Our History

A Brief History of an Amazing Partnership

Rev. Steve Darr

Mission and Goals

Alliance for Excellence was formed to promote and reinforce success in higher education among African American students in our communities and area community colleges. In order to fulfill that mission, a network of four community colleges and churches was formed with regional committees relating to each community college service region and intentionally involving leadership from African American churches. Each college region sends educators and church leaders to the regional board which is the governing body and legal entity. The goals are specifically to increase African American enrollment, retention, and graduation and enrich the college environment for African American students.

History

A group that first called itself the Minority Campus Ministry Task Force formed on February 12, 1985. The stated goal was to “enhance access and success for African American students” and specifically increase African American enrollment at participating community colleges by 100%, a remarkable goal that was achieved at two of the participating community colleges in less than four years. African American enrollment at area community colleges had actually declined in the previous seven years and one of the college administrations stated that “minority enrollment will not increase unless some special programs are implemented to concentrate specifically on minority problems.” The Commonwealth’s Funds for Excellence supported initiatives with the colleges, but one essential aspect of this program was missing previously, an institutional connection with leadership and education in the Black community.

Initial Funding

Educators and clergy involved with Community College Ministries met to talk about the enduring gaps in educational involvement of white and African American students in our community colleges and what churches could do to address disparities. Presidents Johnnie Merritt at CVCC, Arnie Oliver at DCC, and Charles Downs at VWCC led the way among community colleges and PHCC joined under Max Wingett with leadership from Erv Griffin. The Reverends Willie Butler of St. Paul United Methodist Church, E. T. Burton of Sweet Union Baptist Church, John Price of Asbury United Methodist Church, and James Ephraim of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Roanoke and the Reverend Donald W. Johnson of Lynchburg first initiated conversations with church groups in the region and enthusiasm for this partnership soon spread to churches in all four service areas. The one source of continual funding from 1986 to today has been the Presbyterian Church, first as Fincastle Presbytery and Blue Ridge Presbytery and the Synod of the Virginias of the PCUS and later the Westminster Fellowship and the Presbytery of the Peaks of the PCUSA and totaling over $144,000 during that period of time.

First College Liaison

Len Hash at VWCC served as the first college liaison to this committee and Alliance for Excellence was inaugurated at a speech by Dr. James Cone, known as the founder of black liberation theology and the Bill and Judith Moyers Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in a packed room at the library at Virginia Western Community College. Alliance for Excellence was formed as its own non-profit entity, Alliance for Excellence, Inc., in 1986 with a seed grant from the Martin Luther King, Jr., Self-Development Fund of the Presbyterian Church US as a special outreach in higher education. We believe education is the key to bridging enduring social and economic disparities and that educational success must begin with children in primary grades and continue through college. When young people in our churches face these overwhelming obstacles in life, we believe that it is the responsibility of the church to help find solutions and ways of overcoming debilitating social barriers through innovative community and educational ministries.

Hallmark Awards Programs

The group stated, “We seek to accomplish this through a partnership of African American churches with the support and involvement of area colleges. Recent programs include “Success by Choice” in the Roanoke area, the Circle Mentoring program, student participation in national and regional leadership conferences, student visits to area universities, student participation in Upward Bound, motivational speakers and seminars such as “Jump Into It: A Look at Life” that featured sessions on topics such as Male/Female Relationships, Peer Pressure and Other Danger Zones, Get the Job You Want, College: The Next Horizon, Living Single: Life on Your Own, and Church Resources for Growth and Education. Launched by Erv Griffin at PHCC soon after the program started, one of the hallmarks of Alliance for Excellence has been the annual Academic Awards programs in each college region with participation of hundreds of students, peers, and family members every year.

Church Support

The strength of this ministry is the partnership between college educators and local African American church leadership. Local colleges provide essential resources for this program, including staff and scholarships and counsel. However, the most important factor in the program is the support from churches. The church in the African American community is the focal point of leadership and has been for generations. No other institution in the Black community provides the same level of leadership and legacy as the church. In as much as the church has supported education over the years, this program offers young people with an affordable and accessible avenue for educational opportunity and success.

Annual Financial Support

Annual financial support comes from the Presbytery of the Peaks of the Presbyterian Church USA, member congregations of the Cherrystone Missionary Baptist Association of the Baptist General Convention in Virginia, other local churches, and occasional grants, including $10,000 from the Presiding Bishop’s Fund of the Episcopal Church, $20,000 from the Twenty-First Century Foundation in New York, and local churches. In 1995, a new Youth Alliance was formed with the help of a $43,750 grant from the Board of Church & Society of the United Methodist Church. Since its inception in 1984, an estimated $837,858 has been contributed to programs and administration of Alliance for Excellence in this region from many sources.

