 HBCU judges welcome back we are not we I am truly privileged to welcome our next guest the esteemed president of Preview A&M University Dr. Ruth Simmons who I've been chasing for years and she finally gave me the time of day to talk about a major gift to the institution a $10 million gift that will support students pursuit of an academic degree in light of the COVID-19 pandemic which were in large part cover the average costs associated with attendance and completion. Dr. Simmons again in honor can you talk about this and while we we don't and won't know who it is what is it that your conversation with that person that particularly interests them in this kind of support for students of all the things that you could give to student scholarships and research stipends and all that covering the costs to those that have been impacted by COVID-19 why that area of philanthropic focus for them. Well first of all thank you for having me and giving me an opportunity to talk about Prairie View I appreciate it but I wish I could tell you that this is a gift that I pursued in truth it is not I have always said that our highest priority at Prairie View is to support our students to support them well enough that they can continue their studies continue and complete their studies and so I said as a high priority raising funds for financial aid out of the blue this donor called me and said that they wanted to help our students it's one of those ideal circumstances that a president dreams of and it happened just that way they didn't say that it had to be used in precisely this way but we decided that this would be a very good use of the funds because of this unique period that we're in. Students and their families are so stressed by COVID and the radical change in circumstances that COVID has brought about including joblessness the inability of some of our students to keep their their jobs which they use to help pay for their education it just seemed to me to be the right thing to do given given COVID and so I'm just delighted that we're able to put this to work for our students and and in checking with the donor and saying what would you think if we use the funds in this way they said very enthusiastically this was great so I'm happy the donors happy we're happy we're able to provide this opportunity for our students. We keep hearing or at least the young people on on Twitter keep talking about they keep asking the question why is it that you know Howard Moore House Spellman get off of the money when we hear things of announcements about gifts Howard Moore House Spellman Howard Moore House Spellman and yet Prairie View has received a couple of these big time donations in recent months. You have donated to Prairie View A&M University. What is it about the PVAM story that you think resonates with the surrounding community and why do you think it is that even as a large one of the largest HBCU that it keeps getting lost that you guys are also a part of that kind of monetary. Well keep keep in mind that that people generally don't know very much about HBCUs and we labor under the difficulty that lots of institutions get attention for a host of reasons but it's very hard for us to get the same kind of attention so that's why we focused on getting the story out about what we're doing. We founded in 1876 for decades we've been producing students who have graduated and gone on into professions and created significant proportion of the middle class here in Texas and around the country but people don't know that story so we focused on telling the story and that's one of our obligations at HBCUs is to make sure that we are as transparent as we can be that we tell our story as often as people are willing to listen to that story because we have a very good story to tell. So secondly keep in mind that Howard and Spellman are very much deserving of the money that they get is wrong with the fact that people make significant gifts to them but let's say that you're a donor and you don't know much about HBCUs well you're going to focus on the heard of right these are the these are the institutions that they have heard of so more to the more to the point telling our story is the single most important thing for us to do Spellman has been able to tell that story has been able to tell that story and the rest of us have got to begin to do the same thing now having said that what we have in this last period been blessed with incredibly generous gifts and I think that has to do with a number of different factors first in this moment where we're finally confronting race and the history of racism in this country many people of good will have turned to thinking about what they can do concretely to help this situation and and this is where you know again telling our story becomes very important so they turn to obvious obvious places that they can be assured will make a difference in this sphere. HBCU is an obvious choice for donors the donor who gave us money for these scholarships is not associated with Prairie View is not associated with the region this is just a person of good will who knows what we're doing out of the blue said that's what I want to do for these students so so I think we are in a special moment when George Floyd was was murdered I was so influenced by that moment that I wanted I wanted to help my students deal with the fallout from that and so I wrote a letter to the community saying here's what I think we ought to do when we get beyond our morning let's think about what we can do and so I wrote a letter to the community saying here's some things that concrete things that we can do well that was just a letter I wrote to my community but it got published and to my astonishment from around the country people and companies and institutions and foundations started contacting us and saying okay I'm in I want to support that so