NSU receives $1M donation for chair endowment

Retired Dominion Enterprises Inc. President and CEO Conrad M. Hall has donated $1 million to Norfolk State University, the university announced Friday.

The gift from Hall, who serves on NSU’s board of visitors, will support the creation of an endowed chair, the Conrad M. Hall Endowed Chair in Constitutional and U.S. History, in NSU’s Department of History and Interdisciplinary Studies and its political science department.

“Preservation of our history is imperative to our nation staying true to its founding,” NSU President Javaune Adams-Gaston said in a statement. “This professorship will have an enduring impact on our scholars and their understanding of the underpinnings that make our nation great.”

“It is the expectation that an understanding of American and constitutional history will work towards the strong desire of all involved with NSU to equip students with the absolute best education that will enable them to be leading citizens,” Hall said in a statement.

Hall served as president and CEO of Norfolk-based Dominion Enterprises for 20 years. Dominion Enterprises is a digital marketing and software services company that was started under the umbrella of the former Landmark Communications Inc., which owned The Virginian-Pilot and other newspapers.

Hall became president and CEO of Trader Publishing Co. in 1989, which was renamed Dominion Enterprises in 2006.

Before that appointment, Hall served as executive vice president and chief financial officer with Landmark Communications, after serving as vice president for human resources. He’d previously served as vice president of operations for The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star.

Hall is a Norfolk native who served as an artillery officer in the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1968. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Virginia Military Institute and an MBA from the University of Virginia.

Hall serves on numerous boards in addition to NSU’s board of visitors, including Eastern Virginia Medical School’s board of visitors and the boards of the Access College Foundation, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Landmark Media Enterprises LLC and the Slover Library Foundation.

Hall previously was a member of the boards of visitors of VMI and Old Dominion University and is a past president of the VMI Foundation Inc. and past chairman of VMI Investment Holdings LLC. Other boards he served on include the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters and the United Way of South Hampton Roads.