The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) has approved the Joint School of Public Health (JSPH), offered by Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University, the schools announced on Thursday.
Council members approved the school at a Sept. 17 meeting, according to a SHEV spokesperson.
“We have a real opportunity to create and sustain transformational change in Virginia’s communities where, for too long, we have seen serious health inequities,” ODU President Brian O. Hemphill stated in a release. “The formation of the Joint School of Public Health, in partnership with Norfolk State University, will serve Hampton Roads well as we provide a growing pipeline of health care leaders who are fully dedicated to building and maintaining healthy communities.”
The Joint School of Public Health (JSPH) is part of Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at ODU, an academic health sciences center. Classes will be held at NSU, ODU and Eastern Virginia Medical School at ODU.
NSU is only the second historically Black college or university to offer a public health program.
“This is a unique partnership between our two institutions that in time will show the power of regionalism … and how collaboration can be used to find solutions to improve wellness and health outcomes for everyone, especially in underserved communities,” NSU President Javaune Adams-Gaston said in the release.
Diabetes and heart disease mortality rates across Hampton Roads are higher than other areas of Virginia, according to the Bon Secours 2023 Community Health Needs Assessment Implementation Plan. Officials leading the JSPH want to improve health equity for the region.
“The Joint School of Public Health is an opportunity for some of the best and the brightest students, faculty and staff in our region to come together to address our most pressing needs around public health and health equity in Hampton Roads,” Dr. Alfred Abuhamad, executive vice president of Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at ODU and dean of the Eastern Virginia Medical School at ODU, stated in a news release.
The JSPH will offer two departments: the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Environmental Health, and the Department of Health Behavior, Policy and Management. Students can earn bachelor of science degrees in public health; public health with a major in health services administration; and environmental health. Master’s degrees in public health and health care administration and a doctorate in health services research will also be offered.
Next, the JSPH will seek accreditation from the Council on Education for Public Health, a national accreditation body that requires a site visit and curriculum review.
Virginia’s first Black governor says it’s past time for the state’s historically Black colleges and universities to receive their fair share of the pie.
Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a Virginia Union University alumnus, jokes that he has been advocating for increased state funding for Virginia HBCUs “for about a hundred years.”
The Biden administration gave a push in that direction last September in letters to 16 Southern governors — including Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin — calling on them to correct what it calls decadeslong underfunding of 16 land-grant HBCUs in their states. According to the White House, states underfunded these schools by $13 billion from 1987 to 2020.
The commonwealth has two land-grant schools — Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and Virginia State University in Ettrick, an HBCU founded in 1882. Federal officials estimate that VSU is owed more than $277 million in state funding.
Land-grant schools were established by the 1862 Morrill Act, under which the federal government provided money to create 57 public colleges for agriculture and engineering. States generally provide required dollar-to-dollar matches for these institutions. During the days of racial segregation in the South, Black students were unable to attend colleges established by the 1862 act, so a separate Morrill Act system was set up in 1890.
Youngkin’s administration has denied that the commonwealth has underfunded VSU compared with Virginia Tech, and expressed skepticism over how federal officials came up with the numbers.
Wilder, a Democrat, says he’s written to Youngkin on the subject. “The underfunding has been documented at the federal level. I say to the governor, ‘Start putting money in the budget for HCBUs — all of them.’ This has been ignored too long by too many.”
William R. Harvey, who retired in 2022 after 44 years as president of Hampton University, suggests that HBCUs seek state funding for specific projects, like HU’s Proton Therapy Institute, which treats cancer patients. Photo by Mark Rhodes
The 93-year-old Wilder, the nation’s first Black governor since the Reconstruction era and later Richmond’s first popularly elected mayor, is now a distinguished professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs named for him. Last September, the school’s annual Wilder Symposium addressed the topic of HBCU funding head-on under the title, “HBCUs and the Absence of Support.”
Under Youngkin’s proposed 2024-26 state budget, released in December 2023, VSU’s operating funding would go up about 9.2% — from $232 million for fiscal 2024 to $250 million proposed in 2025. The Democratic-controlled state legislature will get a crack at the budget to make amendments (likely in a special session this spring) before submitting it to the governor to sign.
There are multiple ways of advocating for more funding, Wilder says. In 2006, a group of alumni and supporters of Maryland’s HBCUs filed a federal lawsuit accusing the state government of providing inequitable resources to its four historically Black schools. In 2021, Maryland reached a $577 million settlement to end the lawsuit.
Wilder says he’s not advocating that Virginia HBCU supporters follow Maryland’s example, but he notes that both chambers of the General Assembly have significant Black leadership, including the state’s first Black speaker of the House of Delegates, Del. Don Scott.
“I don’t think a lawsuit is necessary,” Wilder says. But if HBCUs are not better funded, “we’ll say that your projects likewise will not be funded. There will be no pie for you if there’s no pie for me. … Power concedes nothing without demand. Now that we people of color can do something, we need to do it.”
Economic drivers
Virginia State University President Makola Abdullah, who serves on President Joe Biden’s HBCUs advisory board and is board chair of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, expresses hope that the General Assembly recognizes the value of investing in HBCUs and will be “receptive” to funding increases. “It’s exciting that we’ve reached the point where this conversation is happening” in Virginia, he says.
