LORMAN — After spending Tuesday meeting with community and school leaders, faculty, students and staff, Dr. Christopher Brown said he was hopeful about the future of Alcorn State University and happy and humbled to have been named its new president.

“I am thankful and blessed to be here,” Brown said at a late-afternoon press conference on the ASU campus. “On last night’s drive to the hotel, and this morning, it was raining, the winds were blowing and there were tornadoes up and down the corridor. But this morning, when it looked like the sun wasn’t going to shine any more, God put a rainbow — a purple and gold rainbow — in the sky.”

Brown earned laughter and a round of applause for his reference to Alcorn’s colors.

Brown was the unanimous choice of the Board of Trustees of the State Institutions of Higher Learning and will begin serving in January. At 38, he will become the youngest public university president in Mississippi. Among the first challenges he will face is managing a possible 15 percent drop in state funding next year.

He replaces Dr. Norris Edney, who agreed to serve as Alcorn’s interim president when George Ross stepped down in February to become president of Central Michigan University.

Ross, 58, a Utica native, had been in office 13 months after succeeding Clinton Bristow, who died on the campus after suffering an apparent heart attack.

Almost 50 applications were reviewed for the job by the search committee. Brown was the committee’s unanimous choice.

“They spent a lot of time thinking about what Alcorn needs in its future president,” said Dr. Hank Bounds, IHL commissioner. “One of the first things we need is some stability. We’ve had some movement around here. We also need someone who understands rural Mississippi. We need someone who can wrap their arms around the ASU family and bring them together, particularly in times of fiscal stress.”

He said Brown not only has the right educational background and professional experience to lead Alcorn, but connected with virtually every group on campus.

“It really is a marriage, so there has to be a good fit,” Bounds said. “The thing I’m most excited about is that it was apparent to me that there was a real fit here today.”

Committee chairman C.D. Smith said Brown rose to the top when rated by campus groups on such attributes as enthusiasm, interests, leadership qualities, academic credentials, financial management, diversity, commitment and vision for ASU.

“When all was said and done, Chris Brown emerged as the person to be the next president of Alcorn State University,” Smith said.

Brown currently is executive vice president and provost of Fisk University in Nashville, and previously was dean of the College of Education at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas and also held a number of other faculty and research appointments at universities and institutes. He said few details and tasks need to be wrapped up in his final weeks on the job.

He has a doctorate in higher education from Penn State University and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at South Carolina State University and the University of Kentucky, respectively.

Brown has written or edited 15 books and monographs and authored or co-authored more than 100 journal articles.

Brown said he met Monday with Vicksburg Mayor Paul Winfield and visited the Vicksburg campus of Alcorn, which offers a variety of courses in conjunction with Hinds Community Collge. Some ASU programs, such as nursing, are offered at another satellite campus in Natchez.

“Alcorn is a university of three campuses and our intention is to continue to serve all three with vigor,” said Brown. “We’ll have to look at what the plans have been and continue to try to support them, and make the appropriate judgments at the proper time. Hopefully we’ll continue to spend the appropriate and right amount of time to understand Vicksburg’s needs and the ways we can serve the population.”

“He seems to have a plan, and he’s very knowledgeable about HBCU’s, specifically land-grant, which Alcorn is,” said Zelmarine Murphy, a member of the search committee who is also president of the Vicksburg Warren School District Board of Trustees.

Founded in 1871, Alcorn was the nation’s first state-supported institution for the higher education of African Americans. It is one of three historically black colleges and universities in Mississippi, along with Jackson State University and Mississippi Valley University.

JSU has also been searching for a new president and Nov. 23, the same day Brown’s name was put forward, IHL trustees announced a preferred candidate, Carolyn W. Meyers, a past president of Norfolk State University in Virginia, to lead that school.