By Jamal Watson, Ph.D.
The second day of the Higher Education Leadership Foundation's (HELF) Ideation, Innovation, and Collaboration convening traded some of its opening-day energy for something rarer and arguably more valuable: candor.
HBCU presidents, trustees, and senior administrators moved past pleasantries and into the thorniest questions in institutional leadership: the relationship between boards and presidents; the temptation to manage rather than govern; and the human bonds that ultimately determine whether an institution survives a crisis or is consumed by one.
The conversations that unfolded across multiple panels and small discussion groups, offered an unusually frank portrait of life inside HBCU governance, where denominational politics, gubernatorial appointments, alumni interference, and the ever-present "street committee" can either sharpen or destabilize the most capable leaders.
One of the day's most persistent themes was the confusion that some trustees bring with them when they arrive at a board — specifically, the conflation of governance with operational management.
"Many people arrive to a board with their skill sets, their experiences, and immediately, without the proper education and onboarding, they believe that their task is to help the president do his or her job better," said one trustee on the board governance panel. "That's the confusion. The reality is for them to understand how they are the institutional backbone versus the person who drives the operational management."
Another panelist offered a visual metaphor that drew nods across the room: the board, she said, is like the axle system supporting a wheel. "The president is the wheel. Oftentimes people confuse themselves as the wheel, where they were never designed to be."
The moderator, Reverend Matthew L. Watley, , vice chair of Wiley University's board, invoked scripture to frame the stakes. Referencing the story of Samson, he noted that HBCU leaders today must govern institutions in an environment where traditional structures of support are being systematically withdrawn.
"Boards and presidents are hand in glove working together," he said. "We literally don't have the luxury for some of the foolishness and chicanery that has defined many of our institutions."
If the morning sessions established what boards should not do, the afternoon panels illuminated what presidents and board chairs must do, and it had less to do with Robert's Rules than with relationship-building.
President Ericke S. Cage of West Virginia State University, who found himself moving from vice president to chief operating officer to interim president within a matter of months, described the role that trust played in navigating that extraordinary transition.
"There was a relentless focus on the mission," he said. "And two, there was trust. There was no wavering, no equivocation."
Dr. Yolanda W. Page, president of Stillman College in Alabama, described how she learned to tailor her communication style to her board chair's preferences.
"Some people don't like it that way — beginning, middle and end," she said. "Just give me the bullets. Just give me the highlights. So, I was able to navigate that. Getting to know them as individuals, not just as the chairman, has been helpful."
Several presidents emphasized that weekly communication with their board chairs was non-negotiable — not just about institutional affairs, but about life.
Dr. A. Zachary Faison, Jr., president of Edward Waters University in Jacksonville, Florida — the state's first private, independent HBCU — offered perhaps the most pointed advice on boundaries.
"My board has been very, very good about saying, 'We don't run Edward Waters University,'" he said. "When community members bring complaints, board members ask: 'Have you sent an email to the president? Have you called the president's office?' Nine times out of 10, the answer is no. And then my board will say, 'Well, then you're not really trying to get the issue solved. You want to gossip.'"
Perhaps no concept generated more recognition — and a fair amount of laughter — than the "street committee": the informal network of alumni, church members, community stakeholders, and disgruntled employees who feed board members information outside of official channels.
One president described the dynamic with characteristic directness: "If you don't get a handle on that quickly, it can break you very quickly."
But several panelists argued that the street committee, while real, is manageable — primarily through proactive communication.
"If I have the information and it's going to impact the institution, my board chair and my board are going to know," said Faison, who described maintaining a group text with board leadership. "If I get any inkling this may get out on social media or the news, they're going to know almost simultaneously to me getting it."
Boards as Resources, Not Just Governors
The governance conversation eventually turned toward a more aspirational question: in what ways can a well-functioning board add value beyond what the charter requires?
Trustee Pamela Pryor of Edward Waters University described her work chairing the institution's advancement committee and challenging every board member to contribute a minimum of $25,000 to the endowment.
"Over the year or two, we were able to get probably about 50% or more of our board to do that," she said. The effort rippled outward. Board members returned to their own churches and organizations to solicit additional gifts, ultimately generating tens of thousands of dollars in new endowment contributions.
Several panelists also addressed the question of board composition and skills matrices, with at least one trustee acknowledging that her institution had not been systematic about it.
"That's one of our takeaways from these discussions — that we have to have something, a matrix or whatever, that we're going to use to determine the skill sets that are needed," she said.
Growing Together
The day's closing exchanges returned to a theme that had surfaced throughout — the idea that a board and a president are not static partners but co-evolving ones.
Faison, who was named to his position at 37, spoke about the journey he has taken with his board across the years.
"My board has exercised an immense amount of patience with me. They could have very early on said, 'This ain't working.' I'm very unapologetic. On social media all the time. This looks different. But they were patient with me. And what I was saying to them was: just trust me."
He paused, then added: "I'm 46 now. I'm not the same as I was at 37. Allow me to grow. And as I grow, the institution grows and we grow together."
It was an observation that seemed to crystallize much of what the day's conversations had been reaching toward — that governance, at its best, is not a structure but a practice, sustained not by bylaws alone but by the stubborn and renewable work of human trust.
