Although he - and many others - consider Fisk University, Nashville, to be one of the nation's "elite" historically black colleges and universities, Kevin Rome told reporters Friday he won't be trading administrative headaches for smooth sailing.
"Private schools actually experience more budget challenges than public schools," he said, adding his decision to become Fisk's 16th president "wasn't about the resources - it was about the opportunity to lead such a historic institution during challenging times."
Both Lincoln and Fisk were founded at the end of the Civil War, although Fisk has been teaching students for about nine months longer.
In its timeline posted on its website, Fisk reports: "In 1865, barely six months after the end of the Civil War and just two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, three men - John Ogden, the Rev. Erastus Milo Cravath and the Rev. Edward P. Smith - established the Fisk School in Nashville.
"The school was named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau, who provided the new institution with facilities in former Union Army barracks near the present site of Nashville's Union Station.
"In these facilities Fisk convened its first classes on Jan. 9, 1866."
Fisk's first students "ranged in age from seven to 70, but shared common experiences of slavery and poverty - and an extraordinary thirst for learning."
About the time Fisk began holding classes, Lincoln was being created by soldiers of Missouri's 62nd and 65th Colored Infantry units, as they were mustering out of the service in Texas after the Civil War ended.
Lincoln Institute held its first class in September 1866, with two students, in a dilapidated shack on the side of "Hobo Hill" where the Simonsen 9th Grade Center now sits.
Fisk was incorporated in 1867 by the American Missionary Association - later part of the United Church of Christ. A private college, Fisk retains an affiliation with the church today.
Lincoln became a state-supported school in 1871 and a state university in 1921.
Rome is leaving a university with about 3,000 students, to head one that currently enrolls about 800 students.
Fisk Trustee Frank L. Sims has spent the last 18 months as the interim president. He's spent most of that time working on Fisk's financial picture, telling the Nashville Tennessean in 2015: "We wanted someone on an interim basis who could come and help us with an assessment of policies we have in place, controls we have in place or lack of controls we have in place."
He also told the newspaper Fisk's next president "has to be someone capable of building our endowment. We must build the endowment of this college if we're going to be able to sustain the type of education that we want to provide our kids in the future."
Rome told reporters Friday he expects challenges.
"All universities that I'm aware of have challenges - so, we're not different in having challenges" at either school, he said. "Lincoln has its challenges - and I think we've addressed many of them.
"I believe, we have a great faculty, a great staff, great support in the community and we can only go up from here."
Rome said one thing he won't miss by living in Nashville instead of Jefferson City: "The snow. Even though we didn't have that much this year, I am not a winter person."