By Art Jester
ajester@herald-leader.com
FRANKFORT — Today is a milestone for Kentucky State University, as it celebrates its most optimistic future since racial integration left state support for KSU languishing in uncertainty some 50 years ago.
Now, with the opening of two buildings, the state apparently will successfully conclude a 27-year effort to comply with a federal mandate to eliminate all ”vestiges of segregation“ from its public higher education system.
This effort has dealt almost entirely with KSU, the state's only historically black college or university since it was founded in 1886.
As KSU begins its fifth year under President Mary Evans Sias, the university seems to have regained self-respect and a new sense of purpose.
”What we can change is where we go from here,“ Sias said.
Kentucky came under the federal mandate as a result of a series of lawsuits, known as the Adams cases, that involved about a dozen Southern states in which there had been a history of segregated education for blacks.
Kentucky grappled with the matter for most of 1981, considering several proposals that caused bitter protest from some KSU supporters. Among the proposals were plans to make KSU a community college, or to close it altogether.
But under federal guidelines, states were required to improve historically black colleges and universities because they had not been given equal money and resources during segregation and beyond, a violation of their constitutional guarantee of equal rights and equal protection.
In Kentucky's settlement with federal officials, KSU was to remain a small four-year institution, focusing on the liberal arts. Since then, the state has spent more than $100 million on construction projects to comply with the agreement.
Now, state Sen. Julian Carroll, D-Frankfort, a former governor and a longtime KSU supporter, praises Sias, 58, for exuberant, tough and visionary leadership. She has done a ”great job“ of ”cleaning up what used to be a scandalous situation at the university,“ he said.
Carroll was referring to Sias' no-nonsense dismissal of some student troublemakers and alleged lawbreakers. She also added campus police to thwart non-students who were causing trouble.
Carroll said Sias' leadership is changing a perception of KSU over the last 30 years as a revolving door for presidents, some under clouds of mismanagement.
”I think KSU's biggest need now is to have proper funding,“ Carroll said.
To see what proper funding can do, even if it came with the feds breathing down Kentucky's neck, look at the two buildings opening today.
Hathaway Hall, KSU's main classroom building, is fresh from a $13.1 million renovation. The 1967 structure has been so transformed — by ”smart“ classrooms, more seminar and conference rooms, and larger faculty offices — that state Rep. Jesse Crenshaw, D-Lexington, a KSU alumnus, said: ”Once you see what's there, it's a brand-new building, an academic facility that's state of the art.“
Charles Bennett, the dean of the College of Mathematics, Science, Technology and Health, said the new building ”will pick up morale.“
Meanwhile, some urgent housing needs will be helped by the new $20 million Whitney M. Young Jr. Hall, a coed residence hall with all of the modern features, named for the KSU alumnus and esteemed civil rights leader. The old Young Hall on the South Campus has been renovated and will remain in use under a new name, The Halls.
Since Sias left a senior vice presidency at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2004, the housing occupancy rate at KSU has jumped to 98 percent from 74 percent. She expects last year's enrollment of almost 2,700 to go up by 150 to 200 when classes begin Aug. 18.
In time, KSU will need even more dorms, she said, because plans call for enrollment to grow to 4,100. This corresponds with a consultant's study that said the university needed more students to lower its per-student cost of operation.
KSU also awaits legislative approval of $5 million to build the proposed Betty White Nursing Building.
Sias was interviewed in 2006 for the presidency of the historically black Bowie State University in Maryland, but she stopped the discussions. She said she stayed at KSU after some students called her and said, ”You can't leave this job; it isn't done yet.“
Sias said she hopes to retire in Frankfort after she serves as KSU's president another five years or so, as long as the board wants her.
And there are still big problems confronting KSU. Its retention rate — students who finish their first year and return for a second — is only 48 percent, compared with a state average of 78 percent for four-year universities. Its six-year graduation rate is 25 percent, compared with about 47 percent statewide.
At one point, fewer than half of students were passing national teacher exams, but now nearly 100 percent pass, Sias said. Likewise, nursing students achieve strong scores on their national exams.
Enrollment has grown steadily under Sias, as has state budget support in tough times: from $24.8 million in 2004-05 to the almost $27.2 million approved for 2009-2010.
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Friday, July 25th 2008 at 11:10AM
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