His grandfather on
his father’s side was a
tenacious Virginia slave
Who fought in the Civil
War, first for the
Confederacy and the Union
Army. His grandmother on his mother’s
side was educated at Wilberforce
University and taught in a one-room
schoolhouse in Kentucky.
Dr. Harrison B. Wilson says his
roots and his upbringing shaped him as
a fighter and proponent of education. In July, Wilson will
step down as president of Norfolk State University in Norfolk.
Virginia, after twenty-two years. He says he hopes his retirement
will give him more time to spend with his five grandchildren.
Despite two years remaining on his contract, the outgoing
sixty-eight-year-old president said his grandchildren — who range
in age from one to eleven — were growing up without really
knowing him. He doesn’t want to miss out on spending time the
same way he did with his own six children. And the deaths of
some friends helped Wilson realize his own mortality.
“I said `My God, you can’t take anything with you. I don’t
know my children that well,'” he recalls. “It was just time
and age and children and family” that led to his retirement.
Wilson, who is paid $132,600 a year, begins a one-year paid
sabbatical July 1. He plans to work on his memoirs — for which
the consummate storyteller is saving his best tales — travel,
and write essays on urban problems, perhaps as a newspaper
columnist. He leaves a rich legacy at the sixty-two-year-old
historically Black institution.
Norfolk State University — which was Norfolk State College
until 1979 — has gone through many changes since Wilson took over
the reins. The annual budget has grown from $14 million to $86
million. Enrollment has increased from 6,700 to 8,100 students.
The number of faculty and staff has grown from 377 to 412, with a
current student-faculty ratio of 22-1. The university has also
added fourteen buildings and acquired fifty-one acres of land.
Despite Norfolk State’s low graduation rate — 22 percent of
students graduate in seven years, according to the state of Virginia
(a figure that university officials challenge) — NSU has maintained
an open admissions policy to give low-achieving students from
poor public schools an opportunity to further their education. The
university has expanded the number of bachelor’s degree programs
from thirty-three to forty-four, and its master’s degree
programs have swelled from two to fifteen.
It began its first doctoral program in social
work two years ago. Graduates of its
Dozoretz National Institute for Minorities
in Applied Sciences program — an intense,
nationally competitive honors program
— are among a budding crop of young Black
scientists, engineers and chemists.
