Dwuan Warmack says his focus as president of Harris-Stowe State University is hard to forget, because it’s young men just like him.

At Friday’s formal installation in the position that he took over last July, Warmack noted that he didn’t have the best grades or the highest test scores in high school. “All the indicators said I wasn’t college material,” he told a crowd of friends, family and colleagues at the festivities, which included tributes, a bit of history and a video explaining to his young daughter why he wears a bow tie.

He added that people saw in him what he didn’t see in himself and pushed him to succeed. Now, as head of the area’s only historically black college or university, he says it’s time to give back.

“Our mission is to serve an underrepresented population that is in large percentage low socio-economic, first-generation,” Warmack said in an interview after the inauguration ceremony. “Sometimes, that’s the voice unvoiced. So my job is to make sure that population has a voice and that their voice can be heard.

“I think Harris-Stowe has taken a chance on finding diamonds in the rough and provided them an opportunity that allows them to be successful.”

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