More Than Just Money
Committed partners can be worth their weight in gold when an institution is trying to improve. Just ask Hampton University.
By Cheryl D. Fields

HAMPTON, Va.

Money is often viewed as the biggest obstacle to upgrading an institution's campus and/or academic programs. In tight economic times, institutions often end up postponing, scaling back or even scuttling plans for growth. But, as at least one historically Black college can attest, sometimes the greatest asset an institution can have is an outside partner who is as committed to a project as campus leaders.

Hampton University's experience in developing its new Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications is one such example. The $10 million facility and enhanced academic program are products of a unique partnership between the university and the Scripps Howard Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Cincinnati-based media company E.W. Scripps Co. The new school was born out of two visions that providentially converged at the right time.

Judith G. Clabes, chief executive of the Scripps Howard Foundation, has played a leading role in the creation of the new school. Her journey to the partnership with Hampton began many years before she even got to the foundation.

"I had been involved in trying to solve the problem of diversity in the nation's news rooms for a long time," Clabes recalls. The former head of the American Society of Newspaper Editors had played an active role in that organization's failed Diversity 2000 effort. During that time, she became all too familiar with the challenges the media face in recruiting people of color. One significant part of the problem, she discovered, is the paltry production of African American students with journalism degrees by the nation's colleges and universities. Not only are traditionally White colleges and universities producing too few African American journalism graduates, but too few historically Black colleges have journalism programs.