Dr. William Bynum knows some Mississippi Valley State University alumni have voiced their displeasure that he was named the preferred candidate for the school’s presidency Thursday.
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” Bynum said. “I don’t take it as a personal slight.”
The day after the state College Board named Bynum its preferred candidate, Roosevelt Yarbrough, president of the MVSU National Alumni Association, called a press conference urging the College Board to offer the job to another candidate, preferably a Valley graduate.
“I look forward to working with the National Alumni Association,” Bynum said. “I think everyone wants to support the students that are currently there and see those students succeed and graduate.”
Bynum said he feels his background makes him a good choice to be president at Valley. He’s spent 20 years working as an administrator at historically black institutions, from Clark Atlanta University to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania to his most recent position at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
At all three of those schools, he’s focused on student recruitment, enrollment and retention — areas where Valley has struggled of late.
“Those areas are definitely my strong suits so I felt like I could be a good fit for the university,” Bynum said.
Bynum has been on a special leave of absence from Morehouse since June. He said he left the school amicably after Morehouse hired a new president in February.
“After working with (the new president), we decided we differed in terms of enrollment strategies and recruitment strategies,” Bynum said. He said the new president was focused on bringing in more students who could pay full tuition, while “I want to see students from all socio-economic backgrounds served.”
“I am a product of a single parent household. My mother raised eight kids,” Bynum said. “I know the importance of financial aid.”
Bynum said he relied on Pell grants and other forms of financial aid while attending Davidson College, a top-ranked liberal arts school in North Carolina. He said he played middle linebacker on the football team while earning his degree in sociology.
He’s long aspired to become a president of a university, and he said Valley has been on his radar for a very long time.
“We really knew about Valley during the Jerry Rice and Willie Totten era, but I’d heard of it long before then,” he said.
He was encouraged to apply for the position by several friends and colleagues who graduated from Valley. “(They) have always represented themselves well and talked very highly with love and appreciation for the university.”