VSU ranks No. 26 in U.S. News and World Report’s list of Best Overall HBCUs for 2023, and its enrollment grew by 8% for fall 2022 and another 11% in fall 2023, surpassing 5,000 students. In 2021, Virginia State got a major boost in the form of a record-setting $30 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. She also donated $40 million to Norfolk State University, part of a series of donations to HBCUs and other traditionally underfunded institutions.
Major donations are important, but consistent public funding would translate into more scholarships, increased financial aid and updated technology and equipment, VSU’s president says. More than that, increased resources would mean that “the entire community would be uplifted,” Abdullah says. “VSU is a premier economic driver in Petersburg.”
Land-grant schools such as VSU “invest so much back into rural America,” says U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who serves on the House Agriculture Committee and in December 2023 launched her bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
Speaking at the 1890 Land Grant Universities Recognition event co-hosted last September in Washington, D.C., by the nonprofit 1890 Universities Foundation, she told the audience that “back home in Virginia, I have heard from our farmers and our institutions of higher education about the critical nexus between research and the success of Virginia’s No. 1 private industry — agriculture.”
In the past three decades, “more than $275 million should have been available for Virginia State University, had it received state funding per student equal to that of Virginia Tech,” according to Spanberger. “This is unacceptable; those investments could have supported more infrastructure, more student services, and the ability to compete for research grants to better serve Virginia’s students. We need to do better.”
Acknowledging disparity
Although the Biden administration’s letter was specifically aimed at land-grant schools, “it comes at a time when we’re trying to get Virginia to do more for all Black schools,” says James W. Dyke Jr., senior advisor for McGuireWoods Consulting in Tysons.
“This has been going on a long time. Black schools have always received less funding. It’s built up over the years. I think everybody acknowledges the disparity,” says Howard University alumnus Dyke, who was Virginia’s education secretary under Wilder and has worked in recent years on increased funding for HBCUs.
Now is an especially important time to allocate more money to HBCUs, Dyke says. While many institutions around the country are struggling to attract students, enrollment at HBCUs is on the rise, increasing 57% by 2022, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report last spring.
And after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned affirmative action at most colleges and universities last June, Dyke says, “I think there will be more demand.”
He’s far from alone in that assessment. According to a July 2023 report by Inside Higher Ed, HBCU leaders are expecting more applications. While more interest is generally welcome, administrators at HBCUs nationwide expressed concern that they don’t have the resources and infrastructure to accept more students.
Currently, predominantly Black universities produce 20% of Black college graduates in the country but face significant underfunding compared with predominately white institutions, according to the Wilder Symposium, which billed it as “a crisis that impacts financial support for students, technology resources, and building infrastructure.”
It’s in the best interest of businesses and communities to better support all HBCUs, Wilder says. “Businesses are looking for leadership to come from all of their schools in Virginia. They need a [workforce] pipeline. We produce the doctors, the lawyers, the engineers.”
Like other higher ed institutions, HBCUs are not a monolith. Some, like NSU and VSU, are public universities that receive federal, state and private funding, while others are private universities that rely on tuition, donations and endowments. In Virginia, Hampton University, Virginia Union University and Virginia University of Lynchburg are the state’s private HBCUs.
In 2022, Virginia Attorney Gen. Jason Miyares, a Republican who is rumored to be eyeing a 2025 gubernatorial run, wrote that the state’s laws and constitution allow some public funding of private HBCUs — through the Tuition Assistance Grant program for individual students and with loans to universities through the Virginia College Building Authority.
“This is a significant moment in time for HBCUs,” Virginia Union University President Hakim J. Lucas said when Miyares made that determination.
William R. Harvey, who retired in 2022 after 44 years as president of Hampton University, knows about the effort it takes to attract donations and has advice for other private HBCUs.
When Harvey became HU’s president almost half a century ago, the university’s “finances were in bad shape. They had not balanced the budget. Physical buildings had decayed.” The school’s endowment was $29 million.
Harvey and his team went to work, and “people responded.” At his retirement, Hampton’s endowment contained more than $400 million, a 1,279% increase. MacKenzie Scott also made a $30 million donation to the school in 2020, its largest donation. But that endowment increase also reflects support from nonbillionaire donors.
People responded, Harvey says, because “we asked them to fund specific projects. We didn’t ask for $50 million, we asked for the proton center.” That’s the $225 million Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute (HUPTI), which employs proton treatments on a variety of cancers. The facility opened in 2010, funded by private donors and regional lenders, as well as some public support from the state and federal governments.
Harvey views the institute as a “classic example” of how Hampton and other HBCUs are helping their communities. “We are curing cancer. Cancer is the No. 1 killer in Virginia. We are easing human misery and saving lives.”
Virginia HBCUs at a glance
Virginia has five historically Black colleges and universities, spread across Hampton Roads and Central Virginia. Some of the oldest in the nation, these institutions are a mix of public and privately run schools.
