Campbell University

Campbell also operates a Raleigh Campus in downtown Raleigh, which is home to the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law as well as other programs. The university's athletic teams are named the Fighting Camels; there are 20 NCAA Division I varsity programs.

• Name — Campbell University • Motto — Ad astra per aspera (Latin) • Motto Eng — "To the stars through difficulties" • Established — January 5, 1887 • Type — Private university • Former Names — Buies Creek Academy (1887–1926) Campbell Junior College (1926–1961) Campbell College (1961–1979) • Endowment — $209.3 million (2021) • Budget — $247.8 million • President — William M. Downs • Students — 5,000 • City — Buies Creek • State — North Carolina • Country — United States • Campus — Fringe town • Campus Size — acre • Colors — Orange and black • Sports Nickname — Fighting Camels • Mascot — Gaylord the Camel • Sporting Affiliations — * NCAA Division I FCS – CAA • CAA Football • SoCon • Religious Affiliation — Baptist State Convention of North Carolina • Academic Affiliations — NAICU • Website — campbell.edu • Accreditation — SACS • Free Label1 — Other campuses • Free1 — * Camp Lejeune • Fort Bragg & Pope AFB • Lillington • Raleigh

• Illustration — Campbell Junior College students gather at the Paul Green Outdoor Theater in the 1930s. Leslie Hartwell "L.H." Campbell (1892–1970), the oldest son of the founder J.A. Campbell, was the unanimous choice by the board of trustees to succeed his father. Leslie was eight years old when the academy burned in December 1900. He remembered attending classes in the converted tabernacle when the Kivett Building was under construction. He graduated from Buies Creek Academy in 1908 and enrolled in Wake Forest College, along with his younger brother Carlyle. Upon his father's death in 1934, L. H. Campbell at the age of forty-two became the youngest college president in North Carolina. He served as president for 33-years, through the Great Depression, World War II, and post-war expansion. In the post-war period, Campbell became a fully accredited co-educational Baptist-affiliated liberal arts and vocational college. The only campus building constructed in the 1930s was the Dining Hall. It was built in 1933 to accommodate four-hundred students, and was later named for the college's longtime business manager, B.P. Marshbanks Sr. Paul Green, a 1912 Buies Creek Academy alumnus and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, helped establish the Paul Green Theater, located between the D. Rich Administration Building and the Gym in 1934. in 1937, Campbell was the only junior college in North Carolina to offer courses in drama and journalism for college credit. During World War II, the enrollment on campus declined from 700 students to around 400. Like many other colleges throughout the country, intercollegiate athletic programs such as football, baseball, basketball, track, and tennis were temporarily suspended during the war years. When many male students went off to fight, space for female boarding students was at a premium; and Layton Annex, which had housed males, was turned over to women. The war also affected food supplies on campus. • Illustration — Campbell University's second president, Leslie Campbell, oversees construction on campus in the 1950s. "I remember the day the war was formally declared. President Leslie Campbell got the entire student body into one of the large rooms at D. Rich, and had a radio in there. He turned it on, and we heard, live, President Roosevelt declare war." — Dorothea Stewart Gilbert ('46) By 1957, the enrollment on the main campus reached 1,023 students, and more residential facilities were added to the campus.

Campbell became a senior college in 1961 and a university in 1979. In 1961, the James A. Campbell Administration Building was dedicated and Bryan Hall for women opened "as a cluster of 12 one-story apartment units grouped around an exterior wall" that could house 200 students. Strickland Hall opened in 1962 to accommodate 132 women, and E. P. Sauls Hall opened that same year to house 131 men. A major building completed on the campus was the 44,000-square-foot Leslie Campbell Hall of Science. This three-story structure originally housed the departments of physics, biology, and chemistry, as well as home economics. • Illustration — University President Dr. William M. Downs in 2025 In 2007, Campbell, along with four other private North Carolina Christian colleges, began a process to change their relationships with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, in order to obtain more academic freedom and select their own trustees. The state convention also agreed to start transferring funds traditionally given directly to the universities into a new scholarship fund for Baptist students. In 2009, the schools gained autonomy from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina and established a “good faith and cooperative” relationship with it. The four other schools were, Mars Hill University, Gardner-Webb University, Wingate University, and Chowan University.

