David V. Tolliver, III
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Michael T. Miller
University of Memphis
Jennifer M. Miles
University of Memphis
Correspondence related to this article should be directed to David V. Tolliver, III, Texas A&M University-Commerce, dvid.tolliver@tamuc.edu
Abstract
There is a strong interest in higher education to enroll a diverse student body, including groups from historically underrepresented populations. This is particularly true within the Black American community, where Black women have increased their presence in higher education yet Black men continue to account for only a small fraction of all college enrollment. To help increase the enrollment of Black men, some institutions have explored and put into place mentoring programs and have looked to symbolically demonstrate that higher education is a welcoming place by spotlighting college presidents who share similar demographic characteristics. The current study was designed to describe the perceptions of Black male college students concerning their institution where a Black male college president was in place. These findings included a range of reactions from the creation of hope and making a difference to perceptions of indifference and even anger. The study illustrates the importance of critically examining role modeling and mentoring as a strategy to help recruit and retain students from diverse backgrounds.
Participation in postsecondary education has been described as one of the most transformative experiences an individual can undergo. The exposure to ideas and differences of opinion, combined with content learning and socialization can provide the tools for an individual to earn more throughout a lifetime as well as serve as a precursor to a higher quality of life (including increased marital stability, healthier lifestyles, etc.). And because of the transformative nature of higher education, it is critical that the experience be open to a wide cross section of society, including those from all types of different backgrounds (Hill, et al., 2005). This includes those from different socio-economic and racial backgrounds.
Higher education in the US has made tremendous progress in diversifying enrollment across all types of institutions. Of particular success has been the quadrupling of enrollment among Hispanic-identifying students and the doubling of Asian students. Students from the Black community, however, have grown at a somewhat slower pace then their other under-represented minority group students, and within the Black community, women have in particular enrolled in higher education at a much higher pace than their male counterparts (Tolliver, 2020). Tolliver particularly noted the state of Black men enrolling in higher education at stagnate levels and identifying the consequences for not participating in postsecondary education as being correlated with negative social behaviors, such as imprisonment and drug use.
Although there have been multiple efforts to increase the enrollment of Black men into higher education, 50-year trends show only modest gains in enrollment. Among the reasons that Black men have identified for not participating in postsecondary education are the lack of role models and others who can identify with them and their experiences (Tolliver, 2020). One response that the academy broadly has undertaken is to hire senior administrators from diverse backgrounds, including individuals from diverse backgrounds into the presidential role. Within the Big 10 athletic conference, for example, nearly half (6 of 14) presidents are individuals from underrepresented populations.
The college presidency is a complex role that is both highly political as well as academic, and the role may or may not serve to indicate to racially minoritized populations that all are welcome on the campus (Martin, 2020). The current study was specifically designed to describe how Black men perceived their campuses hiring a Black male to serve as their college president.
The study is framed by a conceptual framework of mentoring and the importance of having a support system represented within an environment where an individual is present. Mentoring can have a significant impact on an individual; this relationship not only can hold formal parts that reflect obligations to one another but can be largely informal and framed around casual conversations and activities that reflect care for each other. Some programs are formalized and consist of recruiting mentors and protégés, and in other situations the process of mentoring evolves organically with individuals seeking each other and creating safe spaces for open, honest dialogue (DiBianca, et al., 2023; Hoffman & Wallach, 2005; Hurd & Raposa, 2021).
The college president is uniquely situated to provide a mentoring relationship with those on campus. The position, although highly complex and purportedly becoming more complex on a regular basis, carries a high level of visibility and notoriety on campus. This individual is the public ‘face’ of an institution has tremendous position-based power to influence campus activities. For some individuals, this power-relationship holds appeal and attraction; for others, this can be seen as a distraction from the real work that occurs in an academic environment (Jack, 2023; Martin, 2020, McNaughtan & Hotchkins, 2021; Wazin, 2023).
The current study, however, contends that young adults who come to a college campus seek out relationships that provide support and assistance to them. Whether this is a formal pursuit or something informal, finding individuals in power positions who look like them and can have a relational past set of experiences, however minor or major, may play an important role in determining student success.
