Dr. Evelyn Maria Thompson was named the next president of Coppin State University, effective July 1. Thompson, who has served as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at SUNY at Oneonta since 2011, will be the institution’s first female president.
“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Thompson as president of Coppin State University,” said James L. Shea, chair of the University System of Maryland (USM) Board of Regents, in a May 19 statement. “Her background as a top-level academic leader at SUNY-Oneonta, and her earlier experience in building a research enterprise at an urban historically Black institution, position her well to advance Coppin as a vital institution in Baltimore and the state.”
Prior to SUNY at Oneonta, Thompson served as Vice President for Research and Sponsored Programs at Tennessee State University, where she oversaw federal policy objectives and shaped the institution’s research agenda.
“Dr. Thompson has had such an impressive career in higher education,” said USM Chancellor William E. “Brit” Kirwan on May 19. “In her four years at SUNY Oneonta, she has led an impressive university-wide effort to advance the quality of the institution’s academic programs. Her leadership of the research programs at Tennessee State University is equally impressive. Her time at TSU is especially relevant as she assumes the leadership of Coppin State University because, like CSU, it is a historically black institution in an urban setting. We are very fortunate to have found a person of Dr. Thompson’s quality to lead CSU into the future.”
Coppin State had a total enrollment of just over 3,000 in the fall of 2013, the last year for which data are available from the Maryland Higher Education Commission. It leads the state in Pell Grant-eligible students at 60.8 percent and has the lowest graduation rates in the state, at 16.5 percent, which Kirwan said are directly correlated.
During a May 14 interview, Kirwan said that low-income students (as indicated by Pell Grant eligibility) still face a tremendous achievement gap in the state and across the nation.
“We haven’t made as good progress with low-income students as a group,” said Kirwan at the time. “We’ve moved the needle, but we haven’t made as much progress. … It has to do, quite frankly, with the adequacy of funding and the ability to invest in financial aid.”
