Under crisp blue skies and a pleasant autumn breeze, I took a stroll through one of the city’s most precious pieces of real estate the other day.
National Mall? The Rock Creek golf course? Sen. Harry Reid’s Senate hideaway? Nope. I was crossing what passes for a quad in the middle of the University of the District of Columbia.
The concrete expanse still has the look and feel of a Soviet era housing project in the outskirts of Moscow. It looks cold and barren. The gray, concrete university buildings still have numbers rather than names, though new banners at least tell us which houses the law school and which the media classes. But the value of the property cannot be denied; UDC spreads out from a Metro stop, it’s arrayed along Connecticut Avenue at the Van Ness crossroad, it’s surrounded by the embassies of Israel and China.
Can you say prime property?
But since Congress paved the way for UDC in 1974, after the passage of the Home Rule Act, the city’s public university has been struggling, to say the least. Its open enrollment sounded admirable, but the student body was not stellar. It had some good professors and great programs — nursing comes to mind — but it also became a dumping ground for bureaucrats and crusty professors. It had no champion, skimpy funding, little hope for becoming a high quality university. It has a mascot, the firebird, but not much of a basketball team.
This school year, UDC is starting to have the look and feel of a serious city college, more like the City University of New York than the prison it resembled a year ago. Students returned to buildings with department names outside, fresh coats of bright yellow and red paint inside, a mosaic mural on the entry steps, and leadership at the top that has its sights on making UDC a destination for students who sneered as they applied to University of Maryland and beyond.
Downside: Students have to pay tuition — $7,200 for the four-year university and $3,000 for the brand new community college. But most of the students who protested the tuition last spring are on board. Enrollment is up 20 percent.
The train is being driven by two new conductors: board Chairwoman Emily Durso and President Allen Sessoms.
Durso is the ideal chairwoman. A native Washingtonian, she earned her political and business chops working for Marion Barry’s economic development team in the early years, helped Giuseppe Cecchi develop Techworld, and has been executive director of the Hotel Association for two decades. She started the hospitality high school. She knows every player in town and can make things happen — like securing $45 million from the city council for capital improvements and achieving her goal of putting community college branches in all eight wards.
UDC is in a political demilitarized zone — Mayor Adrian Fenty seems to be no friend; the city council loves it.
Durso wants UDC to rank among the best public universities. “It’s possible in five to 10 years,” she says.
I wouldn’t bet against her.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
