Tennessee Voices, Episode 307: Glenda Glover, president, Tennessee State University
Tennessee State University is seeing a spike in first-year enrollment and that is coming with opportunities and challenges.
Administrators are working on making sure every scholar has housing in Nashville, a city where rents have soared. At the same time, the increase in the student body is an indication that TSU's story is resonating more strongly than before.
On this episode of the Tennessee Voices video podcast, TSU President Glenda Glover spoke with me about TSU's narrative, the evolution of historically Black colleges and universities, and hot topics in higher education including student debt relief and the value of college today.
Glover is a proud TSU alum herself and promoted Homecoming, which goes from Oct. 2-8. "There's no homecoming like a Tennessee State University homecoming," she said.
We also talked about the historic under-resourcing of HBCUs and the impact of a relatively new permanent federal commitment to HBCUs as well as the Tennessee General Assembly passing and Gov. Bill Lee signing a budget that includes a multimillion-dollar investment in TSU's infrastructure.
TSU is one of seven HBCUs in Tennessee and four in Nashville. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Howard University alum, spoke at the school's spring commencement — her first such address to an HBCU since taking office.
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About Tennessee Voices
The Tennessee Voices videocast is a 20-minute program, which started in March 2020 and invites leaders, thinkers and innovators who have written guest columns for a USA TODAY Network Tennessee publication to share their insights and wisdom with me and our viewers.
Please email your ideas for future guests to me at dplazas@tennessean.com. Thank you for watching.
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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee and an editorial board member of The Tennessean. Tweet to him at @davidplazas.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Voices: The growth of HBCUs with TSU President Glenda Glover
