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Title: Assistant Professor, Department of Teacher Education and Higher Education, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Tenured: No
Age: 36
Education: B.A. in History from Coastal Carolina University, and a certificate in Program Evaluation from Florida State University; M.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs from the University of South Carolina; Ph.D. in Higher Education from Florida State University
Career mentors: Dr. Tamara Bertrand Jones, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Dr. Brian McGowan, American University; Dr. Derrick Brooms, Morehouse College; Dr. Erik Hines, George Mason University; Dr. Holt Wilson, UNC Greensboro; Dr. Cameron C. Beatty, Florida State University; Dr. Jennifer L. Bloom, Florida Atlantic University
Words of wisdom/advice for new faculty: “Focus on the work that truly matters to you, approach it with care, and remain humble—everything else will fall into place.”
On the cusp of graduation at Coastal Carolina University, Dr. Jesse Ford thought he had done pretty good for himself when he secured a job offer at Waffle House making $45,000 a year.
“That was big money for your boy because I wasn’t making no money,” says Ford, who is now an assistant professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
But before Ford could accept the Waffle House job, his Greek Life advisor sat him down and told him: “No, you’re not doing that. You’re going back to school to get a masters.”
“And the next day, he sat me down and made me apply for graduate schools and graduate programs,” recounts Ford. His advisor even helped pay some of the application fees.
“It really was just a brother sitting me down, like, ‘No, you go back to school because you have this interest,’” Ford says of the curiosity he had then about why so many fellow young Black men on campus were not graduating. “‘You want to know more.’”
Ultimately, that talk – and the efforts that followed – got Ford accepted into the University of South Carolina, where he graduated with an M.Ed. in higher education and student affairs. A Ph.D. in higher education from Florida State University would soon follow.
For Ford, that sit-down also typifies the kind of concern for underrepresented students that is direly needed at colleges and universities in the U.S. He bases that on his research, which focuses largely on how underrepresented and under-researched populations are socialized within academia as graduate students and early career faculty, as well as how they make meaning of student success.
Asked what his research has led him to believe matters most in higher education, Ford offers this reply: “People that care.”
“I think that’s the biggest thing,” says Ford, who is now a McNair Scholars advisor and the inaugural director and creator of The Center for Black Men Success at Greensboro. “I don’t care whether [the school] is an HBCU, PWI, North, South, is in Alaska or around the world. It boils down to who works there and do they care.”
Dr. Erik Hines, one of Ford’s mentors and a professor in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University, credits Ford with creating a “strong, relevant and timely” research agenda.
Ford’s work includes Engaging Black Men in College Through Leadership Learning, a 2023 volume that Ford co-edited with Dr. Cameron C. Beatty of Florida State University.
Ford is the only person in his family who has an advanced degree. He is the son of a hog farmer and a stay-at-home mom. He grew up “in the middle of nowhere” in South Carolina. His childhood memories are of getting off the school bus, changing clothes and going to work alongside his father.
Being raised on a farm taught him important lessons about self-sufficiency.
“If we were in an apocalypse tomorrow, I would not die,” says Ford, who currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I can grow food. Downstairs I got peppers. I got sixteen blueberry trees outside.”
Being raised on a farm also informed Ford’s work ethic in academe.
“I feel like I know what hard work is,” he says. “My whole concept of hard work is being on that farm. When people tell me that being a professor – or doing school – is hard, I’m like, ‘Nah, I’ll do this all day. Don’t make me go back to (farming).”
Ford’s research, which includes 23 peer-reviewed articles and 16 book chapters, is largely framed by Dr. William A. Smith’s work on racial battle fatigue. He says one of the biggest challenges that Black men face on campus is anticipated racialized stress.
“We know from biology research that stress kills and on average Black men live seven years less than their racial and gendered counterparts,” Ford says. “And so, if stress is killing me off the bat, it looks and feels different, especially when you’re not even thinking about it when you were in college, just trying to make it day to day. But how does that impact me down the road?”
Although Ford’s career is based on improving higher education, he is less concerned with whether people go to college than whether they lead a successful life.
“I don’t believe college is the one-size-fits all for everyone,” Ford says. “What I do believe is that if you can figure out how to make money and be successful, whether that’s plumbing, electricity, auto work, as long as you are successful in society, I’m cool with that.”