DR. ALICIA B. HARVEY-SMITH, IN HER OFFICE AT PITTSBURGH TECHNICAL COLLEGE, IN OAKDALE.
The word “debt” has been associated with Pittsburgh Technical College for a long time.
In the fiscal year 2019, the college had a debt of $46.4 million, the New Pittsburgh Courier has learned, before Dr. Alicia B. Harvey-Smith ever stepped foot in Pittsburgh, or on the college’s grounds in Oakdale.
A COURIER SPECIAL REPORT
Dr. Harvey-Smith is the president of Pittsburgh Technical College, or PTC for short. Today, the school is pretty much no more. The school’s Board of Trustees decided in June 2024 to close the college altogether in August following declining enrollment and a host of investigations and local TV news stories that, according to some at the college who spoke with the Courier, including Dr. Harvey-Smith, portrayed the college in a very bad light.
A group that referred to themselves as “The Whistleblowers” filed a number of complaints against the PTC president in 2023, specifically pertaining to decisions she had made and the alleged financial spending she had done. The college’s board responded by hiring an independent law firm to conduct an investigation. Following the investigation, the Board of Trustees wrote that “the vast majority of the allegations were summarily found to be without merit, but the report highlighted three areas of concern for further evaluation by the board.”
Those concerns included the award of a presidential scholarship to a Black student at a predominantly Black local high school. The board found that Dr. Harvey-Smith was within her authority to award such a scholarship, “and that the scholarship promoted the College and advanced its mission.”
The second concern dealt with an award of a copying contract to a local, Black-owned business. Again, the board ruled that Dr. Harvey-Smith “had the authority to award the contract and under the circumstances the award represented an appropriate exercise of that authority.”
The third concern dealt with PTC paying in some part for a book that was authored by Dr. Harvey-Smith. “Dr. Harvey-Smith did not break any law, regulation, rule, policy, or directive with respect to the College’s payments and upon publishing the book in 2022, had offered to donate proceeds from the book to the College’s scholarship fund,” the board wrote.
Near the end of the letter in response to the “Whistleblowers'” allegations, the board wrote that Dr. Harvey-Smith was “offered the Presidency at Pittsburgh Technical College with the understanding that she would be an agent for change as the institution continues its metamorphosis from a for-profit technical institute saddled by crushing debt to a non-for-profit college striving for financial stability. Change is never easy, but often necessary, and the Board of Trustees reaffirms its full support and confidence for Dr. Harvey-Smith and transformative change.”
That said, it boggled and continues to boggle the mind of Dr. Harvey-Smith, Michael Russell (the school’s Academic Chair, School of Information Systems and Technology, and the School of Design and Engineering) and Dr. Bev Moore, a current trustee member, how reports continued to flood local TV about Dr. Harvey-Smith’s alleged financial transgressions, with even one student alleging on TV that “students were never the top priority at the school; it was always her (Dr. Harvey-Smith) lining her pockets…”
DR. ALICIA B. HARVEY-SMITH SPEAKS WITH THE NEW PITTSBURGH COURIER IN JUNE 2024 AT PITTSBURGH TECHNICAL COLLEGE. (PHOTO BY ROB TAYLOR JR.)
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“I finish what I start. You’re not going to scare me off; that’s not who I am. What it takes, I think, to lead in a moment like this, is courage, and not everyone has that.”
– DR. ALICIA B. HARVEY-SMITH
PTC PRESIDENT[/perfectpullquote]
Dr. Harvey-Smith, who is Black, told the Courier in an exclusive interview, June 26, that she believes a series of “orchestrated attacks” were made against her. Dr. Harvey-Smith, who is Pittsburgh Technical College’s first Black president, stopped short of saying that racism played a role or was behind the attacks, which she called wholly inaccurate. However, the attacks on her character, alleged financial mismanagement and overall leadership style, according to Dr. Harvey-Smith, caused the domino effect of board members resigning, students not wanting to go to PTC, the school’s accreditor, Middle States Commission on Higher Education, threatening to withdraw the school’s accreditation, and financial donors not wanting to be part of the “smoke,” ultimately leading to the board’s decision to close the school altogether.
