Bluefield State President Resigns, Plans to Teach at College

BLUEFIELD, W.Va.
Bluefield State College president Dr. Robert Moore announced his resignation last month, citing a desire to pursue new personal and professional goals.
Moore, who became BSC president in June 1993, following 19 years as a member of the college's faculty and administrative staff, is stepping down from the presidency to return to his tenured faculty position at the college.
Moore's salary as a professor will be in the "Mountain State Professorships" range, says Norris Cantor, a Bluefield lawyer who heads the college's Board of Governors.
The rate for "Mountain State Professorships," which the state offers to college presidents when they resign, is up to 80 percent of the president's salary. Cantor said 80 percent would be "a touch high" for Moore, whose salary as president is $123,000.
The average Bluefield State faculty salary is $43,000.
The Board of Governors will form a search committee to select a new president, Cantor said. Moore's resignation is effective June 30.
Moore has served as Bluefield State's president for eight years and was an administrator and professor there for almost 20 years.
There were several lawsuits and controversies during his tenure, some of which he inherited from his predecessor, Gregory D. Adkins, who was fired in 1993. In 1997, the state Human Rights Commission found that Bluefield State had discriminated against Edward J. Cabbell, who is Black, when it turned him down for a job as a financial aid assistant in 1985. The commission ordered the college to hire Cabbell and pay him $300,000 in back pay and interest.
Also in 1997, Linville Hawthorne, a faculty member, sued the college alleging he had been passed over for promotions because he is Black. The college settled the lawsuit in February 2001. And in 1998, an administrative law judge ordered Bluefield State to rehire professor Garrett Olmsted, who had criticized the historically Black college in 1997 for having no Black employees and a student body that was only 6 percent Black.
Cantor said that during Moore's tenure, the college has grown and more programs have been accredited than almost any other small college in West Virginia.
"He has done a simply outstanding job," Cantor says. "People can always find fault, and we recognize that. Nobody's perfect, including Bob Moore."