PHOENIX -- Dr. Allen Sessoms took over as president of the University of the District of Columbia 19 months ago with one mandate.
Either fix it or close it.
Sessoms was faced with many challenges including: dwindling enrollment, low academic standards for students along with no real tenure for professors. If professors lasted 90 days, they received tenure, he said.
"It was full of folks just put there," Sessoms said.
The first step was to create a vision for the only public university in D.C., Sessoms said. Within 18 months, officials were on the road to turning around the historically Black institution. One of the first steps was to create a community college and a four-year flagship university with increased academic admission requirements, Sessoms said.
Sessoms, along with university presidents Dr. Glyn Davis (The University of Melbourne) and Dr. Kevin Manning (Stevenson University), spoke Monday at the American Council on Education's annual conference in Phoenix. They all described their experiences with transforming their universities and the challenges that came with change.
Manning knew in 2000 when he was hired as president of what became Stevenson University, the institution was in danger. It was a one-campus college in Maryland with an obscure name, Villa Julie College.
Manning presented a plan to the board of trustees to build a second campus with residence halls six miles from the original campus. He told the board members the institution needed to become a university and they had to change the name.
As a former director of admissions, Manning knew the name was not helping.
"A brand has to be positive and neutral," Manning said. "Ours was both confusing and negative."
Manning wanted a name that would better reflect the identity of the institution. Although Villa Julie College had been open to men for more than 35 years, many local business owners still associated it as a Catholic two-year college for women. Stevenson, the town where one of the campuses is located, was eventually chosen.
