CityView Magazine

48 | January/February 2018 receiving a diploma in 1964. Today, 74 percent of the school's students identify as racial minorities. Along the way, the school has had 13 leaders. e first five held the title of principal and included founding principal Robert L. Harris, Charles W. Chesnutt (later a noted writer), George Williams, Rev. L.E. Fairley and Ezekiel Ezra (E.E.) Smith, who spent 40-plus years at the school amid breaks to serve as a U.S. Ambassador to Liberia among other things. Smith helped move the school to its current site, oversaw its expansion from a three-room building to 10 buildings on 50 acres and paid off the note on the land, later deeding it to the state for the school. In 1927, six years before he retired, his title was changed to president of the school. Later presidents and then chancellors included J. Ward Seabrook, Rudolph Jones, Charles A. Lyons Jr., Lloyd V. Hackley, Donna J. Benson (an interim chancellor for 11 months), Willis B. McLeod (the first alumnus in the job) and elma J. Bryan (the first woman officially in the job). roughout the years, the leaders faced plenty of challenges. It was no different for Anderson, who arrived in mid-2008. At that time, Fayetteville State was facing major problems. Its four-year- old nursing program was on the verge of being shut down because of its students' poor performance on state licensing tests and its financial reports were repeatedly cited by state auditors for numerous deficiencies. "We were the laughingstock" of the higher-education world, Anderson said. But the school's situation and its history and potential excited Anderson. "I love challenges," he said. He decided to take the job and upon Fayetteville State Chancellor James Anderson stands in front of portraits of previous FSU leaders. Nurses and their families listen to graduation speeches at the December ceremony.

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