we've raised a tremendous amount of money just by having people read about the proposal that I submitted to the campus about what we could do so so I would say the community is hungry for ideas of what can be done and I think they're at a point now where they want to do something that is concrete right we've got to give them some concrete answers to what can be done to help our communities can I can I actually underscore that conversation with you a bit because I feel like that part of it is Howard's Morrell Spelman there is a there is a tipping point for people to say that that's an institution I want to get behind very strong in engineering long been strong in agriculture long been strong in the programs they're one of the leading institutions we got in the country in terms of young people and talking about voting advocacy and access prayer view dope not always had Ruth Simmons as president and so when you talk about all that attention how much of that tipping point and I don't mean this I mean this is the highest form of compliment I give how much of that is because Ruth Simmons is talking about it and that that's important people to hear that gives a certain gravitas I know I don't want to make you feel like I'm bragging about that but do you think that that's that's possible at least well I I you know when I came to pray you I came with the intention of using whatever I had accomplished in my career to serve this community and if that meant I could raise money as I did at Brown I mean I ran a 1.6 billion dollar campaign at Brown why would I not want to bring some fundraising knowledge to prayer view I mean that's why I'm here oh so does it have anything to do with that in part I'm sure because I have a lot of experience fundraising but secondly I can say it modestly I have very strong views about this which I okay and that is people are so accustomed to coming to HB use HBC use and saying here I'm gonna give you this little gift mm-hmm come to me and they say I'd like to give you this little gift for prayer you I say no thanks okay I know what you do for other institutions that's right and if you want to patronize us we don't accept that if you want to help us come help us you have to be serious about it that means in terms of the amount it has to be a serious amount in terms of engagement it has to be a continuous engagement not a one-shot effort to make you feel better and to promote your philanthropy and so I think what I'm trying to get people to understand is you get treated better if you deserve if you demand better treatment and we're trying to do is demand better treatment and what I learned when I was president of Brown was that that's not a bad thing and donors don't treat it as a bad thing but they treat you as being more serious when you respect yourself enough and what you do enough to value it at a high level and I value Prairie View at a very high level and I say to people all the time no that's too little I'm not interested we're not gonna wait waste our time one of the things that at least from the outside it appears over your distinguished career a lot of people from one sector and come into the HBCU sector and say we need to fit black colleges in this mold it doesn't appear that you have done that and that's reasonable to assume because you're an HBCU graduate you've been on that you sat on the board of an HBCU so you have a global view of what screens can and cannot do regardless of what sector they're in but yet you you still elevated brand in a very intentional and strategic way what is it that enables you to do that easily you know because if you know every school has a certain name recognition but what do you think the assets are a review that allow you to do that to walk in those doors and say let's have a serious conversation about partnership or philanthropy or development or student workforce development what do you think that the Panther story gives you to do that well first of all not everybody at Prairie View would be in agreement with the way that I do things or the way that I think of my work here that's I would say and not everybody in the system that we're a part of will think that everything that I'm doing is the right thing to do because I come to this with a very particular perspective and that is I am I have a finite amount of time to move the institution if I can I only want to be here if I can move Prairie View significantly during my time here that means that I have to push harder I have to insist more and I have to do things sometimes in a way that others would not do it so when I first came I said without consultation with the faculty Prairie View needs to have for American Studies program period it is appalling to me that an HVCU would not offer African American Studies and I just you know so that's not the way to do things and if I were at the beginning of my career I would have been more circumspect in the way I proceeded and so so what what I think allows me to do what I'm doing is first that that I am here for a very special purpose and a very special time I think people know that I think they know I won't be here for as long as a traditional president would be here I think they know that they can get all of my attention all of my passion for this for the time that I'm here and I think they want to take advantage of that I know I know the students do and I know that everything that happens for example this this gift that we've gotten you know the comments that I'm getting from faculty and students is thank goodness that you thank goodness you're here okay because this represents a very large perhaps the largest gift that Purdue has has ever received and so that says to them okay yeah you're not doing things the way you should do them but you know we're going to buy in if it's going to mean that we are going to have the advantage of better resources