Comeback at Fisk: a major turn-around is underway at historic university - Special Section On Historically Black Colleges And Universities - Interview

Ebony, Sept, 2002 by Kevin Chappell

Until now, the collection, which includes paintings by Pablo Picasso, Renoir and Henry Ossawa Tanner, has been on display at the school's Carl Van Vechten art gallery. But the school recently established an office of entrepreneurial ventures, which--along with starting an online campus and getting into the book publishing business--plans to take the school's artwork on the road. "What's the need of having this collection if you don't find a way to make money," says Reid-Wallace, who also touts the university's library, which houses some of America's most priceless first edition letters, diaries and memorabilia. "We're not going to do anything of bad taste. The goal is to find a way to make money, but also to tell the Fisk story, expand the brand. It becomes another revenue stream to support student scholarships. It's what Harvard and Yale do."

As with many successful White schools, Fisk has begun to take stock in the importance of planning. Last year, the Mellon Foundation gave the school a grant to do planning and to hire outside consultants. "I don't care how rich in history you are, if you can't do forward thinking, if you can't think in a strategic way about how to move from one place to another, you are not going to get anywhere," Reid-Wallace says. "We have plotted and planned how the university will turn itself around in a 5-year period. That grant was key. It is the first time that we have said that we will not only do the planning, but we will ride herd on everything that we said we will do. Every morning when I wake up, I have a journal that has in it everything that we said we will do. I force myself to read pages of that journal to make sure we are where we are supposed to be today so that we can be where we want tomorrow."

For people like Colbert and Reid-Wallace, helping lay the groundwork for a new Fisk has become a passion. "I'm obsessive-compulsive about it. I love this place," says the president. "I know the only way this institution will be here a 100 years from now, when we are all gone is for us right now to put the stakes in, just put the stakes into the ground very firmly. And it's a passion with me now, a deep commitment because I believe historically Black colleges and universities are treasures, true treasures that should be shared with the world."