The Hilltop & President Ribeau: Q&A

most rewarding. This

past Sunday at Chapel there was a senior day service. It was the first

time that we've actually done it this way at the Chapel, and Dean

Richardson and his staff just conceptualized it so that the students ran

the whole thing. Some of their stories were challenging, difficult

stories. They talked about experiences in high school where they were

told that they didn't have the ability, they weren't smart enough … the

implication was because they were Black. For almost all of the stories

it wasn't about them but about the responsibility that they had for

their communities, for their families. To see the grace and the poise … I

think everybody in Cramton just had slack jaws. They couldn't even

respond. It was the proudest moment I've ever had as an academic

administrator on any campus, and I've been on five.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *  * * * * *

The

challenging part: We inherited a number of challenges here and that's

why we had the academic renewal, faculty renewal, administrative renewal

… all of these renewal initiatives. The facility challenges are based

on that we haven't had the resources or hadn't utilized the resources in

a way to allow us to maintain our physical plan. We need new

res[idence] halls and we just haven't been able to really--even though

we've had the approval from the Board many years ago-- to get that done.

We don't have enough housing on campus for students who want to live on

campus. Some of the classroom spaces, some of the laboratories need

major renovations, so we need to do that so that you, as a student,

have, as a students have the facilities, classrooms and technology …

 all of the facilities that allow you to be as competitive as possible

when you leave here. The challenging part is doing all of that in an

environment of shrinking resources.

H: What are the next steps in the renewal process?

R:

On the academic side is to make sure we follow through on all of the

recommendations that came from the PCAR process. They [the commission]

made a series of academic recommendations about programs, new programs

that need to be added, things that need to be consolidated and more

interdisciplinary programs.

One

of the recommendations was eliminating the Classics program … and in

fact the Classics program as it existed will be closed and they're

created a new ancient Mediterranean studies program. Classics looked at

Greece, Rome and the antiquity of all those areas. Mediterranean studies

will add to those areas North Africa and West Africa because one of the

opportunities of academic renewal is to insure the curriculum is really

teaching the most recent knowledge and most recent discoveries. We know

now, based on more research, that Africa was the center of western