As historically As black colleges and universities grapple with shrinking resources and growing financial pressure, Fisk University President Agenia Walker Clark is betting the school’s future on one of America’s most controversial developments: a data center.
Shocking some of its neighbors, the Nashville-based HBCU recently unveiled a $1 billion plan it calls “Quantum Leap To revitalize the 40-acre campus. The financial centerpiece of the plan will be a $400 million Innovation Center, which will include a 30,000-square-foot academic space along with a 70,000-square-foot technology data center that Clark believes could generate revenue for the university for generations.
Data Center Demand Rising Nationwide, Driven by Rise of Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing—McKinsey & Company projects that cumulative global spending on data center infrastructure could reach $7 trillion by 2030. But local opposition has also grown, with communities concerned about the centers’ power and water demands, as well as potential health impacts.
For Clark, the project is about more than chasing a hot field. It’s about creating a sustainable path for a small university with about 1,000 students (mostly undergraduates, with a few dozen graduate candidates) and a meager endowment. As she says, the school’s technology focus makes the innovation center a natural fit, not a stretch. About 30% of graduates major in computer science, with many more majoring in data analysis.
Some HBCUs have recently received significant gifts from billionaires. Most notably, MacKenzie Scott, the author, philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has made a number of donations. But Fisk was not among Scott’s recipients. Clark says she’s glad to see other HBCUs benefit, but her school isn’t waiting around for a transformative gift. Instead, she has leveraged her background in marketing and as a nonprofit executive (she was CEO of Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee for 19 years) to develop a strategy that makes sense for the school over time.
“As long as we stay true to who we are and what we do, we will always be able to appeal to philanthropists who want to invest,” Clark said. Forbes. “That’s why this master plan is important, so they know where their investments will go.”
Fisk President Agenia Walker Clark says the 160-year-old university must look ahead to secure its future.
Fisk University
Fisk’s current $30 million endowment amounts to $30,000 per student. By contrast, Bates College, a small, predominantly white liberal arts school, has an endowment of $486 million, or more than a quarter million per student.
While Fisk faces many of the same challenges as other small, private, tuition-dependent colleges, it scored a healthy B+ in Forbes 2026 College Finance Rankingsthe same grade as Bates. The unrestricted net assets-to-expenses ratio, which provides a true picture of how much money a school has available each year to cover its operations, is also relatively strong at more than 200%, far outpacing peer colleges, including HBCUs such as Hampton, Dillard and Xavier University of Louisiana.
However, Fisk does not live on an easy road financially. Its undersupply is well below its peer group and the national average, and its cash-to-debt ratio stands at 2.63, well below the peer average of 7.37. In 2024, the latest year for which audited financials are available, its cash position was down 59% from 2023. Those financial pressures permeate Clark’s pitch for the data center: a university that still looks healthy by many measures, but is now looking for ways to boost its operating income.
The proposal is the product of more than two years of planning and is not Fisk’s first turn to a master plan. Clark says she learned during early conversations with students, faculty, staff and alumni that a campus master plan effort had actually begun in 2008. “Nothing happened with it,” she says. After becoming president in 2023, Clark, now 67, spent months meeting with the campus community to map out priorities for Fisk’s future. Those conversations eventually led to the Quantum Leap master plan designed, he says, to carry the 160-year-old university into its next 160 years.
During a recent Zoom interview with ForbesClark didn’t seem bothered by criticism from alumni and community members who say a data center doesn’t belong on the campus of a historic liberal arts institution whose famous alumni include WEB Du Bois, Ida B. Wells and John Lewis. “As far as reactions go, I haven’t watched much of it because I was expecting it,” he said. “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and many times those opinions are not based on facts.” As he sees it, protecting Fisk’s historic mission now requires finding revenue in places the university had never looked before.
