THE TALENTED 10TH PRESIDENT OF VOORHEES UNIVERSITY: DR. RONNIE HOPKINS
BY ZERLINE SPRUILL
shortly after starting the industrial school. She didn’t live to share legacy the way Mary McLeod Bethune did, but we are so unique in that we are the first HBCU founded by an African American woman. Part of Voorhees’ secret sauce is that we use her vision and mission where she said, ‘I am going to build a school so these individuals can grow up to have amazing careers.’ We are connecting to her spirit and her vision.”
friend. “Both Ronnie and I were raised Pentecostal, so when we were having a conversation about what the choir line would have to do, Ronnie being Ronnie–who has a lovely vocabulary–asked, ‘would we be doing anything risque?’ Half the room looked around like who is this young man using this word, ‘risque?’ His professional career has been devoted to molding Black scholars on numerous Black campuses. When Hopkins joined Voorhees’ faculty in 2017, he was actually in the middle of completing 14 years at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, where he served as Dean of the Freshman Institute and an English professor. He also spent several years at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina and Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia. Hopkins was fully immersed in the culture of HBCU academia and proved his readiness for Voorhees to serve as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, accreditation liaison and as a tenured Professor of English. He was named interim president in January 2021 and by June took
Committed to HBCU Life
An HBCU native son, Hopkins received his first degree at North Carolina Central University (NCCU), before earning three post graduate degrees from Michigan State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As it goes with HBCUs, the friendships he made as early as freshman year have become long-term familial and business relationships. “We practically had all our classes together because we were English majors and we did choir line together,” said Dr. Linda Leek, Provost and Professor of Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania and long-time
W ith a student population of 500 scholars, Voorhees University may seem small, but this training ground for Black excellence has a large footprint and not just in Denmark, South Carolina where the campus sits. Voorhees University is the first HBCU founded by a woman, Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, in 1897. According to Voorhees University President Dr. Ronnie
Hopkins, many are just learning about Voorhees University and confuse this historic milestone with Bethune-Cookman University which was founded in Daytona Beach, Florida, by Mary McLeoud Bethune seven years later in 1904. “The reason people haven’t heard about Voorhees is because our foundress passed away at age 35,” said Hopkins. “She fell ill
2 6 | HBCU TIMES SUMMER ISSUE 2025
Powered by FlippingBook