By LEE TANT, T&D Staff ReportTuesday, April 22, 2008


The search for South Carolina State University’s 10th president is down to five finalists, according to Lumus Byrd, vice chairman of the S.C. State Presidential Search Committee.

“The process is progressing very well,” said Byrd, adding the target date of having the new president in place by July 1 is well within reach.

Members of the committee met all day on both Saturday and Sunday to narrow the field that began with 42 candidates.

Byrd, who also serves on the university’s board, said he could not release a list of the finalists’ names yet and that an announcement would be forthcoming.

The committee also selected an alternate, he said.

The committee is planning to invite the finalists to visit the campus to meet with faculty, staff, students and community stakeholders.

“They’ll get a chance to interview and vet the candidates,” Byrd said. The committee hopes to hold those interviews next week.

Once the five finalists have undergone those interviews, three candidates will be selected for final consideration by the entire S.C. State board of trustees.

Byrd noted the confidentiality of the process, stating the committee members had their notes and materials taken up at the conclusion of its weekend meetings.

The committee began searching for former S.C. State President Dr. Andrew Hugine’s replacement at the beginning of the year. The board decided to not renew Hugine’s contract last December and placed him under administrative leave until his last day on Jan. 4.

Dr. Leonard McIntyre was tapped by the board to serve as interim president.

T&D Staff Writer Lee Tant can be reached by e-mail at ltant@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-534-1060.

S.C. State announces finalists in presidential search
By S.C. State University Relations & MarketingTuesday, April 22, 2008
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S.C. State University Presidential Search Committee chairman, Maurice G. Washington, today, announces the names of five applicants who have been selected as finalists for the presidency of the South Carolina State University.

The finalists, listed in alphabetical order, are:

JOHNSON O. AKINLEYE, Ph.D., currently the associate vice chancellor for academic programs at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington;

JULIETTE B. BELL, Ph. D., currently the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Fayetteville State University;

GEORGE E. COOPER, Ph.D., currently the deputy administrator, for Science and Education Resources Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture;

LAWRENCE F. DAVENPORT, Ph. D., currently the interim president of PARAGON FOUNDATION in West Palm Beach, Fl.;

JUANITA P. FAIN, Ph. D., currently the vice president for planning at the University of Nevada, (Las Vegas).

“I am not at all surprised at the quantity or quality of the applicants that expressed interest in the presidency of SC State University,” Washington stated. “The Committee (presidential search) began with 42 candidates, narrowed that to 10, and then again to five. SC State is indeed an institution of great heritage, and a true higher education leader in the United States; and we are committed to appointing the most excellent talent to lead our University into the future,” he continued.

The five applicants will meet with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members during their visits to SC State’s campus. Following the campus visit, the search process will then be completed by the SC State’s Board of Trustees, who will ultimately appoint the 10th President of SC State University.

“I am so proud of the members of the search committee who have given so unselfishly of themselves to ensure that the most qualified of the candidates have been advanced for on campus interviews and the opportunity for our University family to meet, greet, and engage them in dialogue. Our future is brighter than our past,” Washington concluded.

PUBLIC LIVES; A Numbers Man With a Focus on the Littlest Ones
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DiggFacebookMixxYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy JANE GROSS
Published: June 7, 2002
LAWRENCE F. DAVENPORT knows all about financial management systems and best-practice standards. He can go on at eye-glazing length about the savings that come from electronic fund transfers for vendor payments and per-square-foot productivity goals for custodians.

His résumé is 10 pages long, with type so small it cries out for a magnifying glass. In three decades, Dr. Davenport has held more than a dozen jobs, usually as chief financial officer, in such places as the United States House of Representatives, the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania and the Seattle public school system.

Dr. Davenport, 57, an imposing, 6-foot-4-inch former track star, considers himself a ''turnaround specialist,'' a man who rescues troubled organizations. ''I've been a fireman in a lot of different places,'' he said, ''and firemen run toward a fire, not away from it.''

