Talladega College President Gregory J. Vincent participated on a panel, “Illuminating Success Stories on HBCU Campuses” as part of the prestigious 2024 Milken Institute Global Conference, “Shaping a Shared Future,” held in Los Angeles on May 5-8, 2024.
The panel also included UNCF President and CEO Dr. Michael Lomax, CodePath co-founder and CEO Michael Ellison, Wells Fargo Foundation President Darlene Goins, NBA Superstar Chris Paul, American television host Kevin Frazier, and T.D. Jakes Foundation Founder and CEO Bishop T.D. Jakes. The Milken Institute’s Director of Financial Markets Troy Duffie moderated the panel.
“It was a tremendous honor to be included in the Milken Institute Conference, and specifically the HBCU Success panel,” said Vincent. “The panelists are national leaders in creating pathways for HBCU student success, thinking outside of the box to ensure students and communities are given opportunities for successful careers.”
The panel conversation focused on how HBCUs have made a difference to students across the nation and what can be done to ensure that our HBCU students continue to succeed in light of technological changes that are colliding with a nationally declining workforce, declining intellectualism. It also celebrated graduates of the Milken Foundation’s HBCU Fellows Program.
Lomax set the stage for the discussion, explaining how HBCUs are engines of social and economic mobility. He also explained the history of UNCF, started by a group of HBCU presidents 80 years ago to raise money for the historically Black institutions. Since then they have raised more than $6 billion and supported 500,000 students, but the real focus, he explained is thinking about how UNCF can make HBCUs better run enterprises. He said, “Dr. Vincent is an exemplar of our work.”
With that opening, President Vincent discussed Talladega College’s compelling origin story, its success in admitting students with an average GPA of 3.7 under the preferred admissions program, the Emerging Scholars program, stats regarding the College’s success in social mobility, and the high number of Talladega alumni who have become college presidents and highlighted the historically important Amistad murals.
Later in the conversation, Duffie asked Vincent what it was like to take over the College after a global pandemic. Vincent spoke to the fact that the 156 students who walked across the stage during graduation on May 5th, had been affected by the pandemic during their college tenure. All of the entering students this fall as well experienced the pandemic as high school students.
He emphasized with the support from UNCF, the College has been able to implement margin of excellence programming like being able to begin the 2nd HBCU gymnastics team in the nation, which brought 16 high-achieving students to campus who otherwise would have attended another institution; 14 out of the 16 have STEM majors.
Vincent also applauded the tremendous work UNCF did in funding and helping the College complete its strategic planning and campus master plan, which focused the institution on using resources more effectively. “Most importantly, they gave $600,000 in scholarships, which makes a difference between a student making a way out of no way. I see it every day. A student is contemplating, ‘can I make it?’ Then the UNCF scholarship money comes, and for that family, it makes all the difference,” he said. “UNCF is everything to us.”
Later, the conversation turned to students who do not fit the traditional college student profile—students whose college tenure is interrupted, and they later return to college. Vincent received applause from the audience when he explained Talladega College’s Fast Track program for returning students and the Second Chance Pell program for those who had been incarcerated.
The Global conference, with an attendance of around 4,000, has been held annually since 1998 and is a platform for discussion by thought leaders on topics focusing on global issues of technology, business, energy, education, agriculture, the world economy, and health and medical research.
