The Revival for the Soul of Higher Education at Wiley University
Amid unprecedented change, we brought together leaders from small HBCUs nationwide to find the way forward to fulfill the calling for our unique institutions.
The Revival for the Soul of Higher Education at Wiley University
By Wiley University 17th President & CEO Herman J. Felton, Jr., and Dr. Tashia Bradley COO/V.P. for Institutional Advancement
A Think Piece
From May 10-25, 2024, Wiley University hosted a series of experiences coined The Revival, an annual event dedicated to fostering student success by integrating spiritual practices and educational outcomes. Spearheaded by President & CEO Herman J. Felton, Jr., Ph.D., J.D., this initiative evolved beyond a simple professional development series to become a forum for reimagining the alignment between purpose and work in higher education.
Purpose brought together five sitting presidents and one former college/university president who shared inspirational expressions of their faith while tying together their calling, purpose, and impact in higher education leadership.
The centering of purpose reclaims the idea of vocation, or calling, as part of the interaction between HBCU professors/administrators and students. The Revival, as envisioned, is an extraction of what HBCUs have been traditionally the experts in - merging purpose and work to generate an environment where one's calling is so profound that student success is the only outcome. Guest “revivalists” reminded participants that this calling must be re-centered in our work if we as institutions are to thrive for generations to come.
Each distinguished speaker offered a glimpse into how their calling and purpose have inspired their vocation in higher education. Laughter filled the room as we gathered around the storytelling of Dr. Dwaun J. Warmack, President and CEO of Claflin University - who shared his journey to serving at one of the nation’s greatest higher education institutions with one of the largest endowments in HBCU history. Dr. Warmack emphasized that it is his calling that grounds him in the work, in a way that generates these significant fiscal and academic results.
Dr. Andrea Neal, Associate Provost for Academic Engagement at Norfolk State University and guest revivalist, centered our focus on purpose-driven work by inviting us to return to our roots, in establishing support that squarely centers first generation college students. Dr. Neal cited that practices centering students’ needs in order to increase their success requires a different level of engagement.
The Revival organizes around the idea that if we can locate our purpose, we can accept our calling and increase impact on the lives of those we are entrusted to engage. HBCUs that are led by purpose-driven leaders offer an opportunity to go beyond the classroom, as examined by guest revivalist Dr. Micheal Sorrell, President & CEO of Paul Quinn University. His explanation of his purpose offers that this work for him is about eradicating poverty. This purpose drives his efforts and is the basis for his community-centric approach We Over Me, which is encapsulated
throughout the core branding of his institution. It is how he engages his leadership, and requires those who serve alongside him to grow the institution through hard and heart work.
At stake for HBCUs when team members refuse to embrace purpose-driven work is not squarely an individualistic loss - the deficit impacts the community. HBCUs are destinations not only for the culture (before the phrase was popular) - HBCUs are the culture. The community is from whence HBCUs evolved, built on the dreams of newly freed Blacks, creating educational experiences that endured for generations to come. Employment at HBCUs requires an intentionality that is not often expected at other institutions. The work is not just a job, it is a requirement in understanding what you believe about yourself, Black people, and the ancestral history we have emerged from. There is no room for lack of commitment; too much is riding on our participation. We have forged our way forward because of this commitment, even with the most dire of realities: racism, segregation, poverty, and desegregation. Dr. Walter Kimbrough - Retired President of Dillard University and Philander Smith University - reminded us of the sheer brilliance and determination that permeates our HBCU spaces. HBCUs play an indispensable role in promoting educational equity and cultivating future leaders, as highlighted in such data points to be proud of: “a whopping 25% of African American graduates with STEM degrees come from HBCUs. Eight HBCUs were among the top 20 institutions to award the most science and engineering bachelor’s degrees. Though HBCUs make up only three percent of the country’s colleges and universities, our institutions enroll 10% of all Black students and produce almost 20% of all Black graduates.” (https://uncf.org/the-latest/the-numbers-dont-lie-hbcus-are-changing-the-college-landscape)
We are the ones we have been waiting for...
