HIGHER EDUCAT
I ON PR
O M OT I ONA L SERIES
H
ow does a small, private liberal arts college of 1,450 students morph into a leader in higher education with an enrollment of 3,900 in just seven years’ time—in the height of one of the worst
answer: Dare to dream big and inspire others to do University academically, culturally and physically, propelling it to the rank of an A-Lister.
TRANSFORMA TION
Established in 1924, HPU is the result of a partnership between the Methodist Protestant Church (now the United Methodist Church) and the city of High Point, North Carolina, known for furniture manufacturing and the High Point Market. Originally called High Point College, the school, education. For the next 80 years it prospered, and by 2005 HPU ranked 15th among U.S. News & World Report’s Regional Colleges in the South. In spite of its solid academic reputation, the Univerpopulation that numbered around 1,450. Already engaged in a search to replace the school’s president who was retiring, the board turned to its dynamic vice-chairman, Dr. Nido R. Qubein. Having come to High Point College in 1968 from the Middle East, Qubein would go on to live the American dream by becoming a successful speaker, author and business consultant. When he assumed the presidency of HPU, many in the community felt he was the right man for the right time. “Maybe in an interesting kind of way I’ve spent all of my understood that the university needed a higher
WHAT’S NE W AT HPU? Proposed programs in pharmacy, physical therapy and physician assistant studies. With strong under graduate science programs, a health sciences cur riculum seemed only natural. As with other academic disciplines at HPU, the programs will be home to distin guished faculty-scholars, such as Dr. Daniel E rb, who, for 11 years, served as director of Graduate Studies of the Doctor of Physical Therapy Division at Duke Univer sity. HPU has already opened the Human Biomechanics and Physiology L ab last fall.
the university’s international student population, represented by 30 countries, and to its commitment to a holistic education. Students are encouraged to explore new ideas and concepts, while at the same
In addition to these components, he wanted to enhance HPU’s caring environment that he fondly recalled from his student tenure. Collaborating with
principles of God, family and country. For every incoming freshman, that means attending Qubein’s Life Skills Seminar, which the president describes as a class, “where students learn about commu-
took shape with principles that have now become the university’s promise: “At High Point University, every student receives an extraordinary education, in an inspiring environment with caring people.”
management, leadership, stewardship and developing an entrepreneurial spirit.” Life skills also permeate the curriculum so as to transform young minds into “people of success
CULTURE
leadership of Dr. Dennis Carroll, Provost, and faculty from prestigious institutions such as Stanford,
Fast-forward to the fall of 2012. Opposite one of the campus’s original buildings, Roberts Hall, stands a statue of Atlas shouldering the globe that
MARCH 2013 SPIRIT