His latest fire is one that blazed hot a year ago, then burned to ashes. Dr. Davenport is the new executive director of Hale House, the children's shelter in Harlem founded by Clara Hale, who baby-sat for neighborhood children for $2 a week and rocked crack babies to sleep.

Mother Hale, as she was known, unwittingly became a national icon -- and the darling of people with pots of money -- when President Ronald Reagan called her ''an American heroine'' in his 1985 State of the Union Address. By the time she died 10 years ago, her daughter and son-in-law had inherited a fund-raising powerhouse. They are under indictment on charges they stole more than $1 million in donations.

Enter a turnaround specialist.

Dr. Davenport, less than a week on the job, seems to fill his office on West 122nd Street, not occupy it. He talks of his strong-willed parents in Lansing, Mich., his walks in Morningside Park with his cocker spaniel, his plans for Hale House.

Much repair work had already been done by an interim director, Edna Wells Handy. She hired Hale House's first social worker and chief financial officer, suspended fund-raising until donors could be reassured, and spruced up the shabby areas where the children lived. A staff of 64, with 32 administrators, was trimmed by almost half and now has a slim majority of child care workers. Details in order, Dr. Davenport mulled Hale House's mission, murky in the scandal's aftermath.

Dr. Davenport said he wants to open a day care center for neighborhood children as well as those who live at Hale House. He intends to double the home's capacity -- it is currently licensed for 13 children -- by completing the renovation of an unused Hale House property.

The expansion, he knows, will be controversial. The consensus among child welfare advocates is that foster homes, care by relatives, or family reunification is better than group housing. But Dr. Davenport, who said, ''I can't be concerned with political correctness,'' suspects that the issue is really money. Foster care costs the state less than $5,000 a year, he said, compared with $37,500 for residential placement.

But Dr. Davenport is on the same page with the advocates about long-term planning for the children in his care. Hale House should follow their progress through adolescence, he said, and be there for them in crisis. The agency should also assist in a smooth reunification with their mothers, most of them imprisoned on drug charges. To that end, he said he plans parenting instruction, job training and other services for mothers once they are paroled.

The ongoing services, to be run by an outside agency, will be located in one of two apartment buildings that Hale House bought from the city years ago for $3 and renovated with $6 million in government funds. The 56 apartments were supposed to provide inexpensive homes for such families, ineligible for public housing because of felony convictions. Instead, Mother Hale's daughter, Lorraine E. Hale, rented all but a dozen to friends, relatives and middle-class tenants.

Dr. Davenport, his wife and a grown son live in one, having downsized to a 1,400-square-foot apartment from a huge home in Hershey, Pa. Their presence is meant to send a message to wary rent-stabilized tenants, who will soon have new neighbors: families headed by women fresh from prison.

DR. DAVENPORT'S post at Hale House brings him full circle, back to his college education in social work and his earliest job, as a ''family helper'' for the Lansing school district. He made home visits to mothers, some prostitutes and drug addicts, instructing them in nutrition and budgeting. The terrain was familiar although the distressed circumstances were not. Dr. Davenport's father, an auto worker, and his mother, a maid, saw to it that all 12 of their children went to college.

Dr. Davenport was a recruited athlete at Western Michigan University, and a state record holder, at 51.5 seconds, in the 440-yard dash. (''It should have been under 50,'' he said, ''but I was boxed in.'') His coach insisted that he major in physical education, lest demanding classes interfere with his eligibility.

But Dr. Davenport's father had taught him that sports were a hobby, not a life plan, so he went home and enrolled in community college. Later, he received bachelor's and master's degrees from Michigan State and a doctorate in education from Farleigh Dickinson University.

''We've got four Ph.D.'s, two lawyers and a bunch of master's degrees,'' Dr. Davenport said of his accomplished siblings. ''If you think I'm smart, you should meet the rest of them.''