Savannah State President on new changes and much more

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - On Welcome to Our Community WTOC’s Dawn Baker got a chance to have a conversation with Dr. Jermaine Whirl, who is the president of Savannah State University.

We talked to the university’s president back in June, but since then much has happened. Dr. Whirl started by talking about the accreditation of the engineering technology programs.

“Yes, it’s a big one, you know, so we’re excited to get reaffirmed. We go through this process typically between seven and ten years. Our accreditors will come in and ensure that we are meeting the standards of the accrediting body and so we’re so thankful that we got reaffirmed for our engineering programs, specifically our civil and our electrical engineering programs get reaffirmed,” said Dr. Whirl. “And moreover, we also had our mechanical engineering program affirmed. And so the big three, as I call them, engineering programs and engineering technology, I tell people all the time we’ve had these programs since 1973, October 1, and so to be able to offer that to our citizens. We also have now the only College of Engineering Technology and Computing at any HBCU in Georgia.”

Reorganization of academic colleges at SSU

He then talked about the university’s work reorganizing some of the academic colleges.

“Yeah, so our academic colleges had not changed since 1980. If you look at our academic catalog, they read exactly the same since 1980. And so obviously a lot has changed during that time and we wanted our academic colleges to reflect the industry, the workforce needs of today and of the future. And so we did reorganize a few things. We didn’t have any change in terms of employment, our faculty, staffing, but it allowed us to better organize and better brand. So we now have a College of Media, Arts, and Communications, something that we’re excited about that really helps grow those students who want to go in that profession,” continued Dr. Whirl. “We brought our sciences and humanities faculty together for the first time, which really provides more what I would call interdisciplinary research, something that we really want to do as we pursue a R3 designation for our institution.”

‘Hyundai College of Education’

He also talked about the renaming of the College of Education.

SEE: SSU rebrands College of Education into ‘Hyundai College of Education’ after $5M donation

“Of course, COBA is the same, the College of Ed has a new name, Hyundai College of Education. And then really last for me is, you know, one of our neat unique opportunities to really blossom and grow ed and in engineering technology and computing, you know. And so I’m excited. Our faculty unanimously approved these changes and they’re excited about what we call the uproar at Savannah State.”

Tiger Walk at the Enmarket Arena

“Listen, we had a lot of people come out for that and it’s exciting. It’s just what I would say are part of our strategic plan that we also just unveiled. Strategy number five talks about community impact. How do we ensure that Savannah State is represented and presented throughout the community, not only just in name but also in physical presence. And so this was our first array moving into something like this. I’m thankful to the folks at Enmarket Arena because we had an idea and they were like, let’s make it happen. But you’ll see more and more of these opportunities throughout the city in future years to come.”

Academics and athletics at SSU

Dr. Whirl also talked about the 54 SSU student athletes with grade point averages of 3.4 or higher.

“Academics is number one, number two, and number three. Athletics really takes the back door. We’re very serious about that,” said Dr. Whirl. “You know, we try to tell our student athletes we know some of them will go on professionally, even at a minor level. But more importantly, we want them to graduate and we want to ensure that they’re job ready.”

Dr. Whirl reflects on ‘Pack the Den’ night

In the beginning of October, Savannah State University hosted a “Pack the Den” night at home. The university’s athletics department called upon all students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members alike to help make history.

The goal was to help the Savannah State Lady Tigers Volleyball team set a new attendance record for the program.

“I saw something about another institution across the country had a pack the den event. And so I just sent a little text message to our athletic director. I said, you know, we need to do this for our volleyball team because I went to a few of the games and we have a phenomenal team. I said, we got to support him. And lo and behold, here we go. 1488 people right behind that. And we packed it. Then we beat a NCAA record that was held at Alabama State University, 1200 students there. And so we’re very, very excited that the, you know, the tiger is roaring on campus right now.”

Future of Savannah State University

“We were ranked the number one best value HBCU in Georgia, and that’s a big deal. And there are quite a few HBCUs in Georgia. Many people don’t realize that,” said Dr. Whirl. “We want to continue to build on that and ultimately want to ensure that we recruit, train and graduate and then place our students for years to come.”