 HBCU Digest Radio, welcome back. We are continuing our conversation about the HBCU community's response to the COVID-19 global pandemic and the ways in which our colleges and universities will be prepared to face a very, not so certain future, but a hopeful and optimistic view of how we can adapt to that. And we have a tremendous voice, a friend of the show. She is the president emerita of St. Augustine's University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Dr. Diane B. Suber, who will talk to us from a unique perspective of what the leadership should look like for an institution that is likely, not guaranteed, but likely to face a bit of financial strain and what her seasoned leadership and her experience teaches her and can teach others about how to adapt to that. So, Madam President, as usual, it's an honor to have you on. Great, thank you. Hi, Derek, how are you? It's good to be with you again. If you are good, I am great. So, let's begin kind of from the past. So, when you started your tenure at St. Augs, this was a school that had some financial concerns, to say the least, and you were able to successful what was then a college into a university. You added programs, you built enrollment. You did a lot of positive things even out of a less than positive picture. Do you think that this is a similar approach that chancellors and presidents should be taking with their schools now, maybe not being so much in financial duress, but that they could be in financial duress in a matter of weeks and months? I don't, I think from the standpoint that it is a challenge, it is an unknown. There are some similarities. Certainly when I went to St. Augustine University as a new president, there was a lot to learn and there were a lot of needs and a lot of challenges that had not been addressed over the years, and there was, as you indicated, limited resources and limited funding. And so the process of assessing what needed to be done in terms of priorities and acquiring the kind of resources in order to be able to meet those priorities was systemic, but it was traditional. It was not unlike the kind of challenges that most of our institutions, HBCUs and majority institutions as well, deal with on a day-to-day basis or on an annual basis or traditionally over the years. So there was a roadmap. There was a roadmap that said this is where we should be. This is what looks like a finished product and these are the various options that you can look to in order to acquire the kind of resources you need to fix these problems. This pandemic issue is quite different because there is, I mean, we're using the term new norm. That's the new vocabulary now and so we're using the term to describe what's going on but the reality of it is that it is a new norm. There are so many unknowns. There is so many, there's so many challenges that we haven't even looked at that I don't think this is exactly the same thing in terms of what these presidents and chancellors are going to face and are facing moving forward. So no, I don't think it's the same. I think the challenge is the same, which is success. What does the success look like at the end of the road? But I think the landscape is very different. So does that mean that HBCUs have to do a new thing? Because this is, as you mentioned, this is not traditional. This is nothing we've seen before. So if you kind of throw what has been a usual roadmap for us out of financial strain or approaching financial strain, then should the presidents and chancellors and the boards really be thinking about what can we do that is brand new because this situation is brand new? Yeah, I think at this point that presidents and chancellors have to look at stopping the bleeding but I also think it's an opportunity for these institutions to redefine themselves in a way that we've never had an opportunity to do before and we've never had the need to do before. I don't think this is a situation where we are trying to find solutions to fix what we've always done. I don't think we are looking at how do we stimulate recruitment in this thing? I don't think we look at how we have graduated at how we manage budget. I think what we have to do with these institutions have to do and I'm saying we because I don't guess you ever get far away from what your passion is but I think what institutions have to do is say this really is a clean slate. This is the beginning of a whole different approach to higher education, particularly for small institutions or institutions that are historically challenged with the goal of achieving enough financial resources to be successful. I think you have to say the new norm really is that. It is us establishing what will be the norm for us moving forward and that's not an easy thing for our institutions to do because we part of our mission and part of our brand is what we call our historic value, our historic traditions and I don't think this is a time when those traditions can be something that we hold on to as though we have to continue to manifest those things as our brand. It's interesting that you say that because we almost have two trains running towards each other at one time. You hear a number of presidents or at least I do and kind of the private conversation that we have is that and I didn't realize this over all the years I've been covering it. Our students, I won't say all black students but HBCU students are not excited about the prospects of online learning. They kind of want to come back to campus and this is something that Benedict College president Ryzen Clark already spoke about that some of these students feel the quality of life is better on campus than it is at home and they have more access to resources and nurturing on campus than they would at home. So that's one perspective where the students want to come back but then the other is what is the HBCU experience if sports is not there? If the marching band is not there and parties and social gatherings are way, way different in part because your enrollment has to be almost halved just to be able to do so safely. Is it that you can meet the expectations of students and you can maintain HBCU tradition in developing this new norm which we've never done before and this is something we have to kind of invent on the fly. Well, I think that's the real conversation that has to happen. I was talking with a university person not too long ago and their question, the essence of the conversation was we really have to ask ourselves and answer the question what does this institution look like at the end of the pandemic? And her article that you ran not too long ago really hits on I think a core of what the conversation around HBCU tables has to be. And she talked about the fact that for many of our institutions, the institution itself is the safe haven and it's an interesting concept given what's going on as a sidebar to the pandemic and that is the struggle or the conversation we're now having around diversity and Black Lives Matter. But for many of our students, the college is the safe haven so it is do you bring back your students in the midst of the pandemic and run the risk of them becoming infected or do you not bring them back and have them and run the risk of them being victims of the society and I don't know that there is an answer but I think you do have to ask the question and this is an opportunity for our institutions to say we're not all going to be the