“Of Service” – An Editorial by Provost Tony Allen
“Of Service”
By Dr. Tony Allen
Six weeks ago, Delawareans watched our elected officials struggle through the seemingly intractable problem of balancing our state budget without breaking faith with our most vulnerable citizens. While it was not pretty, it was enlightening, because it became an ardent statewide debate about our values, and how much those values should be extended to everyone.
From my perspective, it was exactly the conversation to have, as well as a forum in which the contributions of higher education should have been front, center, and in question. Confronting these questions now is critical, because our answers will largely determine our future.
Since colleges and universities produce the overwhelming majority of teachers and administrators in public education, what level of accountability should our institutions of higher learning assume for ensuring that those professionals are well prepared for the toughest classrooms and most challenging students?
With a declining set of diversified industries to support stable economic growth, what breakthroughs in science or technology are coming from higher education to spur investment, attract new capital, and create new jobs?
In this era of spiraling health care costs and fierce debates over access and affordability, what new learnings have our universities offered the state to flatten that cost curve and create a healthier next generation?
With Delaware’s only metropolitan city reeling from concerns of individual safety and middle-class flight, in what areas has higher education invested to ensure our presence both as learning laboratories and economic engines supporting urban revitalization?
Our higher education system has always actively participated in shaping the landscape for reform, but our role in helping Delaware surmount these challenges must be a core obligation, and central to preparing our students to be “Of Service.” This is equally as important for a large, research-intensive institution such as the University of Delaware; a highly specialized niche school such as Goldey Beacom; growing private institutions such as Wilmington University and Wesley; and Del-Tech, one of our nation’s premiere community colleges.
It is also absolutely critical for the proud state university in Dover, born 1891 as the Delaware College for Colored Students, and now one of the finest and most diverse Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the country. Delaware State University offers a growing research portfolio, unique programs like our world-class Aviation program that continues to boast a 100% placement rates for its graduates, a commitment to data-driven decision-making, and a college of first choice for promising students of any background without sacrificing our proven ability to educate students who are traditionally underrepresented and sometimes underprepared.
It is our ardent belief at DSU that only universities that are diverse at their core, committed to public scholarship and service as an integral part of their mission, and actively connected to the broader community–beyond the campus–can be truly consequential in helping solve some of Delaware’s fundamental challenges.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been closely studying what’s happening in those areas at DSU. What I’ve learned about our portfolio of initiatives has made me inordinately proud and also acutely aware of our obligation to attempt even more.
As a land-grant institution and an HBCU, DSU has two unique responsibilities. First, we are tasked to “train a new generation of educated citizens” from both the general population and from traditionally under-represented groups, including those who have limited access to a quality education and/or are challenged by a limited opportunity structure in their communities.
While that statement includes young people from low-income families in Wilmington, it also encompasses thousands of others throughout Delaware and the region who face similar circumstances. As the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission has noted repeatedly, of the 50% of Delaware public school children that qualify for free or reduced lunch, the greatest proportion of them live in Kent County (Dover specifically), and in the western part of Sussex County.
DSU is equally fortunate to attract students so well prepared before setting foot on our campus that they could succeed anywhere. It’s that dynamic combination that necessitates
a holistic approach from faculty, staff, and other students, who consciously become an integral part of everyone’s learning, growth, and success. In our view, that’s also how you bring quality, accessible education for all into the marketplace.
Our second charge is to be “Of Service” to the people and communities around us, a point so important that it was memorialized in the 1890 federal legislative mandate passed one year before DSU’s founding. That expansion of the 1862 Morrill Act effectively gave national credence for the first time to the notion of access to higher education for all Americans http://1890universities.org/history
Faithfully maintaining that service obligation requires faculty and students alike to engage in scholarship and experiential activities directly contributing to the social, cultural, and economic fabric of the communities surrounding our campus, and extending that to touch the region, the nation, and the world. Knowledgeable heads, willing hands, and humble hearts must combine to convert what’s been learned in the classroom into doing and serving in what our students so often call “the real world.”
These twin responsibilities are the hallmark of our mission: “to produce capable and productive leaders who contribute to the sustainability and economic development of the global community.” Done right, this kind of education represents the hope of a great country, because it testifies that people, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, or who they love, can be made equitably competitive in a smaller, more connected world.
The fundamentals of this effort are strong. Under President Williams’ guidance, DSU faculty and staff have already been working toward the better integration of our academic endeavors with our community engagement. Now we must become a model for comprehensive land-grant institutions that make a strategic difference in their communities.
For example, DSU is already the state’s largest provider of highly qualified teachers of color. While school districts compete to hire our graduates, they often cannot because structural considerations allow nearby Maryland to offer job contracts long before most Delaware schools can do so. We need to increase our output and fix that hiring problem.
In addition, DSU’s Early College High School already provides hundreds of children the opportunity to not only become first-generation college students, but also to graduate high school with up to 60 college credits. We need partnerships that will extend that model north and south, and we must recognize that this success requires us to become bigger players in improving Delaware public education.
That’s why this fall DSU will join the University of Delaware’s Partnership for Public Education to participate in the critical work of improving high-poverty schools
throughout the State of Delaware. We will also sign a formal agreement with Wilmington City Council and the Mayor that will offer our students across a variety of disciplines an opportunity to help solve some of Wilmington’s most pressing problems.
In addition, we will begin this fall to leverage our resources to more completely integrate Service and Experiential Learning into all aspects of our many curricula, not only to develop those habits of mind and practice among our students, but also to use our resources to attack larger challenges with a more strategic approach.
Although much of that work is already embedded in our clinical programs from Nursing to Forensic Biology, we are focused on expanding our already strong relationship with financial institutions such as Barclays and Bank of America to provide credit for practical application of student learning in areas like financial literacy for low-income communities. Our agriculture programs - which include two farms, a 34-pond aquaculture research and demonstration facility, and our Cooperative Extension outreach - are unique resources to help communities “above and below the canal” and throughout the mid-Atlantic region.
In addition, we believe the optics technology developed through the National Science Foundation and NASA must help incubate new business for Delaware and the region, while DSU’s new Department of Mass Communications, Visual and Performing Arts has the potential to create digital learning environments for arts-based education throughout the state.
DSU’s commitment to be “Of Service” also extends to the community of HBCUs. In addition to its numerous collaborations with black colleges and universities, over the last six years, DSU has founded and facilitated an annual HBCU Philanthropy Symposium. Most recently held July 19-21, the event attracted more than 130 fundraisers from public and private HBCUs to discuss relevant challenges and solutions for such institutions. The event was supported by foundations such Kresge, Lumina, Gates, Mellon and Strada.
Delaware deserves this kind of great state-sponsored university, one that internalizes its mission to “train a new generation of educated citizens” and be “Of Service” at its core.
That’s a university that provides a high-quality education to the broadest and most diverse population of citizens at the best possible value, and promotes a culture that brings research and scholarship into the public square, applying it to our communities’ most pressing concerns.
That’s a university capable of inspiring its higher education colleagues, as well as those in industry, the arts, and the humanities, to stand together boldly for economic uplift, the free exchange of ideas, cultural enrichment, social progress, and educational excellence for all.
That’s your Delaware State University.
With a rich 125-year history, a population that looks like the global community we serve, and a contemporary approach to post-secondary education in a 21st century landscape, you can and should expect even more from us at DSU.
And you’ll get it.
Tony Allen is the incoming Executive Vice President and Provost at Delaware State University (DSU), one of the oldest and most diverse historically black colleges and universities in the country. He is also a Whitney M. Young Awardee for Advancing Racial Equality, the National Urban League’s highest honor. He starts his tenure with DSU on August 15.