UNCF Gray's Way

Black Issues in Higher Education, Sept 30, 1999 by Ronald Roach

* An energy conservation program for the U.S. Department of Energy.

* A gerontology curricula program for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

* Archival work for and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

* Programs for the U.S. Departments Labor and Defense and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"This has been the biggest change for UNCF," Doermann says.

Two other significant alterations wrought under Gray's leadership are the launching of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute and The College Fund's move from New York City to northern Virginia.

The Patterson Institute, established in 1996 with a $5 million endowment, conducts and distributes research to policy makers, educators and the public in hopes of enhancing educational opportunities and improving outcomes for African Americans at all levels of education.

Under the helm of Dr. Michael T. Nettles, its first director, the institute attracted positive reviews for its first major publication, the three volume "African American Education Data Book."

"It takes a long time to get people paying attention to what the research is showing," says Dr. Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich, chair of the Black Leadership Forum. The Institute "has got a real opportunity and challenge to get that done."

Enhanced Policy Role

Even though most UNCF schools sit in the South, the UNCF's original New York City headquarters placed it in close proximity to the image-making Madison Avenue advertising firms and many Fortune 500 companies it hoped to woo.

Yet even as early as the late 1970s, UNCF member presidents pushed for a stronger presence in Washington, D.C. Technically, UNCF schools already were represented in the nation's capital by NAFEO.

But some presidents believed they needed their own voice on Capitol Hill. Dr. Henry Ponder, NAFEO's current president and a former president of Fisk University, a UNCF member school, says the push by UNCF member presidents in the 1980s represented what all Black college presidents were seeking at the time -- government-sponsored research opportunities and federal contracts. "Black colleges were not getting their fair share," Ponder says.

By the mid-1980s, under the leadership of Dr. Norman Francis of Xavier University, Dr. Johnetta Cole of Spelman College, Dr. Adib Shakir of Tougaloo College and Dr. Robert Albright of Johnson C. Smith College, the UNCF began dabbling in higher education policy -- such as student financial aid, Pell grants and other access-related issues.

"What happened was that UNCF leadership went from being reactive to proactive on higher education policy," says William "Buddy" Blakey, Washington, D.C., counsel for UNCF.

Blakey recalls that the 1986 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act marked a watershed moment among the advocacy organizations for Black institutions. Cooperation among UNCF, NAFEO and the Office for the Advancement of Public Black Colleges at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges hit a high point as they worked together for the inclusion of Title III, Part B in the reauthorization, he says. That section authorized special funding exclusively for Black institutions.