Houston-Tillotson leader aims to boost enrollment, build gym
Colette Pierce Burnette sees school as integral part of East Austin.
Colette Pierce Burnette brings an unpretentious, high-energy style to the job of president and chief executive officer at Huston-Tillotson University. Those traits should come in handy as she works to advance the small, historically black college on a gentle hill in East Austin.
Pierce Burnette, 57, previously served as interim president of Pierce College, a two-year school in Puyallup, Wash., and in various leadership positions at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio.
She started work at Hus- ton-Tillotson on July 1, and she will be formally inaugurated Nov. 7 as the first woman to lead the school since Samuel Huston College and Tillotson College merged in 1952. Tillotson had a female president from 1930 to 1944. On Friday, the university marked the 140th anniversary of Tillotson’s founding to educate freed slaves.
Pierce Burnette succeeds Larry Earvin, who doubled enrollment to about 1,000 students, increased the endowment to $11.5 million from $5 million and established a community health clinic and wellness center on campus in cooperation with the University of Texas Dell Medical School and local health care organizations.
Here is an edited account of an interview with the American-Statesman last week:
When your appointment
was announced April 1, you were in the homestretch on a 200-page doctoral dissertation in higher education administration at the University of Pennsylvania. Have you finished it?
I defended that in April and graduated in May. I was really challenged in getting my doctorate late in life. But I had reached the proverbial glass ceiling.
You can’t be a university president without having a doctorate?
You can. It’s just more difficult. And as a woman of color you want to make sure that you have all the credentials so that you clearly have on the same color uniform as everyone else.
Do you plan to increase enrollment?
It’s going to take me time to see what’s healthy for the university, but I will say this: We are focusing on growing our traditional and our adult, nontraditional enrollments because I think there’s great potential in growth, not just for Huston-Tillotson but for the East Austin community.
What niche does this university fill?
We are postured to be the intellectual heartbeat of East Austin. We were founded in this location to be a hub, a sweet spot, to grow a community that deserves to be nurtured with diversity of thought, diversity in the workforce, diversity where we worship, diversity in quality of life.
The college is in a neighborhood undergoing gentrification, where some lower-income people of color are moving out to perimeter areas. What does that feel like?
It feels odd, but it doesn’t feel threatening because the community still has character, still has heart. We are the anchor in this community. We owe the residents of this community to service them as such, to have those conversations on what’s happening in the community. Do we want it to stop? Do we want it to continue? We don’t have the answers, but we can drive toward solutions.
What’s it been like for you, taking a job in a new city?
I am extremely grateful and in awe of the reception that I’ve received. It started with my meetand-greet reception, and I was just overwhelmed at the number of people from all different walks of life who came — local officials, state officials, community people, professional people. It’s not about me. People are embracing the university.
The university’s graduation rates have come up a little in recent years, to a 31 percent six-year rate. The rate for men is 21 percent; for women, 43 percent. What’s going on there?
That’s not exclusively a Huston-Tillotson problem. Our young people come with very big lives, and often many of our young men are the heads of their households. They come from single-parent families.
They come from K-12 situations where they aren’t really adequately prepared for college. We do a yeoman’s job of getting as many through as possible, but it requires resources to be able to do that. We have peer-learning consultants, study hours, tutors — we could do so much more with more resources.
In terms of the physical plant, what is your top priority?
We’re building a community health and wellness center; they hope to see their first patient toward the end of November.
We need a physical health and wellness center — a gym. I’m calling it a health and wellness center because we can have many components in there. The Mary Branch Gymnasium is old. It leaks. The money to bring it up to speed is not worth it.
It sounds like fundraising will be an important part of your job.
My first couple of months, I wasn’t really fundraising; I was friend-raising. We are recruiting for a VP of advancement. I need someone who can help the campus tell the story in an effective way. I feel like I’m turning a wheel to change the culture externally and internally to say that (donating to) Huston-Tillotson is an investment in the future of this area as opposed to a charitable contribution.
Is there an existential threat to Huston-Tillotson?
Not at all. Small liberal arts black colleges have heart and grit. Slowly but surely, the nation is beginning to see that if we don’t service underserved populations in a very grand way, our strength will be challenged as a nation.
There’s a cost to not educating Americans. It’s not just the cost of social programs ... because our people are in poverty. There’s that cost of lost journalists, lost teachers, lost fashion designers, lost artists, lost engineers.
Are there plans to develop the university’s property just west of Chalmers Avenue?
It’s where our students park now. We are in conversations to look into a public-private partnership, and that’s potentially how we could build a new health and wellness center. No decisions have been made by the Board of Trustees on what to do with that area.
What do you do for fun outside work?
I’m an avid reader. If I read nonfiction, it’s generally about higher education. I haven’t had an opportunity to do a lot of reading lately.
I’m also a big fan of “Scandal” and “Empire.” They’re just silly TV shows. And I love shoes. Austin has great shopping for shoes.