Norfolk State raises profile with STEM investments

At Norfolk State University, President Javaune Adams-Gaston sees the school’s profile rising as surely as the new $118 million science building expected to open in fall 2027.

The four-story, 131,000-square-foot facility will replace one of the school’s oldest buildings, and it heralds a big STEM push at the school that includes new master’s degree programs in cybersecurity, cyber psychology and public health.

“We clearly needed updated science facilities,” Adams-Gaston says. “We needed to increase the ability for these science projects and the ways that we are investing in science to move us forward.”

Science is just one front of the school’s increasing profile in her five years at the school, founded in 1935 as the Norfolk branch of Virginia Union University. In 1979, it attained university status and is one of two public historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in Virginia. Adams-Gaston has been an advocate for collaborations during her tenure, and in October 2024, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia approved certification of the Joint School of Public Health, operated in partnership with Old Dominion University.

Norfolk State is also in a Department of Energy consortium with other HBCUs to diversify cybersecurity education.

Other high-profile events at NSU in recent years include the December 2024 hiring of former NFL star quarterback and Newport News native Michael Vick as head coach of the NSU Spartans football team, as well as hosting Hampton Roads-raised music legends Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams as commencement speakers. In 2021, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave Norfolk State its largest ever donation, $40 million.

Meanwhile, the state approved a new fine arts building at the university last year, and Adams-Gaston has launched NSU’s second ever capital campaign, aiming to raise $90 million this year in honor of its 90th birthday.

“When I look at the university holistically, things are moving forward,” Adams-Gaston says, citing federal and state support for new buildings, research projects, an energized faculty and donor momentum. “That kind of support, it really makes a difference, having people see the advantage of everyone rowing in the same direction.”

Forging ahead

The immediate manifestation of that momentum is NSU’s new science facility, something she sees as increasing the school’s ability to do more science research. The ground floor of the four-story building will house a 150-seat planetarium, a greenhouse, a makerspace, an electrical shop, a computer lab, classrooms, student study spaces and offices. The upper floors will have classrooms and student collaborative and study spaces ringing the perimeter, with faculty offices nearby to foster community collaboration.

It will also be home to scholars in the Dozoretz National Institute for Mathematics and Applied Sciences (DNIMAS), established in 1985 to address the shortage of minority scientists by producing graduates who can move on to graduate studies in the basic and applied sciences.

“When I’ve talked to the science faculty, they’re very excited,” Adams-Gaston says. “The science building is a key because you can’t have your science occurring in buildings where you’re just always trying to patch it together.”

The opportunities opened by the science facility build on some of the school’s strengths. In 2015, the Department of Energy began investing $25 million over five years to enhance the cybersecurity programs at 13 HBCUs.

In the years since, Norfolk State has led the way. National Cyber Director Harry Coker Jr. visited the school last year, calling the cybersecurity program at the Marie V. McDemmond Center for Applied Research a national model. The school was one of the first HBCUs to be designated a center of academic excellence by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security in 2009.

“Our cybersecurity is impeccable,” Adams-Gaston says. “It’s a national model that’s working really well.” Another NSU strength expanded last year when SCHEV certified the Joint School of Public Health with Old Dominion University. ODU created the Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at ODU in 2024, where the public health school and Eastern Virginia Medical School are based.

Norfolk State is only the second HBCU in the nation to be part of a school of public health, a field that gained a great deal of attention during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the school’s shining lights has been its nursing program, Adams-Gaston notes, so this was a natural partnership.

“We have faculty, staff and students who have been in nursing and allied health and social work and education,” she says. “They have been promoting wellness and physical activity and researching things like systemic racism in the science fields, in the health fields. What we are doing now together is producing health care professionals who are able to work for hospital systems and to do health care with the government agencies across the commonwealth of Virginia.”

The first five students in the master’s in public health program matriculated in fall 2024, including an undergraduate social work major from Norfolk State.

Capital push

In addition to its strides in science, NSU has a long history in arts education, notably in theater and music. The school earned 20 awards from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival last year for “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” including outstanding production of a play and distinguished achievement in direction and design by Professor Anthony Stockard.

Under Norfolk State’s capital plan, programs like those would have a new, expanded home. The school’s existing E.L. Hamm Fine Arts Building would be renovated, partially demolished and expanded into a new 128,000-square-foot facility. NSU’s 2021 six-year plan estimated the project’s cost at $67 million.

“We want to … ensure that building, which will be the next one onboard, has the capacity to continue those [fine arts] programs and continue those programs to be great,” Adams-Gaston says.

Retaining and adding programs and students are among the goals of an ambitious NSU capital campaign, “Now Is Our Time,” which aims to collect $90 million by the end of 2025, the school’s 90th year.

As of late 2024, Adams-Gaston says, the school was three-quarters of the way to reaching its fundraising goal, which was considerably higher than the $15 million goal NSU reached in 2005 after three years of fundraising. “Ninety million was an extremely future-thinking amount,” she notes. “A part of that was thinking about, how do we ensure that we are achieving our vision for the future?”

The campaign’s four major priorities include: increasing scholarship funds, strengthening academic and research programs, funding athletics and creating a larger unrestricted fund to address special needs.

“How do we ensure that every student has the dollars that they need to come to the institution, but more importantly, to leave with the degree in hand, because we know if they do that, they’re going to have a quality of life that is significantly increased versus being not having the resources to stay in the institution,” Adams-Gaston says.

Economic needs

That’s a major consideration at NSU, which has a four-year graduation rate of only 18%, according to U.S. News and World Reports. Only about 40% of Norfolk State undergraduates get their degrees in six years, according to the Department of Education. Adams-Gaston says scholarship money will help address those issues. According to SCHEV, the four-year graduation rate among students who entered public universities statewide in the 2017-18 academic year was 53%.

