Dr. Reynold Verret

STEWARDING XAVIER IN A NEW AGE

Dr. Reynold Verret laughingly describes himself as an academic vagabond, and yet his destiny leading Xavier University of Louisiana as the university’s sixth president and second lay leader seems to have been fated. His first New Orleans academic foray was on the Chemistry faculty at Tulane in the 1990s, with appointments in between including chair of the Department of Chemistry at Clark Atlanta University while also serving as adjunct professor of immunology at Morehouse School of Medicine, and as dean of Arts and Sciences at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, and provost at Savannah State University and at Wilkes University, among others.

Leadership for the greater good

It was in his chief academic role at Savannah that he led the university’s initiatives to build enrollment, enhance the quality and diversity of academic programs, develop the faculty, promote interdisciplinary efforts especially between the humanities and sciences, and to create cooperative relationships with neighboring institutions, and with other partners at the K-12 and higher education levels. His recent work at Xavier reflects these earlier Savannah initiatives. Since Dr. Verret was unanimously elected as Xavier’s president by its board of directors and beginning his tenure at Xavier in July 2015, there has been consistent growth of incoming freshmen, boosted enrollment, and increases in student retention. Too, as New Orleans is a laboratory for innovation in K-12 Public Education, Xavier has developed a strategic alliance with local public schools to serve as a pipeline for African American teachers, and has created a doctoral program in Educational Leadership. At Xavier and throughout his career, Dr. Verret takes great pleasure and satisfaction in the education of students of all races and academic backgrounds at the undergraduate and graduate level. This particularly shows in his stewardship of Xavier as a local academic powerhouse that is nationally recognized as one of the top U.S. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Of his student body, Dr. Verret comments, “It’s been a great joy leading Xavier. What’s significant is not only what we do here (academically), but in setting an example

of what’s possible in American higher education for African American students. “Students come to us with a great range of (academic) preparation and when they leave, they have a higher level of education. The fact that we’re able to do that is showing that this is possible.” He also recognizes the vigor of a Catholic education and the importance of an interdisciplinary curriculum, born from his own early academic experience in Brooklyn, educated by the Jesuits. He laughs, “I was one of those science geek kids. But my passion for the humanities gave me a fundamental cross-disciplinary source of knowledge, and as a scientist, those were important to me.”

Collaborative by nature

Dr. Verret is a firm believer in the strength of collaboration, the result of his journey as a scientist and building relationships across disciplines. His background as a biochemist forms his view as an academic leader. He notes, “Biochemistry is the cross section of the two disciplines (biology and chemistry). You have both feet in each area.” This has also given him the insight that most cutting-edge innovations in academics happen at the edges of where multiple disciplines meet, similar to the overlapping of a Venn diagram. Dr. Verret remarks about the similarity: “When you look at nano-technology and other sciences today. It’s not the core of any, but it’s really chemistry, technology, and physics, and where they interact. A field like economics in my early education had to be quantitative and analytic. But now there’s a psychological component with the rational disciplines. In many fields now there is great excitement for innovation. Yet how we really can benefit is by asking how to learn from our neighbor.” Especially in the academic realm today, for Dr. Verret, the pendulum shift is in recognizing how much collaboration is necessary and mutually beneficial, and how much all academic disciplines have in common. Collaboration is at the forefront of Dr. Verret’s academic philosophy and is obvious in his Xavier leadership, and interdisciplinary new programs. “In my stewardship (here), my experience in interdisciplinary academics has led to a new neuroscience program, which is the bridge between the life and the behavioral sciences. One thing at Xavier, and a credit to my team, is how many of us (our students) have dual majors.”

Community

Xavier’s community partnerships also reflect such collaboration, for example Xavier’s partnership with Ochsner Health Systems. Expanded from their symbiotic relationship with the College of Pharmacy since the 1980s, is the launch of the new Xavier Physician

Assistant program and the upcoming implementation of Genetic Counseling and Health Informatics programs. Dr. Verret gives credit to Ochsner for being so open in their partnership, noting, “we need each other’s initiatives; they make us better.” “Our partnerships are intentional in that we ask ourselves, what curricula can we have so that our students are trained where they’re needed? In this instance, African American physicians’ assistants only represent 5% of the field and so we wanted to open this avenue to our students. We are engaged and exploring other partnerships, both nationally and not Dr. Verret 2nd lining during his investiture as Xavier’s 6th president - photo by Xavier University of Louisianajust locally.” Other examples of expanding Xavier’s academic offerings and developing programs to meet industry needs include the addition of the pathology undergraduate and master’s programs and an eye toward adding genetic counseling and personalized medicine disciplines. “Clearly, we open those areas to students who have that inclination and keep an eye open not only in health fields.”

From strength to strength

The university’s status has been burnished not only through these community partnerships but in national recognition. Chief among the university’s national plaudits is the very timely $420,000 grant (announced May 2021) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop mitigation strategies to reduce and prevent the disproportionate COVID-19 transmission among African Americans in the New Orleans metropolitan area. Xavier’s new age of recognition under Dr. Verret also extends to donorship. In 2020, the university received $20 million – the largest private gift in the school’s nearly 100-year history – from an anonymous donor. At the same time as this donation, MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced that the university was one of about 120 organizations to which she had donated nearly $1.7 billion of her fortune. As it moves toward its centennial anniversary in 2025, such gifts allow the school to secure its future by investing in endowments and expanding need-based scholarship. Of his current and future graduates, Dr. Reynold Verret is certain of their abilities to become leaders. “There is a need for the leadership that our young men and women can provide. They’re able to serve and work together as brothers and sisters.”

The only historically Black, Catholic university in the United States, Xavier is a private, liberal artsbased, co-educational institution currently offering more than 40 undergraduate majors and several graduate degree programs. Nearly half of its 3,384 (2020-2021) students are from Louisiana, but it draws students from nearly all fifty states and 16 foreign countries. Xavier is a nationally recognized leader in the STEM and the health sciences, producing more African American students who graduate from medical schools each year than any other university in the United States. Its College of Pharmacy is among the top producers of African American pharmacists. Its liberal arts-based programs, in the areas of art, business, education, psychology, and political science – as well as recent additions in bioinformatics, data science, neuroscience, crime and social justice, and jazz studies – offer students an unbeatable combination of traditional classroom study, hands-on research, service-learning opportunities, and life experiences.

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Dr. Rougelot completed his undergraduate education at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and received his Medical Doctorate from LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans. He completed his internal medicine internship at Ochsner Medical Center and his dermatology residency at Tulane University where he was appointed Chief Resident of Dermatologic Surgery and Cosmetics. After residency, Dr. Rougelot completed an ACGME accredited fellowship in Mohs Micrographic Surgery and Dermatologic Oncology at Dermatology Associates of Birmingham with world-renowned Mohs surgeon Dr. Gary Monheit.

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