Alliance for Excellence Highlights

Some of the highlights of Alliance for Excellence over the years are the first presentation by Dr. James Cone of Union Theological Seminary in New York at VWCC; workshops on Alliance for Excellence offered by board members and staff at the National Association of Blacks in Higher Education in Atlanta, the American Association of Community Colleges in Washington, DC, and the League for Innovation in the Community College in Washington, DC; hosting the revered Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor, Virginia Union theologian and professor at PHCC; a full day of workshops following a speech by Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., to a packed auditorium at George Washington High School in Danville; opening the first neighborhood center by DCC in a building of Camp Grove Baptist Church; conducting tours to area four-year educational institutions; motivational seminars that reach young people across all sectors of the community; mobilizing students for service; instituting awards and recognition programs at all four community colleges with local schools and churches and with inspiring speakers such as former Alliance for Excellence board president Dr. Thomas Johnson, now senior pastor at Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem.

Alliance Legacy

The board of directors and the activities of the organization have often reflected the degree of support from the college presidents. Alliance for Excellence certainly benefited from the constant and enthusiastic leadership by Dr. Arnie Oliver, former DCC president and then VCCS Chancellor; the long-standing leadership and advocacy of Dr. Carlisle Ramsey at DCC, by CVCC president and eventual Secretary of Education of the Commonwealth of Virginia Dr. Belle Wheelan, by CVCC current president John Capps, and the unwavering endorsement and support of Dr. Charles Downs who was a founding institutional executive and long-time advocate for this work at VWCC.

The vast number of students in Alliance programs were a reflection of the need and appeal of this program. And there were students who began their road to excellence with the Alliance and ended as senior directors of the National Institute of Health and a life-time Gates academic scholarship and a current School Board member in Danville. Inaugural staff leadership came from the Reverend Jim Richardson and the Reverend Rufus Millner. The Youth Alliance reached children in elementary and middle schools to support their road to excellence; along with programs like the African American student Leadership Conferences; ties with the Black Concerns Consortium of the Virginia Community College Association; hosting the Virginia Council of Churches at Camp Grove Baptist Church; and supporting the steadfast work among students by Jean Wilson for over 25 years along with Muriel Mickles, Christine Payne, Gloria Lindsay, Cheryl Hilton, Sandy Saunders, Doris Morrison, Joe Keen, Mark Gibson, and many, many, many more; and last but not least the entourage of Alliance for Excellence students, faculty, and staff visiting Barbara and Ambassador Vinai Thummalapally at their home and in the Obama White House.

Alliance for Excellence Today

By 2018, Alliance for Excellence began support for a grassroots program with at-risk youth in Danville called Hoop Don’t Shoot. HDS was started by a woman in the community, Angie Dixon, who had been to too many funerals of young people killed in gang activities in Danville and she almost single-handedly started a basketball program for young men and women who were either in gangs or at risk of gang influence. She received a significant amount of support among community members and is gaining recognition and support among other organizations and local agencies. Several hundred young people have participated in basketball after school and through the summer months augmented by motivational speeches, college recruiters, counselors, and others. Around this time, Community College Ministries granted Alliance for Excellence $50,000 toward its activities and Ferrum College rejoined the program as the only 4-year institution.

In 2018, the Danville group of Alliance for Excellence visited the Center for Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation at Duke University. This began a long affiliation of working with young people in the community to build bridges and repair a history of racism in the region. Community members in Danville and the surrounding area started meeting monthly to discuss the “new narrative on race” and a youth movement is in the works as of August 2020. Alliance for Excellence continues to be active on every campus and in each college service area and seeking tangible ways to respond to the racial justice crisis across the country precipitated by the recent unwarranted murders of African Americans by police in Louisville, Minneapolis, and Atlanta.

By mid-2020, we were finding ways to reach out to young people remotely and overcome the separation imposed by COVID. The Duke program has invited youth leaders in Alliance for Excellence to participate with them in a Racial Healing Institute in Washington, D.C., in June 2021, an excellent call to action in our times.

A Vision for the Future

In the infancy of this organization, visionaries of Alliance for Excellence wrote, “Together with educators and church leaders, this ministry envisions a time when young African Americans will have the same level of educational participation and economic and social benefits as the majority population. We believe that this goal is attainable one person at a time while building an enduring partnership of education with a strong spiritual foundation.”

Building upon this vision, we continue to expand alliances beyond educators and church leaders to include neighborhood, civic, and grass root organizations. Together we are making a difference.