At 10:55 a.m. Wednesday, a throng of students reached the doors of the chapel at Shorter College and were turned away by a uniformed police officer.
The students nearest the double doors turned to the others behind them and motioned the way across the courtyard to the college’s library, where the service could be watched by remote television.
Back inside the auditorium, more than 200 students and faculty filled every seat available, including metal chairs set up on the stage to accommodate the overflow. Some students sat on the steps of the stairways while others lined the back wall.
The mass of students was a sharp contrast to the first day Shorter College President Jerome Green took the helm in 2012.
“We had two students enrolled,” Green said in an interview after the service. A broad smile spread across his face, and he let out a hearty laugh.
Founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1886, the twoyear private college had dwindled to near extinction by 1998 when it was plagued with a $1 million tax lien, internal conflict and financial destitution. Another blow came when the college lost its accreditation, putting an end to the federal financial aid that was keeping it afloat.
It is a period Green refers to as the “14-year drought.”
Today, enrollment has risen to nearly 500 students; the North Little Rock college has regained its accreditation, opening up Title IV Federal Financing Aid; and the faculty and staff have expanded from “four people, including the janitor” in 2012 to more than 40 professors, administrators and support personnel.
Green unfurled a large paper scroll, pointing to a black and white architectural rendering of the futureof Shorter College: a two-level, state-of-the-art student dormitory.
Green was quick to deflect praise for the college’s resurrection to “the will of God” and the commitment of the church’s 12th District presiding bishop, Samuel Green, who oversees church operations in Oklahoma and Arkansas. The Greens are unrelated.
In 2008, Samuel Green guided the church’s financial resources and rallied the college’s board of trustees to slowly get the school out of debt and rebuild its foundation.
“He could have just as easily decided to sell it for its real-estate value. Instead, he decided these dry bones should live again,” said Jerome Green, referring to the Bible story in Ezekiel where God resurrects a valley of dry bones.
Jerome Green was in Birmingham, Ala., working as the director of government relations at Miles College when he got the call to come back to Arkansas.
A native of Pell City, Ala., and an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Green had spent more than 30 years on a legal career in Arkansas that included a partnership in the Little Rock law firm of Gill, Wallace, Clayton & Elrod, now the Gill Firm.
His answer was succinct when asked why he agreed to leave a lucrative career to take over Shorter College.
“Instead of being a lawyer who is a minister, I evolved to a minister who is also a lawyer,” Jerome Green said.
It is that message of faith, hope and restoration that has drawn students to Shorter College, he said. Immediately after taking his post in July 2012, Jerome Green was given a $12,000 stipend to launch an enrollment campaign for the fall semester.
He based the marketing blitz on the message “You fit here,” offering a place of acceptance for students from allwalks of life.
“People ask me, ‘Well, where did you get them from?’ I got them off the street. I got them from the corner. I got them from wherever life blew them,” he said. “They were not sent here by their parents. They were sent here by life itself, hoping desperately that there is a place for them. We said, ‘Yes, there is a place for you. You fit here. We don’t care where you came from.’”
The president is known in the halls of Shorter College as the man with a constant smile who can give a stern rebuke when needed.
Kenneth Kilow, a 39-yearold freshman who is rebounding from a lifetime of “bad things,” said Jerome Green and the other administratorsare constantly involved and engaged with the students.
“I love the leadership here so much that I can’t stand it,” Kilow said. “They take the time to help each individual and to support them.”
In the chapel service that morning, Kenneth Jones, the dean of student affairs, jumped on the stage and presented a comedic imitation of Jerome Green’s interaction with students.
“You are special. You have decided to go from an impossibility to a possibility,” Jones screamed as he dramatically straightened his collar and pointed at individual students.
The roars of laughter from the students was accompanied with shouts of “Yep, that’s him” and “Say it!”
Positive aff irmations, though, are only part of the equation, Jerome Green said. The weekly chapel service is a required credit for each of the four semesters and is used to reinforce the school’s philosophy of “The Four C’s: Competency, Character, Culture and Citizenship.”
“These are values that they did not come to Shorter College possessing,” Jerome Green said.
Wednesday’s chapel service included “ zero-tolerance” admonitions of “take your hats off,” “pull up your pants” and “obeying parking lot rules.”
“I don’t want to spoil your swag, but you swag outside of here,” Jones warned.
The college has employed five certified police officers to reinforce its message and ensure a safe environment.
“We don’t hire them unless they’re real policemen. We want badge-carrying, weapon-authorized, arrest-empowered personnel,” Jerome Green said. “We have a high standard of conduct, and if they can’t abide by it, they have to leave. You cannot be at Shorter College and have your pants hanging down.”
Jerome Green is clear that he is not in competition with the state’s four-year institutions. Instead, he is focusing on building Shorter College into a premier two-year institution. He said he foresees state and national collegesseeking Shorter College graduates.
“We are miners. We are sifting, and we know there are diamonds there,” he said. “We know that many of the ones who appear to have no hope actually have great hope. But somebody has to be willing to give them an opportunity and to embrace them.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 02/10/2014