As Fayetteville State University Chancellor Darrell T. Allison finished his third year at the helm of the storied campus on March 15, he had accomplishments to celebrate.
Some of these:
But Allison also had a crisis brewing on his third anniversary as the leader of the FSU Broncos. Faculty grew increasingly angry at university Provost Monica Terrell Leach, the chief academic officer. On April 5, the anger boiled into a “no confidence” vote by the Faculty Senate against Terrell Leach.
Notably, the faculty’s dissatisfaction with Terrell Leach did not transfer to Allison, even though Terrell Leach was hired shortly after Allison took over.
“Chancellor Allison has been great this semester,” Associate Professor Rob Taber said in an interview April 22 on WFNC radio about the provost and the Faculty Senate’s “no confidence” resolution. Taber has been one of the leading and most-vocal critics of the administration. But he said Allison “has really leaned in” to listen to the faculty’s concerns with letters, meetings and an April 12 town hall session.
These show that “he’s standing by Provost Leach, but that he’s taking the resolution as a to-do list of ‘here are the things that need to be addressed on campus,’” Taber said.
CityView spoke with the chancellor by telephone on April 2 and in person on April 10. Allison talked about the university’s challenges and recent successes, and how he is handling the professors’ discontent.
“No one is saying in three years: ‘Sunshine, sunshine,’” Allison said. “That’s not real life, right? There’ll be days where the sun is shining. There’ll be days when it’s raining. That’s to be expected. That’s leadership.
“And so I do think on the whole — not snapshots — on the whole, I think we’re moving in the right direction, with the intent and with the focus to make sure that we all know we’ve got a lot of work to do, not just with our fiscal campus, but also internally, with the human capacity here, here on this campus,” he said. “And I am confident that we’re moving in the right direction, and we’re going to get there.”
More than $200 million in construction, renovation
When Allison arrived in 2021, he said, the state had not been providing enough money to maintain the campus and build new facilities. Fayetteville State got no capital investment money in 22 of the previous 30 years, he said.
“We have some of the oldest buildings you’ll find,” Allison said, listing several built in the 1920s and 1940s. “So coming here, I knew that we needed some resources — we needed some resources from the state in a real way.”
Why didn’t Fayetteville State get money for upkeep and growth?
“I can’t speak to why it was happening. I think that the proof is in the pudding,” Allison said. But since he took office in March 2021, he said, there’s been a more than $210 million investment.
A partial list of the projects underway through 2027:
How did Allison make this happen?
“It’s a collective ‘we,’ not ‘me,’” he said. Allison and other leaders in Cumberland County, he said, went to the legislature and made the case for more than $500 million of state investment in the community, including Fayetteville State.
“How do we go, instead of going solo, ‘Lone Ranger,’ how do we work in such a way, show up more dynamically, and we get more done together,” the chancellor said.
Helping students stay in college
Another problem in 2021, Allison said, was Fayetteville State’s retention rate — the percentage of students who stayed in school vs. those who dropped out.
“Of the students that we had, they have been coming through the front door, but they were just as quickly going through the side door, the back door,” he said.
Since then, the numbers have improved, Allison said.
According to data from the University of North Carolina System:
The incoming freshman class of fall 2024 had 807 students.
To help students stay in college and graduate — ideally within four years — Fayetteville State has a number of programs, Allison said.
The university in fall 2022 joined the North Carolina Promise tuition program. This sets tuition at $500 per semester, making Fayetteville State much more affordable than most other universities.
The university partners with Fayetteville Technical Community College, so FTCC students with 3.0 grade point averages and associate degrees can attend Fayetteville State University tuition-free for two years to get bachelor's degrees, he said.
It allows military and military-connected students to attend tuition-free, he said.
Fayetteville State also began offering free tuition for summer school. This helps and encourages students who get behind in accumulating enough credit hours to graduate in four years to make up ground, Allison said. Students need at least 30 credit hours per year to finish in four years, or 15 per semester.
“Even if you fall back a bit — let’s say you fall back to 12-12,” the chancellor said, using shorthand for 12 credit hours per semester, “because you made that stretch, we’ve got you in the summer. Because in the summer, we, as an institution, we’re going to cover costs for seven credits.”
Angry professors
In March, as Allison was marking progress on graduation and retention rates, research, capital improvements and other fronts, Fayetteville State’s professors were growing increasingly unhappy.
Earlier this year, the administration planned to increase the teaching workload for summer school teachers and decrease their pay, faculty members told CityView. Following complaints, that plan was put on hiatus for this summer, the professors said, but it remained on the table for future summers.
Meanwhile, the provost advanced another plan to increase teaching workloads during the regular academic year, starting with the fall 2024 semester, in effort to comply with a new policy from the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina System. The UNC System oversees Fayetteville State and the state’s 15 other public universities.
The faculty contend that Terrell Leach misinterpreted the requirements of the UNC System teaching workload policy.
The summer school pay, the teaching workload policy and other complaints led to the Faculty Senate to vote 32-4 (with eight abstentions) on April 5 to pass its “no confidence” resolution against the provost.
A week later, Allison and Terrell appeared before the faculty members in a town hall meeting. There and in a follow-up letter, Allison told the professors that summer school pay and workloads won’t change.
Further, Allison told them, Fayetteville State’s implementation of the UNC System teaching workload policy would be postponed to January 2025 and remains under review.
In his interview with CityView, Allison said he draws on his blue-collar roots from growing up in Kannapolis, a textile mill town near Charlotte, as he leads the university. He said he strives to get to know the students, the faculty and the staff who keep Fayetteville State going.
“I am just as much focused on how we get to our destination, as opposed to just getting to the destination,” Allison said. “And I am confident that we’re going to find our rhythm, and we’re going to continue to do some pretty amazing things here for our students.
“I am confident that our faculty and staff, they will be even more encouraged and excited about where they work. And I am confident that when all that comes together, we'll have some positive stories that the state will be proud, here at the second oldest public university in all of North Carolina.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
This story was made possible by contributions to CityView News Fund, a 501c3 charitable organization committed to an informed democracy.
