The University’s 11th president left an enduring mark that will be felt for the U of M’s next 100 years.
By Greg Russell Shortly after Dr. Shirley C. Raines was officially introduced as president of the University of Memphis during a Tiger basketball game at The Pyramid in early 2001, several Memphis Police Department officers gave chase in hot pursuit. No cuffs, no citations — “They were just trying to catch up to me to shake my hand,” says Raines, with a smile. It was a telling moment. The four or five female police officers were just a few of the thousands of women in the building that evening who wanted to congratulate Raines: she had just become the first female president of a University that began offering classes in 1912. Women reached across their husbands in the stands to shake her hand as she slowly made her way up the stairs from the court back to the President’s Box. When she later visited the concession stand in the building’s corridor, workers couldn’t wait to congratulate her. “That’s when I realized how significant it was that I was a female,” Raines says. “It was important in that I think it helped others believe they can do whatever they want in their profession, no matter their gender.” 10
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Looking back, that would become a small but albeit important part of a legacy of a president who would go on to dramatically transform a campus both physically and academically. From growing up on a farm in rural west Tennessee where she picked cotton to later using scholarships to keep her head above water in college, Raines would become the longest serving president in the school’s history and one of the region’s most visible and beloved public figures. Raines has garnered national attention for her presidential leadership. She was invited to the White House by the U.S. Department of Commerce last October to take part in a panel discussion on entrepreneurship and innovation because, “We have been very impressed with the approaches taken by the University of Memphis in terms of corporate sponsorships, campus engagement and an entrepreneurship agenda, as well as its unique partnership with FedEx,” read a White House statement. THE UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS