Mangum administration not giving SBI credit it deserves for raising at least $6M of FAMU’s $12.3M since 2014

Back in June, FAMU School of Business and Industry Professor (SBI) Annette Singleton Jackson wrote an open letter that said President Elmira Mangum’s administration was “constantly taking credit for the accomplishments of others who came before, and those who continue to work for the betterment of FAMU.”

Another example of the problem Jackson pointed out could be seen in a July 22nd FAMU press release that announced that that the university finished the 2015-2016 year with a total of $6.5 million in contributions.

The press release stated that “this is the largest single-year fundraising total in Florida A&M University’s 128-year history, only exceeding the $5.8 million raised in 2014-2015 after a renewed focus was placed on fundraising under the leadership of President Elmira Mangum, Ph.D.”

That press release didn’t include one word about SBI even though that school is responsible for raising at least $6 million of the total $12.3 million that FAMU received in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016. But Mangum’s name was mentioned seven times.

$5 million of the $5.8 million in 2014-2015 came from a gift by John W. Thompson, an alumnus of the School of Business and Industry (SBI) and chairman of the Microsoft Corporation Board of Directors. That donation was the result of a negotiating process led by SBI Dean Shawnta Friday-Stroud and her team that followed the fundraising model of founding SBI Dean Sybil C. Mobley. The negotiations took years to complete.

Thompson said one of the big reasons for the gift was his desire to give back to the program that Mobley created.

On May 26, 2016, Hershey Company Chairman Jim Nevels visited SBI and discussed his company’s decision to donate $1 million to FAMU to establish the Mobley Hershey Endowed Chair. He said Hershey’s great admiration for Mobley’s work led it to make that contribution to FAMU. 

Questions are now swirling on campus about the future of the current SBI dean. At the June 10, 2016 meeting of the FAMU Board of Trustees, SBI Professor Clyde Ashley said that Friday-Stroud is one of four deans who are possibly “being targeted.”

Mobley appointed top-quality faculty members in SBI and those professors have built on her fundraising success by seeking big donations from corporate leaders who value her legacy. But the July fundraising press release by the FAMU administration ignored the work that Mobley and the professors she hired did to make at least $6 million of the university’s recent big contributions possible. The press release made it seem like every dollar donated to FAMU since 2014 has been because of Mangum.

Maybe Mangum will understand the problem if real Rattlers tell her a rephrased version of what Lloyd Bentsen said to Dan Quayle during the 1988 vice-presidential debate:

“We knew Sybil Mobley. Sybil Mobley was a friend of ours. You, President Mangum, are no Sybil Mobley.”