Desk of the President
Jun 11, 2026
Dear Wileyites,
Stop what you are doing. Take a breath. And let this settle into your spirit: as of today, Wiley University is a doctoral degree-granting institution.
The Board of Trustees of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) has approved our substantive change request to advance to Level V status, and with it, the authorization to offer our first doctoral program, the Executive Ph.D. in Business Administration, offered in three concentrations in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence & Business Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Faith-Based Administration. The program will be delivered in a 24-month online executive format anchored by in-person intensive residencies, drawing accomplished leaders from across the nation to our beloved hill in Marshall, Texas.
I want you to understand what you have done. Not the administration. Not the cabinet. You. Every faculty member who held the standard high. Every staff member who treated this campus as a sacred trust. Every student who chose Wiley University and made us better by being here. Accreditors do not elevate paperwork; they elevate institutions, and institutions are people. This is your achievement.
One hundred fifty-three years ago, our founders planted a college for the formerly enslaved in the piney woods of East Texas. They dreamed of literacy. Today, their dream confers doctorates. The institution of James Farmer and the Great Debaters now takes its seat among the doctoral universities of the American South, and we did not arrive by accident. We arrived by faithfulness.
And some among us carried this request across the finish line, page by page. I am profoundly grateful to our Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Morris Thomas, to the Academic Affairs Leadership Team, and to the Accreditation Council, whose tireless and meticulous labor turned our shared vision into the documented evidence SACSCOC required.
In the weeks ahead, you will hear more about the inaugural cohort, faculty appointments, and how every member of this community can share in this moment. For now, I ask only this: hold your head a little higher today. You work at a doctoral degree-granting university. You always belonged in that company. Now the credential matches the truth.
The compass points forward.
Inspiranta Procedunt,
Herman J. Felton, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
President & Chief Executive Officer
Wiley University
