Tampa Bay Business Journal Editor Alexis Muellner led an enlightening conversation with St. Petersburg College President Dr. Tonjua Williams about the synergy between higher education and business.
In the interview posted in early November, Williams talked about her journey with SPC and how she grew up at the institution. She started at the college as a financial aid accounting clerk and typed checks on a typewriter to hand out financial aid to students. After years of promotions and different roles, she became SPC’s seventh president in 2017 — the college’s first female and first African-American president.
“As the president, everything you do, every decision you make needs to be for the purpose of students succeeding and having a better life,” she said. “I grew up at the institution and got to witness the total commitment to the community. It became apparent to me that this is a place I want to be.”
Here is an excerpt from the conversation:
Muellner: Corporate partnerships are very important. You’re in the second year of a $300 million grant from Bank of America that helps fund the salaries of two business relationship managers and an employment and internship specialist. Talk a little bit more about that.
Williams: One of the things that has changed in higher education from when I started 36 years ago is access. Let’s get the folks in and let’s open the doors. Let’s bring people in to change your life. Maybe 10 years later it was a success. How many are finishing? How are you retaining students? How are you moving them forward? Then it was graduation and completion.
Well, now I would say the target is job placement and transfer. Right now for state and community colleges, we’re not done until they transfer to their next institution or they start a high-wage paying job. Our partnership with Bank of America aligns right with that. They came to us to say, ‘Hey, we need more individuals and finance and technology jobs, and we need them to come from those lower socioeconomic areas.’ For me, that was music in my ears. We’re here for economic mobility. I’m all in, what do we need to do?
One of the things about operating an educational institution is you’ve got to stay current with the business part of it. We have a passion for teaching, but there’s also a business side to it.
We were given three years to put 500 people into these high-wage paying jobs. In one year, we did 1,600 placements in either internships or high-wage paying jobs, and that is because of the partnerships we have with our workforce partners. So we were really proud last month to share that with the board and applaud the employees, but also the partnership, because what Bank of America did, they didn’t just work on Bank of America, they opened it up to all of the other finance institutions and folks saying, ‘What do y’all need? We’re going to invest this money even for your businesses.’
I mean, that’s when you can really sit and say, I’m here for the community. It’s not just Bank of America. They opened that up for everybody, and I thought that was huge and very unusual.
Listen to the podcast episode to learn more about Williams’ journey with SPC, and her commitment to the Titan community and Pinellas County.