Hampton University
Located in Hampton, the private, not-for-profit university is on 314 acres and has 3,649 students, 3,255 of them undergraduates.1 It was founded in 1868 as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. In July 2022, Hampton welcomed its new president, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams; he succeeds William R. Harvey, who had served as the university’s president since 1978.
Norfolk State University
The four-year public school near downtown Norfolk was founded in 1935. It has a 134-acre campus and has 6,045 students. NSU’s December 2021 commencement speech was delivered by music superstar and Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams, who also hosted his Elephant in the Room business forum at NSU that year. NSU unveiled its 6,000-square-foot Micron-NSU Nanofabrication Cleanroom in October 2021.
Virginia State University
Virginia State University was founded in 1882 as one of Virginia’s two public land-grant institutions (the other is Virginia Tech). Located in Chesterfield County’s Ettrick area near Petersburg, its 231-acre campus overlooks the Appomattox River. VSU has 5,190 students, 4,829 of them undergraduates.
Virginia Union University
The private university was founded in 1865. Hartshorn Memorial College, a women’s college established in Richmond in 1883, became part of VUU in 1932. Storer College, a Black Baptist college in West Virginia that closed in 1955, merged its endowment with VUU. The university has 1,704 students, 1,227 of them undergraduates.1
Virginia University of Lynchburg
Virginia University of Lynchburg traces its origins to the 1886 founding of the Lynchburg Baptist Seminary. Renamed over the years, VUL was incorporated as Virginia University of Lynchburg in 1996. The private not-for-profit school has 837 students, 479 of them undergraduates.2
Donald Alexander Jr. considered multiple schools, as well as the Air Force, before he landed at Norfolk State University in 2019.
The Chesapeake native grew up with strong ties to the university, one of Virginia’s two public historically Black colleges and universities. As an elementary schooler, Alexander went to summer camp on Norfolk State’s campus, and several aunts, uncles and cousins attended the school. His uncle, Melvin T. Stith Sr., a former dean at Florida State University, received his bachelor’s degree from Norfolk State and served as its interim president from 2017 to 2019.
After high school, Alexander attended a summer program offered by Norfolk Stateto help him prepare for the academic experience, and fell in love with the college. He also found comfort in building connections with peers who had similar backgrounds and experiences.
“We were in a time where racial profiling was active again. It was a big thing when I was going into college, and I feel like a lot of African Americans, when they choose HBCUs, they choose them because of the comfortability that they will have,” says Alexander, now a 22-year-old senior majoring in computer science. The shared experience of an HBCU, he says, “allows you to have more people to lean on, to have more people to get close with.”
Virginia State University Provost Donald Palm says branding, social media and a state-sponsored program offering free tuition for eligible local students have helped fuel record enrollment. Palm photo by Shandell Taylor;
At a time when overall undergraduate enrollment is declining nationally, Alexander is among a wave of Black students who are choosing HBCUs over predominantly white colleges and universities.
According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, undergraduate enrollment in colleges and universities declined 4.2% from 2020 to 2022. Meanwhile, undergraduate enrollment at HBCUs grew 2.5% in fall 2022, reversing a 1.7% decline from the previous year. That growth was driven by a 6.6% increase in freshmen enrolling at HBCUs, the NSCRC noted.
Virginia’s 15 four-year public universities, including HBCUs Norfolk State and Virginia State University, are slightly ahead of national trends. Undergraduate enrollment declined 2% between fall 2020 and fall 2022, according to an analysis of data from the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia. Enrollment at Virginia private colleges that report data to SCHEV fell 4% during the same period.
However, during the same two-year period, VSU and NSU saw huge undergraduate enrollment boosts — increases of 18% and 7% — far outstripping their larger, predominantly white public counterparts. Only William & Mary came close to matching those increases, with a 9% enrollment boost from 2020 to 2022. By comparison, Longwood and Radford universities saw undergraduate enrollment decreases of 20% and 18%, respectively, during that same time.
Nationally, combined total enrollment at HBCUs grew 25% from 1980 to 2015, rising from 234,000 to 293,000. But that growth wasn’t as rapid as it was for all colleges and universities combined, which saw enrollment nearly double during the same time period, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. From 1976 to 2014, the percentage of Black college students attending HBCUs fell from 18% to 8%, a trend that has been reversing more recently.
Fall 2022 enrollment data from two of Virginia’s three private HBCUs, Hampton and Virginia Union universities, is incomplete, and neither granted Virginia Business’ requests for interviews. Virginia University of Lynchburg, another Virginia HBCU, does not report data to SCHEV because it does not receive state funding. VUL did not respond to interview requests from Virginia Business.
Social justice, strategic planning
Administrators at VSU and NSU say enrollment increases at their universities are a result of numerous factors and follows a trend seen nationally among the 101 HBCUs located across 19 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Juan Alexander, associate vice president for enrollment management at NSU, and VSU Provost Donald Palm, who is also senior vice president of academic and student success and engagement, cite the Black Lives Matter movement for helping to raise the visibility of HBCUs. Social justice rallies that swept the country in 2020 fueled greater corporate awareness for diversity, equity and inclusion and sparked philanthropic giving to HBCUs, including record gifts from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. Scott’s 2021 donations of $30 million to VSU in 2020 and $40 million to NSU represented the largest gifts each university has ever received. She also gave a record $30 million to Hampton University in 2020.
