Inspiring educator
Simmons, as she has done her entire career, is aiming for high mark at Prairie View A&M.
Prairie View A&M University’s campus is abuzz today with its first-ever commencement held at the new Panther Stadium. Many of the nearly 900 students who are graduating will cross the stage, dressed in purple and gold gowns and leave with a diploma, excited to begin their professional lives.
This 142-year-old university, which was established during the aftermath of the Civil War, recently has embarked on a new beginning of its own. Last month, national higher education star Ruth J. Simmons was inaugurated as its eighth president. The trailblazing Simmons, who already has a string of firsts by her name, added another one: first female president of Prairie View.
Although Simmons has accomplished much in her distinguished education career, it’s here at this historically black university built on a former slave plantation that she could arguably have the most impact. At the second oldest public higher education institution in Texas, most students are poor. About half of the students are the first generation in their family to go to college.
Like many universities that admit most who apply, Prairie View has struggled to graduate its students, in part because of socioeconomic factors. Simmons intends to improve graduation rates by increasing scholarship aid and academic advising. She also plans to recruit and retain demanding faculty, refocus efforts on humanities and social sciences and raise funds to keep students in school, as reported by the Chronicle’s Lindsay Ellis.
If Simmons succeeds in her visionary goals for Prairie View to be among the best smaller universities in the country, and the best historically black college, the university located 50 miles from Houston off U.S. 290 will become a model for the nation.
She has walked in these students’ shoes, so Simmons is uniquely positioned to help them. The 72-yearold educator grew up poor. She was the first in her family to attend college. As a student at Dillard University, a historically black college in New Orleans, she has experienced firsthand how HBCUs can change lives.
The young girl from the Fifth Ward became the first African-American president at the all-women’s Smith College, then at Brown University became the first African-American president at an Ivy League institution, and Time magazine’s 2001 best college president. Simmons’ life story should serve as an inspiration to these students to overcome the many obstacles to graduation.
Texas’ future is linked to Prairie View and our state’s other universities and colleges serving students from groups that traditionally have not earned certificates or degrees in large numbers. Unless Texas can improve completion rates for these students, our state faces a decline in its economic future and the opportunities available to all its people.
Simmons’ network has already opened the university to new sources of donations. But the new president needs more help if she is going to achieve her dream for the university and help better position our state. For starters just 2 percent of alumni give directly to the university. Not only alumni, but business and community leaders in the region should rally to the support of this worthy cause.
On the chilly April day of her inauguration, Simmons noted, “I believe in a way that my path to Prairie View was written in the heavens.” Amen.