Recording excellence: Huston-Tillotson’s registrar has nurtured more than 5,100 graduates over 50 years
Tuesday Mar, 11 2025
Austin, Texas – March 11, 2025 – As Austin’s oldest university celebrates its 150th birthday, one of its greatest accomplishments has been to proudly produce annual classes of predominantly Black graduates going back to 1875. Indeed, one of Huston-Tillotson University’s most remarkable graduates has – according to her own records – spent half a century personally helping more than 5,100 other students cross that graduation finish line.
Now 88, Huston-Tillotson Registrar Earnestine Strickland first visited the campus on the hill in 1974 – the same year that President Richard Nixon resigned and Muhammad Ali knocked George Foreman out in Zaire’s “Rumble in the Jungle.”
Strickland accompanied her daughter as she registered at Huston-Tillotson (HT) that August. Enthused about discovering that hubbub of students, faculty, and staff, Strickland said she told her daughter, “This looks like an awesome place to work.”
The following year, Strickland’s daughter, Beverli Carlette Strickland, told her mother about an HT job opening. “I was hired on the spot – but not for the registrar’s office,” Strickland recalled. “I was hired to work in the science building as secretary.”
Starting a university career without a university diploma of her own, Strickland said she had to acclimatize herself to HT’s academic atmosphere. After working two years in the Dickey-Lawless science building, she transferred to the registrar’s office. Rising up the ranks, she became the university’s official registrar in 1994.
As registrar, Mrs. Strickland has maintained academic records, scheduled classes, recorded grades and transcripts, and certified HT’s graduates over the course of five decades.
Early in Strickland’s career, HT’s then-president, Dr. John Quill Taylor King, allowed her to pursue her own bachelor’s degree, majoring in industrial relations and personnel management. In this way, HT Registrar Ernestine Strickland proudly attended – and helped certify – her own HT graduation in 1986.
Strickland has remained at HT for 50 years because the work is joyful and fulfilling, she said. Uplifting incoming students with complicated backgrounds and helping them to earn degrees keeps her going year after year. She’s mindful that many HT students retrace her own steps.
Image credit: Earnestine Strickland.
“So many of our students are first-generation students,” she said, “and college is new to them — like it was to me.”
Despite being underestimated by many, HT students with challenging backgrounds are expected to overcome adversity to attain excellence. They, too, must live up to their school’s “IDEAL” standards for integrity, diversity, excellence, accountability, and leadership. This does not mean that some of them don’t need help along the way. “That is a level of satisfaction to me — that they feel like they can reach out to me,” Strickland said, “and I can make a difference.”
Strickland also oversees HT’s untraditional Adult Degree Program, which helps adults holding down full-time jobs obtain a degree, just as Strickland did. The working student “may do one night a week just to get their associate degree,” she said. “And some of them continue to get their four-year degree.”
“Ms. Strickland is a touchstone for every student who has attended HT for the past 50 years,” said Dr. Michael Hirsch, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Alums come to campus to see her. She is beloved because she understands she is there to help. And help she does.”
“Mrs. Strickland’s longstanding contributions to the university are invaluable,” adds English professor Shawanda Stewart. “Her wisdom and years of experience are paramount to the success of our Registrar’s Office.”
Even more students could make this journey, Strickland said, if HT were better publicized to the many Austin residents who are unaware of its existence. “We are a well-kept secret,” she noted. “Not many folks that are right here in Austin know about us and that needs to change.”
Strickland said that the HT community needs to make a stronger push to the media to cover such things as HT sports programs, which provide crucial scholarships for low-income students. In “our sports program, when something good happens, we have it on the local news,” she said.
Image credit: 2C2K Photography.
Hirsch said that Strickland’s influence on students extends beyond graduation day. She “embodies the spirit of the university,” he said.
Strickland acknowledges that, “I thought about retirement” but has “no definite plans at this time.”
As Huston-Tillotson marks its sesquicentennial, records maintained by its registrar document thousands of HT Rams who embody the school’s spirit of selfless diligence and excellence. Among the best of them is an HT mom who stopped by campus on a summer’s day in 1974 – and has helped to run the show practically ever since.
Marcus Santillanes is a recent graduate of Huston-Tillotson University, where he was a W.E.B. Du Bois Honorsscholar who majored in environmental justice. Santillanes wrote a story on “Japan’s Unforgiving Working Culture” as a Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow in 2022. He is passionate about spreading awareness of underreported environmental and human rights issues.
By Marcus Santillanes
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ABOUT HUTSON-TILLOTSON UNVIERSITY
Huston-Tillotson University, the first institution of higher education in Austin, Texas, has roots dating back to 1875. Huston-Tillotson University is an independent, church-related, historically Black, four-year liberal arts institution located on a 23-acre tree-lined campus near downtown in East Austin. Huston-Tillotson University’s mission is to nurture a legacy of leadership and excellence in education, connecting knowledge, power, passion, and values. The University offers associate and master’s degrees in addition to Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in more than 19 areas of study. Huston-Tillotson University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC).
