“Everybody knows everybody,” said George Fulwood, a freshman physical education major from Monroe. “I love it.”
Around campus, there are no crowds, no lines and little noise. There is scant need for giant lecture halls, and it’s unlikely that students will ever hear a class taught through a microphone.
“I think it’s much more nurturing here,” said Gary Harmon, who teaches in the biology department. “I mean really being able to work one-on-one with the students and being able to interface with them in a way you wouldn’t be able to do if there were 500 in a class.”
It’s exactly that kind of intimate atmosphere that draws many students to ECSU, Burnim said.
“Some students really thrive in a Chapel Hill or an N.C. State environment … but a lot of students tell me that they like a small, quiet place like Elizabeth City and Elizabeth City State,” he said.
The public schools in the counties around Elizabeth City often are not on par with those in the central region of the state, Burnim explained, creating an important challenge for ECSU.
“Students coming from these rural school systems will oftentimes not have been in a position where there were very high expectations held for them or where they had been nurtured and encouraged,” he said.
Bryan Kidd, a freshman mathematics major, said he feels comfortable going to school close to home. He commutes every day from his family’s house in Moyock, a little more than 20 miles north of Elizabeth City.
“There are a lot of kids from the area, so you know a lot of people,” he said. “It’s not like you’re in a totally different environment, so I like it.”
Kidd, who received a full academic scholarship, said his math professors have already begun encouraging him to apply his skills in North Carolina after he graduates.
“I’m hopefully going to teach in Currituck (County) High School,” he said. ECSU was founded as a teacher’s college and has retained a strong focus on turning out new instructors to work in the state’s public schools.
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Looking west
Without losing sight of its regional mission, the university is increasingly making an effort to look outside its 21-county area for new recruits.
ECSU has sought to market its strengths as a smaller university, hoping to draw students who might never have considered studying in Elizabeth City.
Professor Michael Weaver, who teaches strings in the university’s music department, spends plenty of time recruiting students from across the state. There are no high school strings programs in ECSU’s 21-county base area.
“I think one of my primary selling points is that the program is really small,” Weaver said. “We know our students. We know where they are and who they are and what their strengths and weaknesses are.”
Changing perceptions
Among the school's biggest challenges, Burnim said, is getting past stereotypes about ECSU's status as a historically black university.
“Those issues that have affected us historically — I’m speaking now about racial issues — are still present,” he said. “Some people still see us as an institution that was founded for the education of black North Carolinians and only black North Carolinians — in spite of the fact that that hasn’t been true in probably 50 years.”
Burnim said he’s proud of the school’s diversity, noting that this year’s football team had several white players and that “there are several white students actually living in the residence halls.”
The campus, he said, has largely moved beyond race, and Burnim expressed hope that community perceptions eventually will catch up.
He added that the university receives great support from the civic leadership in Elizabeth City, but said he’d like to see that kind of positive relationship “trickle down to the general population.”
John Bell, the mayor of Elizabeth City, said that on a one to 10 scale, the relationship between the school and the town is about an eight.
“I don’t think anything is a 10. There’s always room for improvement.”
On ECSU’s campus, room has already been made for a new student center and new residence halls, all designed to improve student life, Burnim said. Despite its low profile, the school continues to grow.
“I see it as a university that makes a real difference for the people of northeastern North Carolina,” Burnim said.
“While we don’t get a lot of attention and there’s not a lot of prestige associated with working at ECSU, I think we do a lot of good for individuals and for this region.”
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