The Courier has learned that the college’s debt decreased each year after Dr. Harvey-Smith’s first full year as president. Data reviewed by the Courier revealed that during the 2019-2020 fiscal school year, which was Dr. Harvey-Smith’s first full year as president, the overall debt increased from $46.4 million to $47.6 million. But by 2021, the debt fell to $44.4 million, and by 2022, the debt fell to $39.8 million.
PTC TRUSTEE MEMBER DR. BEV MOORE SPEAKS WITH DR. ALICIA B. HARVEY-SMITH.
How did Dr. Harvey-Smith get the debt down? She told the Courier it was a mix of renegotiating contracts, competing for and acquiring grants now that the college was a non-profit, and more.
“We were frugal,” Dr. Harvey-Smith told the Courier exclusively. “We did the best with what we had.”
Dr. Harvey-Smith said the college was able to open a health and wellness center through a series of strategic partnerships and not with funds that would have added to the debt load.
In three years, Pittsburgh Technical College’s debt decreased by nearly $7 million with Dr. Harvey-Smith at the helm. Those kinds of things, which she considered positive milestones, were left out of all the Pittsburgh-area media reports about her performance as PTC president, she told the Courier.
“If there’s one message, it’s that the debt was inherited,” Dr. Harvey-Smith told the Courier exclusively. “This is not debt that I brought. I did not add to it, I decreased that debt. What was missing (from the local media reports) was the full picture.”
With Russell and Dr. Moore in attendance, Dr. Harvey-Smith told the Courier that the “Whistleblowers,” she believed, were a small number of disgruntled former and, at the time, current employees. As of Fall 2023, PTC had 160 or so full-time faculty and staff, and another 65 or so that were part-time faculty and staff, according to data on its website. Obviously, no one will be employed by PTC as of August 2024.
DR. ALICIA B. HARVEY-SMITH GREETS A PTC GRADUATE ON JUNE 22, 2024.
It got ugly, Dr. Harvey-Smith told the Courier. She said some of the “disgruntled” former/current employees disguised as the “Whistleblowers” were calling PTC board members at their homes, and even sending negative emails about Dr. Harvey-Smith on the college’s own email system.
“I got threats, the board got threats,” Dr. Harvey-Smith told the Courier.
“I tried to look at, what are the other possibilities,” the PTC president said. “Is it performance? Has this woman (Dr. Harvey-Smith) performed at a higher-than-average level? There’s no way you can say I haven’t. That’s documented. Have I mistreated someone? Well, no, so it’s not behavioral. So then, why do you have an issue with me other than, we came in, we strategically created a plan that’s being implemented (at other institutions) across the country…we tried to implement it…I think it became a little too much for them.”
DR. ALICIA B. HARVEY-SMITH WITH PTC GRADUATES ON JUNE 22, 2024 — PTC’S FINAL COMMENCEMENT.
Dr. Moore chimed in and said that maybe some people thought attacking Dr. Harvey-Smith or trying to discredit her in the media would cause her to be “intimidated, or breakable, and that didn’t happen.”
Then, Russell, the school’s Academic Chair, School of Information Systems and Technology, and the School of Design and Engineering, chimed in. “I will not say that the fact that Dr. Harvey-Smith is a Black female had nothing to do with things being as aggressive as they had become. I asked people in the hallways, have you talked to Dr. Harvey-Smith? ‘No.’ Have you been to her office? ‘No.’ So how is it that you have this opinion…why do you have a negative opinion about her leadership when you haven’t (gone to her) and asked the questions…?”
Dr. Harvey-Smith, sitting with the Courier in her waterfall-less office (it was alleged in various local media reports that her office was so elaborate that there was a waterfall in the office), said she was blindsided by all the allegations. After all, things started out great for her at PTC.
DR. ALICIA B. HARVEY-SMITH, AT PTC’S COMMENCEMENT.
