From the op-ed: “Great things keep happening at FAMU”:
When students enroll at Florida A&M University, we enter
into a pact. When public and private funds are provided to support our students
and operations, we are committed to effective stewardship.
Our team — the faculty, staff and administration — agree to
provide inspirational teaching, character-building, extracurricular experiences
and a safe and stimulating environment in which students can learn and grow. In
return, our students accept the challenge of cultivating a strong knowledge
base built upon the foundation of our core values to become successful adults.
They accept the challenge of pushing themselves to improve their own lives and
the livelihoods of their communities.
Many of the headlines associated with the university over
the past 18 months provide a painful reminder that now is the time to push even
harder for continuous improvement to satisfy our own expectations and those of
our constituents.
But what the headlines do not convey is the broader context
— a story of a university that has been working arduously to address the issues
behind the headlines and to get even better at our many positive attributes. A
recent story behind the headlines is the fact that in March, the university
received a clean financial audit from the state auditor general — the sixth
consecutive unqualified audit. The headlines do not tell the story of the FAMU
that U.S. News and World Report ranked as the country’s No. 1 public
historically black college or university (HBCU), nor of the FAMU that
Washington Monthly magazine ranked as one of the nation’s top 100 universities,
nor of the FAMU that the Princeton Review’s 2012 edition named one of the “best
colleges in the Southeast.”
The Florida A&M University that we know remains one of
the nation’s top producers of African-Americans with bachelor’s degrees. In
2009-2010, FAMU produced 20 percent of the nation’s African-Americans with
doctorates in the environmental sciences, 16 percent of the nation’s
African-American PharmDs, and 20 percent of the nation’s African American
Ph.D.s in the pharmaceutical sciences. On May 4, FAMU will award six minority
students Ph.D.s in environmental science, perhaps more than any other
institution in the nation.
Yet, we are taking seriously the lessons of the recent past
and working on bettering our institution, because like every university or
organization, we must take stock of our challenges in order to avoid these same
problems in the future.
Over the past six months, we have engaged in deep
introspection and have identified on our own other areas not covered in the
headlines that need improvement, and we have either addressed the issues or
developed corrective action plans to do so. We have also worked on the concerns
highlighted by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on
Colleges and are preparing for the association’s August visit to assess our
progress.
While the process is on-going, the good news is that we are
not going it alone. We have buy-in from key constituents. We have developed a
close working relationship with Chancellor Frank T. Brogan and the Board of
Governors’ staff as we address operational issues. Our alumni are fully engaged
in the continuation of our efforts to recruit the best and brightest students,
and to provide financial support at a time when many of our students are facing
financial challenges. In a spirit of transparency, we have, in fact, opened the
lines of communication with the media so that they can have the access needed
to better inform the public about the issues we address at the university.
But why?
Because all of these stakeholders know, as do we, that FAMU
is a strong asset, and a stronger FAMU makes for a stronger Florida. They know of
the contributions of past graduates, the awe-inspiring research and creativity
of our faculty and the necessity of these things to continue for the betterment
of our state, region and nation.
That is why it is our goal to not just rebuild the image of FAMU,
but to solidify our foundation so that our university is among the finest in
the country. We contest the headlines not in a sense of denial, but simply to
make note that even as we solidify our foundation — great things happen at FAMU
every day!
Thank you for helping us tell these stories.