Zahra Gor­don

"The things about it that I love are its mis­sion and its mot­to: truth and ser­vice. Howard (Uni­ver­si­ty) has in­flu­enced not just the US, but the African Di­as­po­ra in a ma­jor way," said Dr Wayne Fred­er­ick dur­ing an in­ter­view at the T&T Guardian re­cent­ly. Fred­er­ick, 42, a sur­gi­cal on­col­o­gist, was named in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the Wash­ing­ton DC uni­ver­si­ty in Oc­to­ber.

T&T Tra­di­tion

Fred­er­ick has had a 25-year re­la­tion­ship with Howard and is just one of many Trinida­di­ans for whom the school is an al­ma mater. "I think Howard and T&T have had a very fruit­ful re­la­tion­ship based on some of the lu­mi­nar­ies who have spent time on our cam­pus like Er­ic Williams and Stok­ley Carmichael (Kwame Ture–peo­ple who re­al­ly went on to in­flu­ence not just the uni­ver­si­ty, but al­so had a ma­jor im­pact back in T&T," he said.

In 1989, at just 16, Fred­er­ick left his Diego Mar­tin home to study zo­ol­o­gy at Howard.

Hav­ing suf­fered with sick­le cell dis­ease since child­hood, Fred­er­ick had dreams of find­ing a cure for the dis­ease and ad­mired Howard's Sick­le Cell Cen­tre. In 1994, at 22, Fred­er­ick grad­u­at­ed from the Howard Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Med­i­cine. Lat­er, he re­ceived a third de­gree–an MBA–from HU as well.

Fred­er­ick then served as the as­so­ciate di­rec­tor of the Ca­r­ole and Ray Neag Com­pre­hen­sive Can­cer Cen­ter and the di­rec­tor of sur­gi­cal on­tol­ogy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Health Cen­ter and re­turned to Howard in 2006.

Since then, he has served as a pro­fes­sor, as­so­ciate dean in the Col­lege of Med­i­cine, di­vi­sion chief in the De­part­ment of Surgery at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal, di­rec­tor of the Can­cer Cen­ter and deputy provost for health sci­ences. Pri­or to be­ing named in­ter­im pres­i­dent, Fred­er­ick served as provost and chief aca­d­e­m­ic of­fi­cer.

Fred­er­ick would like to deep­en Howard's re­la­tion­ship with T&T and he has al­ready be­gun. In 2012, while provost, he made his first over­seas re­cruit­ing trip to T&T.

Dur­ing his vis­it in late No­vem­ber, he met with mem­bers of the HU T&T Alum­ni As­so­ci­a­tion. Fred­er­ick would like to see Howard build a more sys­tem­at­ic re­la­tion­ship with T&T.

"On a broad­er scale I'd like to see more tan­gi­ble pro­grammes where both sides can ben­e­fit and I would like to see broad­er re­la­tion­ships with UWI and UTT and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions of high­er ed­u­ca­tion in T&T."

He would al­so like to see more stu­dents from T&T and oth­er parts of the world at­tend Howard and re­turn to their home coun­tries to make pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions to their so­ci­eties.

Fred­er­ick said one of the uni­ver­si­ty's im­me­di­ate goals is to in­crease the in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent pop­u­la­tion at Howard, which has dropped from ten per cent to four per cent in re­cent years.

Fred­er­ick at­trib­ut­es the drop to ris­ing costs to at­tend uni­ver­si­ties and al­so grow­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Caribbean. Cur­rent­ly, 25 per cent of Howard's in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is from the Caribbean while 10.8 per cent of the in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is from T&T.

Goal ori­ent­ed

In­creas­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is just one of Fred­er­ick's goals as in­ter­im pres­i­dent. His ap­point­ment to the po­si­tion came at a time some would call tu­mul­tuous. In June, a let­ter writ­ten by the vice chair­woman of Howard's board of trustees, Re­nee Hig­gin­bot­tom-Brooks, ex­pressed con­cern that HU may not ex­ist in three years time due to fi­nan­cial and oth­er mis­man­age­ment.

In Sep­tem­ber, Moody's In­vestors Ser­vice down­grad­ed HU's cred­it rat­ing claim­ing a "loss of pa­tient rev­enue and vol­ume at its hos­pi­tal and cuts in fed­er­al fund­ing."

Howard is just one of many HB­CUs–his­tor­i­cal­ly black col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties–that have lost fed­er­al fund­ing re­cent­ly. Al­so in Sep­tem­ber, two law­suits were filed against the uni­ver­si­ty claim­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion and re­tal­i­a­tion for whistle­blow­ing.

Fol­low­ing months of bad press, the Howard's 16th pres­i­dent, Dr Sid­ney Ribeau, re­signed. And if this wasn't enough, at the school's an­nu­al Home­com­ing cel­e­bra­tions, in late Oc­to­ber, eight peo­ple were in­jured when at­tempts to con­trol crowds failed. Con­se­quent­ly, one of Fred­er­ick's goals is to change the pub­lic dis­course about Howard.

"In terms of the sto­ries over the sum­mer, I have not found any fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment or malfea­sance and cer­tain­ly if I do I will ad­dress that. But I have no con­cerns right now that any of that ex­ists. What I think we have to do right now is re­fo­cus and keep our eyes on where we need to go," said Fred­er­ick.