While those donations also led to media exposure and are helping fund scholarships and other initiatives, including research laboratories, faculty and staff conferences and training, and venture capital funds at NSU, they also coincided with efforts to enhance admissions, says Alexander, who also credits the university’s marketing strategies and use of alumni in boosting enrollment.
NSU Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Juan Alexander says the university is one of only a few HBCUs that use the Common App. Alexander photo by Mark Rhodes
For example, Norfolk State had also been working to streamline and remove barriers to its admissions process. NSU’s Alexander (no relation to NSU senior Donald Alexander) says that around December 2021 the university joined the Common App, an undergraduate application that allows students to apply to as many as 1,000 member colleges and universities by using one form. That’s allowed NSU, which has only about five recruiters, to expand its reach to students it might not otherwise reach. Fewer than about a dozen HBCUs currently use the Common App, and about 30% of NSU’s incoming freshmen in fall 2022 applied using it, he says.
In addition, NSU added virtual college tours and virtual appointments, including with financial aid counselors. It also moved to a new customer relations portal that allows the university to keep in touch with students “at every stage” of the enrollment and application process.
“We’re up about 131% from last year in our freshman first-time acceptances … so that’s a good sign,” Alexander says. “It looks like we’re gonna have a pretty hefty freshman class again this coming fall.”
Meanwhile, VSU, located in Chesterfield County’s Ettrick area near Petersburg, broke a 30-year record for the 2022-23 academic year, enrolling more than 1,700 first-time freshmen and transfer students, for an increase of 550 new students over the previous academic year, which also broke enrollment records.
VSU launched a strategic plan in fall 2020. One prong of that plan includes improved marketing and branding efforts. Social media is an important part of that, and has gotten attention, Palm adds. “Our students are so engaged. That’s where are students are — on social media. So we are in the social media game.”
VSU ranked No. 27 among all NCAA Division II schools for overall social media engagement in 2022, according to social media marketing analysis company Rival IQ, but took the No. 1 spot on Twitter, with 19,043 engagements, and No. 3 on Facebook, with 151,362 engagements.
Another program helping boost enrollment is the state-sponsored Virginia College Affordability Network. Launched in 2021 to support the state’s two public HBCUs, it provides free tuition for Pell Grant-eligible first-year students who live within 40 miles of VSU or within 45 miles of NSU. About 600 VSU students have taken advantage of the program and about 300 students have benefited from it at NSU.
The program has helped encourage some students who may have looked farther from home for their higher education to stay local, Palm says.
“We’re reaching those students who — many students want to go elsewhere — they want to leave home to go to college,” Palm says.
At NSU, Donald Alexander credits the personal attention and family atmosphere he’s found there with helping him push himself, something he’s unsure might have happened if he’d gone to a non-HBCU. He’s been a member of NSU’s student government, including its chief justice during the 2021 to 2022 academic year, and after the Black Lives Matter protests he served as an SGA liaison to handle student relations with campus police.
He likes that the university hosts “Soul Food Thursday,” offering Southern comfort foods like fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread.
“There’s nothing like an HBCU, honestly, and any HBCU student could attest to that,” he says. “The atmosphere there is unmatchable. It’s just something that is going to stick with you for the rest of your life.”
Sarah King contributed to this story.
Virginia HBCUs at a glance
Virginia has five historically Black colleges and universities, spread across Hampton Roads and Central Virginia. Some of the oldest in the nation, these institutions are a mix of public and privately run schools.
Hampton University
Located in Hampton, the private, not-for-profit university is on
314 acres and has 3,317 students, 2,867 of them undergraduates.1 It was founded in 1868 as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. In July 2022, Hampton welcomed its new president, retired U.S. Army Gen. Darrell K. Williams; he succeeds William R. Harvey, who had served as the university’s president since 1978.
Norfolk State University
The four-year public school near downtown Norfolk was founded in 1935. It has a 134-acre campus and has 5,786 students. NSU’s December 2021 commencement speech was delivered by music superstar and Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams, who also hosted his Elephant in the Room business forum at NSU that year. NSU unveiled its 6,000-square-foot Micron-NSU Nanofabrication Cleanroom in October 2021.
Virginia State University
Virginia State University was founded in 1882 as one of Virginia’s two public land-grant institutions (the other is Virginia Tech). Located in Chesterfield County’s Ettrick area near Petersburg, its 231-acre campus overlooks the Appomattox River. VSU has 4,300 undergraduates and 348 graduate students.
Virginia Union University
The private university was founded in 1865. Hartshorn Memorial College, a women’s college established in Richmond in 1883, became part of VUU in 1932. Storer College, a Black Baptist college in West Virginia that closed in 1955, merged its endowment with VUU. The university has 1,730 students, 1,243 of them undergraduates.1
Virginia University of Lynchburg
Virginia University of Lynchburg traces its origins to the 1886 founding of the Lynchburg Baptist Seminary. Renamed over the
years, VUL was incorporated as Virginia University of Lynchburg
in 1996. The private not-for-profit school has 558 students, 217
of them undergraduates.1
Northern Virginia economic development officials are working with Virginia’s two public historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to establish a joint satellite campus in the region that officials say would fill a gap in higher-ed offerings in Virginia’s largest population center.
