Buies Creek, N.C.-Campbell University announced the establishment of an endowed professorship in memory of Dr. Norman Adrian Wiggins, the third president of Campbell University. The $1.5 million Wiggins Endowed Professorship of Trust and Wealth Management at the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business was established by the wife of the late president, Mildred Harmon Wiggins.
“It is fitting that the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business is the home of the Wiggins professorship,” said Dr. Benjamin Hawkins, dean of the School of Business. “As the author of ‘Wills and Administration of Estates in North Carolina,’ ‘Estates and Trusts,’ and ‘Trust Functions and Services,’ Dr. Wiggins literally wrote the book on trust and wealth management. Not to mention his outstanding stewardship of Campbell’s financial resources during his 36 years as president and four years as chancellor.”
An ex-marine with a forceful personality, Wiggins served as president of Campbell from 1967-2003. During those decades, he led the school to university status, and, by 2001, Campbell University had a thriving and respected four-year undergraduate liberal arts program as well as five professional schools: the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business, the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, the School of Education and the Campbell Divinity School. Students in the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law and the College of Pharmacy regularly lead all schools in the state with high scores and overall success rates on state bar and pharmacy exams.
Dr. Wiggins and Campbell University celebrated another milestone in 1971 with the establishment of an award-winning Army ROTC program that grew to include three other campuses, Fayetteville State University, Methodist University and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Campbell also established satellite campuses at Fort Liberty, Camp Lejeune, Research Triangle Park in Raleigh and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia during Wiggins’ tenure.
Dr. Wiggins’ influence reached far beyond the Campbell University campuses, however, as the president of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina from 1984-85 and as one of the founders of the state Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, he led the charge to secure public tuition grants for North Carolina students. In 2000, Dr. Wiggins was named one of the most outstanding Baptists of the 20th century by the state Baptist publication, “The Biblical Recorder” and he was also honored in the anthology, “The North Carolina Century: Tar Heels Who Made a Difference, 1900-2000,”published by the University of North Carolina Press. Dr. Wiggins was 83 when he died in 2007.
Photo Copy: Dr. and Mrs. Norman Adrian Wiggins, circa 1987