Michael Sorrell has been named number 34 on Fortune Magazine’s annual World’s 50 Greatest Leaders list. The list includes 50 of the world’s greatest thinkers, speakers, and doers who are stepping up to meet today’s challenges.
Sorrell, president of Dallas’ historically black college, Paul Quinn, turned the organization around after coming aboard in 2007. At that time, the school was losing students, and the campus, which housed 15 abandoned buildings, was “closer to a garbage dump than a grocery store,” Sorrell told Fortune. The 135-year-old college was even on the brink of being shut down for good.
In his 10+ years at Paul Quinn, Sorrell has turned things around dramatically. Fortune reports he “quickly set about challenging perceptions, both external and internal, by giving Paul Quinn a bigger vision of itself”. According to Paul Quinn’s website, under Sorrell’s leadership, the school has become one of the most innovative small colleges in America and is rapidly becoming a model for urban higher education by focusing on academic rigor, experiential learning, and entrepreneurship.
The Fortune article adds, “Paul Quinn is now a federally recognized work college; students get jobs with area companies, helping them to pay tuition and prepare for life postgraduation. Sorrell, who calls this the “new urban college model,” now plans to open Paul Quinn campuses nationwide.”
ABOUT PAUL QUINN COLLEGE
Paul Quinn College is a private, faith-based, four-year, liberal arts-inspired college that was founded on April 4, 1872 by a group of African Methodist Episcopal Church preachers in Austin, Texas. The school’s original purpose was to educate freed slaves and their offspring. Today, we proudly educate students of all races and socio-economic classes under the banner of our institutional ethos, WE over Me. Our mission is to provide a quality, faith-based education that addresses the academic, social, and Christian development of students.
The mission of the College is to provide a quality, faith-based education that addresses the academic, social, and Christian development of students and prepares them to be servant leaders and agents of change in the global marketplace.
Find out more on the organization’s website.