The presidents of Virginia State University and Norfolk State University have been talking with members of the Northern Virginia Regional Commission about the project since June 2021. The schools are expected to start serious discussions about potential locations with the Northern Virginia Economic Development Alliance this fall, says Fairfax County Economic Development Authority President and CEO Victor Hoskins.
More than one of the area’s 10 jurisdictions has expressed interest in assisting the campus with permitting and financial investment, says Hoskins. The campus will likely be a joint venture between the two schools, and could be co-located with another university that already operates a Northern Virginia campus.
NVRC Chair and Dumfries Town Councilwoman Cydny Neville — a VSU alumna — spearheaded the effort after noticing friends crossing state lines to attend HBCUs because Virginia does not have one north of Richmond.
She and NVRC Executive Director Robert Lazaro say access to public transportation will be important for the campus. The universities also will need to determine which degree programs will be needed, how many students such a campus could hold and other operational aspects.
The effort comes at a time when Northern Virginia is a booming market for higher ed. The University of Virginia, George Mason University and Virginia Tech have invested in satellite campuses in the region. Since Amazon announced it would build its HQ2 headquarters in Arlington, Hoskins says, 18 schools from across the country have expressed interest in establishing outposts in the region.
Neville and Lazaro say VSU and NSU could make degree completion more accessible for a large part of the region’s population. Both schools’ annual in-state tuition — about $9,600, not including room and board — is among the lowest in the state.
Affordability — along with the supportive environment that many Black students seek from HBCUs — could help more first-generation and lower-income students access the wealth-building potential of a college degree, Neville says.
“This would be a major paradigm shift for the educational attainability of the people in this region,” she says.
The presidents of Virginia State University and Norfolk State University are on the list of intended appointees to the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the Biden administration announced on March 31.
Virginia State University President Makola M. Abdullah, Norfolk State University President Javaune Adams-Gaston and Janeen Uzzell, CEO of the Alexandria-based National Society of Black Engineers made the list from the commonwealth. Other board members from outside Virginia include Academy Award-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson, United Airlines President Brett Hart, TIAA President and CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett and NBA star Chris Paul of the Phoenix Suns.
The board will work to advance the HBCU Initiative, which President Jimmy Carter’s administration originally established to increase the participation of HBCUs in federally sponsored programs and reduce and eliminate barriers to participating in those programs. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in September 2021 reestablishing the initiative.
In February, Biden appointed Dietra Trent as executive director of the White House HBCU Initiative. Trent served as state secretary of education under former Gov. Terry McAuliffe and then as chief of staff to former state Secretary of Education Anne Holton, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine’s wife, when Holton served as George Mason University’s interim president.
Abdullah became Virginia State University’s 14th president in 2016. Before that, he served as provost and senior vice president at Bethune-Cookman University. He previously was the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Florida Memorial University, and prior to that, dean and director of 1890 land grant programs at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
“This initiative gives me an opportunity, in my capacity as VSU president, to also work closely with the Executive Office of the U.S. President on key administration priorities related to advancing educational equity, excellence and economic opportunities for HBCUs,” Abdullah said in a statement. “I am proud to serve on this board which allows me to continue to advocate for the transformative work of HBCUs.”
Abdullah holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in civil engineering. He received his undergraduate degree from Howard University and his master’s and doctorate degrees from Northwestern University. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. and a member of multiple boards and committees, including the Board of Trustees for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on College and the Council of Presidents for Virginia Institutions of Higher Education.
Adams-Gaston became the seventh president of NSU in June 2019. Since then, the school has secured more than $7 million in public and private partnerships with corporations including Apple Inc., Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Dominion Energy Inc.
Adams-Gaston
“I am honored to serve on President Biden’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” Adams-Gaston said in a statement. “I appreciate the confidence the administration has in appointing me to serve on such a distinguished board. I look forward to collaborating with my fellow board members as we work to improve the outcomes for students who attend our historic institutions.”
Prior to becoming NSU’s president, Adams-Gaston served as senior vice president for student life at The Ohio State University. Before that, she had held several roles at the University of Maryland, including associate dean in academic affairs, assistant athletic director and graduate faculty member. She had a practice as a licensed psychologist for 25 years.
Uzzell is CEO of the Alexandria-based National Society of Black Engineers, a student-governed organization. She was previously the chief operating officer of Wikimedia Foundation Inc., which operates Wikipedia, where she helped launch the Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund to address racial inequities in free knowledge.
She previously held several roles in General Electric Co.’s health care technologies sector, including as head of women in technology. Uzzell also served as global director of external affairs and technology programs, director of health care programs at GE Africa and director of global health care programs.
Uzzell received her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She has been recognized with a United Nations Global Leadership Award.
Bank of America granted Virginia Union University $1 million for its new banking and financial services workforce development program, the university announced Monday.
VUU’s Sydney Lewis School of Business will lead the program, called MORE for My Opportunity is Real Essential, in partnership with the university’s workforce development division and its Evelyn Reid Syphax School of Education.