• Illustration — Kivett Hall, built in 1903, is the iconic centerpiece of Campbell University's main campus. Located in the Sandhills of southeastern North Carolina, the university is nestled in the small unincorporated village of Buies Creek near the Cape Fear River. The Buies Creek census-designated place population was only 2,215 in the 2000 census and the surrounding area remains rural. However, Buies Creek is approximately 33 mi south of Raleigh, the state capital, North Carolina's second-largest city, and approximately 33 mi north of Fayetteville, North Carolina's sixth-largest city. The center of campus is Academic Circle, which fronts Leslie Campbell Avenue to the south. Academic Circle is a grass thoroughfare, laced with sidewalks and magnolia trees that is surrounded on the south by the Oscar N. Harris Student Union (2020) and along the north by the Frederick L. Taylor Hall of Religion (1973) (Campbell University Divinity School), D. Rich Memorial Building (1923), Kivett Hall (1903), Wiggins Hall (1993) (formerly Law School), Butler Chapel (2009) and Britt Hall (1947) (campus bookstore). North of Academic Circle the buildings flank the newly developed Fellowship Commons, a series of brick sidewalks and gathering places that connect the campus from the west on T.T. Lanier Street to the east on Main Street. In this part of campus are Marshbanks Dining Hall (1934), Leslie H. Campbell Hall of Science (1961), J.P. Riddle Pharmacy Center (1991), Maddox Hall (2007) (Pharmacy School), Pearson Hall (1915), Carrie Rich Memorial Library (1925), Carter Gymnasium (1952) and James A. Campbell Administration Building (1961). Beyond Fellowship Commons lies the north campus which contains several residence halls along with the Taylor Bott Rogers Fine Arts Center (1984) and the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business (1999). East of Main Street are more of Campbell's athletic facilities including Jim Perry Stadium (baseball), Johnson Memorial Natatorium (swimming), and the John W. Pope, Jr. Convocation Center as well as the Buies Creek post office. South of Leslie Campbell Avenue are more residence halls, including the new student apartments in Bob Barker Hall (2005), Luby Wood Hall, Burkot Hall, Small Hall, Sauls Hall, Murray Hall, Stadium Apartments, Faculty Apartments, and Pet Hall. South of U.S. Highway 421 are athletic fields and Barker–Lane Stadium. North campus residence halls include Jones Hall (1954) (for the university's honors college), Powell Hall, Pat Barker Hall, Strickland Hall, and Hedgepeth Hall. The newly constructed 96,000 sq. ft. Leon Levine Hall of Medical Science across Highway 421 hosts the new School of Osteopathic Medicine and the Physician Assistant Program.

U.S. News & World Report for 2022 ranked Campbell tied for #277 in National Universities, tied for #58 in Best Undergraduate Teaching, and tied for #153 in Top Performers on Social Mobility, while finding Campbell's 2020 admissions were "selective" with an acceptance rate of 81%, with half the applicants admitted having an SAT score between 1010 and 1210 or an ACT score between 19 and 25. Campbell offers over 100 tracks and concentrations; master's programs in business, education, pharmaceutical science, clinical research and divinity; and professional programs in law, pharmacy, physician assistant, physical therapy, nursing, and osteopathic medicine. In addition to Campbell's College of Arts & Sciences are the following: Campbell University School of Pharmacy was established in 1986 and was later renamed the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences. The Catherine W. Wood School of Nursing provides professional nursing degrees. The Campbell's Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law is the university's law school. Campbell's School of Engineering was launched in Fall 2015 and offers an ABET-accredited BS in engineering with concentrations in mechanical engineering, chemical/pharmaceutical engineering, electrical engineering, and electromechanical engineering. The Campbell University Divinity school offers both undergraduate and graduate level degrees. The Divinity School officially opened on August 19, 1996. The Campbell University School of Education, founded in 1985, offers undergraduate and graduate programs of study in Education, Psychology, Social Work, Mental Health Counseling, and School Counseling. The Lundy-Fetterman School of Business offers a joint MBA with Pharm.D., J.D., and M.Div. students. The university's newest school, the Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine, had its first class in August 2013. Campbell University also has an adult and online education program with an online campus and campuses at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. Campbell University's Online Education program was established as a pilot program in 1999. The program originated at the Camp Lejeune Campus and became a separate program in 2004, relocating to the Main Campus.

Campbell University fields 20 NCAA Division I sports. As of the 2023–2024 academic year, the Camels are a member of the Coastal Athletic Association; they previously competed in the Big South Conference from 2011–2012 to 2022–2023. The men's wrestling team is an associate member of the Southern Conference. Men's sports • Baseball • Basketball • Cross country • Football • Golf • Soccer • Tennis • Track • Wrestling Women's sports • Basketball • Cheerleading • Cross country • Golf • Lacrosse • Soccer • Softball • Swimming • Tennis • Track • Volleyball In 2008, Campbell completed the John W. Pope Jr. Convocation Center, an athletic complex for basketball, volleyball and wrestling. The facility houses a game basketball court, practice basketball court, practice wrestling room, varsity weight room, student fitness center, locker rooms, and the Department of Exercise Science. The wrestling team and the volleyball team both host matches on the main basketball court.

The SGA serves as the voice of the student body of Campbell University. The organization consists of 45 members: nine from each class and a nine-member Executive Council. The SGA conducts the Annual Christmas Tree Lighting, passes resolutions to voice student concerns, and allows students a forum to share their voice with administration.

The Pine Burr is Campbell University's yearbook, published every spring and given out for free to the students before final exams.

The Lyricist is Campbell University's literary magazine, featuring poetry and prose from students and statewide contributors.

The Campbell Times is the student newspaper at the university, and is published bi-monthly in a tabloid format during the spring and fall semesters. The newspaper was established in 1925 and was originally known as Creek Pebbles until the current name was adopted in 1983. It had a print circulation of 2,000 as of 2007.

WCCE-FM is an FM radio station broadcasting on frequency 90.1 that was signed on by the university on October 7, 1974. Campbell sold the station in 2007.

• Illustration — Sound of the Sandhills Marching Band during pre-season training • Illustration — Campbell University Wind Ensemble prior to concert Campbell University Bands features multiple concert and athletic musical ensembles, including the Sound of the Sandhills Marching Band, their featured athletic ensemble. Campbell University Bands regularly involves more than 100 members from across the campus. The featured ensemble of the concert bands is the Sandhills Wind Symphony, which performs concerts regularly during the academic year. Past directors of the program include noted composer Jack Stamp, who has been featured recently within performances of the program. Athletic bands performs regularly at university athletic events and annually accompany the men's and women's basketball teams to the Big South conference basketball tournament.