Content area
Full Text
NESTLED among the pine trees in a tiny town in rural east Texas is a college that is defying the odds.
The dormant oil wells that punctuate the campus are a reminder of both the lavish and the lean times that Jarvis Christian College has known over the past two decades. In the 1970s, those wells were gushing oil and pumping up to $2-million a year into the college's coffers. But when oil prices plummeted in the 1980s, most of the wells--and the revenues that flowed with them-were shut off. The college now receives about $250,000 annually from oil and gas revenues, toward its annual budget of $12-million.
Nevertheless, this historically black college, founded in 1912 by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), is once again on the upswing.
Jarvis Christian has operated with balanced budgets for three years, Its enrollment is up, and it is planning its first comprehensive capital campaign, hoping to raise $10-million over five years.
ISOLATED CAMPUS
The freshman class jumped to 326 this year, from 150 last year, and two-thirds of the entering students had at least a B average in high school. The college's total enrollment is 530.
It hasn't always been easy attracting money and students to an isolated, rural campus. In 1991, the college hired a new president--who was immediately faced with the necessity of layoffs in a town with few other...