“We are excited to partner with Bank of America on this innovative program to build a workforce pipeline for the financial industry, as well as to educate young children and adults about the importance of financial literacy, financial markets and managing wealth,” Robin R. Davis, dean of the Sydney Lewis School of Business, said in a statement.
The program’s three components are community outreach, a financial markets lab and workforce development and assessment.
The program will use its Mobile Community Outreach Financial Van to reach students in nine schools in Chesterfield and Henrico counties and the city of Richmond, focusing on students between the ages of 10 and 18 years. It will also provide wealth management, investments and home ownership education to residents of Gilpin Court.
The financial markets lab will be on the VUU campus and will have 30 computers with planning, budgeting and investment software and four stock tickers.
Students will have a workforce development coach to help prepare for internships in their sophomore and junior years. The university will also host a quarterly Financial Business Speaker series focused on career opportunities in the financial industry.
The grant is part of the Way Forward Initiative from Washington, D.C.-based education firm EAB and Bank of America to help tribal colleges and historically black colleges and universities (HCBUs) achieve financial sustainability and serve students.
“HBCUs play a vital role in creating opportunities for students and communities of color by providing education needed to address economic and social inequality,” Bank of America Richmond President Victor Branch said in a statement. “At Bank of America, we believe it is essential that these institutions receive the support they need to continue in their mission.”
Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bank of America Corp. reported $89.1 billion in 2021 revenue.
Mariah Simmons arrived at Virginia State University in 2016 with a dream of becoming the first computer scientist in her family.
The week before school started, she enrolled in an on-campus mentorship program called Project Knowledge, which provided her a road map for navigating college.
Simmons, now 23, heard stories from students who had been down the path she was about to embark on and received tips on how to succeed in a particularly challenging degree program. Until she graduated, she was mentored by a graduate psychology student, who taught her various life skills, including time management, study skills and mental health management.
She learned psychological tricks to help keep a positive mindset and coping skills for dealing with stress and setbacks.
The knowledge she acquired and the support network she developed changed her life. She credits Project Knowledge with helping her earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science within four years. She graduated in 2020 and landed a job as an associate information security analyst with Richmond-based Fortune 500 utility Dominion Energy Inc.
The mentoring program was based on research led by Cheryl Talley, a VSU psychology and neuroscience professor dedicated to studying methods of keeping students on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) career paths.
Soon after Talley arrived at the Ettrick land-grant university 12 years ago, she noticed her students struggled to complete science courses and she wanted to do something about it. “When I came to Virginia State, I was just so struck by how science averse my students were,” she says.
She knew they were capable of succeeding in math and science classes, but her students didn’t believe that, so she embarked on a journey to find out what precisely was preventing them from earning STEM degrees.
That nagging question has defined Talley’s research and has led to VSU receiving multiple grants to study the topic so the school can find out how to retain those students and help them ultimately go on to high-paying careers.
VSU Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Cheryl Talley is leading a research project studying ways to keep HBCU students on STEM career paths. Photo by Shandell Taylor
In November 2021, VSU and two other historically Black colleges and universities [HBCUs] — Georgia’s Morehouse and Spelman colleges — received a joint $9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study methods for increasing student retention and graduation rates for STEM degree tracks. The researchers will collect data on HBCU students over the next five years to discover what academic interventions work and why.
Competition and demand
The research comes at a pivotal moment in history for HBCUs, which are competing for students and seeking to funnel their best and brightest to companies aiming to diversify the workforce.
Talley will lead the research as director for the analytic hub of the HBCU STEM Undergraduate Success Research Center, which was created to help the universities collaborate on the research. The goal is to develop methods to encourage more Black students to pursue STEM education at historically Black colleges and universities across the country.
Donald Palm, VSU’s provost and vice president for academic and student affairs, hopes the research will provide a playbook for HBCUs to implement programming and instruction techniques that will improve student success rates in STEM studies. Coming from a STEM background himself, Palm is proud VSU is leveraging evidence-based research to lead students to successful STEM career paths.
“HBCUs have a very critical role with having an impact on the diversity in STEM careers as well as in STEM degrees,” Palm says.
About a quarter of Black students with STEM degrees graduate from an HBCU, according to the United Negro College Fund Inc. While that’s significant, there are not enough Black students graduating from STEM programs, especially from HBCUs, to meet industry demand.
Fewer than half of Black high school graduates enroll in college courses, and 13% obtained a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field during the 2017-18 academic year, according to the most recent data available from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Over the past decade, VSU has mostly lost students, according to data provided by the State Council of Higher Education. In fall 2012, VSU enrolled 6,208 students. During fall 2021, the school had 4,300 students, a 280-student increase from 2020.
Such fluctuations are not necessarily reflective of whether students are enrolling in or staying in college, however, says Tod Massa, director of policy analytics for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Black students are being recruited by other HBCUs as well as by predominantly white universities.
“There are a lot of institutions across the country that are trying to do two things — diversify the student body and survive,” Massa says. “There’s a lot of competition for talented Black students, and that puts pressure on HBCUs.”