Background of the Study
Mentoring
The higher education faculty has historically been White, with 7% of the faculty self-identifying as Black (National Center for Education Statistics, 2024), and as Scott (2016) noted, there is little research on Black faculty who have risen into senior administrative positions. One consequence of this, as Wiley (2024) wrote, “When Black male college students do not see men like themselves in faculty and administrative positions, they are less likely to enroll in college and less likely to stay in college” (p. 20).
Harris and Lee (2019) found that Black college students often feel disconnected or removed from White faculty members for a variety of reasons, including trust and perceptions that their historical differences are simply incompatible. This finding was consistent with Brinson and Kottler (1993) who emphasized troubled histories between racial groups as a nearly insurmountable barrier to building close relationships between Black students and White faculty. The converse has been noted for Black students working with Black faculty, however, as there is perception among students that these faculty members hold a similar world-view and historical set of experiences (Fiest-Price, 2001).
The idea of someone who looks and has some similar background characteristics leads to the concept of mentoring. In higher education, working with Black students in particular, racial identity is an important part of the mentoring process. Building trust and communication between a Black student and Black faculty member can be critical to improving the overall experience of the student. This includes improving self-esteem, retention, and graduation rates (Whitfield & Edwards, 2011). These mentoring programs can also help students build the skills to successfully deal with difficult situations and their attitudes about school and academic performance (Dappen & Iserhagen, 2005; Gibson, 2010; Whitfield & Edwards, 2011).
Formal mentoring programs for Black students have been found to be effective (Hoffman & Wallach, 2005; Stromei, 2000), improving social skills, campus integration, retention and graduation rates, etc. Some of the most effective mentoring experiences, however, are those that arise naturally from interactions, such as those between a student and a teacher in the classroom or a student and an administrator on campus. Hurd and Raposa (2018) found that these natural mentoring relationships tend to be strong and develop a closeness that is critical to the student. As they are naturally occurring, the mentoring is altruistic and has the hallmark of a caring relationship.
The challenge associated with the current study has to do with the either real or symbolic mentoring associated with having a ‘mentor’ in the college presidential role and whether this individual has an impact on the students on campus. In order to understand whether it is feasible to construct such a mentoring relationship, an understanding of current college presidential role is necessary.
College Presidents
College presidents can play an important role in determining student success through a combination of their priority setting, visibility on campus, and what they choose to emphasize in their administrative work (Ruch, et al., 2023). Similarly, DiLoreto-Hill (2022) explored the relationship between college presidents and how they work with student government associations, finding in his qualitative study that often there is a disconnect between what presidents and senior administrators see as campus issues and what students, through their formal governing bodies, decide to give attention to. One result of this disconnect is that presidents are frequently seen and their formal actions recognized, but the communication between the president and individual students is often limited.
Gee and Hart (2015) stressed the quality of a college education is driven not by the symbolism of a president, but rather, how the institution interactions and the quality of the education. The president has the power, then, to build critical relationships and create a direction and value system for the institution that can or will prioritize certain things, including respect for diversity, academic rigor, student success, etc. (Corder & Timm, 2021).
The college presidency continues to evolve and has been referred to as the most difficult job in the United States (Thomason, 2018). The position is pulled in multiple directions by disparate constituents all seeking something different from the role. In this context, it can be difficult for presidents to maintain their attention to students (Miles, 2018). These challenges may be even more difficult for Black college presidents, particularly at predominantly White institutions (PWIs), where there may be additional scrutiny of the individual in the role (Jack, 2023; Martin, 2020). Subsequently, the challenge facing college presidents from underrepresented populations is that they must meet all of the typical expectations of the presidential role, but then they must also find ways to connect with and meet the unique needs that may accompany the perspective that they have an additional responsibility to the stakeholders with whom they identify.
The current study is situated at the nexus of the presidential role, race, student success, and community expectations. Presidents have challenging professional roles that pull them in many different directions, yet for Black college presidents, those on campus who also identify as Black may look to them for special support, encouragement, or to build a special connection. This descriptive study seeks to identify what Black students perceive to be the relationship between themselves and the Black president, and whether this creates a value-added environment that possibly increases their opportunities for success.
Research Methods
As the purpose for conducting the study was to describe the experiences of Black men on a college campus with a Black male college president, qualitative research methods were identified as the most appropriate tool to create this description. Qualitative research methods allow for the telling of stories, experiences, and lived situations, clustering stories to create an overall narrative.
