he earned decades ago.
Along the way, Francis has hosted Lady Bird Johnson, Pope John Paul II and former President Bill Clinton. He’s been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President George W. Bush. He hosted President Barack Obama last fall as the nation’s chief executive marked the fifth anniversary of the Gulf Coast region’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
At 80, the silver-haired Army veteran and father of six seems as charged about his job as when he was selected (he became the first lay person and first male to head historically Black Xavier) and as passionate about the Catholic university’s mission and goals and role in the greater New Orleans community.
“If Norman called me about everything he did, he wouldn’t have time to tell me, and I wouldn’t have time to listen,” says Xavier board of trustees Chairwoman Mary Zervigon. “He’s an entirely remarkable man. You’ll learn something every time you talk to him.”
There’s no dust gathering under his feet, says Zervigon and others who have worked with Francis over the years. His energy and warm personality are contagious, they say. When he talks about his school, his students, his colleagues, his family or his city, he sounds as excited as a kid in a candy store. Some joke he exudes enough energy to trounce the Energizer Bunny in a head-to-head race.
“To call him a peer is an overstatement,” says Dr. Ronald Mason, president of the Southern University System in Louisiana. Mason, a former general counsel for Tulane University and who one-time directed a Tulane-Xavier funded center focusing on urban issues and public policy, is one of many college presidents who consider Francis a friend and mentor. “He’s an icon in the industry. He’s stood the test of time,” says Mason, echoing the sentiments of others.
Adds Dr. Antoine Garibaldi, president of the University of Detroit Mercy, also a private Catholic college: “As a president, he’s a visionary and a master when it comes to relationships with students, alumni, trustees and foundations. That’s exactly what the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament thought he would be able to do,” says Garibaldi, who served in a variety of capacities at Xavier for 15 years, including provost, before leaving in the 1990s to become provost at Howard University.
Similarly, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was positively effusive in his praise of Francis following his speech at the HBCU Week conference in September before numerous HBCU leaders, including Francis.
Francis “just epitomizes what moral leadership, educational excellence is all about. I spoke at a graduation at Xavier and I was just so moved by leadership. His enthusiasm, his commitment, his energy, his vigor — he’s absolute American hero. I have so much respect for him,” Duncan said.
“What’s he’s done for not just his university but the country is truly remarkable. There aren’t too many folks like him, he’s a living legend and I’m so lucky to have a chance to work with him,” Duncan added.
The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, or S.B.S., is the religious order founded and funded by Katharine Drexel, a devout Catholic and wealthy Philadelphian who turned a fortune inherited in the late 1800s from her banker father into a mission to make the world a better place through education.
Drexel had traveled the country as a young lady and had seen first-hand the lack of educational opportunities across the land for Native Americans and “coloreds,” as Native Americans and Blacks were called at the time. Drexel eventually took a vow of poverty, joined the S.B.S., and over the next half century used millions of her fortune funding chapels and small schools whose mission was the education of Native Americans and Blacks.
With part of that money, Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament braved racism in the Deep South to start and fund a number of small Catholic preparatory schools around Louisiana including Xavier. It was first started as a preparatory school and later expanded into a college that could, among other things, offer higher education opportunities to children finishing prep schools that Drexel was funding around the state.
“She was like a little Ford Foundation,” says Francis, comparing Drexel’s sustained investments in Xavier over the years to the public good will focus of the giant philanthropic fund founded by the family of the late Henry Ford
For nearly half a century, Drexel ran Xavier as the centerpiece of her efforts. The school’s steady income from Drexel’s fortune ended in 1955, however, when she died at age 97 and the covenants governing the trust supporting her work through Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament required that it be liquidated upon her death. Xavier had a firmly rooted mission by then and a devoted leadership team focused on keeping her dream alive. Today, fully one-third of Xavier’s board of trustees is composed of members of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. The order still gives financial support to Xavier and other schools Drexel chose to fund years ago, albeit at a reduced level.
By the mid-1960s, Xavier was in need of new funding sources. Its enrollment of more than 1,300 students was continuing to grow. Yet, the growth was straining its budget, operating costs were growing steadily, fundraising was not going well and the school was operating with a budget deficit. In what football enthusiasts call a Hail Mary pass, the S.B.S. embraced a major overhaul of Xavier’s leadership. The order decided to give control of Xavier to a new lay person/Catholic church affiliated board of trustees and president. They looked to an alumnus and 10-year employee of the school: Norman Francis, the same bright young man who came to Xavier 20 years earlier, and, along the way, had earned the admiration and respect of fellow students, colleagues and Drexel’s successors.
If a person can be called “the chosen one,” Francis fits the mold.
