The Southern University System board of supervisors has named Dennis Shields as the next president of the Southern University System and chancellor of Southern University and A&M College.
Shields will lead the Southern University System, which has campuses in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Shreveport. He will also serve as the leader of the flagship Baton Rouge campus.
“I am humbled and honored by your confidence in me to take on this role at this wonderful institution of higher education,” Shields said to the Southern University Board via live stream video during the meeting. “I had a remarkable and inspiring visit (to campus) and was able to spend some time with the students. I take it as a great responsibility to help continue the rise of the Southern University System.”
Shields has been the chancellor for the University of Wisconsin-Platteville since 2010. Prior to his current position in Wisconsin, Shields held administrative positions in admissions at the University of Iowa College of Law, University of Michigan Law School, and the Duke University School of Law. He has also held a deanship and a teaching position at Phoenix School of Law and acted as the vice president for student affairs at The City College of New York.
Shields, an Iowa native, earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, and a juris doctorate from the University of Iowa College of Law.
What a very misguided and dimwitted hiring decision. The so-called Black Southern University System (SUS) decision makers (lack thereof) should submit their immediate letters of resignation for hiring someone whose TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS to the implicit and explicit legislative and fiscal barriers face. Dennis Shields is woefully lacking substantive upper echelon administrative experience at HBCUs. That alone should have IMMEDIATELY DISQUALFIED him for even being considered for this position.
It appears to me that we see countless so-called Black higher education professional who spend the lions share of their sub-par and mistreated career at the racist HWCUs. Then, in the winter part of their sub-par career they suddenly want to work at an HBCU. I don’t think so on numerous levels. In fact, many of these proverbial academic sellouts would never send their own children to an HBCU. The HBCU community don’t need people like Dennis Shields and his ilk. In fairness to Dennis Shields, he’s not the only one who fall in this category.