© 2024 University of Missouri - KBIA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Lincoln University Names Jerald Woolfolk New President

Jerald Woolfolk will be the next president of Lincoln University, according to a press release yesterday.

The board of curators at the land-grant university selected Woolfolk to succeed Kevin Rome, who left in June of last year.

Woolfolk is the vice president for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management at the State University of New York at Oswego. She says her background will help build a new leadership to increase enrollment, graduation rates and fundraising.

“I understand that the higher education funding has been cut for the past several years, and that would be very harmful to an institution the size of Lincoln. You don’t want to put the increases on the back of the students.” Woolfolk said.      

Woolfolk said increasing enrollment and funding are priorities for Lincoln University after the proposed statewide budget cut in higher education. She said she would seek to create a funding infrastructure and improve enrollment, because tuition revenue becomes “the biggest piece of the budget” of public universities. Thus, a sustainable institution would be able to create more “cutting-edge" academic programs to help students succeed, meaning “they come and they stay and they graduate.”

“Lincoln University is a great institution.” Woolfolk described her excitement to join the university, “It’s been around for 152 years; we are going to very hard to ensure that it stays around for another 152 years.”

Woolfolk will take office at Lincoln University on June 1. She will be the 20th president of the 152-year-old institution. Michael Middleton, the interim president will serve until then.