Coppin Welcomes Eighth President

President Jenkins comes to CSU from West Virginia State University, a historically black land-grant research university near Charleston, W.V., where he served as president since July 2016.

He will succeed Dr. Maria Thompson, who was appointed to the CSU presidency in 2015 and announced in January 2019 that she would be retiring at the end of the 2018-19 academic year. Dr. Mickey Burnim lead the institution as interim president for the past year. 

A United States Army veteran, President Jenkins began his path to higher education as a first-generation college graduate of Fayetteville State University. He earned a master’s degree from North Carolina Central University and a doctorate from Virginia Tech University. His higher education administrative experience includes service at institutions such as UNC-Wilmington, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and the University of Central Florida.

In an April campus town hall meeting, Jenkins said he will lead CSU with five areas of focus:

1.    Diversifying enrollment growth in a systematic and strategic way that is healthy for CSU and the students.

2.    Creating an environment of overall holistic student success with high student retention and graduation rates.

3.    Providing experiential learning through student leadership opportunities, research, internships and other experiences that will prepare students to graduate ready to make positive change to the community, state, region and the nation.

4.    Increasing research and being able to transfer and apply research results to society in ways that impact improvements to the communities served by the university.

5.    Increasing teaching innovation brought on by faculty and staff excellence. He said the university will invest in faculty and staff professional development to enable teaching at the highest level and delivering a quality education that will position CSU students to be critical thinkers and societal problem solvers.