He was plucked from obscurity by the S.B.S. upon the recommendation of a small, unrelated Catholic high school in Lafayette. Francis got a work-study scholarship, spending 24 hours or more a week working in the school’s library at night. At the time of his enrollment, in 1948, most campus buildings for classes and housing were surplus wooden Army barracks with no air conditioning. Dress codes were strict. No shorts or tank tops. Curfews were enforced. Learning was paramount. Off campus, racial segregation was the strict law of the land. A math major, Francis’ talents and personality were quickly recognized by Xavier’s leadership. It made sure he had opportunities to grow.
Upon graduation from Xavier, Francis entered Loyola University of New Orleans’ law school, becoming the first Black student admitted to the law program (one attempt in each of the two previous years had failed, although both of those applicants went on to other law schools and eventually became federal judges). While attending law school, Francis was allowed to stay on the Xavier campus, as Loyola had no housing for Blacks. He was appointed resident counselor on one of the floors of the dorm in which he lived.
During his law school years, Francis met his soon-to-be wife, Blanche Macdonald, a Xavier graduate who was teaching modern dance at Xavier. They married in 1955, just as he was graduating from Loyola and heading off to the Army. The military service “kept me humble,” he says, noting he took a lower rank (private) that required him to shine shoes and work various other service jobs in exchange for a shorter tour — two years rather than three. The military housing was no bother, he says, explaining that he had already been sleeping in wooden military barracks for nearly eight years, alluding to his stay in Xavier’s dorms through his undergraduate and law school years. Upon completion of his military service, he was recruited by Xavier to work in the school’s administration.
“I got a letter from a nun saying, ‘We need someone for dean of men. Would you give us a couple of years?’” Francis recalls. “I did and I did and I did,” he says with a laugh, as he talks about how a “couple of years” turned into more than half a century. He rocketed through every assignment with the zest he brought to the school as a freshman, and, to the S.B.S., gambling the school’s fate on their chosen one seemed like a no-brainer. After all, he already had been with them, more or less, for 20 years.
“If that (surrendering day-to-day control of the school to a lay person and lay-religious board) was not done, I’m not sure what Xavier would be today or maybe even open today,” says Sister Patricia Suchalski, president of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and vice chairwoman of the 17-member Xavier board of trustees.
A Xavier alum who attended the school the first year Francis was appointed president, Suchalski recalls the new president as “a man of great faith, great intelligence and a good reader of people.” He’s still the same, she says.
In speculating on why he was chosen as president, Francis thinks the sisters said, “‘If we’ve been running this school for 50 years, isn’t it time to test whether one of our graduates can run the university?’” With the wind at his back, solid support from the new board and the sisters who groomed him, Francis took the reins of the school, gathered a team of trusted lieutenants and brought Xavier back from the brink.
Saving Xavier meant making some tough choices, including canceling the school’s robust, and costly, intercollegiate athletic programs in football, basketball, volleyball and track and field. By the same token, the new president was careful to protect the programs that had helped distinguish the school over the years, such as its College of Pharmacy and other science and pre-medicine programs. They were prized legacies of Drexel’s era and would be built upon to save the school, not sacrificed, Francis said.
Saving the school also required raising more money. And that Francis and his new leadership team did relentlessly.
Today, Xavier is quite a different place from when Francis inherited it with heavy debt and an endowment of about $1.8 million. The old wooden barracks have been replaced by modern air-conditioned buildings for classes and housing. Before Hurricane Katrina knocked the wind out of New Orleans and most of the Gulf Coast, total enrollment had reached 4,000 students (it’s now about 3,400). While women increasingly constitute a majority of the student body, it is now majority non-Catholic and less than 75 percent Black. Asians, particularly Vietnamese students from the New Orleans area, make up the largest share of Xavier’s 25 percent non-Black enrollment. Xavier’s endowment is now valued at more than $133 million, and the institution has not reported a deficit in more than 30 years.
As for Hurricane Katrina, the devastating storm that ravaged New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in August 2005, Xavier has more than weathered the storm thanks in large part, observers say, to Francis’ unyielding sense of optimism about the ability to get things done.
Although waters from the hurricane and subsequent flooding consumed the campus and forced Xavier to shut a few days after the school year started, Francis declared that the school would reopen in January 2006, no questions asked.
It was a bold decision, given the fact that the school sustained major water damage and that Francis and several dozen staffers had lost their homes to the storm.
To the astonishment of many, including his staff, the school did reopen as planned, a move that minimized the loss of faculty and students and delayed graduation of seniors by only three months. Xavier is rebuilding its enrollment, actively acquiring property adjacent to its campus that was abandoned after the storm and is engaged in a capital construction program. This program includes a new school of pharmacy pavilion funded with a post- Katrina “windfall” gift of $17.5 million from the government of Qatar. It also is building a new chapel in honor of Drexel, who was canonized in 2000 and declared a saint by the pope based on her life’s work and evidence of at least two instances in which she performed miracles.