and improve profile and so forth the most important I define very clearly what I came to things that needed to happen at Purdue number one our students to treat them well and acknowledge how precious every single one of them is and treat them like that right offer them the best opportunities we can possibly afford them and so forth that's number one number two we have to insist that we they are entitled to the first class faculty than any other student is entitled to so we can't we can't stent on on building up our faculty those two things the students and the quality of our programs and and faculty those are the two most important things to me and that's what I insisted that we really need to work on all of the I call them curly cues all the other stuff well that's very nice you know if we do those things but it's not like supporting our students it's not equal to having an excellent faculty that support it to the extent that they need to be supported in order to do their work and so forth so we we've had low salaries for our faculty we have increased our faculty salaries we we have had a lot of temporary faculty we have the goal of making our faculty more sustainable with more stakeholders over a longer period of time that's what builds a great university you know I did this work at Spellman when I was there at Provost as Provost and it's very important for us as HBCUs to believe in our heart of hearts that we are every bit as good and we should therefore be as demanding as any university because our students are no less precious than students at Brown they aren't okay they can be as great as students at Brown so we've got to treat them like that and I think it's wonderful that Kamala Harris is going to be our our vice president because you know the signal of that sends that a graduate of Howard graduates of Howard's have have been doing fantastic things for for for many years but that's a very visible position that makes the statement that she can she is as brilliant as the all of the other women who've exceeded two levels of power that's a very important statement to make and then the final question and again I'm greatly honored by you you coming on today you mentioned that you there's a finite set of time for you to get your work done at Prairie and while I will not ask you what time that is how will you how will you measure that the goal you set for yourself in coming to Texas that you've met or exceeded them is it student achievement is it is it fundraising is it academic development is it facility improvement and capital design or is it all of you above are there certain things where you look back and say boom boom boom out of here I'm going I'm going I'm going fishing the wheel now done done done first of all we are lucky to be in the A&M system because in terms of physical plant we have a beautiful campus yes and we have the capacity to to have the physical facilities that that we need and so that's not a concern my concern is really the standing of the university Prairie View has produced extraordinary graduates it has a stellar engineering program it has the an architecture college school that has produced the highest number of african-american architects it has incredible nursing and I could go on and on so so I but I definitely want to raise the visibility of the university and that means that I know how I have to structure the university to make sure that that we we are structured so that we continue to tell the compelling stories about Prairie View alumni and the programs that are underway at Prairie View I know how to do that and I need to put a certain administrative structure in place with the highly qualified individuals who are able to to do that so far you know I have to say I'm I'm kind of failing at it because since I've been here you know two and a half years I've lost three top administrators to presidencies so it's not going well so I'm going to I'm going to try to hire in the future in a way that does not cause us to lose everybody because they're going on to to great success I'm saying that half you know jokingly but really the administration of the university is very important I want top people running the university and I my job is to hire people okay secondly I'm determined to get the endowment up and to make sure that ours is one of the highest the largest endowments among HBCUs third I want to get more into financial aid so crucial and then I want to have to feel that the faculty is in order you know when I left Spellman I thought okay I had worked on the faculty at Spellman but I didn't realize how long live the work I did would be at Spellman but I the board of trustees and the president invited me back recently to talk about faculty development and then I was able to hear from you know the results of that work so there's certain amount of work that you put in to make sure your faculty have a fair chance at building their careers and I want to put that in place here at Prairie View and once I do all that you know hopefully it'll be time to it'll be time to you know I was happily retired and it was wonderful okay so I longed to go back to that so far that's not working out well for me because being back in Texas I'm a Texan by birth being back in Texas now I've gotten deeply involved in a lot of things here and so even if I retire I'll have a lot to do but but it's been very rewarding to be back and my students are I just can't say enough about how wonderful they are and anything that I can do for them I stand ready to do well we are glad to have a hero still working and not ready to quit this yet so Madam President thank you so much for your time today I appreciate it thank you thank you for the work that you're doing and it is bringing light on all of the variety of things that happen in our community those stories need to be told and I thank you for telling them