New president chosen for Texas Southern University
By Benjamin Wermund
May 16, 2016 Updated: May 16, 2016 10:23pm
In his past jobs as a college administrator, Austin A. Lane worked to drive up enrollment at the schools he helped lead. That will likely be one of his biggest challenges when he takes the helm this summer at Texas Southern University.
The Texas Southern board of regents Monday night unanimously picked Lane as the university's next president. Lane, who has family ties to the historically black university, has been second-in-command at the Lone Star College System since January 2015. He will succeed John Rudley, who has led the school since 2008.
"I've followed TSU for years, and I feel like I'm coming home," Lane, 45, said in an interview after the meeting.
The announcement wraps up a months-long search for a new leader. Lane was one of 50 who applied. The board spent nearly 12 hours behind closed doors in a small Marriott meeting room Thursday, interviewing two finalists for the job. They debated until 3 a.m. Friday who would be the right person to lead the university but did not make a decision.
In his interview with the board last week, Lane presented the regents with a 90-day plan, the first 30 days of which focused heavily on recruitment efforts, including tapping into the area's community colleges and high schools.
"Bottom line, Dr. Lane just was on point," board chair Derrick Mitchell said. "He taught me some things about Texas Southern I didn't even know. He's done his homework."
Enrollment ,which reached as high as 11,635 in 2004, has been a major issue in recent years for Texas Southern.
A nearly 10 percent enrollment drop - driven by changes to the federal Pell Grant program - left the university with 7,744 full-time students and a $7 million shortfall in 2014. The school has about 500 more students now; with state funding largely tied to enrollment, fluctuations can lead to big funding cuts at a small school like TSU. College leaders have said they expect to have just $2 million in cash at the end of the fiscal year.
Lane, who currently helps run a community college system with seven campuses, served as president of Lone Star's Montgomery campus for six years, from 2009 to 2015. Full-time enrollment at the school grew by 20 percent during that time to 12,000 students. The number of degrees awarded at the campus nearly doubled during his tenure, from 538 in 2009 to 1,016 in 2015, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
Lane also directed a collegewide enrollment-management team as a vice president at Tyler Junior College in Tyler, where he worked before joining Lone Star and, according to his online biography, helped push enrollment there to a record level.
Besides a leader who can drive enrollment, Texas Southern needs someone who "has a lot of energy, is student-centered, respects faculty governance, and can raise money really well," said Marybeth Gasman, director of the Penn Center for Minority-Serving Institutions at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on historically black colleges and universities.
"I'd love to see someone new on the scene to really breathe fresh air into TSU," Gasman said. "I'd like to see someone who inserts TSU into national conversations."
Lane, who has three degrees including a bachelor's in psychology from Langston University, another historically black college in Oklahoma, has ties to TSU. His father-in-law and mother-in-law both attended Texas Southern. Larry Williams, his father-in-law, took classes with Mickey Leland, the former Texas congressman, and was best man in Leland's wedding.
Lane and his wife, Loren, have three children and are members of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church near Texas Southern.
By state law, Lane, for now technically the sole finalist, won't be able to take the president's position for 21 days. The regents said he will start in June. His predecessor, Rudley, was previously set to leave the school in August, but the regents said Monday night that he will stick around as an adviser to Lane for at least six months.
During his tenure, Rudley raised admissions standards, found ways to fund construction including a new dorm despite cuts in state funding, and pushed for other university improvements. Despite those successes, Rudley in recent months has butted heads with regents and the faculty senate passed a vote of no confidence.
Rudley suggested at a recent regents meeting that his upcoming departure was largely due to change on the board.
"I've been around this business for over 20 years," Rudley said during a contentious March meeting of the board. "I know how when boards change, the winds change, relationships change. ... From a personal standpoint, I should be smart enough to know the table is laid out, and the table laid out was not conducive for me to stay at TSU any longer."
Despite the tension with regents and faculty, the university on Saturday presented Rudley with a medal of honor at the TSU graduation ceremony.
On Monday night, board members said their vote was also a show of confidence in Rudley, whom they have asked to stick around beyond August, when he had planned to leave. The regents said he is welcome to stay on as long as Lane needs his help.
Reproduced via the Houston Chronicle: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...sen-for-Texas-Southern-University-7518287.php