The Genesis
The Revival emerged in the aftermath of the COVID-19 Pandemic, a period marked by significant workplace transformations and a widespread fluctuation of employees vacating their positions, famously dubbed "The Great Resignation." As many workers reassessed their professional lives, higher education - particularly at small private HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) - experienced notable instability. This disruption prompted some leaders to seek new strategies to enhance job satisfaction and retention, situating The Revival as a timely and necessary discussion.
Small private HBCUs, institutions that are often incredibly under-resourced, had to be nimble in this crisis. The challenge not only fueled the reorganization of the employment pool but also required us to be even more attuned to our purpose in the world of work. The COVID-19 pandemic made us different, or pushed underlying beliefs and values that we have been harboring to the surface. The tension between work, life, and balance became the rallying cry for many, demanding that work take place between certain hours traditionally reserved for hourly employees, and without focus on completion of work or deadlines. This new collective attitude left employers and employees whose centering was different scratching their heads and trying to establish what exactly work-life balance meant in terms of completing and celebrating work well done. Even well-established leaders had to map out new pathways for how they would engage work. Dr. Hakim Lucas – guest revivalist and President & CEO of Virginia Union University and co-editor of How HBCUs Navigated the COVID-19 Pandemic – explained how he
grappled with a sincere sense of urgency for fulfilling his purpose while needing to re-imagine his own life goals, in order to be healthier and happier in living in his purpose.
How did we get here, where the college environment became a 9-5 p.m. experience? Our students don’t live their lives in those hours; in fact, the utility of the residential living experience is to embark on a journey with them, during their peak hours of inquiry, activity, and reflection. We are at a dead-end in determining how we inspire greatness if it can only occur during our 9-5/M-F traditional work terms. This is why The Revival was established, so that we may re-establish that there is a unique calling that must be part of one’s ethos in order to work with students, especially Black students at HBCUs. Our experience is linked not to individuality but to our tradition of community. “I” is a foreign concept to most of us, as everything is intertwined in ways that inform our societal status today. Take for example the communities that guard our HBCUs across the land. When we can look past the current state of affairs, we should see the remnants of a thriving community, with buildings, homes, markers, and placards that signal the historical capacity of our communities - the remnants of what an “I” mentality has done. A genuinely innocuous assumption was that desegregation would integrate Black people as full citizens, in a society that had openly hosted dueling ideas about freedom. The Revival is also a philosophical clearinghouse for ideas on how to reinvest in ourselves and our communities. The Revival moves participants to think about this idea of community in the 21st century, and to grapple with whether we can see the rise of our communities again - particularly as we look out of our windows at the blight, nestled in between the historical significance of what was and the reality of what is.
The Mighty Middle
Each leader shared their insights on the challenges and opportunities within higher education, particularly in the context of HBCUs. A significant theme was the importance of aligning work with personal and institutional purposes to foster a more fulfilling and productive educational environment. Special attention was focused on the often powerful group, which was coined by President Felton as The Mighty Middle. It is this group who are neither vice presidents nor entry-level team members, but the directors and assistant vice presidents (or AVPs), that are the mighty and the middle. The term is used to describe the group of employees who have the most direct impact on student experience but are often invested in the least. The Revival emphasized the need to empower this group, recognizing their pivotal role in shaping the institution's success.
This idea of further empowering The Mighty Middle came to being as we were leaving the restrictions of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and re-engaging. The practices of isolation and re-evaluation led many workers to exit the workplace, often with glorious demarcations of why work no longer mattered in the ways it had before. The Revival is a sacred set of conversations that invite employees to consider the reasoning alongside their current existence at Wiley University, from the abstract to the personal. These questions are an opportunity to understand why the higher education landscape is experiencing so much turnover, particularly when it has historically been a highly stable industry.