The positionality of the researchers was also an important consideration during the process of conducting the study. One scholar was a Black male who had attended both predominantly White institutions (PWI) as well as an Historically Black College (HBCU). With experience in both public education and higher education, he has viewed role modeling as a critical element in his personal and professional life. The other researcher was a White male who had experience at both PWIs and an Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). His work has predominantly been situated in leadership and governance and his expertise in the project related more to the positionality of the presidential role rather than the racially-situated structure of the study. The third researcher brings the perspective of a female with 30 years experience working in student development. Her experience includes leadership at several minority-serving institutions including research and comprehensive universities as well as community colleges. Collectively, they recognize and acknowledge their biases in interpreting and framing both the data and the analysis of that data.
The study was further framed as transcendental phenomenology, whereby the lived experiences of students were described and explored. The approach is based on structure and discovery and data interpretation must recognize the role, bias, and experiences of the researcher (Husserl, 2012; Moustakas, 1994).
To collect data, 11 Black men on a mid-southern research university campus were interviewed. These men were identified through the university’s multicultural center, a space that offered both programming, supportive institutional representatives, and a space for unstructured socialization. These men all responded to personal approaches for participation without regard to year in school or academic major. There were an additional 5 men identified to potentially participate in the study should data saturation not be achieved.
Participants responded to an open-ended, five prompt oral survey administered by an undergraduate student who was hired for the study. The interviewer was trained to conduct the interviews and how to record non-verbal cues and behaviors. The interviews were held in a meeting room adjacent to the multicultural center in the university’s student center.
Upon completion of the interviews, interviews were transcribed and returned to the participants for member-checking. Following each interview, the interview completed a journal entry about impression and observations of the interview and immediately met with one of the co-authors of the study to share feedback. Completed transcripts were then studied using open coding. Transcripts were also shared with a non-researcher expert on college students and race for verification of theme identification.
Findings
Of the 11 interviews conducted, 4 students were freshmen, 2 were sophomores, 4 were juniors, and 1 was a senior. The majority of participants (n=7) had academic majors in the college of arts and sciences, 2 majored in agriculture, 2 in business. The students were from, on average, within 200 miles of the campus, 8 reported that their parents were college graduates, and none of them reported holding part-time jobs while enrolled. All were enrolled on a full-time basis and consented to participate in the study. The interviews lasted, on average, 43 minutes, and all participants verified the accuracy of their transcripts.
The analysis resulted in over 200 different codes, but through repetition, 4 themes emerged from the data: Creating Hope, Anger, Indifference, and Makes a Difference. These themes were somewhat contradictory, and many of the comments made by students were inconsistent and perhaps reflective of the nature of the interviews.
Creating Hope
Having a Black college president was illustrative of the success of a Black individual in higher education and this in turn created some degree of hope for students. Several students pointed to the presidential role on their campus as the ultimate position of responsibility and power, and the racial identification of the individual for them was important. As one student said:
“Its big. Really. Its big. To have the president, the boss of the entire campus be Black tells me that I can do that.”
Another elaborated:
First of all, I don’t see him that often. He doesn’t know me. But its not his job to, you know. But, the fact that the boss, the head [cheerleader] on campus is Black makes a difference. He is a symbol for the entire state, not just those of us hanging around in the MC [multicultural center]…I think when I look at him I don’t want to be him, I want to make some real money, but its cool the university would do that, hire him. It kind of gives me hope that maybe this place is a more accepting than people think.
The most prominent comments throughout all of the interviews was that having a Black president in some way gave students the hope that the institution was not racially motivated to prevent someone’s success, particularly their own. One student commented, “It just makes me feel good. It makes me feel like maybe any of us can achieve something so great as what he has.”
And another student said:
He has it all going on. He’s got that house and that a really nice car and people stand up when he comes in the room. They recognize how important he is. And for him to be an African American man, like me, lets me know in some way that they can look at me and see that I could be him one day. So I don’t know if it really does that much everyday, but it does say something about what I can do and that’s that it gives me hope.
Anger
Another common theme that arose in the interviews was that of frustration bordering on anger. Those men who were interviewed experienced, saw, or heard comments about the president and that these comments were not all positive. As one student said, “Man, I hear it, I hear what people say. They see him and say that he just got the job because of his skin color. No respect for his hard work or what he really did to get here.”
