Capehart Celebrates New Era at Bluefield State University
Photo courtesy of WV Legislative Photography Trending
CHARLESTON - On the far southern side of West Virginia, the seniors that started their first year at Bluefield State University earlier this month will be the first graduates since the historically black college/university gained university status in July.
For Marshall County native Robin Capehart, it’s just another step to making BSU one of the best small universities in the state and the region and a key part of churning out the workers West Virginia needs.
“The one thing achieving a designation as a university does is it does elevate the prestige of the school. It’s also something that must be earned as a public school in West Virginia,” Capehart said. “We’re very proud of the fact that we earned it.”
Capehart is approaching the start of his fourth year as president of BSU since taking the helm of the once-troubled college in September 2019. Since coming on board, the school offered on-campus dorm living for the first time in decades, restarted a NCAA Division II football program along with 11 other sports programs, and began its first master’s program which allowed it to add “university” to its title after approval by the Higher Education Policy Commission.
“It raises the prestige, but I also think it raises the expectations of what people will expect from the school now that it is a university,” Capehart said. “There are obviously some great challenges, but we’re looking forward to accepting those challenges.”
That’s a far cry from talk about BSU a few years ago, when there was open talk about shuttering one of West Virginia’s only remaining historically black colleges and universities. The college was having financial problems and decreasing enrollment. With nearby Concord University in the northern part of Mercer County, BSU’s existence had long been questioned.
Originally founded as Bluefield Colored Institute in 1895, the school specializes in teaching, engineering, and nursing. BSU and West Virginia State University in Institute are the last HBCUs in the state after Storer College in Harpers Ferry closed in the 1950s. Both BSU and WVSU are two of 100 remaining accredited HBCUs in the nation.
BSU just received a reaffirmation of its accreditation from the Institutional Actions Council of the Higher Learning Commission, which reviews the effectiveness of degree programs in higher education institutions across an 18-state region. BSU has maintained its accreditation status uninterrupted since HLC began its accreditation process in 1951.
Earlier this year, Gov. Jim Justice awarded BSU $1 million through a new Nursing Workforce Expansion program. The program is designed to help get trained and certified nurses into the state workforce as West Virginia faces a shortage of nurses tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. BSU is also trying to address a shortage of teachers in the state with its Alternative Teacher Certification program.
According to HEPC data, BSU saw a 7.2% increase in fall headcount enrollment between 2019 and 2021, from 1,052 students in 2019 to 1,336 students in 2021. Out-of-state enrollment jumped 67.5% during the same time period, from 194 students in 2019 to 325 students in 2021, thanks to the new dorms.
“Not having housing here has just been almost disastrous and almost fatal to the school, because when you don’t have housing, you’re basically required to recruit your students from within an hour away,” Capehart said. “We actually have a good problem this year when we actually ran out of housing and had to double some students up … that just goes to show how key housing has been for this campus.”
Capehart became the 16th president of BSC in 2019 and was officially inaugurated in 2020. Capehart is the former president of West Liberty University, a former professor at Marshall University, and a Fulbright scholar. Capehart also served as secretary for tax and revenue under former governor Cecil Underwood in the late 1990s and as chairman of the West Virginia Republican Party in the late 2000s.
Going into this year and future years, Capehart is focusing the efforts of BSU into helping make sure students coming out of West Virginia’s high schools are college-ready. BSU is launching the School of Preparatory Studies next year to help educate incoming students to get them ready for higher level classwork.
“The biggest problem we face right now is students coming out of high school that are not college-ready. In fact, we’ve got students coming out of high school right now that are not high school-ready, but yet they’re getting a diploma,” Capehart said. “It will bring all of those kids who are not at the starting gate yet for being college-ready up to that point and they’ll have the opportunity to prove themselves. We want students who want to learn.
“We get a lot of students who come out of extremely difficult situations,” Capehart said. “They’re not prepared for college due to perhaps social or cultural problems. Perhaps they come out of a K-12 system that didn’t necessarily have the assets or the ability to make them college ready. Whatever the reason is, once they come here, they are our students. As long as they have the heart and the willingness to want to learn, we want those students to learn.”