“Our students don’t leave because they don’t like the institution or they’re not doing well,” she says. “They leave because they have to work. So, we have self-reported about 70% of our seniors are working full time. When you start to think about that now, you start to think about many of these students start working at the end of their first year or the beginning of the second year, because the resources that they may have had are not as reliable year-over-year, because sometimes it’s the whole family giving to that student.”

Economic need is a pressing worry for many students, another SCHEV dataset shows. Only 30% of students statewide who qualified for Pell Grants graduated within four years, according to the state’s 2020-21 data.

At NSU, a $5 million, five-year grant from the Landmark Foundation that started in 2022 is helping narrow the gap, Adams-Gaston notes. Also, a $15 million scholarship fund, part of MacKenzie Scott’s $40 million gift, has assisted more than 400 students with a collective $750,000 in tuition assistance since 2021.

“We know that with an institution where you have just about 90% to 92% of students who have to have some kind of financial aid, it helps significantly when you get these major gifts that allow for the closing of the gaps,” Adams-Gaston says.

Also, a $9 million Department of Education grant to the Tidewater Education Consortium, which includes Norfolk State, will provide stipends for university students seeking a degree to become teachers.

To keep students in school, Adams-Gaston wants every Norfolk State student to have a paid internship, which will help not only with costs but with getting a job after graduation.

Za’Chary Jackson, a senior who came to the university from a small town in Louisiana and is now the Student Government Association president, has seen the school rebound from COVID and increase its support for students.

He is one of 10 in his family and says the school’s financial support made attending NSU possible for him. So did the fact that NSU is the least expensive HBCU in the state. But he sees other students struggling under financial burdens as they become seniors.

“It’s very important for these scholarships to come in so students are not having that hardship, especially at the finish line,” says Jackson, who plans to go into public relations after graduation. “Norfolk State University is like no other. This is a home away from home, and we make sure that we put our students first.”

Focused on success

Supporting student athletes is another priority. Norfolk State’s national profile got a boost when Vick was hired as its head football coach. The former Atlanta Falcons and Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, who grew up in Newport News and was a standout quarterback for the Virginia Tech Hokies, was formally introduced at an event just before Christmas.

Standing on stage with Adams-Gaston and other dignitaries, Vick donned a green-and-gold letterman’s jacket embroidered with “Coach Vick.”

“This is where I want to be. I was just talking to my high school coach a couple of weeks ago and told him I wanted to be a football coach. … It allows me to serve young men in my community. Football is in my blood, it’s always been in me,” he said at the news conference. “We’re going to make the most out of this. We’re going to win.”

Adams-Gaston notes that “student-athletes are one of our most successful groups of students in terms of both on the field or in the arena or on the track, as well as in the classroom. We want to continue to find scholarship dollars so we can fully fund those students.”

Another priority of NSU’s “Now Is Our Time” campaign is creating a sort of rainy-day fund to be used when the unexpected happens.

Adams-Gaston arrived at Norfolk State from Ohio State in June 2019. “By March of 2020,” she recalls, “I had gone from being the president of the university to the president of COVID.”

Adams-Gaston praises her faculty and staff for adjusting to remote classes at the start of the pandemic, as well as returning to in-person teaching once it was safer to do so.

“Everybody here is engaged in ensuring that we are moving forward and that we are laser-focused on student success and a culture of care,” she says. “And so, I would say the fact that we got out of COVID effectively has to do with the people who were here.”

With NSU’s capital campaign cruising along and construction beginning on new facilities, Adams-Gaston sees a university on the rise.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” she says, “and that is because people are invested in this institution, invested in the longevity of the institution, but most importantly, invested in the excellence of the institution.”

Virginia HBCUs at a glance

Virginia has five historically Black colleges and universities, spread across Hampton Roads and Central Virginia. Some of the oldest in the nation, these institutions are a mix of public and privately run schools.

Hampton University

Located in Hampton, the private, not-for-profit
university is on 314 acres and has 4,244 students, 3,728 of them undergraduates.(1) It was founded in 1868 as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. In July 2022, Hampton welcomed its new president, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams; he succeeded William R. Harvey, who served as the university’s president since 1978.

Norfolk State University

The four-year public school near downtown Norfolk was founded in 1935. It has a 134-acre campus and has 6,045 students. NSU’s December 2021 commencement speech was delivered by music superstar and Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams, and hip-hop legend Missy Elliott, a Portsmouth native, gave the graduation speech in December 2022. Norfolk State hired NFL star quarterback Michael Vick as its head football coach in December 2024.

Virginia State University

Virginia State University was founded in 1882 as one of Virginia’s two public land-grant institutions (the other is Virginia Tech). Located in Chesterfield County’s Ettrick area near Petersburg, its 231-acre campus overlooks the Appomattox River. VSU has 5,605 students, 5,124 of them undergraduates.

Virginia Union University

The private university was founded in 1865. Hartshorn Memorial College, a women’s college established in Richmond in 1883, became part of VUU in 1932. Storer College, a Black Baptist college in West Virginia that closed in 1955, merged its endowment with VUU. The university has 1,783 students, 1,238 of them undergraduates.(1)

Virginia University of Lynchburg

Virginia University of Lynchburg traces its origins to the 1886 founding of the Lynchburg Baptist Seminary. Renamed over the years, VUL was incorporated as Virginia University of Lynchburg in 1996. The private not-for-profit school has 1,167 students, 480 of them undergraduates(2)

(1) Fall 2024, reported to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV)
(2) Fall 2022, reported to the National Center for Education Statistics