As The Great Resignation began in 2020, higher education settings experienced instability in staffing at remarkable rates. The departure of team members at small private HBCUs was of
specific interest because of this community’s size and perceived connectedness. As we tried to navigate the turmoil of the pandemic - fighting for medical, physical, and economic survival - our staff was resigning with incredible fanfare. Their departure didn’t always include better endeavors; they were simply quitting. It seemed that The Mighty Middle led the exodus. As they faced this exit, many higher education leaders grappled with how to bring a close to the quitting and establish new practices for those who remained, and for those who will come in the future.
In 2023, Wiley University implemented its first Revival, offering a selection of speakers and friends who could discuss issues facing higher education, and also invite a call to action for all of us invested in securing the investment of higher education on our campus.
Year two of The Revival offered continued conversation and analysis, but a contentious response to The Great Resignation emerged. Was the Great Resignation because work was the problem, or could it be because during this period of decline, individuals determined that they were not aligned in a purpose that mattered, and therefore could not find value in their work experience? The language that had been circulating centered on employers and the workforce as the reason for departures. The exits that circulated social media were perhaps the most dramatic, with lists and letters for their former employers and workplaces. The drama of the quitting was also some of the most relatable, with commentators finding connection in the moments of quitting and railing against the system. There was a solidarity in what seemed to be a pushing back of the system by workers. Every industry has experienced this, but HBCUs have experienced this in a unique way because of the already complicated relationship with our resources to staff our institutions.
It is here that The Revival picked up and collectively located another answer for The Great Resignation. What The Revival exposed is that for some, work is no longer aligned with their purpose; or rather people have come to the experience for multiple reasons, but in that moment of despair, calling, vocation, and purpose were not part of the relationship with work. These are of couple of ways in which the speakers provided some enlightenment on our relationship to the organization Wiley University, the field, higher education (especially HBCUs), and to our stakeholders (students, and their families), as we go forward with impact.
The Revival offered ten days of intense interaction with this lineup of presidents and administrators to create more than the traditional ideas of professional development. We know that great customer service increases student satisfaction, and a nurturing environment offers students an opportunity to grow and explore. However, we discovered that we do not pay enough attention to the employee area that perhaps has the most collective “power” to make or break an institution, The Mighty Middle. This is the group that has the most contact and opportunity to design and implement the ideas and yet is often the least invested in.
The Revival offered this group an entry point into the dialogue that has often left them out while simultaneously expecting them to carry the institution. Instead of investing in a few members to attend a conference a year, the collective campus was turned into a learning laboratory for The Mighty Middle.
The Promised Land
The Revival is more than an idea of professional development; it is a unique approach in higher education; it is a unique approach to training and development for the collective campus community that centers renewal, skill development, and skill strengthening to help increase students' success and completion.
The Revival is a spiritual journey that infuses Wiley University's religious history in efforts of student success and completion, so they go into the nation...
It is our chance to also collaboratively investigate the needs of The Mighty Middle and identify support that increases purpose-driven work for our students. High rates of turnover are not operationally how most multi-million dollar organizations want to proceed; however, in higher education, we are squarely focused on our student success and want collaborators who believe in the gift of working with students and furthering the mission of these 100+-year-old institutions, through their purpose.
For each revival, we set aside time to ascertain what we had learned. Whether it was tangible actions, like the establishment of an honors college, designing integrated/real-time enrollment and fundraising dashboards, the utility of integrating a full technology experience for every student, a no-class cancellation policy, and more - or how we will design a pathway for our students and community during this most critical time - we take this journey together.
As we close the reflection on The Revival 2024, we are reminded by guest revivalist Dr. Zachary Faison, President & CEO of Edward Waters University, that as we come to this work, key elements that are necessary for going forward require us to engage in strategic thinking. Our whole communities need us to master the art of operational efficiency and effectiveness - to ensure that the investment is evident as we frame and inform the nation’s next scholars, debaters, athletes, activists, vocalists, and leaders to... Go Forth Inspired.