Delaware State University President Allen L. Sessoms is a finalist for the top job at the University of the District of Columbia.

Sessoms is listed on the Washington, D.C. university’s Web site as one of four candidates who were invited to spend a day on campus meeting with groups of stakeholders and participating in an open forum. His scheduled campus visit was May 19.

The University of the District of Columbia is a 5,600-student historically black university located on the northwest side of the nation’s capital. The open admission institution was chartered in 1974 and is the only public college in Washington, D.C.

DSU spokesman Carlos Holmes said Sessoms declined to comment other than to say that he was “being recruited as often happens and it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“That’s all we’re going to say about it,” Holmes said.

The job in Washington isn’t the first time Sessoms has been considered for a president’s job outside DSU, a 3,700-student school in Dover. In 2006, shortly after the DSU Board of Trustees voted to extend his contract for three years, Sessoms’ name appeared as an applicant in a presidential search for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

School officials said Sessoms was recruited for the UNLV job but declined to apply. Sessoms has held the top job at DSU since 2003.

Officials at the University of the District of Columbia have been searching for a new president for about a year. President William L. Pollard resigned in June 2007. According to news reports, Pollard’s departure came because that school’s Board of Trustees felt he wasn’t being proactive enough at fixing operational issues and improving academic programs. Pollard was the school’s fifth president in 15 years.

I saw this and I say to DSU folks - keep your used up mess at home and don't make him UDC's problem.

I say that from the bottom of my heart.

Speaking of "mess," maybe Sessoms, by "applying," is seeking greater challenges and is willing to take on the gargantuan task of trying to fix UDC's decades-old and apparently intractable operational and academic problems.

But who knows? If chosen, maybe he would succeed where past UDC leaders have failed.