Fayetteville State University held a ceremonial groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday for its new College of Education building.
With the new space, the university hopes to increase its enrollment of students in the College of Education and add new bachelor and graduate degree programs for them, officials said.
Fayetteville State has been a pipeline producing generations of teachers, principals, superintendents, administrators and professors for North Carolina, Chancellor Darrell T. Allison told dozens of campus officials, elected officials, students and others gathered for the ceremony.
“This official groundbreaking signifies that Fayetteville State University is doubling down on our commitment to education of our educators for tomorrow,” he said.
According to Fayetteville State:
- The new College of Education building will have four stories, with 72,027 square feet for classrooms, conference rooms and offices.
- It’s being built on the north end of the Fayetteville State campus, off Langdon Street near Willis B. McLeod Hall.
- It’s budgeted at $69.3 million, with the money allocated by the North Carolina General Assembly.
- Metcon Construction of Pembroke is the contractor.
- The university plans to open it in 2026 before the start of its fall semester.
Allison thanked Cumberland County’s lawmakers who served in the General Assembly in 2021 and 2022 who obtained the funding for the building: Rep. Marvin Lucas, Rep. Diane Wheatley, former state Sen. Kirk deViere (who now is chairman of the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners), former state Sen. Ben Clark, former state Rep. John Szoka and former state Rep. Billy Richardson. He also thanked state Rep. Garland Pierce of Scotland County, who grew up in Fayetteville and is an FSU alum.
Seeking more room
The College of Education has been housed in the G.I. Butler Building, Dean Chandrika Johnson said, with some faculty working across campus from offices in Capel Arena. The college shares the Butler Building with the Department of English, the Department of Performing and Fine Arts and Cross Creek Early College, she said.
The college needs more room for its existing programs and to grow, Johnson said.
The university has not yet decided what it will do with the vacated space in the Butler Building once the College of Education moves out, Allison told CityView.
Long legacy of training teachers
On Nov. 29, 1867, seven men spent $136 to establish the Howard School in Fayetteville, which now is Fayetteville State University, Provost Monica T. Leach told the people assembled for the ceremony. The provost is the university’s chief academic officer.
“In their wildest dreams, who really knew the legacy they would create for the Fayetteville area and the Sandhills community?” Leach said. “This groundbreaking occasion signifies our commitment to nurturing and educating our future educators. That’s how we started, and look where we’re going.”
Ten years after the founding of the Howard School, according to a history of North Carolina’s public universities, the North Carolina General Assembly voted to use it to train Black teachers and renamed it the State Colored Normal School.
The name changed several times in the early 20th century, a campus history says, becoming Fayetteville State Teachers College in 1939 and Fayetteville State University in 1969.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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