Most of VSU’s students are first-generation college students and grow up in low-income households, according to the university, so financial struggles continue to burden them while attending college. About 70% of VSU students receive Pell Grants.
It makes sense that first-generation Black students are concerned about rising tuition costs and taking on debt. To help these students, Massa says, schools need to provide financial aid and wraparound services that prevent students from worrying about money and accessing food and technology.
VSU’s College of Engineering and Technology is creating a summer program to assist high school graduates with college preparedness. Photo courtesy Virginia State University
Assessing readiness
For the fall 2021 semester, the state started a pilot program called the Virginia College Affordability Network, which offers full semester-at-a-time scholarships to Pell Grant recipients who live within 25 miles of VSU’s Petersburg campus. So far, about 300 VSU students have received the scholarship during the 2021-22 academic year and have an average GPA of 3.1, says Ri’Shawn Bassette, a spokesperson for the university.
Additionally, Talley says, many VSU students come from high schools that didn’t offer course material required for entering STEM programs. A 2014 report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found that 57% of Black students did not have access to courses necessary for college preparation.
“Living in the United States, we have a disparate educational system,” Talley says. “So, depending on your ZIP code, you will get a different educational experience.”
VSU wants to offer a bridge to these types of students, Palm says, so the College of Engineering and Technology is in the process of creating a pre-college summer program to help high school graduates catch up on courses needed to succeed before the semester begins.
“We are putting things in place in order to address their underpreparedness, and we want to really build them up in order to get them to the finish line,” Palm says.
The school has also started a small pilot scholarship program that allows students with a GPA lower than 3.0 to participate in STEM majors.
“If you don’t have a 3.0, it is very difficult to get into a STEM major,” Palm says. “Why can’t somebody who has a 2.5 get into a STEM major if we’re providing the tools for them to be successful?”
The challenges Black students face alone could be enough to stop them from pursuing STEM degrees, Talley says. But through her research, Talley learned a student’s likelihood to continue pursuing a STEM degree has less to do with a student’s ability to complete the coursework and more to do with psychology and their support network.
Talley administered assessment tests to VSU students, asking them questions about self-agency, self-confidence and their academic skill set. The results showed many incoming VSU students are lacking in these three areas, which in turn is preventing many from pursuing STEM education.
The National Science Foundation grant awarded in November 2021 will allow Talley’s team to deploy a similar assessment to students at 25 other HBCUs to determine if these factors are also holding back students from majoring in STEM disciplines at other HBCUs.
“The question will be, is this something that is just true about Virginia State?” Talley says. “Or are other HBCU students majoring in STEM also having self-confidence, self-agency and academic skill set [deficits] being associated with first semester grades?”
Based on the data collected at VSU, Talley’s research team has found that reshaping how students think about themselves can go a long way toward improving student retention.
Victoria Davis, outgoing program manager for Project Knowledge, says VSU’s research has shown students succeed when they are taught to develop self-regulation techniques, so they don’t catastrophize failures.
Talley says 80% of Project Knowledge participants have stuck with STEM courses and, on average, have maintained higher GPAs than students who aren’t in the program. With grant funding, Project Knowledge has expanded into Petersburg High School so VSU can prepare students from marginalized backgrounds before they arrive at college.
“Dr. Talley is a powerhouse, and she is the one who picks up all the kids and nurtures them to be better people,” Simmons says. “Her knowledge that she has given to all of us is actually something that you can get nowhere else. I think she’s the reason that we’re so impactful.”
Simmons, who now protects Dominion’s computers from cyberattacks, returned to VSU this year as an adjunct computer science instructor. She’s the school’s only Black assistant professor of computer science and the only instructor who has gone through VSU’s computer science program and Project Knowledge. She says it means a lot to her to be a role model and show students a Black woman can succeed in a STEM profession.
“The students look at me differently because they see me more as a friend and ally,” Simmons says. “I’ve been an advocate for a lot of students.”
She hasn’t been a professor for very long, but Simmons is already finding ways to leave her mark at VSU. She started a coding club on campus to help students connect and support one another, similar to the way Project Knowledge helped her.
“I’ve been through what the students have gone through,” Simmons says. “I notice a lot of them continue to keep going because they saw that I made it.”
VSU at a glance
Founded
A public, historically Black land grant university, Virginia State University was founded on March 6, 1882, when the General Assembly passed a bill to charter the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute.
Campus
VSU sits atop a rolling landscape overlooking the Appomattox River with expansive views of Petersburg. VSU’s 231-acre campus has 11 residence halls, 18 academic buildings and a 412-acre agriculture research facility.
Enrollment
Undergraduate: 3,899
Graduate: 401
Student profile
African American/Black: 93%
White: 3%
Virginia residents: 72%
Female: 61%
Male: 39%
Faculty*
272 full-time and 150 part-time faculty
Tuition, fees, housing and financial aid
In-state tuition and fees (undergraduate): $9,154
Out-of-state tuition and fees (undergraduate): $20,909
Room and board: $11,544
Average 2020-21 financial aid awarded to first-time, full-time freshmen: $11,845
Earlier this year, I issued a call for the commonwealth to confront and reassess its disproportionate support of its historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
I wrote a letter to the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and the respective leadership of the General Assembly. At this juncture, I have not received any acknowledgment or response to the letter from anyone.
