2019-2020 PQC Student Government Association volunteer at For Oak Cliff in Dallas, TX on Martin Luther King Day 2020.
Our Mission
The mission of Paul Quinn College is to provide a quality, faith-based education that addresses the academic, social, and Christian development of students and prepares them to be servant leaders and agents of change in the global marketplace.
Our Guiding Principles
We call them the Four L’s of Quinnite Servant Leadership— the foundation of who we are and how we operate. At Paul Quinn College, we believe that all Quinnites should:
LEAVE places better than you found them.
LEAD from wherever you are.
LIVE a life that matters.
LOVE something greater than yourself.
Who We Are
Paul Quinn College, one of the most innovative small colleges in America, is a private, faith-based, four-year, liberal arts-inspired college that was founded on April 4, 1872 by a group of African Methodist Episcopal Church preachers in Austin, Texas. The school’s original purpose was to educate freed slaves and their offspring.
Today, Paul Quinn has become a model for urban higher education by focusing on academic rigor, experiential learning, and entrepreneurship.
The College proudly educates students of all races and socio-economic classes under the banner of its institutional ethos, WE over Me. Its mission is to provide a quality, faith-based education that addresses the academic, social, and Christian development of its students. The College’s president, Michael Sorrell, was recently named one of Fortune Magazine’s World’s Greatest Leaders in 2018 and the Male President of the Year by HBCU Digest for the third time.
Beginning in the Fall of 2015, Paul Quinn College adopted a new student financial structure called the “New Urban College Model” which, among other characteristics, reduced student tuition and fees and provides students with the ability to graduate with less than $10,000 of student loan debt. The centerpiece of the New Urban College Model is Paul Quinn’s decision to become the country’s only urban Work College. There are currently eight work colleges in the nation. Paul Quinn is the ninth federally funded work college in the United States, the first Minority Serving Institution (“MSI”) in the Work College Consortium, and the first work college in Texas.
The vision of the Paul Quinn College Work Program is to transform ability into action and potential into achievement by encouraging all students to embrace the ideals of disciplined work, servant leadership, and initiative in preparation for lives of financial freedom, community engagement, and outstanding character.
Our Institutional Ethos
Our ethos is simple: WE Over Me. Forged through times of struggle and strife, our students make the world a better place by centering this:
The needs of the community supersede the wants of the individual.
APOSTLE’S CREED
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead; and buried. The third day he arose from the dead’ he ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Church Universal, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.
DOCTRINAL STATEMENT
Paul Quinn College, its students and employees, affirm the Biblical and theological foundations of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and commit ourselves to fulfilling the mission and philosophy of education that reflects our foundations. These beliefs are enumerated in the Articles of Religion, the Standard Sermons of John Wesley, and the Apostle’s Creed.