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Enrollment, Housing and Scholarship Donations are up at NCCU
Provost David H. Jackson Jr. credits rebuilding the admissions team – in particular appointing Sharon Oliver, Ph.D., to lead the enrollment effort – along with efforts to increase retention through University College and an overall enrollment effort that was more organized and aggressive.
While some of the enrollment increase might be due to the COVID pandemic being under control, NCCU also saw an increase in applicants, said Oliver, who serves as interim associate vice chancellor.
Undergraduate Admissions worked with high school guidance counselors, community partners, alumni, faculty and staff on recruiting. Chancellor Akinleye made time to participate in recruitment activities, including speaking with prospective students and parents and creating videos.
Enrollment also benefited from increased attention gained by the football and softball teams’ winning seasons, and the Jack Rudin Jazz Championship brought home by the NCCU Jazz Ensemble.
SHARON OLIVER, PH.D. director Scholarship and Student Aid
SUSAN L. HESTER vice chancellor Institutional Advancement
Jackson is also pleased that NCCU did not go over its cap – no more than 35% of enrolled first-year students with out-of-state residency.
RESIDENCE HALLS ARE FULL NCCU has more students living on campus than ever before. There are now 3,235 students on campus, an increase from 3,144 students in fall 2022.
That number is not just impressive at NCCU but by any standards, said Angela Coleman, Ed.D., vice chancellor for student affairs.
“That’s about 40% of our student population that we house,” Coleman said. “Most universities are at 25 – 35%.”
Living on campus has positive benefits.
“Forty-plus years of research shows students who live on campus are more engaged,” Coleman said. “That contributes to student retention and leads to positive student experience which [results in] happy alums who give to the campus.”
Some of the housing increase is due to new residence halls that were completed during the COVID pandemic. Another factor is diversifying the housing stock on campus.
“Now our inventory is mixed,” Coleman said. “There are [fewer] community-style bathrooms. Now it is more semi-suites, suites and apartment-style [units]. We also house some graduate students and law school students. The new types of housing have attracted those populations.”
In 2022, NCCU Residential Life switched to a new housing management system called Mercury which made it easier to communicate with students, see housing availability and work with special populations such as athletics, Cheatham-White Scholars, the African American Male Initiative, University Honors program, etc.
The Division of Student Affairs also expanded the time period to apply for housing, opening housing applications in January rather than April.
Increase In Scholarship Donations
Finally, the university has raised $16.4 million. That is up 8.6% from $15.1 million during the 2021-2022 school year.
“This is the most we’ve raised in the last ten years,” said Susan L. Hester, vice chancellor for institutional advancement.
The increase was partly due to university gift officers contacting more alumni, who gave generously. The majority of those alumni donated money to support scholarships, particularly to the schools or colleges that they graduated from. Among those were the School of Business, Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise (BRITE), School of Education and School of Law.
It wasn’t easy. There was a decrease in staffing and Institutional Advancement onboarded new staff in the middle of its fundraising campaign.
“We were getting them accustomed to NCCU and learning the culture of NCCU while calling on donors,” Hester said.
Internship At Duke Medical To Benefit Nccu Undergraduates
North Carolina Central University (NCCU) and Duke University jointly developed the Mentored Internship Program. Starting in September 2023, an undergraduate from NCCU began as an intern in the division of nephrology (kidney) at Duke University School of Medicine for one year.
Gentzon Hall, MD, Ph.D., of Duke University, who came up with the idea, said increasing the number of African American physicians is a challenge.
“People in underrepresented groups don’t see African American physicians or they don’t see themselves fitting into elite institutions,” said Hall, vice chief of diversity, equity and inclusion in the division of nephrology at Duke University School of Medicine.
“The motivation to pursue it, to stay engaged once they have made it into medical school, these are areas of significant weakness.”
The original idea for the Duke/NCCU Mentored Internship Program came from Hall, who wanted to honor his mentor, Dr. Michelle Winn, who died in 2014. The idea then expanded to include honoring Dr. Charles Johnson, the first African American member of the medical faculty at Duke School of Medicine, who influenced Winn in her career, Hall said.
While the 2023-2024 internship is for one undergraduate, we plan to have two interns –each with a stipend of $25,000 –in future years.
— Charles D. Johnson, Ph.D.
Statistics show a definite shortage. In 2021, only 5.7% of doctors in the United States were African American, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. In the area of nephrology, it is 6%. Meanwhile, in 2022, 13.6% of the U.S. population is African American, according to the U.S. Census.
Dr. Johnson, an endocrinologist, was also the father of Charles D. Johnson, Ph.D., chair of the history department at NCCU. Hall reached out to department chair Johnson who in turn reached out to Nina Smith, Ph.D., associate dean in the NCCU College of Health and Sciences (CHAS).
The three worked as a team to plan the internship.
“We wanted to make sure that the experience is immersive,” Smith said.
Hall agreed. “The goal is not for her to be another pair of hands in the lab.”
Smith pitched the internship to Dean Mohammad Ahmed, Ph.D., of CHAS and disseminated information about the internship to faculty and departments, who in turn helped recruit student applicants. She arranged for the
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(continued from page 9) intern to gain school credits, reviewed applications, took part in interviewing candidates and arranged meetings of the three organizers to discuss what the internship would look like.
Department Chair Johnson offered his insights on developing the internship. “I gave a sense of who my father was so we could be true to what his mission was as a physician,” Johnson said.
The inaugural intern is Monique Armelle Dacanay, an NCCU junior in biomedical sciences.
For 12 hours a week, Dacanay worked in a lab researching apolipoprotein L1 (APOL1)mediated kidney disease.
She will also shadow researchers, network, attend research conferences, learn about research and visit clinics to learn how to interact with patients. A $25,000 stipend will accompany her experience.
Perhaps most important is an emphasis on mentoring.
“How woefully deficient mentoring is in medicine, particularly for underrepresented students,” Hall said. “What we lack is a sherpa. We don’t have anyone to help us climb this mountain. I wanted this to be a yearlong process because I want the intern to develop relationships with the people mentoring.”
Mentoring is part of the attraction for Dacanay. A Cheatham-White Scholar, honor student and member of the Phi Beta Honor Society, Dacanay says that “throughout the year, I wouldn’t have made it without mentors.”
While the 2023-2024 internship is for one undergraduate, Johnson said that they plan to have two interns – each with a stipend of $25,000 – in future years.
