Step onto the campus of Hampton University in southeastern Virginia, and you’ll find its 314 acres to be full of energy. Recent achievements include a multimillion-dollar NASA mission managed entirely by the university’s Center for Atmospheric Sciences, and the largest freestanding proton therapy center in the world. Also, Hampton’s endowment, is impressive, at more than $230 million, placing it among the top five endowments at historically black colleges and universities, and 241st among the endowments of 833 U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers.
Hampton is a powerful exemplar of management efficiency and entrepreneurial innovation among institutions of higher education. Yet, far too many HBCUs continue to experience fiscal and institutional crises–from financial mismanagement and state and federal funding cuts to declining enrollment and graduation rates.
Why has Hampton flourished and been considered one of the best universities in the nation for decades? William R. Harvey. For 35 years, Harvey has presided over the institution as its CEO, running Hampton like a corporation to fuel its growth in education and infrastructure, meet challenges head-on, and more than quadruple its endowment to $233 million as of 2012. HU notably opted out of UNCF decades ago. An entrepreneur in his own right as one of the first African Americans to own a soft drink franchise, Harvey shared with black enterprise his business approach to leading Hampton. In this exclusive interview with Multimedia Content Producer Janell Hazelwood, he discusses the value of teamwork and investment as well as the efforts needed to ensure the future viability of HBCUs.
Funding, especially for HBCUs, has been difficult. What exactly has been the key to your ability to keep Hampton financially thriving?
I knew I wanted to run Hampton like a business for educational objectives, and that’s what we’ve done. One has to understand that this is a business. When I became president, it was about a $15 million business. Now it’s a more than $200 million business. Our emphasis is quality education, but in order to have quality one has to have the resources. I adopted the business model and there’s no question that it has paid off.
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Hampton has forged business relationships and community involvement in enterprising endeavors. What have been key elements of doing that?
In addition to being president of Hampton, I’m 100% owner of a Pepsi-Cola bottling company in Michigan. I know the value of entrepreneurship and we’ve included entrepreneurship as a field of concentration in our school of business.
We’ve also invested in our community. We built four hotels. We don’t still own them, because that’s not our model. Our model is to serve pretty much like a bank where we provide support to build the hotel, and we get, just like a bank, a percent of our money. We
I think entrepreneurship is good for anybody, particularly African Americans, and I have promulgated that, and it’s worked out well for us here at Hampton.
Education administrators are often tasked with balancing the fiscal health of a school with educational demands of students, faculty, and staff. How have you maintained that balance?
I think that a college president is a CEO of an institution. I’ve got to make sure that my colleagues and I can provide the resources to do good work. Part of that is teamwork. Our board of trustees is involved in everything we do on a policy matter. There’s always a robust discussion with the board. I take everything to the board–the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Also, we have such a world-class, quality faculty. We would not have been able to do the things we’ve done if we didn’t have quality faculty.
My model for administrative success is made up of 10 principles that I’ve practiced all of my adult life. It starts with vision and includes academic excellence, teamwork, innovation, fairness, courage, fiscal conservatism, and results. Results are important.
How have you promoted teamwork?
Teamwork includes working with faculty, administrative staff, the board, and, indeed, the students. I meet with student leaders once a month, just as I meet with faculty once a month. Many of the things we’ve done have come from meetings with our students. For example, students said we needed a new cafeteria. I asked them what they’d like to see in it and how they’d like to see it executed. Now, we probably have the nicest cafeteria in the country, on the water. That came about with a lot of student input. Though I am the team leader, it is the team approach that makes Hampton do well … because I listen, get input, we share it, we have collective competence.
Many people focus on the problems confronting HBCUs instead of solutions.
One of the things people, black and white, do is think that all HBCUs are alike. That’s not correct. We are not a monolith. Just like predominantly white institutions, some are very, very good, some are poor, and most are in the middle.
Hampton happens to be one that’s very good but if you look at the body of HBCUs, all but a few are accredited. They exceed the standards of their accrediting bodies. Some have world-class academic and research activities. For example, nearly 25% of all black pharmacists practicing today in the U.S. came from Xavier University. North Carolina A&T is the largest producer of African Americans with bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in engineering. If you
think about Tuskegee University, Florida A&M University, Spelman College, Tennessee State, Prairie View A&M, Morgan State, Howard University, Meharry, St. Augustine’s–you name it–all are doing well for our society.But a number of HBCUs have faced fiscal crises. You’ve served as chair of President Obama’s
advisory board on HBCUs. What is your advice for turning things around?
Fiscal challenges for all institutions–perhaps even more so at HBCUs– are, quite frankly, always going to be there. If you look at some of the current fiscal crises–and they’re there, not only for the least of us, but for the best of us–is that Pell Grants for HBCU students are down, Title III funds are down, PLUS loans are down.
What one needs to do is take a balanced approach and not depend on any one source of support. What we do is look to the federal government, foundations, corporations, individuals, our alumni–all of these segments are important.
These things are not going to go away, so I can’t rest on my laurels. We’re getting ready to start another $150 million campaign because I have to look forward for Hampton another 10, 15, to 20 years from now, when I’m not here. For me, Hampton is not just a job, it’s a way of life. I’ve got to make sure that I make Hampton better than when I came, and look out for its future. That’s what our founder, Gen. Samuel Chapman Armstrong did, and that’s what I must do.