Federal courts have pushed to end de facto segregation by ruling that states cannot have a dual system in colleges and universities. HBCUs were there when there was nowhere else for people of color to attend college. I know, because I was one of those students who was fortunate to be able to attend Virginia Union University, located in my hometown, Richmond, Virginia. The University of Richmond forbade me from matriculating there.
When I returned home from fighting on the battlefields of Korea, I studied law at Howard University School of Law in the nation’s capital.
I did not have the time or money to engage in litigation to attend law school in Virginia.
The increase in the number of white students on Black campuses and of Black students on white campuses should not come at the expense of the Black sector. The governor, the General Assembly and the Virginia business community need to demonstrate collaborative leadership so that every student has the opportunity to achieve the American dream, thereby becoming a taxpaying contributor to Virginia’s economy and improving our quality of life.
In my public life, I have practiced fiscal responsibility. I was proud, during my gubernatorial administration, to have had Virginia selected for the first time ever as the best fiscally managed state in the nation. This was done two years in succession.
I think the governor and General Assembly have the responsibility to immediately provide significant and ongoing funding to our four HBCUs (Virginia Union University, Hampton University, Virginia State University and Norfolk State University) from Virginia’s $4.3 billion share of federal relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. This commitment should include initial grants of $50 million to each HBCU for scholarships, recruitment, retention, research, academic programs and capital projects, as Virginia has historically allocated to its predominantly white institutions.
There is no plausible alternative.
Let us not forget, the General Assembly found a way to act quickly when it wanted to institute the morally repugnant policy of Massive Resistance. Virginia must now give meaning to its words to correct the inadequacies of its past, and to provide hope for the future of all Virginians.
The time is now.
The first African American governor elected in the United States, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder served as Virginia’s 66th governor from 1990 to 1994. He also served as Richmond’s first at-large elected mayor in modern times from 2005 to 2009.
Virginia Beach-based Virginia Natural Gas and its parent company, Southern Co., announced Thursday that the companies are donating $500,000 to Hampton University to support information technology infrastructure upgrades in light of new remote learning needs brought on by the pandemic.
The funds, which are part of the Southern Co. Foundation’s $50 million HBCU (historically Black colleges and universities) Initiative, will be used for technology upgrades in the Center for Technology Excellence. The initiative grants funding to HBCUs for scholarships, internships, leadership development, technology access and career readiness programs.
“After speaking with many institutions across our footprint, we heard the call loud and clear: New and better technology is needed to deliver quality education to students, now and in years to come,” Southern Co. President and CEO Thomas A. Fanning said in a statement. “The goal is to provide resources that will stimulate the kind of critical thinking that will allow students to embrace ideas that will drive the change required for success today and into the future.”
The university intends to use the funding to improve remote instruction, secure data, authenticate signatures and develop a mobile campus communications app.
“Hampton University appreciates this generous donation from Virginia Natural Gas and Southern Co.,” university President William R. Harvey said in a statement. “These funds will further enhance Hampton University’s commitment to employing advanced technological tools to our students and faculty especially during these unprecedented times where virtual learning is key.”
Founded in 1868, Hampton University is a private university with more than 4,200 students. Virginia Natural Gas delivers energy to nearly 300,000 southeastern Virginia customers.
U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) and Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) announced Tuesday they have introduced the Reaching America’s Rural Minority Businesses Act, which would establish up to 10 minority business centers at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to serve rural and underserved communities.
The legislation would authorize the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) in the U.S. Department of Commerce to establish the HBCU business centers, which would offer education, training and technical assistance to rural minority businesses. The existing MDBA centers are currently concentrated in 18 states.
“MBDA centers have long been integral in supporting minority-owned businesses, but many rural businesses face challenges tapping into these federal resources. This difficulty is particularly devastating amid the ongoing economic crisis brought on by COVID-19,” Kaine said in a statement. “By combining the talent and expertise of HBCUs and MBDA centers, this bill will offer vital means for rural minority-owned businesses, helping them thrive and expand.”
The legislation would authorize $10 million per year to establish up to 10 rural business centers at HBCUs. Eligible institutions do not have to be rural, but must demonstrate how they would serve a rural or underserved minority population. Virginia is home to five HBCUs (Norfolk State University, Hampton University, Virginia State University, Virginia Union University and Virginia University of Lynchburg). In 2019, Norfolk State University opened its business center, which has supported local entrepreneurs through community forums, workshops and workspace availability.
“NSU’s Innovation Center is on the forefront of addressing these challenges by working to develop and support the next generation of minority entrepreneurs,” NSU President Javaune Adams-Gaston said in a statement. “The Reaching America’s Rural Minority Business Act is commonsense legislation that will provide America’s HBCUs with access to the critical resources needed to help minority owned businesses thrive in rural America.”
Centers could specifically help with implementing broadband, promoting U.S. manufacturing, closing supply chain gaps, promoting trade and exports and strengthening entrepreneurship, according to Kaine and Wicker’s announcement.
The legislation is cosponsored by U.S. Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.)
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