Dr. Tony Allen becomes 12th president of Delaware State

When the calendar flipped to 2020, Delaware State University welcomed a new leader, as 49-year-old Dr. Tony Allen became the 12th president in the university’s history.

“I’m very excited. Anxious to get started,” Allen said. “It’s been a real career interest of mine, and I’d say a certain passion, not only to be a college president but to be one at Delaware State, specifically.”

Allen replaces retiring President Wilma Mishoe, having previously served as the university’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. He grew up in New Castle and joined Delaware State in 2017 after a career in the banking and nonprofit sectors.

Allen said one of his duties is to continue to build up Delaware State’s profile. Part of that, he said, has been increasing the university’s presence in Sussex County, hiring a director, strengthening Delaware State’s relationship with Delaware Tech, and signing agreements with First State Community Action Agency to provide a talent pipeline to the university. 

“My experience with Sussex is their students don’t necessarily think of Delaware State first. We’re trying to change that,” Allen said. 

As the head of both the only state university and the only historically black college or university in Delaware, he views diversity as one of the school’s biggest selling points. Delaware State is nearly 30 percent non-black, one of the highest rates of non-black students among HBCUs in the country. 

“We are becoming a community that looks like a smaller, more connected world,” he said.

He said his goal as president is to put real-world tools into the hands of students so that when they graduate, they are able to smoothly transition into the job market.

“Many people ask me, ‘Do you think HBCUs are still relevant?’ And my answer always is, ‘If you didn’t have us, you’d have to invent us.’ There are very few institutions that can do what we do and serve the diversity of students we do,” Allen said.

Allen graduated from the University of Delaware in 1993 with a degree in political science, and earned a master’s in public administration in nonprofit management and community development from the Austin Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at City University of New York. While pursuing his master’s, Allen worked as a speechwriter for then-senator and future Vice President Joe Biden. 

“He and his family have been very important to me,” he said. “My quote from Joe Biden is, ‘Lucky man who wakes up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor and knows exactly what he wants to do and believes it still matters.’”

After leaving Biden’s Senate office in 2000, Allen moved into the world of nonprofits, serving as a founder of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League until 2004, when he moved into the banking world with MBNA America Bank in Wilmington. In 2006, he went to Bank of America, where he worked until 2017.

“My experience didn’t follow the traditional academic path, but I do think because it is so varied across many disciplines our students study today, I think it matters relative to how I’m preparing,” Allen said. 

He said he learned the value of education from his parents.

“My mom was a teenage mom, kicked out of the public school system in Delaware. My father never finished the 11th grade. They saw education as the key to my future, even though they had no idea how to make sure I was getting a quality education, or resources to make sure I got to college. But what they had was grit. They tried to make connections for me that mattered,” Allen said. “They made sure I gave back and remembered where I came from.”

As the chief academic officer, Allen said he learned to see how to grow the university academically and focus on student success. He said the position also allowed him to really learn the history of Delaware State, which dates back 128 years. 

“It really prepared me for the seat I’m in today, which is a little different but continues the philosophy  that we are a student-centric organization who has great, deep meaning to the health of the state,” Allen said.