The hallway outside Kim Cunningham’s office at Baptist Health Sciences University is bright with sunlight from rows of clerestory windows.

Inside her office, the glow is all her own.

With Cunningham’s help, the university received $4.25 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Education to boost student graduation rates, starting with the retention gap between the first- and second-year students.

Newsweek ranks Baptist rehabilitation hospital best in state

More than 40% of the freshmen don’t make it their second year, a sobering statistic for a region crying for nurses and healthcare workers.

But more than that, African American students graduate from Baptist Health Sciences at a fraction of the rate of other racial groups. Over six years, 13% of its Black students earn baccalaureate degrees compared to 50% or more for Asian, Hispanic and white students.

This is personal for Cunningham, director of the university’s Center for Academic Excellence.

“I am this particular student that we’re talking about,” she says. “I see the benefits because someone did it for me. I know it can be done.”

The federal money is for colleges with more 1,000 undergraduate students and 40% Black enrollment.

Southwest Tennessee Community College received $3 million in this grant cycle, its second renewal. It is funneling the money to programs to help Black male students complete their degrees.

Baptist Health Sciences is part of Baptist Memorial Health Care. It offers a range of programs, including a new doctorate degree in nursing. The campus is at Union and Pauline in the Medical District. 

Tennessee Hospital Association honors Memphis exec, medical team

It is a first-time recipient of the federal funding given to colleges with predominantly black student bodies. The reason is largely because Baptist has Cunningham, who gathered the data for the grant and now will do the hiring and build out the systems to meet the goals.

“We’re going to hire six academic success coaches; four of them will be dedicated to our incoming population, our transfer students, our at-risk students,” she said.

Baptist Health Sciences is also hiring alumni to be professional tutors. It’s beefing up peer tutoring and support services, and adding an internship coordinator, whose sole job will be to help students access the array of chances to learn on the job in local hospitals.

It’s building a center for all the supports in its Hub building, where the library and other student services are based.

 “Our idea is that there will be a physical center where they can go,” said Megan Bursi, director of marketing and alumni. “They can have student life, coffee bars, places to relax, meditate. There’s a chapel for their spiritual faith. There is spiritual counseling, mental counseling, and there will be the academic counseling,” she said.

Cunningham now is planning the university’s first welcome week, set for January.

“We will give them an intensive boot camp of resources and tools to help them be successful,” she said.

Welcome week will happen three times a year — ahead of every program start.

Eventually, Cunningham imagines the week will include a chance for new students to stay in the university’s dorms.

Baptist breaks ground on new emergency department in Arlington

“People will be able to come and experience dorm life,” she said.

Any student is eligible for the counseling and services, but Cunningham will be tracking the progress of Black students, reporting retention rates and academic progress.

To receive the next year’s funding, Baptist Health Sciences will have to meet the performance metrics outlined in the grant.

Students, for instance, will be required to create an academic success plan, with personal and milepost goals, plus meet with the coach assigned to them at least once a week.

The idea, Cunningham says, is to catch problems before they become crises.

“If you’re working 40 hours a week and taking a heavy load of courses — say a student is taking six courses — we really need to have a conversation about that,” she said.

“We’ll move from that conversation to talking about time management, note-taking skills, how to read a college textbook. Some of our high school students that come to the university have never seen a college syllabus before,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham is the in-house resident on these topics. Besides writing a series of college workbooks on how to navigate college, she lived the trauma of being a first-generation college student.

She started at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock with a conditional acceptance, which means she had to prove herself in a series of remedial classes.

Morris, Evans being inducted in state Health Care Hall of Fame

“I did not do well on by ACT,” she says.

Cunningham, who has since earned master’s and doctorate degrees, is the only child of parents who each worked two jobs, including night shifts, so she could go to college.

They also saved diligently so she would have no college loans.

“After we pulled up on campus, we did a campus tour. As we were walking, my mother stopped and had a moment, ‘This is what a college campus looks like,’” Cunningham says, tears misting in her eyes.

When Cunningham received notice that Baptist Health Sciences had received the grant to help Black students, she quickly called her mother, Inez Cunningham.

When she tried later to fill her in on more details, there was no answer.

When she finally did answer, she was at the cemetery where Cunningham’s recently deceased father is buried.

“’I’m telling your daddy all the good news,’ she said. ‘Our girl made us proud again.’ ”