How Determined Fund-Raising Efforts Are Turning Around a University

By Bob Levey

Nashville

Four years ago, Hazel Rollins O'Leary had just finished renovating her retirement home in Hilton Head, S.C., when the phone rang. It was a member of the Fisk University Board of Trustees.

Would Ms. O'Leary help find a new president for her alma mater?

"I said, sure, I'd help them," said Ms. O'Leary, class of 1959, who was 67 years old at the time and had been secretary of energy in the first Clinton administration.

She