John Douglas Jones - who has a Ph.D. in educational leadership - told Lincoln University faculty members Tuesday he's excited to be LU's new provost and vice president for Academic Affairs.
"My first maybe five weeks or so here at Lincoln University have, in fact, been just excellent," he said. "I am excited to be here.
"I am excited about the work that we all will do."
Jones is one of the new senior administrators new LU President Jerald Jones Woolfolk hired to help her lead Lincoln into the future.
"I have met with the deans (and) the academic leadership team," Jones reported. "We have begun to plot a direction for Lincoln University that is designed to move the needle."
Jones said he was - the third of five sons his parents raised in the segregated South of North Carolina.
"All of us are college-educated," he reported, "which was required in our household."
Although the schools and much of the community were segregated, he explained, "we were quite integrated into our community, given the professions our parents had."
His father was a pastor, and his mother was a nurse.
Jones also attended the Head Start preschool program, which was integrated, he said, and which was where he met his wife - although they didn't get married until well after they finished college.
He graduated from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then served as a social worker in the Charlotte-Mecklenberg (County) public schools for several years, before going to the University of Wisconsin at Madison for his graduate studies.
"I completed my master's, Ph.D. and dissertation in 3 years," he said, quipping he "was on the fast track because my wife was with me. She was quite the Southern Belle, and she was quite intolerant of the weather in Madison, Wisconsin - and threatened to leave me there if I didn't finish by May of 1996."
Jones said he returned to Johnson C. Smith University, where he served as director of Student Support Services, a program "designed to assist first-generation, low-income college students to complete their baccalaureate degrees."
He announced Lincoln's Student Support Services program has been returned to "Academic Affairs, where it belongs," because it helps faculty members help students who need extra assistance in learning in their college classes.
Under Kevin Rome's administration, Academic Support Services and Career Services had been combined into one operation, but Jones said he sees those programs as "two ends of a continuum - and they don't meet in the middle."
So going forward, they again will operate separately.
Admissions, Financial Aid and the Registrar also have been moved to the provost's office, Jones announced, with Debra Greene assigned as the new associate provost for enrollment management and strategic academic initiatives.
A former history professor, she had served as LU's interim provost and VPAA until Jones came last month.
Jones said the changes will help him oversee the academic side of university operations, explaining: "I am quite familiar with strategies to influence some very important indicators, like retention rates and graduation rates."
Jones came to LU from Kaiser University, based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but with 19 commuter campuses around that state, as well as programs in other countries.
He said his work with online programs serving adult and non-traditional students was one of the reasons Woolfolk hired him for the LU job.
However, even though he's a top administrator, Jones told Lincoln's faculty: "I'm not important.
"What's important here are the students we serve - and you, the faculty, are important because you provide the core services" to those students.
And the key to keeping Lincoln operating in the future, Jones said, is recruiting those students, then retaining them so they can graduate.
"That is what we (all) are responsible for," he said.
Jones said Lincoln will become more focused on the statistics that will help faculty, staff and administrators work with students so they want to come and then want to stay until they complete their studies - what he called "satisfactory academic progress."
However, it won't be a trial-and-error process.
"We're going to do trial and success," Jones said, doing "things that have proven effective, through research."
Jones said faculty will be responsible for developing LU's curriculum, and he doesn't plan to "develop any programs - but I will want us to engage in some relevant academic programming that is consistent with current trends in higher ed."
Woolfolk told the faculty: "I am supportive of you coming up with those ideas and those programs, and if you feel those are the programs we need, we'll do everything we can to push those programs."
She also said Tuesday that she "can't speak to what happened with other administrations," and won't feel bound by policies or decisions they previously had made.