CAMPBELL GIVING DAY SETS ANOTHER RECORD

For the fourth consecutive year, the Campbell University Office of Annual Giving successfully topped its fundraising goal for Campbell Giving Day. Held on Feb. 3 as part of the university’s annual Founders Week, nearly 1,800 donors contributed more than $1.5 million on Campbell Giving Day to the Fund for Campbell, student scholarships, every Campbell school and college, all 21 athletic teams and many other initiatives.

Final Four

Campbell Law School advanced to the National Black Law Students Association Mock Trial Competition in February, and the team of Kathleen Miller (pictured), Brandon Irabor, Jordan Arroyo and Daisha Barnes finished in the Final Four in the national event. During the national competition, the student advocates received high praise from the judges and beat advocates from Florida State University law school, the regional champion, to advance.

NICE LOOK, DR. STRANGE

Campbell University got a brief cameo on actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s black polo in the film “The Mauritanian,” about a Guantanamo detainee’s fight for freedom and the Campbell Law alum (Col. Stuart Couch, portrayed by Cumberbatch) who fought to help him attain it.

Chatterbox

A team of international engineering students led by Campbell sophomore Joshua Murray designed a clear, portable, sound-proof mask (the “Chatterbox”) that not only blocks out surrounding sound while working from home, but contains the speaker’s voice as well so as not to distract others. The design was one of three prize winners in the national “Innovate for Sustainability Challenge.”

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Items in the time capsule included several magazines, COVID face masks, thumb drives and letters written by students and faculty detailing their life at Campbell.

CAMPBELL LAW SCHOOL was named the fourth best overall performer in a longitudinal study of bar passage published by Pepperdine University School of Law’s TaxProf Blog.

Campbell Law was the only North Carolina law school in the Top 15 and the first-place winner for 2017.

More than 800 pharmacy professionals received education on the COVID-19 VACCINES during a webinar series given by the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences’ Office of Continuing Professional Education and the North Carolina Board of Pharmacy.

WRESTLING’S REVERSAL

Campbell Wrestling was a struggling program when former Olympian Cary Kolat took over as coach in 2014. The program had a 23-118 record in dual meets from 2004 to 2011 and was ranked near the bottom of NCAA Division I schools. Since 2016, under Kolat and current coach Scotti Sentes, Campbell has earned seven Southern Conference team trophies and produced 26 NCAA qualifiers and six All-Americans in the past five years. In March, Campbell Wrestling sent a school-record seven athletes to the NCAA Championships in St. Louis. Campbell entered the 2021-2022 season ranked in the Top 30 programs in the nation, and senior Josh Heil is the nation’s 10thranked wrestler in his weight class.

Dr. Muneeb Shah, a Campbell resident physician, is passionate about skin care education and empowering people to make informed decisions about their health. His skin care videos (@dermdoctor) have garnered millions of followers on TikTok and several social platforms.

DR. KESSLER RETURNS

After five years away as a vice president and dean in Tennessee, Dr. Brian Kessler returned home to become the second dean of the Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine.

Kessler was associate dean of clinical affairs for the medical school in 2011, two years before it opened its doors to students in 2013, and spent five years as vice president, dean and chief academic officer for Lincoln Memorial University’s DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine in Tennessee. Kessler said returning to Campbell was like coming home for him.

“It’s very similar to when you grow up, move away and return to your childhood home — the houses in your neighborhood might look different, and the shrubbery and landscaping might not be the same, but there’s still that warmth and familiarity.”

AYE, CAPTAIN

DR. SAL MERCOGLIANO

The world’s media needed an expert when a massive ship blocked one of the world’s busiest trading routes in 2021. A love of history and a life at sea prepared Dr. Sal Mercogliano, associate professor of history and chair of the History, Criminal Justice & Political Science department at Campbell (and a former Merchant Marine).

MSNBC, BBC, BBC International, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, Fox, ABC, Sirius XM and TV New Zealand (to name a few) all invited Mercogliano on their airwaves in March to talk about the Ever Given — a massive container ship that was stuck in the Suez Canal for six days, preventing nearly $10 billion worth of goods from getting to their destinations.

The College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences and Adult & Online Education partnered to offer an online BOTANICAL AND HOLISTIC HEALTH GRADUATE CERTIFICATE that equips post-professionals with the skills to positively impact patients’ well-being through integrative/holistic health.

Campbell Law School’s TRIAL ADVOCACY PROGRAM once again ranks among the best in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report’s release of Top Law Schools. The 19th place ranking marked Campbell Law’s third appearance in the Top 21 of the U.S. News list.

Campbell Athletics unveiled the LOUISA ALLIENE TAYLOR FOOTBALL LOCKER ROOM at Barker-Lane Stadium. The room was made possible by a naming gift from the Taylor family and Troy Lumber Company in Troy — was constructed by the company responsible for locker rooms at several Top 25 FBS programs.

Evolutionary Study

When the 3-million-year-old Australopithecus fossil known as Little Foot was discovered buried in rock in a South African cave, scientists were excited to learn more about human evolution from one of the oldest and most intact set of bones ever discovered.

Researchers from the University of Southern California needed a specialist to analyze the hominid’s upper body. They brought in an expert on paleoanthropology and the evolution of human shoulder blades — Dr. David Green, associate professor of anatomy for the Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine.

Green’s analysis helped the team determine Little Foot had shoulder blades attached to thick muscles more similar to modern gorillas than today’s humans. The bones offer clues that climbing was vital for early hominids — suggesting that similarities between humans and apes persisted until far more recently than originally believed.

Nasa Quality

A team of students from the School of Engineering took home two national awards in NASA’s 27th annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge. Campbell took home the Project Review Award and the Ingenuity Award in the college/university division, besting schools from all over the world in those categories. The awards are the program’s first in only its third year competing in the challenge.

The annual NASA event encourages student teams from the United States and around the world to push the limits of innovation and imagine what it will take to explore the Moon, Mars and possibly other worlds.

Champions X 2

Campbell’s men’s and women’s soccer programs each won Big South titles in 2021, but it was a historic year for the women’s program, which in the spring (played because the season was delayed in the fall) enjoyed its first conference tournament title at NCAA bid since 2004.

In the fall, Campbell’s women’s program won its first Big South Conference regular season title and first regular season title of any kind since it won the Atlantic Sun, also in 2004.

Campbell celebrated the many donors and friends who keep the University alive and well with its annual THANK-A-GIVER DAY in April. The day is marked with 400+ orange tags on buildings and other areas made possible by gifts, and students and staff personally thanked donors on social media throughout the day.