Next steps for Langston University? New president says school is heading in the right direction

LANGSTON — Louisiana native Ruth Ray Jackson earned her doctoral degree from Colorado State University. As she made that long drive from home to school a quarter-century ago, she determined Guthrie, Oklahoma, was about the halfway point and a good spot to stop and rest before proceeding with her journey.

At the time, Jackson had no way of knowing that a small university in rural Logan County, just a few miles east of Guthrie along State Highway 33, would end up being her professional home. Jackson now has been at Langston University for 10 years, and last month the regents who govern Oklahoma’s only historically black university named her as its 17th president.

“We would spend the night in Guthrie,” Jackson recalled during an interview with The Oklahoman. “I remember thinking, ‘If we can make it to that town in Oklahoma, we’ll be OK.’ Now, every time I take the exit (off Interstate 35), I look over. Who would have known?”

Jackson attended another HBCU, Southern University, earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees there before her time at Colorado State. As she worked on her advanced degrees, she spent a decade in secondary education at two Louisiana high schools, teaching English and African American Studies and serving as an assistant principal and a head principal.

She moved to the university level in 2002, becoming an assistant professor at Louisiana State University’s Shreveport campus. Within a couple of years, she was the chair of that school’s Department of Education.

Jackson began working at Langston in 2014 as the university’s dean and a professor in its School of Education and Behavioral Sciences. She later became Langston’s vice president for academic affairs before being named as interim president after Kent Smith Jr. retired after the 2022-23 academic year.

“Her admiration for our beloved institution and the excellent job she did as interim president have been truly remarkable,” said Sherman Lewis, a member of the search committee that recommended Jackson to the OSU/A&M Board of Regents. “Dr. Jackson's leadership embodies the spirit of Langston, and I am confident that she will continue to elevate our university to new heights."

Her background at different levels of education helps because “I’m a teacher at heart,” Jackson said. “I’m trained as an educator. I’m the daughter of educators. That’s the core of who I am. Whether it’s as a teacher or as a principal or as a faculty member, the core is the same and that’s trying to improve the lives of others through education. That’s what been consistent, regardless of the role.”

Jackson is only the second female president at Langston, which was founded in 1897, 10 years before Oklahoma became a state. JoAnn Haysbert was the first, serving in the role from 2005 to 2011. Jackson didn’t think being a female university president was noteworthy, she said, until speaking with Langston students in recent months.

“There are too many examples of women and people of color being the ‘first,’ even in 2024,” she said. “I think it’s nice not to hold that title, so I didn’t think about it much until our students mentioned it. Dr. Haysbert was here 12 years ago and did some phenomenal things, but our students didn’t know her. For them, it’s like a first. We hear the phrase, ‘representation matters,’ and I really was not thinking about it in that way until not one, not two, not three, but several of our female students mentioned it to me and said what it meant for them to see a woman in this leadership role.”

Questions about underfunding Langston and other HBCU land-grant universities

Jackson said she has a special appreciation for Langston’s status as Oklahoma’s only HBCU. Langston also is one of only two land-grant universities in Oklahoma, along with Oklahoma State University.

Last year, two members of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet said in a letter to 16 governors that land-grant HBCUs, including Langston, had been chronically underfunded per student in state funds. In Langston’s case, the letter said, from 1987 to 2020, the university had been underfunded by $418.9 million.

“It is our hope that we can work together to make this institution whole after decades of being underfunded,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in the letter addressed to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt.

Jackson said that money would be meant to support Langston’s land-grant mission, such as its 4-H programs, its youth programs and its assistance to small farms and business incubators, which she said is ”such a critical part of who we are as an institution.” She was “encouraged by the conversations we’re having with legislators. … I’m encouraged that we will see an increase in funding,” although she didn’t specifically address the $418.9 million amount.

State Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, the chair of the Senate Education Committee, said he first learned of the issue through the letter from Vilsack and Cardona. He said the Legislature has asked the federal Education and Agriculture Departments to explain their methodology in determining the $418.9 million underpayment “and they have yet to provide” an answer. “If we get further information … then we’ll have another conversation. We want to be supportive of our higher ed institutions,” Pugh said.

In the meantime, a $2.5 million line item in the proposed Senate budget for the upcoming fiscal year would allow the state to provide a dollar-to-dollar match to federal money provided for Langston to fulfill its legal land-grant mission. That money is being directed through the state Department of Agriculture so that “we can specifically direct that money to Langston,” Pugh said.

“We have had good meetings with the new president and we feel comfortable for this year, getting to that one-to-one match,” he said. “We want to serve small farmers and ranchers, minority-owned farms, and Langston is a perfect entity to do that.”

OKC TV station donation helps broadcast journalism program

Two major news items in recent years have brought positive attention to Langston. In 2022, Griffin Media, which operates television stations in Oklahoma City (KWTV) and Tulsa (KOTV), donated its former Oklahoma City studio to the university. The gift included the fully operational television studio, along with the land and equipment. It was the largest corporate donation in the university’s history.

The site now serves as Langston’s Oklahoma City campus and houses the university’s Center for Media and Community Advancement. That center is part of the university’s “Forward Together” project, a journalism initiative designed to develop students’ skills in storytelling, digital marketing and audience engagement. Three vignettes, to be shown at a town hall upon completion, are being produced as a result of the project.

Jackson said generations of Langston students will see the benefit of that gift for years to come. The amplification of the university’s broadcast journalism program has led to grants from several organizations, including NBC Universal Academy, and support from local broadcasters.

“Broadcast journalism certainly will be the cornerstone of that program,” she said. “We’re teaching classes there right now, and students are utilizing the equipment. There are conversations about revitalizing some former programs … they’re excited not only to be the on-air talent, which is where most of our broadcast journalism students envision themselves, but now they’re getting to work with the engineering side of it, the production side of it. All of that matters.”

She said David Griffin, Griffin media’s chairman and chief executive officer, made clear to university officials “he wanted this gift to be bigger than News 9. He wanted us to feel comfortable, welcome and open to engage anyone, even companies that were competitors within the market. His end game is to have an increased pool of talent that they can all benefit from.”

National basketball championship sparked positive attention

The remarkable turnaround of Langston’s men’s basketball team also has generated outside interest. During the 2021-22 season, the Lions posted a 1-27 record. Under new coach Chris Wright, Langston went 31-3 the following season and 35-2 this past season, advancing to the NAIA championship game before falling to Freed-Hardeman (Tennessee).

While Jackson acknowledged it’s difficult to “have a direct causal impact” about the effect of the team’s success on enrollment and-or fundraising, “we know the publicity we got, we couldn’t pay for. We were part of the national conversation in basketball. What that also allowed us to do was amplify the university. The positive PR, the number of people who have asked about us, locally and nationally, the number of mentions that we have seen as a result of the success of the basketball teams really has been amazing.”

Jackson said her short- and long-term goals are centered around the idea that the university should be a place where students feel welcome, supported and ready to strive to meet their personal life goals. She also wants Langston to be a place “that attracts amazing talent” for its faculty and staff and that develops strategic partnerships that lead to potential career avenues for students.

“Our mission, our identity, drives what we do every day,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: New Langston president believes she's inherited a good situation