Cynthia Jackson-Hammond to Lead Council for Higher Education Accreditation
Former Central State University President Cynthia Jackson-Hammond was today named as the new president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), the nation’s largest advocacy organization for higher education shared standards and quality assurance.
“I am pleased to serve as president of CHEA and look forward to continuing advocacy of accreditation, member institutions and the work of all recognized accrediting organizations,” Dr. Jackson-Hammond stated.
A unanimous selection to the post by the organization’s board of directors, Jackon-Hammond will begin her tenure at CHEA immediately following her retirement from Central State on June 30. The 2016 “Female President of the Year” HBCU Award winner who led CSU to earn “HBCU of the Year” honors during the same year, was lauded by outgoing CHEA President Judith Eaton as an exemplary leader in higher education.
“I am thrilled that Cynthia will be taking the helm at CHEA,” said outgoing CHEA President Judith Eaton. “Cynthia is the best. She is a seasoned executive, with years of experience and a depth of understanding of effective leadership in higher education that will be of enormous value and move CHEA forward. These are challenging times and the board of directors has chosen a president who will not only lead but prevail and who brings to the position a love of higher education and a heartfelt understanding and commitment to the vital role of quality in higher education in our society.”
Jackson-Hammond is credited with leading Central State’s successful Congressional classification as a land-grant institution in 2014, and last year brokered a partnership with the AFL-CIO labor union to offer admission opportunities to the organization’s more than 12.5 million members for online degree programs.
NC Central’s LeVelle Moton Shares Police Harassment Story on Twitter
As the nation continues to grapple with the murder of Minneapolis, MN resident George Floyd and the result protests throughout the country, North Carolina Central University head men’s basketball coach LeVelle Moton shared his own personal experience with police harassment in North Carolina.
In a detailed thread published on Twitter yesterday afternoon, the four-time Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference men’s basketball tournament championship-winning coach and former CIAA standout as an Eagle player outlined how coverage of the Floyd murder has “triggered” him to relive being pulled over, forcibly removed from his car and accused of being a “dope boy” in 2005.
Click here for the full thread.
Trump Vetoes Borrower Defense Regulation
An Obama-era regulation that allowed college students to bring legal action against institutions for fraudulent degrees and federal student loan forgiveness was vetoed by President Donald Trump this afternoon, creating a reprieve for historically black institutions that may have been a potential target of the rule intended for predatory for-profit institutions.
Originally proposed in July 2016, the regulation created new federal standards for institutional underperformance, factoring cost, post-graduate employment, institutional financial standing and loan debt repayment as indicators of fraudulent, or “financially risky” institutions.
The rule offered students debt forgiveness for proving institutional fraud and would require offending schools to pay a portion of Title IV funding received in the prior year as student aid collateral if deemed to be in financial trouble. It attempted to require watch-list schools to publicly disclose and warn all potential students about financial risk status and cleared the way for students and graduates to file class-action lawsuits against schools with questionable performance metrics.
HBCU presidents and chancellors questioned the broad reach of the rule, which could have presented dangerous consequences for HBCUs with a mission to serve under-resourced and underrepresented student populations, which frequently leads to lower metrics in graduation rates, time to degree completion, and job placement immediately following graduation.
