Campbell celebrates a century of Carrie Rich Memorial Hall

100-year-old building has housed library, health science programs and now engineering since opening in 1925


Carrie Rich is a testament to the idea that you can, indeed, teach an old dog new tricks. 

For 85 years — from the day she opened as a monument to the late wife of early Campbell benefactor D. Rich — she was the library, “as flawless and beautiful as was the character of the woman in whose memory it was given,” Creek Pebbles editor Nancy Shearin wrote in 1957. But when the books and archives were moved to the more spacious building next to Kivett Hall that once housed the law school in 2010, Carrie Rich became something all institutions of higher learning need. 

An incubator. 

(Top photo) The Campbell Junior College music class in 1925. (Above) Students and faculty gather for the 100th birthday celebration of Carrie Rich Memorial Hall on Jan. 29, 2025.

And it didn’t take long for her to get back to work. In 2011, major renovations led to a 40-seat lecture hall, six offices, exam rooms, study rooms and a large student lounge all to house Campbell University’s new physician assistant program while the school went to work on a health sciences campus just up the road. Three years later, when PA moved to the Leon Levine Hall of Medical Sciences, physical therapy took their place at Carrie Rich — eventually joined by the first faculty for the Catherine W. Wood School of Nursing — while their building was under construction.

So when Campbell announced a School of Engineering would launch in 2016, Carrie Rich was again ready to serve. A fabrication facility, new large classroom, 3D printing lab and study lounge were added over the next few years, allowing Engineering to grow into the renowned program that it is today.

Dr. Jenna Carpenter talks about the history of Carrie Rich Memorial Hall, now home to the School of Engineering.

Founding Dean Dr. Jenna Carpenter, to kick off the year-long celebration of her school’s first decade, led a 100th birthday party for Carrie Rich on Jan. 29 that included balloons, cake and stories told by representatives of all the programs that got their start in the now century-old building. 

In retelling the history to the students and faculty who gathered to celebrate, Carpenter again quoted Shearin to say, “We realize with great pride that [Carrie Rich] represents more than money, stone and labor. It stands as an immortal symbol of the concepts of higher education found at Campbell.

“It is ours now, and its true value will be determined by us.” 


From books to cadavers to lunar rovers

Appropriately, it was Campbell’s current Dean of the Library Sarah Steele who led off the “stories” portion of the celebration, and her association with Carrie Rich goes far deeper than the library connection.

Steele held up an old Creek Pebbles photo of her grandfather in Carrie Rich when he was a student back in 1936. Steele said that while the campus was co-ed from the beginning in 1887, male and female students were largely discouraged from being together unsupervised, even into the 1930s. Inside the library, study areas were split by gender, she said. 

“You see the beautiful lamp posts outside of the entrance; apparently when you were courting someone, the boy and girl would have to have a chaperone. The lamppost was where the courting would take place, while the chaperone stood nearby,” Steele said. 

When Steele joined Campbell in 2008 as a curriculum materials and media librarian for the School of Education & Human Sciences, her first office was on the second floor of the Carrie Rich annex (built in the 1960s). She was part of the team that oversaw the transition to Wiggins Memorial Library.

“Happy anniversary to engineering,” Steele added. “I love what you’ve done with the space.

Physician Assistant students practice examinations in Carrie Rich in 2012.

Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation at the medical school Dr. Mark Hammond was the new provost and vice president for academic affairs when Carrie Rich was transformed to house Campbell’s new health sciences programs. He credited former President and the med school’s namesake Dr. Jerry Wallace for the foresight to bring in those new programs and finding them a temporary home while new buildings were going up.

He said the law school’s move to Raleigh in 2009 was also instrumental in making way for those programs. Its departure from Buies Creek started the domino effect that moved the library and ultimately opened up new classrooms and lab space at Carrie Rich.

“For the first time, we had swing space, meaning we had someplace where we could put people,” he said. “It’s tough to do that when you’re locked in and have nowhere to renovate or shift things around.” 

When the new physician assistant program arrived in 2011, the building was practically gutted to make way for a large classroom, new offices, exam rooms where students can practice and other study and lab areas. One room, where the current engineering fabrication facility sits today, was designated as a home for two plastinated cadavers — named Fred and Wilma — for anatomy courses. 

Former Provost Dr. Mark Hammond speaks at the Jan. 29 celebration.

“It was a fascinating conversation with Dr. Wallace at the time,” Hammond said. “[Former College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences Dean Dr.] Ron Maddox and I agreed we had to talk Dr. Wallace into it at first, and the plastinated ones [which are preserved and, therefore, last longer] made the most sense. All of these decisions that went into the program were transformational for this university and add to the legacy of this building.”

PA, physical therapy, medicine and nursing all got their start in Carrie Rich, and while the building lacked a lot of the features that can now be found on Campbell’s health sciences campus, it was a great place to get those programs started, said Dr. Michelle Green, assistant director for the DPT program.

“Carrie Rich was not designed as a perfect space for physical therapy education,” she said, “but it ended up being a perfect space to build a culture of adaptability and instill a sense of problem solving for our faculty and students.”

Dean of the Library Sarah Steele speaks at the Jan. 29 celebration.

The success of those health science programs gave Campbell the skins and the confidence in 2016 to launch engineering, a program that Hammond said was sorely missing and one whose absence kept a lot of students from coming to Campbell prior to 2016. And while Engineering has added an annex on the north end of campus for much of its lab work, Carrie Rich is still home and continues to see renovations and improvements well into its 100th year. 

“Looking back after ten years, we have successfully built a program where our graduates are in high demand by industry, with 158 engineers graduated to date,” Carpenter said. “Our innovative approach to engineering education that emphasizes a hands-on, project-based, team-based instructional model, strong student support and community building seeks to weave students into engineering instead of weeding them out is well-known in engineering education circles across the nation and the world.

“It’s been a lot of work but a ton of fun. I couldn’t be more proud of what our team has accomplished in ten years.”