Dwuan Warmack says his focus as president of Harris-Stowe State University is hard to forget, because it’s young men just like him.
At Friday’s formal installation in the position that he took over last July, Warmack noted that he didn’t have the best grades or the highest test scores in high school.
“All the indicators said I wasn’t college material,” he told a crowd of friends, family and colleagues at the festivities.
He added that people saw in him what he didn’t see in himself and pushed him to succeed. Now, as head of the area’s only historically black college or university, he says it’s time to give back.
“Our mission is to serve an underrepresented population that is in large percentage low socio-economic, first-generation,” Warmack said in an interview. “Sometimes, that’s the voice unvoiced. So my job is to make sure that population has a voice and that their voice can be heard.”
Warmack, 38, is one of the youngest college presidents in the country. He told the crowd on the Harris-Stowe campus that he had a comfortable career in higher education before he heard about the opening in St. Louis, and he saw the job as a chance to help others as he was helped.
In the interview, he added: “This is not work for me. This is a ministry for me. I think because I’ve been blessed with so much, it’s my opportunity to give back and to ensure that others that need an opportunity get it.”
Warmack actually began his duties at Harris-Stowe last July 15, just a few weeks before Michael Brown was shot to death by a Ferguson policeman. Since that time, Warmack has worked to make the campus what he calls an intellectual think tank for problems and issues that affect young black men. He noted that 40 percent of the school’s students come from North County.
“We want individuals across the country to know that Harris-Stowe is a place, if you want to come talk about race, class, gender, all of the isms, that this is a safe place to do that,” he said, “that will have solution-based outcomes.”
Warmack spelled out a vision for Harris-Stowe that includes more programs, academic excellence, stronger fund-raising and a higher profile for a better image than what he says the public often hears and sees.
On Thursday night, Warmack was joined by three other presidents of HBCUs to debate a question: Should HBCUs continue to exist? No one asks that about other institutions that cater to a special segment of the population, the presidents said, so why should they ask it about black colleges and universities?
The real issue, they added, is how well their institutions are serving students who often are overlooked or excluded elsewhere.
“A lot of universities pride themselves on how many students they weed out,” said Kent Smith Jr., president of Langston University in Oklahoma, “and how selective they are. If you want to do something about African-American minorities, talk about how many students you let in.”
Kevin Rome, president of Lincoln University in Jefferson City, added: “I will not be satisfied until Harris-Stowe and Lincoln University are treated the way we deserve to be treated. We are a state university. We produce graduates. We conduct research. We deserve to be treated the same as other state universities are treated.”
Roslyn Clark Artis, president of Florida Memorial University, said that before Harris-Stowe reacted to Brown’s death in Ferguson, her campus dealt with the death of Trayvon Martin and played a critical role in discussions about race.
“You might imagine the pain that many of our faculty, students and staff felt as we went through that,” she said.
All of the presidents agreed with Warmack’s assertion that HBCUs need to do a better job of letting the public know about the job they do. They said they are putting more time and resources into media, including social media.
Artis said everyone needs to know what a good job the schools are doing under difficult circumstances. She said that many of her students have three strikes against them – poor academic preparation, low income and no family history of higher education.
“Harvard has a 96 percent graduation rate,” Artis said. “Given the students they get, they ought to be closed for losing 4 percent.”
Edited for length and reprinted with permission from news.stlpublicradio.org.