He al­so spoke well of Ribeau, al­though many had ex­pressed a lack of con­fi­dence in his lead­er­ship.

"I still en­joy a very good re­la­tion­ship with Dr Ribeau and I think he did a sol­id job.

He came in dur­ing tough eco­nom­ic times and it's al­ways dif­fi­cult to run a uni­ver­si­ty when re­sources are lim­it­ed and I think he stepped up to that chal­lenge."

The re­ports of a "stam­pede" at Home­com­ing–the an­nu­al fes­ti­val for alum­ni–were al­so ex­ag­ger­at­ed, ac­cord­ing to Fred­er­ick.

"I wouldn't de­scribe it as a stam­pede.

"I was there the en­tire time. The in­ci­dent grew out of the fact that the year be­fore we had about 22,000 peo­ple on the yard (the main quad­ran­gle on Howard's cam­pus) and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Po­lice De­part­ment was very clear that we couldn't have that many peo­ple on the yard. So we at­tempt­ed to fence off the yard and ad­mit peo­ple to try to get the num­bers down to 14,000 and that just wasn't ide­al."

Yet, Fred­er­ick says some of the crit­i­cism of Howard has been un­due. "There's a lot of mag­ic hap­pen­ing on Howard's cam­pus and we need to talk about that. We have to be sure peo­ple are clear that we are pro­vid­ing ex­cel­lence. We grad­u­ate African Amer­i­cans at twice the na­tion­al av­er­age. We grad­u­ate about a third of the black den­tists in the coun­try. We have alum do­ing good work all over the world and we need to talk about that."

Fred­er­ick says his main plans are to en­sure that the uni­ver­si­ty op­er­ates ef­fi­cient­ly and with the most up-to-date tech­nol­o­gy. He al­so wants to in­crease grad­u­a­tion and re­ten­tion rates. "Our stu­dents are ex­pect­ing bet­ter use of tech­nol­o­gy and we have to pro­vide that in­struc­tion in a more ef­fi­cient man­ner and in a dif­fer­ent man­ner. That means flip class­rooms and more on­line con­tent," he said. "My oth­er main thrust around that is to make sure that the sup­port­ing are­nas around the ed­u­ca­tion­al prod­uct are run­ning more ef­fi­cient­ly whether it's IT, whether it's ad­min­is­tra­tion, all of those are be­ing looked at right now."

Even with this many goals for the uni­ver­si­ty, Fred­er­ick, said he has not yet made a de­ci­sion to present him­self as a can­di­date for pres­i­dent. "I'd be hum­bled if I were to be the 17th pres­i­dent of the uni­ver­si­ty. Right now I'm re­al­ly fo­cused on see­ing them through this tran­si­tion, but any op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve Howard Uni­ver­si­ty is an ho­n­our."

What is an hbcu?

His­tor­i­cal­ly black col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties are ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions found­ed be­fore 1964 which were es­tab­lished to serve the black Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. There are more than 100 HB­CUs in the US. The most re­cent edi­tion of US News & World Re­port's Best Col­leges Re­port ranked Howard Uni­ver­si­ty as the third best HBCU. First and sec­ond were At­lanta, Geor­gia-based Spel­man and More­house Col­leges re­spec­tive­ly.

HU–Caribbean con­nec­tion

No­table Caribbean HU alum­ni:

Dr Er­ic Williams–T&T's first prime min­is­ter was a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Howard from 1939-1944.

Kwame Ture–Trinidad–born civ­il rights ac­tivist and icon of the Black Pow­er move­ment grad­u­at­ed from Howard in 1964 with a de­gree in phi­los­o­phy.

Dr Kei­th Mitchell–The for­mer pres­i­dent of Grena­da earned his mas­ter's de­gree from Howard in 1975.

Sha­ka His­lop–For­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er grad­u­at­ed with an en­gi­neer­ing de­gree from Howard in 1992.

Michelle Cross-Fen­ty–Cur­rent In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&T. Cross-Fen­ty grad­u­at­ed from Howard Law School and is of Ja­maican her­itage.

AboutHoward

Howard Uni­ver­si­ty is a pri­vate, re­search uni­ver­si­ty found­ed in 1867. Howard is com­prised of 13 schools and col­leges. Stu­dents pur­sue stud­ies in more than 120 ar­eas lead­ing to un­der­grad­u­ate, grad­u­ate and pro­fes­sion­al de­grees.

Since 1998, the Uni­ver­si­ty has pro­duced two Rhodes Schol­ars, two Tru­man Schol­ars, a Mar­shall Schol­ar, 30 Ful­bright Schol­ars and 11 Pick­er­ing Fel­lows. Howard al­so pro­duces more on cam­pus African-Amer­i­can PhD re­cip­i­ents than any oth­er uni­ver­si­ty in the US.

No­table alum­ni in­clude the first African Amer­i­can Supreme Court Jus­tice and civ­il rights ac­tivist Thur­good Mar­shall, No­bel lau­re­ate Toni Mor­ri­son, ac­tors Phyli­cia Raashad and Ossie Davis and singers Rober­ta Flack and Meshell Nde­geo­cel­lo.