Dr. Mishoe returns to University Board

After a two-year tenure as the President of Delaware State University, Dr. Wilma Mishoe has returned to her service as a member of the institution’s Board of Trustees.

University Board Chairperson Devona Williams swore in Dr. Mishoe during the board’s regular public meeting on Jan. 23.

After serving on the Board of Trustees at Wilberforce University in Ohio from 2003-2014 – a period that culminated with Dr. Mishoe in the post of acting president of that institution – then-Delaware Gov. Jack Markell appointed her in 2015 as a member of the Delaware State University Board of Trustees.

In July 2017, Dr. Mishoe became the first woman elected chairperson of the University’s Board of Trustees. With the resignation later that year of then-University President Harry L. Williams, the Board appointed Dr. Mishoe as acting president beginning on Jan. 1, 2018. In June 2018, the Board named Dr. Mishoe as the Permanent President of the University, making her the first woman in the institution’s history to serve in that top leadership position. In another historic first at the University, she was also the first offspring of a president to serve in that same capacity (her father Dr. Luna I. Mishoe was the president of then-Delaware State College from 1960-1987).

Dr. Mishoe retired as the University President at the end of 2019.

Although her elevation to President required her to step away from her Board of Trustees service, the governing board did not fill her seat during that period. In resuming her six-year board term, her original service expiration date remains the same – June 11, 2021.