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Trustees OK naming building for education leader Camp
By Lynn Hotaling
A Western Carolina University building now bears the name of a community leader in public education as the WCU board of trustees unanimously approved a resolution renaming the University Outreach Center as the Cordelia Camp Building.
The board voted during its quarterly meeting Friday, Sept. 1, to officially attach Camp’s name to the building that once housed the Camp Laboratory School. The action came in response to numerous requests by alumni and friends of the university and two weeks after Jackson County commissioners voted to ask trustees to restore Camp’s name to the former school.
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The former Camp Laboratory School, now Western Carolina University’s Outreach Center, has been officially named the Cordelia Camp Building by WCU trustees. The action came during last Friday’s (Sept. 1) meeting and was triggered by an Aug. 17 request from Jackson County Commissioners to restore Camp’s name to the building, which educated Cullowhee children for three decades. The building opened in the fall of 1964 and was dedicated and named for Camp, who was director of student teaching at Western for 23 years, the following spring. The university built the structure that came to be known as Camp Lab to educate Cullowhee’s public school students in grades 1 through 12 to free up the McKee building in the center of the WCU campus, which was built as a school for local children, for college classes. High school students moved to Sylva with the 1988 consolidation of Cullowhee and Sylva-Webster high schools, and K-8 students were shifted to Cullowhee Valley in 1994. After extensive remodeling, WCU placed its distance learning operation there and renamed the building the University Outreach Center. – Herald photo by Nick Breedlove
“I’m glad to hear they made that decision,” Commisioner Conrad Burrell said Tuesday. “I think it will be good.”
According to Burrell, a 1953 graduate of Culllowhee High, most of those who attended a recent Cullowhee school reunion were in favor of restoring Camp’s name to the building and were drafting requests to the university’s trustees during the event.
“They asked me if I’d present the matter to Jackson County’s commissioners, since I’m a commissioner,” Burrell said.
After reviewing the situation during closed session, university officials said that official board of trustees’ action more than 40 years ago named the school, but not the building in which it was located. Given the strong feelings by many friends of the university, Chancellor John Bardo recommended the trustees officially name the building in honor of Camp.
“In reviewing the record, it became clear that there was confusion between the board’s official action and how people interpreted that action,” Bardo said.
The Camp Laboratory School, dedicated in May 1965, was designed to provide training opportunities to Western students who were studying to become school teachers. It operated as a public school for children in grades one through 12 until the 1988 consolidation of Cullowhee and Sylva-Webster high schools and was vacated in 1994 when the Jackson County School System opened the K-8 Cullowhee Valley School. The former school building was subsequently named the University Outreach Center, a step designed to reflect different activities taking place in the building as the university’s distance education, economic development and external engagement divisions moved into the facility, university officials say.
With Friday’s vote by the board of trustees, the building is now the Cordelia Camp Building. The trustees also directed that a suitable likeness of Camp be appropriately displayed in a prominent location in the building.
“The name Cordelia Camp has long been synonymous at Western Carolina University and in North Carolina with excellence in public education. “Miss Camp served on the staff of Western Carolina University, then known as Western Carolina Teachers College, for a period of 23 years as professor of educational methods, social studies for elementary grades and North Carolina history, and as director of student teaching,” Bardo said.
“Through these endeavors and others throughout her professional career and retirement, including the writing of important textbooks on the settlement of North Carolina and pioneer women teachers, Miss Camp left an indelible imprint on teaching and teachers in the state’s public schools,” he said. “Miss Camp not only taught the ideals of democracy to a generation of students in a young and developing Tar Heel State, but exemplified them in her own life.”
Before her appointment at Western, Camp taught in the public schools of North Carolina, including terms as supervisor of schools in Forsyth and Burke counties.
The naming of the building in honor of Camp is in recognition of “her untiring devotion to the profession of teaching, her high standard of personal and professional ethics, and her service to the university, the state of North Carolina, and residents of the state,” Bardo said.
In other action at Friday’s board meeting, the trustees approved a resolution modifying existing procedures and policies for the recognition of outstanding contributions to the university by affixing the name of contributors to buildings, spaces or units.
The amended policy states that such recognitions are not transferable to other buildings, spaces or units upon the demolition or removal of the named building or space, or the discontinuance of the activity for which the unit was named. In the event that a named building or space is demolished, removed or discontinued, the university will appropriately memorialize the person in another manner, the resolution states.
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