“What's magical about these 13, 14, 15-week semesters?” she asked. She has floated the idea of three-year degree tracks and pointed to the speed with which today’s students absorb information through technology, including artificial intelligence, as evidence that rigid academic calendars may no longer serve them. Bringing longtime faculty along with such changes, she conceded, “can sometimes be like pulling teeth.” As the second woman to lead Jarvis, Lee-Pruitt said she has been intentional about not measuring herself against male counterparts. “Be who you are,” she said, she tells other women looking to ascend to the college president. “Don't feel the need to try to make decisions or act like anyone other than who you are.” She described the moment a returning student told her she had grown out her natural hair inspired by watching Lee- Pruitt do the same, a small but telling sign, she said, of the visibility a woman president can offer to a campus. Looking ahead a decade, Lee-Pruitt envisions a stabilized enrollment, modernized facilities and a Jarvis more deeply woven into the fabric of Wood County. What keeps her up at night, she said, is less about balance sheets than about her students’ wellbeing— their mental health, their safety, their struggles with substance use. For an institution founded in 1912 with a mission to educate the children of formerly enslaved people, Lee-Pruitt sees her role in decidedly biblical terms. “I believe I am an Esther,” she said, "in a common time, trying to make sure that Jarvis Christian University stays open and stays sober to continue to do this work another 115 years.”
A PASTOR’S VISION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION Lee-Pruitt’s leadership style is inseparable from her identity as an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a longtime pastor, most recently of St. Matthew A.M.E. Church in Shreveport, Louisiana. Trained as a social worker at Temple University, she describes education, particularly at HBCUs, as fundamentally a justice project. “I do believe that education is a freedom-fighting, social justice platform,” she said. “I believe it is preparing young people, especially at HBCUs, to understand their role in doing justice, love and mercy.” That framework, she said, shapes how she thinks about Jarvis’s mission beyond the classroom. “You're not just getting an education to have a piece of paper to go to work,” she said. “You're getting an education to remember that you have to lift as you climb; that you have to fight injustice and that you have to speak up intelligently and speak truth to power.” Two decades as a pastor, she said, prepared her for the presidency more than any single academic credential. “Being a pastor and having the experience of over 20 years pastoring people, to me [leading a university] it’s really like just pastoring a bigger congregation.”
BUILDING AMID SCARCITY Like many small HBCUs, Jarvis operates under real financial pressure, heavily dependent on tuition revenue in an era of enrollment anxiety across higher education. But Lee-Pruitt points to recent momentum: a $3.5 million federal grant to convert a residence hall into a workforce cyber and AI hub, and the construction of a new kinesiology complex—the university's first new academic building in 50 years. Jarvis has also partnered with the Texas Juvenile Justice Department to offer dual- credit courses to justice-involved high schoolers, an initiative Lee-Pruitt frames through her social work background. “We need to disrupt it if we can on the front end,” she said of the school-to- prison pipeline. Fundraising remains a persistent challenge, she acknowledged, particularly for an institution without a deep bench of alumni donors in high-wealth professions. “A lot of our institutions are tuition dependent,” she said. “As we're working to develop a culture of giving, I have to access funds that I can get to, to get to the point where I can compete.” REDEFINING SUCCESS ON JARVIS’S OWN TERMS Lee-Pruitt has also pushed faculty to question long-held assumptions about the pace and structure of a college education, including the traditional 15- week semester.
HBCU TIMES FALL ISSUE 2026 | 4 1
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