On her 70th birthday, Dr. Wilma Mishoe announced her intention to retire as President of Delaware State University.
Mishoe’s retirement will take effect on December 31 and she will be succeeded by Provost Tony Allen. Allen, a former Bank of America executive, is expected to be a top candidate for president.
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The retirement will come after a 40-year career in higher education that ends where it started at DSU.
In a letter to the university community, Mishoe wrote, “I am far from done. When I retire from the presidency of this great university on December 31, 2019, I know I will go to new adventures, confident that I have left our great, shared enterprise in good hands. My heart will always reside on this campus, and my hands will be here whenever needed.”
Mishoe had served in the post for a year and a half and held the interim position since early 2018. No specific reasons for her departure were listed In a letter to trustees.
Board of Trustees Chair, Dr. Devona Williams, commented, “Like her father, Dr. Luna Mishoe, President Mishoe led the institution with distinction and grace, and set us on a path for growth that leaves many indelible marks on students, staff, and faculty for many years to come.” Dr. Mishoe was recently profiled in The Chronicle of Higher Education as one of a handful of women across the nation who have risen to lead the same universities that their fathers headed.
Mishoe was serving as the first female Chair of the Board of Trustees in October 2017 when then-President Harry Williams announced his departure to become CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. The board announced Dr. Mishoe as interim President in January 2018, a position made permanent that June, installing her as the first female chief executive in the University’s history.
Prior to her tenure at Delaware State University, Mishoe was a long-serving academic administrator at Delaware Technical Community College, Chairwoman of the Capital School Board, and a Trustee at Wilberforce University, the oldest private Historically Black College and University in the nation. where she later became interim President. She started her career at then-Wilmington College.
Under her leadership, the university now stands at nearly 5,000 strong, the largest student enrollment in its 128-year history. It comes at a time when some Historically Black Universities are struggling with enrollment issues.
The President herself sees her tenure in office as having been a special blessing: “To be President, headquartered on the campus where I grew up, was not a possibility that I ever imagined, but it has been both an enormous honor and intense responsibility.”