“[Xavier has] grown in local, regional and nationwide competitiveness,” says Dr. Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund and a past president of neighboring Dillard University in New Orleans. Lomax applauds Francis’ tireless efforts on behalf of Xavier and the city. “He eats, sleeps and drinks Xavier,” Lomax adds, with an admiring laugh. “He eats, sleeps and drinks New Orleans.”
While leading the effort to revive Xavier after Katrina, Francis also was appointed by then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco to head the state’s hurricane recovery board. In that volunteer post, which he held for more than two years, Francis oversaw the distribution of more than $12 billion in federal aid to disaster-stricken parishes (counties) across the state.
He recalls the heavy workload that was required to rebuild his school and help oversee his state’s recovery. Francis notes, in a somber tone, that, while the official death toll from the storm is estimated at about 1,600, many people who lost everything in the storm simply “died from broken hearts.”
“It’s not really behind us. It will be with us for a while,” he adds.
From a political perspective, many people wonder aloud how Francis has kept his job so long, given anecdotal estimates that college presidents in these times usually last about seven years. Presidents at private colleges tend to last longer than those at public universities, as private school chiefs are more insulated from the day-to-day politics of state government boards and legislators, observers say. Still, they must deliver or they are usually out the door.
For sure, those observations provide some political insights into explaining Francis’ successful tenure. There are some other practical factors, he and others suggest, that also explain his tireless energy and personality.
“It’s got to be the Cajun stuff,” says veteran Xavier accounting professor Clifford Wright, who has taught at the school 42 years. “They are super charming. He’s Cajun. He’ll admit it. He knows his roots.”
Francis, who keeps time with a Mickey Mouse watch he received as a gift from one of his daughters, jokes that he gets his energy from the liquid part of his diet. “I drink Mississippi water, unfiltered,” he says with a hearty laugh.
Seriously, Francis says, “I like my job. You get energized by what you do, by working with people and you get energized by helping to make something better.” Those personal, non-academic observations help explain his longevity and why he never gets tired, he says.
There is lots of work ahead, says Francis and his top colleagues.
Continuing to rebuild the enrollment is key. The school’s infrastructure was built to serve 4,000 students, the level it surpassed in 2005, a few days before Hurricane Katrina shut down everything in New Orleans’ low-lying areas like the Xavier campus. While making a steady comeback from the 700 freshmen it lost after Katrina, the school’s enrollment today is still down 20 percent from its peak.
“We’ve got to get more students to sustain those fixed costs or consider a substantial increase in price in tuition or downsizing,” says Calvin Tregre, Xavier’s senior vice president for administration and Francis’ key budget man for more than two decades.
Tregre, a no-nonsense man with a dry sense of humor, says the goal of reaching at least 800 new freshmen a year is complicated by low high school graduation rates, particularly in Louisiana, and the fragile economic status of many entering students. “We have about 500 students who show and can’t pay their first tuition installment,” Tregre says.
Tregre, whom had served as top fiscal officer before becoming senior vice president, says the school is doing all it can to hold its costs in line, even as it engages in its ambitious construction projects and aggressive property acquisition efforts. School staffers took a lower than normal pay raise this year, saving Xavier more than $1 million in salary costs.
Francis, who Tregre describes as the most informed college president in America when it comes to school finances, is driving hard bargains on what the school pays for abandoned properties it’s seeking. “He thinks people should give us the property,” Tregre joked.
In his recent annual start-of-the-year pep talks to faculty and staff, Francis, noting the steady enrollment recovery, cautioned his colleagues about the prospects of enrollment reaching the 4,000 mark anytime soon, explaining it’s not just some people’s worry of another hurricane coming that could impact the school’s future.
“Our enrollment rebound has been on target,” he told the staff meeting. “That’s a miracle, especially given the fact that federal dollars are starting to dwindle.” He told them forces at work in Congress want to make significant cuts in federal student aid and that, too, could complicate enrollment efforts.
“Will we ever get back to where we were (before the hurricane)?” he asked. “Not necessarily,” Francis said, noting that the entering class in the fall of 2005 exceeded 1,000 students. “But, we are not looking for numbers. We are looking for a quality education for our students. It’s not a question of being large. It’s a question of being quality.”
The crowd nodded in agreement.
Not forgotten in the thinking about the school’s future is the somber realization by Francis and his leadership team that no one, not even him, will last forever. It’s just that no one, from his veteran lieutenants to students to trustees, wants to envision Xavier without Norman Francis.
Zervigon, the board chairman, says board members have gone through several scenarios of a succession plan, hastening to add, “But I hope we never have to implement it on my watch. I hope he lives to be 110,” Zervigon says. “You can find a successor,” Zervigon adds, yet, “you can’t replace him.”
No comments:
Post a Comment