By Gail Kerr | The Tennessean
NASHVILLE – Twelve-hour days. Seventeen speeches. Eleven receptions. More cold calls than she can count. And a personal check for $50,000 toward an unprecedented alumni fundraising goal.
In a nutshell, that’s Glenda Baskin Glover’s first 45 days as president of Tennessee State University.
She arrived at a Tennessean editorial board meeting wearing a crisp suit in the school colors: blue and white. Glover, a 1974 TSU alum, makes an engaging first impression. She says “it’s good to be back” in Nashville, and her smile shows she means it.
She is charming, and looks you in the eye. She listens well. She doesn’t resist answering hard questions. There’s not a hint of defensiveness, something TSU’s administrators have had in the past. She conveys a new day of openness.
Glover’s goals are ambitious, and Nashville and the TSU community should embrace them. She has a vision of academic progress, customer service to better serve students and their parents, strong fundraising, a campus with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion, and “shared governance,” where faculty and students have a voice. The latter, she stresses, comes with a caveat: She has the final say.
Her focus so far, Glover said, has been “internal unity.” Her predecessor, Portia Shields (who served as interim president), did a world of good in cleaning up many things at TSU, but there is still a deep rift between faculty factions. Glover said she’s actually been surprised that tension hasn’t been more apparent.
“I don’t see it like I thought I would see it,” she said. “I can’t say it’s not there. But it’s not to the extent it’s making me lose sleep at night.”
She is also determined to personally reach out to businesses and attend community events, to push Nashville to embrace the university as it never has.
As part of that goal, she wants to hear from you. Glover will hold a town hall meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Kean Hall on the TSU campus. It is free and open to the public. There will be designated parking and a shuttle service.
“Some questions may not be kind,” she said. “It is what it is.”
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