Among the plan’s critics: Fisk alumnus and Tennessee state representative Justin Jones, who joined community members in a press conference opposing the proposal. Nashville health advocate and social media influencer Ali Moresco, who has more than 33,000 Instagram followers, said she got involved after seeing complaints from residents living near large-scale data centers in other parts of Tennessee about potential health impacts. She joined forces with the group No New Data Centers to spread awareness by attending city council meetings and posting Reels on Instagram.
“I got sick 10 years ago. It took me eight years to recover,” he said Forbes. “I’m very aware of things that could affect my health and unfortunately it looks like these centers absolutely can.” Moresco was careful to make a distinction: Most activists opposed to the Fisk plan, he said, aren’t against AI or the innovation itself, but want any future development to be done with more transparency and more respect for the surrounding community.
Clark says she herself was skeptical of the data center idea when it was first proposed by a Fisk alumnus working in Silicon Valley, and that she initially had some of the same fears that critics now raise. But, he adds, the university has done its homework and thought about the community. For more than two years, he studied whether a data center could be part of Fisk’s future without harming students, employees or neighbors. The plan calls for a facility to be built with sustainability and energy efficiency in mind – a facility that is certified to meet LEED standards (defined by the US Green Building Council).
“When you hear about the dirty [data centers]What are you listening to?’ Clark asks. “They deplete resources, pollute our water, raise my utility rates and leave a terrible carbon footprint. I mean, it goes on and on and on.”
“Why would we want to open an innovation center and co-locate it with an academic center, and it would be a dirty data center?” he asks rhetorically. “Why would we do that? If you really stop and think about it logically, that’s not in the future of this university.”
One reason the concept works for the Fisk campus, Clark says, is that it has undeveloped land with access to enough energy to run the center. “We’re not selling our land or expanding beyond our footprint,” he explains. “We’re just trying to maximize and optimize where we are.”
The financial pressure on HBCUs explains why Clark is willing to consider something so unconventional. The schools have historically been underfunded and now face some of the same pressures as other colleges. However, HBCUs continue to produce a large share of the nation’s black professionals. The United Negro College Fund puts the numbers at about 70% Black doctors and dentists, 50% Black engineers and public school teachers, and 35% Black lawyers.
Fisk’s broad master plan, unveiled in May, calls for new residences, a student center, expanded academic facilities, an innovation hub, upgrades to existing infrastructure and an enrollment increase of 1,500. There would also be an expanded art gallery to display Fisk’s more than 4,000-plus pieces collection. “Instead of always having to go to the Met to see us, why not come to the Fisk?” says Clark. Each project, he adds, will need its own funding, fundraising strategy and partnerships.
Clark insists there are some wrong assumptions about the plan – namely that Fisk is selling its land to a company and that it’s already committed to building an AI data center. Neither is true, he says. The university will continue to own the land and construction of the center is contingent on the university selecting and signing a satisfactory agreement with a developer.
When asked about the project’s potential ROI, he didn’t pretend to have an answer: “I don’t know yet, because I don’t know who my partner is.” The project’s $400 million price tag, he noted, is only a design estimate based on current market rates for power and square footage — not a definitive budget.
Fisk is not the only HBCU looking at data centers as a source of revenue and technology relevance. Several HBCUs have partnered with companies such as Microsoft to provide students with training and a pathway to jobs in the industry. Atlanta-based Impact DataSource is pursuing a similar “Dream Centers” initiative, partnering with HBCUs to build facilities designed for workforce training and local economic development. Its first $108 million project, approved in partnership with North Carolina A&T State University, will sit off campus and not on campus.
Along with specific concerns about the data center, Clark faced questions about how Fisk and its ambitious master plan will fare in the face of a broad corporate retreat from diversity initiatives.
“I see Fisk as an institution that has trained and given to this community, to this country, to this world, some great minds that we’ve brought to businesses, corporations, governments, municipalities, individuals who are committed to excellence. That’s not DEI for me.
Fisk was chartered in 1866 to educate everyone, he points out, and the mandate hasn’t changed. “We’ve done a really good job of that and we just have to make sure we continue to do that and not look back, but look forward and look at everything we’re going to need going forward.”