Another noted with surprise that some faculty spoke in non-positive terms about the president.
I think its really interesting that some of those professors who work here say things about the president that are ugly. Just ugly. Now I don’t really know if they have a problem with him or what he does, but the way that they say some of these things sounds racially motivated to me. I haven’t heard anybody use the n-word, but they sure seem to say a lot of bad things about him [the president] and I wonder if they would be saying the same thing if he was White.
One student who was a senior had a somewhat different context to the situation as he had been in school prior to this president’s taking the role.
I saw the last president leave and [new president] get hired. I think some people didn’t want him because he was Black and I heard kind of murmurings, but nobody said anything specifically to me. People thought that he was less qualified for the job and said a lot of stuff about him before he was hired, but eventually, when he got the job, everybody seemed okay with it. But, I did kind of sense things that people were worried that he might turn [our university] into a ghetto or something. Really disappointing. This is a university and we are supposed to be open minded and accepting, and to have this feeling that someone isn’t wanted just because of his race is bad, and I think it is almost worse, too, when people try and come up with other reasons to not hire him because he is Black. The whole thing made me feel angry.
Indifference
A third recurring theme among the interviews was that of indifference by students, suggesting that even with a Black president, the involvement of the president in their everyday lives was minimal, and that ultimately the presence of a Black president made little difference in their lives.
A student who was a freshmen said:
Well, first, I didn’t come here because [the university] has a Black president. I came here because it is a family school and place that I have loved ever since I was a kid. The fact that they have a Black president really didn’t have anything to do with my decision to come here, and I think I’ve actually only seen him two or three times this whole year.
The sentiment of indifference was also noted in comments such as “well, I’ve never seen him in person. Its not like he hangs out here in the MC” and “I guess its good we have a Black president, but it doesn’t change my dorm room, my class assignments, or how other students look at me.”
Makes a Difference
As student comments suggested indifference, they also in an inconsistent manner suggested that it made a difference for them. Comments frequently noted that there was ‘big picture’ impact or symbolic recognition that the president was a man of color, even though the president did not directly engage with these students. A freshman noted,
I don’t know. I think its kind of cool to have a Black president. I don’t think that my life is really any different because he is here or not, but I think somewhere in my mind it does make a difference. I like knowing, you know, that he is there, and even if the everybody else here doesn’t care if I’m here or not, I know that he’s here and that makes a difference.
A senior said,
He wasn’t here when I was a freshman, but he’s here now, and yeah, it does make me feel more secure in my place on campus. I have seen him in person a few times, but he’s never spoken to me. But that said, he’s here and I appreciate seeing someone who looks like me here in a public way.
These comments also included the statements “it makes me feel good to have him in the role, even if he has no idea who I am,” and “it’s just good for the school. I mean, it’s a start, right?”
Discussion and Conclusions
These findings illustrate the difficulty of building campus community. Students on the one hand expressed appreciation and joy in having a college leader who shared their demographic characteristics, but at the same time, they were frustrated that the similarity did not transcend to them personally. They identified hope and indifference in the role, and ultimately seemed to recognize that the hiring of a Black college president was not about them personally, but perhaps is a greater symbolic ‘win’ for the institution.
The greatest benefit to the Black male college students who participated in the study was that the hiring of a Black male college president was a visible sign that the institution placed value and capacity in hiring a person of color. Although this demonstration of value did not trickle down to them personally, it did demonstrate a hope for these students for greater acceptance and integration on campus.
These study participants saw the hiring of the president as positive, but ultimately, as demonstrated in the literature, the role is political and increasingly built upon a job description that is external and business focused. Although the president has the capacity and potential to build a more inclusive culture, this does not guarantee that Black students will somehow be more accepted or do better in their studies or degree progress.
Overall, participants tended to find more value than not in being able to observe a college president with the same demographic profile as their own, but yet, this observation did not yield uniform feelings of impact. There were no negative comments made about the president, but these participants did note that there are subpopulations within the Black community and that these groups view and see each other differently. For these students, the observation of faculty members and others within the Black community making unfavorable statements about the president was troubling for them.
Future research should track different enrollment indicators and performance indicators of different demographics of students over time when diverse leadership assumes the mantel of running an institution. These types of data points may not justify certain hiring decisions, but they can be helpful as the institution thinks critically about how to create a stronger, more inclusive campus community.
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