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Tamika Hull is developing 30 single-family homes in the struggling Metcalfe Park neighborhood in partnership with the Milwaukee Urban League.

Hull is a developer for Gorman & Co., a Madison-based development company, a position she believes she would not have gotten without the help of ACRE - Associates in Commercial Real Estate - an ambitious initiative led by Marquette University to increase diversity among Milwaukee's development community.

Hull was hired by Gorman & Co. after completing a yearlong internship as part of the ACRE program.

"I was going to leave Milwaukee," says Hull, 35, a product of public housing in Milwaukee and a military veteran who served in the Persian Gulf War. "I felt compelled to stay and go into challenged neighborhoods and build better developments and give the neighborhoods back to the community."

Now, three years after it was founded, ACRE is about to change in a radical way.

This fall, the program is being re-introduced with a different focus. Instead of an emphasis on helping minorities land jobs in commercial real estate, ACRE will give students real world experience by allowing them to tackle actual development projects.

The biggest change is the elimination of internships, which have been a vital part of the program. After completing the 25-week, non-credit course, top ACRE graduates were awarded one-year, paid internships with one of six commercial real estate partners in the program.

Goals unmet
It's not a change the program's founder, Mark Eppli, made lightly.

While the internships were coveted by both students and developers, the needs and the goals of each weren't being met, he said. "I hate to be in that place," Eppli said.

Developers were looking for trained professionals who could step into commercial real estate jobs and follow company protocol.

Minorities, meanwhile, were enrolling in the program not necessarily to get a job in the end, but to fulfill a mission.

"To our surprise when we surveyed the students, the internship wasn't really important," Eppli said. "What a majority of candidates wanted was a means of getting into commercial real estate more or less to change their neighborhood."

In moving away from internships, Eppli said, "the idea is less about job placement, but more about being a community wealth-building program."

It's a daring move, but sometimes in education you have to reinvent yourself to stay effective. And if anyone has the ability to make this work, it's Eppli.

The Robert B. Bell Sr. chair in real estate studies at Marquette, Eppli is highly regarded in the industry. A Fond du Lac native and graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he has published extensive research on a range of real estate topics and served as a consultant to a number of finance, real estate and government entities.

"Right off the bat, I was impressed with Mark's energy and his passion for really wanting to do something to get African-Americans and other minorities into an industry where they were grossly under-represented," said Ralph Hollmon, president and chief executive of the Milwaukee Urban League.

But with internships now scrapped, a critical entrée for minorities into the relationship-driven commercial real estate business has been lost.

Consider Edwindra Crocker, 29, an ACRE graduate who landed a position with a Milwaukee-area developer after completing the one-year internship.

Crocker was on a fast track as a financial analyst at Waukesha's GE Healthcare and far below the radar of Continental Properties Co., where she now works as a development coordinator.

"Internships give you exposure and the tools to succeed, and give you credibility so that, down the line, if I wanted to do my own thing, I will have the experience of having worked for a reputable company," said Crocker, who took a 50% pay cut to become an ACRE intern.

Dave Wietor, vice president of human resources for Continental Properties, said Crocker was a rare find in commercial real estate, where minorities make up less than 1% of professionals and executives.

"We were fortunate to find Eddie," Wietor said. "You take a very bright lady who has a very strong business sense and you put her in an environment that we have here, where she can grow and develop, she's a perfect match for us."

With internships eliminated, Eppli believes there's still opportunity to showcase minority talent through networking sessions and classroom instruction led by major developers like the Mandel Group, Irgens Development Partners and others.

"My hope and goal is to guide candidates through the ropes of commercial real estate development so that they can ultimately lead their own developments in the city," Eppli said.

Tannette Johnson-Elie writes about small and minority-owned businesses and diversity issues for the Journal Sentinel. She can be reached at (414) 223-5172 or by e-mail at telie@journalsentinel.com.