When a national search was conducted for the next president at PTC in 2018, Dr. Harvey-Smith saw it at the time as a wonderful opportunity. Not that she needed the job; she was the Executive Vice Chancellor of Lone Star College in Houston, one of the largest college systems in the country. She had served in that position since 2016. Prior to Lone Star College, Dr. Harvey-Smith served as President/CEO of River Valley Community College, in New Hampshire; and Vice-President of Student Affairs at Baltimore City Community College, among other roles.
Dr. Harvey-Smith, a Baltimore native, graduated from the HBCU Morgan State University in 1984, earned her master’s from Johns Hopkins University, and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland School of Education in 2003.
All of those qualifications and work experiences were music to the PTC Presidential Search Committee’s ears.
“Pittsburgh Technical College could not be more pleased to welcome Dr. Alicia B. Harvey-Smith. Throughout her career, Dr. Harvey-Smith has embraced the values that are the foundation PTC is built on—providing an immersive, career-focused education,” said Eli Shorak, at the time the chair of PTC’s Presidential Search Committee, in a statement from 2019. “She is a deeply engaged leader who has a demonstrated history of emphasizing skills-based, experiential education, the very tenets of PTC.”
“It seemed like an amazing opportunity to be honest,” Dr. Harvey-Smith told the Courier. “An opportunity to build a college from the ground up. The ads for the particular post spoke of building a college, moving it from for-profit (employee-owned) to non-profit to really re-establishing an organization, and those kinds of challenges excite me.”
In the summer of 2019, Dr. Harvey-Smith officially became PTC’s president, and Dr. Harvey-Smith and husband, Donald Smith, traded in the Texas heat for the hilly terrain—and snow—that all Pittsburghers are used to.
“There was much celebration around her and her husband, both being introduced to the community on the same day at the same time,” Russell recalled to the Courier.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, an official “public installation,” or inauguration ceremony, was held for Dr. Harvey-Smith in June 2022. Russell estimated about 1,000 people were there. He said some people were in tears there.
DR. ALICIA B. HARVEY-SMITH WITH PTC GRADUATES ON JUNE 22, 2024 — PTC’S FINAL COMMENCEMENT.
“It was about hope and it was time for us to step up and take our place in the academic world,” Russell, who is also Black along with Dr. Moore, said. “It’s acknowledged by the employers in the area, but not really recognized by other colleges and universities in the area, even though they all received our students who went on to master’s degrees and other things and saw that our students were superior.”
The going was so good, Dr. Harvey-Smith said, that she and other faculty and staff had a “dream walk” on the campus. They walked on the campus and began to imagine “what could be. Not just what’s here, but what could be…the future is by our design.”
Dr. Harvey-Smith enlisted more than 70 faculty and staff to contribute to what would be the school’s new six-point strategic plan, which, at least Dr. Harvey-Smith thought, had everyone’s blessing.
The strategic plan for PTC included expanding student access, enabling success and skills for the future, aligning workforce demand and curriculum focus, elevating public and private partnerships, enhancing the school’s financial stability and stewardship, and promoting a culture of excellence and accountability.
“As PTC’s first President to emerge from outside of the organization and the first African American to lead the College,” Dr. Harvey-Smith wrote in the college’s strategic plan booklet, “I am humbled to be embraced by a college community that is united by values and a commitment to student success and organizational excellence. Together we will accomplish our goals.”
Turns out, not everyone was united. And it turns out, in Dr. Harvey-Smith’s words, she was made the scapegoat.
“I don’t believe any of the decisions that I made caused the nonsense that we’ve just endured,” Dr. Harvey-Smith told the Courier exclusively. “I think that it was contrived for other reasons; I don’t think it had to do anything with performance.”
When the attacks were coming, when the TV reports were flashing, when a student alleged that, in so many words, she was stuffing the college’s money in her back pocket, when it was said that her office cost $500,000 to furnish, when board members were jumping off the ship, Dr. Harvey-Smith fought back, told her side of the story to anyone who would listen, and stayed at PTC. But why did she stay?
“I finish what I start,” she told the Courier. “You’re not going to scare me off; that’s not who I am. What it takes, I think, to lead in a moment like this, is courage, and not everyone has that.”
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