Fayetteville State University (FSU) Chancellor James A. Anderson has been selected to receive the 2017 American Association of Blacks in Higher Education (AABHE) Harold Delaney Exemplary Leadership Award. The award is given to individuals whose lives and careers have advanced issues of access and opportunity for Black Americans in higher education.
In notifying Anderson of his selection, AABHE stated: “Your stellar career certainly exemplifies these kinds of accomplishments.” Anderson will be honored at the National Conference on Blacks in Higher Education March 23-25, 2017 in Raleigh.
As an award recipient, Anderson and other honorees will participate in a panel discussion focusing on the conference theme. The 2017 theme is Pathways to Success in Higher Education: Transforming Lives through Education, Equity and Social Justice. The overarching goal of the 2017 conference is to encourage the creation of opportunities for critical thinking about academia in an evolving political and economic climate.
Anderson began his duties as Chancellor of the state’s second-oldest public institution on June 9, 2008. Before coming to FSU, Anderson served as the University at Albany’s (New York) Vice President for Student Success, Vice Provost for Institutional Assessment and Diversity and Professor of Psychology.
Raised in Washington, D.C, Anderson majored in psychology at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. He later earned a doctoral degree in the field of cognitive psychology from Cornell University in New York, and upon completion he accepted his first academic appointment in the Department of Psychology at Xavier University in New Orleans.
Anderson is active in professional, civic, and higher-education organizations. He is a member of the Executive Council and Board of Trustees of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, a member of the American Council on Education’s Commission on Inclusion, the Board of Directors of United Way of Cumberland County, the Educators Serving Educators Advisory Board for Excelsior College in Albany, New York, chair of the Board of Directors of the Sustainability Communities Foundation in Fayetteville, and a member of the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Campus Compact on Civic Engagement. He also serves on the advisory boards of Wells Fargo, the Lumina Foundation, and the NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement). He is a member of the 100 Black Men Cape Fear Region and Sigma Pi Phi, the oldest African American fraternity.
Under Anderson’s leadership FSU has increased its support of and engagement with the military. The university has opened a Veteran’s Student Center for advising and scheduling. FSU provides Entrepreneurial boot-camps for Veterans and their spouses, and a separate boot-camp for Wounded Warriors. FSU has developed a Center for Defense and Homeland Security that offers certificates in Cyber Security. The university supports both Army and Air Force detachments of ROTC. At the May 2015 graduation ceremony both the valedictorian and the salutatorian were ROTC students – a university first.
Anderson has expanded the global footprint of the university by expanding international initiatives in China, Africa, India, and Europe. These initiatives are focused on degree program completion, reciprocal program development, summer institutes, and faculty/staff residential exchanges. FSU also supports real-time, web-based academic courses that FSU students share with students from China and India.
Anderson’s research and writing have focused on the assessment of student learning, the interaction between diverse student learning styles and instructor teaching styles, as well as the impact of diversity on student learning, retention, and overall institutional effectiveness. He is the author or co-author of numerous books, including “The Unfinished Agenda: Brown v. Board of Education” (2004) and “Driving Change through Diversity and Globalization—Transformative Leadership in the Academy” (2007).
AABHE has more than 37 years of experience focusing on meeting the educational and professional needs of Blacks in higher education by targeting leadership, access, and vital issues impacting students, faculty, staff, and administrators in the field of higher education.
FSU is a constituent institution of The University of North Carolina and the second-oldest public institution of higher education in the state. FSU offers nearly 60 degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. With more than 6,300 students, Fayetteville State University is among the most diverse institutions in the nation.
For more information, call (910) 672-1474 or email jwomble@uncfsu.edu.