same. We're going to have to define what we can do effectively in the course of this demand in order to be successful when it is over and we're going to have to look at questions like what are the real priorities? What are the majors that we should keep or that we should initiate given the dictates of the time? I know everybody's concerned about having graduation so these students don't feel that they were cheated out of graduation but being a member of the class of 71 at Hampton University that did March, the only class, I can tell you that at some point life goes on so maybe that's not the priority. Maybe the priority is how do we develop a program that gets our seniors graduated? I know we're looking at our whole enrollment but what's the domino effect if our seniors don't graduate down the road? Are they, then is there a core students then who don't get jobs? Is there an angry group of students who don't get back to the institution? Do we need to change policy so that we ensure that there is a successful outcome for that particular population of our schools? We have to ask the question, is this the time for schools like St. Augustine's and Shaw or Benedict and Allen to say, do we have this conversation where we merge and maximize our existing resources, our existing facilities, our existing faculty because there is a limited amount of revenue stream that we can anticipate and that's accurate. They are hard questions that have to be asked and I think to some degree our institutions are going to have to say, how important is the tradition versus survival and what do we really do to survive? Do we take the money that's forthcoming from the federal government and say, we're going to become the HBCU Capella or the HBCU Phoenix? Or do we say we're going to take the resources that are coming from the federal government and this enrollment and become a core teacher education facility? I think there are some hard questions that have to be asked and answered and they're not going to always have the results or the answers that traditionally our population, our student population or our alumni population have expected and want to be the answers. And you raise an excellent point there because you said it's going to be hard and these are going to be tough questions. I am not sure that I've seen at least in study or contemporary observation of the sector that that's going to happen. I mean, do you have any examples of schools that have done something so dramatically different and it put them on a whole new trajectory of survival and possible expansion? Because it's hard to look at, there's so many examples. You look at a Fisk, you look at a Bethune Cookman. That's been troubling to making for a while and you don't really see a body of here's new innovation. We're going to do something totally different now that's going to sustain us. So do you have any hope that campuses will do that? And if you do, who even starts that conversation? Is it the board? I think in answer to your question, I think there are some few examples, some few models. I think Paul Quinn, Michael Sorrell and Paul Quinn are probably one of the examples that come to the forefront immediately. And they are after 10 years or so, 10 or 15 years or so, just now I think beginning to have the level of credibility that make people start to use them as models or as an example or an indication that this kind of out of the box can work. I think there are some others, both in the majority community and HBCUs, but I think by and large, the answer to your question is no, there are not a lot of models. There are not a lot of examples. But I think it is, this is the time to look at creating new models. And I think that conversation almost has to start with the president. And I think even in terms of how you get to that discussion, presidents themselves are going to have to look outside of the box for the kind of vision and the kind of dialogue that may not be in the cabinets of the councils around their table, but may in fact be in the, if you will, rank and file, the faculty or the staff people or even the custodial and support staff that may be visionary, that may have an idea of how that can work in the trenches at the boots on the ground level. I think we're going to have to traditionally stop looking for the answers in the ways we have traditionally looked for them. And then the last question I'll ask you again, so much of your expertise and your legacy is in chains agency. How long does that usually take for a culture change or for a community buy-in to a new administrative outlook? And the reason why I asked that is because this is the beginning of June, the fiscal year turns July one. Essentially, we have less than a month to figure out what is going to be the definitive word on what the campuses will even do in terms of academic delivery this fall. Our school's going to be in position. They got to make an announcement quick. So if you're talking about, that's just being in business. What is business going to look like? So certainly what should people expect for culture change in the way of dialogue and implementation and interface with the credit and agency and all that? What does a timetable like that look like? If you'll allow me a point of levity, I will say to you, when it happens, I'll let you know. I have a friend who has recently retired from an institution and I have a relative who works at an HBCU institution. And when we get together and share stories, it is amazing how common the thread is among all the institutions where we have worked. And so I will tell you that cultural change does not come easy to us as a people and certainly not to our institutions. And I think if we look for how long that takes based on how long it has taken, then the optimism that I feel gets questioned. I think we have from now to the 1st of July to make decisions that are going to be critical in not only saving our institutions for this period of time, this period of pandemic time, but ensuring their survival moving forward. I think the fiscal year starts in July. There will need to be some critical decisions made moving forward. You made a point earlier about students and African-American students not liking remote and wanting to be on campus. And I think there is some research that supports the fact that by and large, students of color are affective learners. They must be engaged. It must be relevant. They must have a relationship with faculty or teachers. And I think this is going to be true for K-12 schools as well, but in order to be successful and that kind of discussion, that kind of research, that kind of validated research needs to be a part of the discussion. But I think in this case, presidents and chancellors are going to have to make some hard decisions that may not be popular. And in the long run, some of them may not even be successful. But I don't think we have the time that allows us to say, well, maybe we should do this or what happens if. I think a core of people that a president and chancellor trust in terms of having the competency, the expertise, the experience, the vision to make a decision that at least extends the survival of these institutions through the first semester is going to need to be made in the next 15 to 20 days. Otherwise, our students traditionally will be making decisions that may result in they're not returning to the institutions of where they were students in March.