23rd Winter Commencement Scheduled for FSU
Fayetteville State University (FSU) will hold its 23rd Winter Commencement on December 8, 2012, at 9 a.m. in the Crown Coliseum. The event is free and open to the public.
More than 500 graduates will be awarded degrees at this year’s ceremony. Guest speaker will be Dr. Dudley Flood, a retired school administrator and a member of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. An endowed chair in the Department of Criminal Justice at FSU also bears Flood’s name.
Flood, who resides in Raleigh, was born and reared in Winton, North Carolina. He began his education career as an eighth-grade math, science and English teacher. He later taught high school social studies and coached high school basketball and football. He served for three years as a principal of a school covering grades 1-12 before joining the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
During his 21 years of service with the Department of Public Instruction, he earned promotions first to assistant and then associate state superintendent. After retiring from Public Instruction on December 31, 1990, he served 5 years and 3 months as Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of School Administrators. Since April 1996, he has been a lecturer and consultant to groups throughout the country. He has been a visiting professor at Meredith College and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and has taught in the Principals Executive Program at the University of North Carolina.
Flood earned his bachelor’s degree from North Carolina Central University, the master’s degree in educational administration from East Carolina University, and the doctorate degree in the same field from Duke University.
He has received more than 300 awards for civic service. He has been presented the Order of the Longleaf Pine Award, North Carolina’s highest civic award, by three different governors. He has received the Outstanding Alumni Award from both North Carolina Central and East Carolina, and he has received the Doctorate of Humane Letters from both North Carolina Central and the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
Flood currently serves on the Board of Governors for the University of North Carolina, the Substance Abuse Advisory Committee for the North Carolina Prison System, the Minority Cancer Awareness Action Team, and on several other boards and committees. He is a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity.
Presiding over commencement will be FSU Chancellor James A. Anderson, the 11th chief executive officer. He began his duties on June 9, 2008. Before coming to FSU, Anderson served as the University of Albany’s Vice President for Student Success and Vice Provost for Institutional Assessment and Diversity.
Raised in Washington, D.C, Anderson majored in psychology at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1970. He later earned a doctoral degree in the field (1980) from Cornell University in New York. Early in his career, Anderson chaired the Department of Psychology at Xavier University in New Orleans (1976-1983) before joining Indiana University of Pennsylvania as a professor of psychology.
In 1992, he began an 11-year tenure as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs at North Carolina State University. In that role, he was credited with leading a revision of the general education curriculum, as well as the development of the First Year College, the Honors Programs, the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, the Minority Engineering Program, and the North Carolina State Diversity Initiative, among others.
In 2003, Anderson was recruited to Texas A&M University, a major land-grant institution serving more than 46,000 students, as Vice President and Associate Provost for Institutional Assessment and Diversity. He held that post until joining the University at Albany in 2005.
FSU is the second-oldest public institution in North Carolina. A member of the University of North Carolina System, FSU has nearly 6,000 students and offers degrees in more than 60 undergraduate and graduate degree programs.
For more information, please call (910) 672-1474.