Innovative and Agile -- William Peace University is Changing with the Times

Given the rapid pace of change in Raleigh, it’s understandable if you’ve missed the radical transformation taking place at William Peace University (WPU).

Long-time residents of Raleigh may think of WPU as a mostly white, women’s college. While it is the city’s oldest institution of higher learning, founded in 1857, it’s no longer a women’s college. It became a university in 2011 and admitted its first male students ten years ago. Today the 750 students are 48% percent male, 52% female, and highly diverse. Nearly half are students of color. A quarter are the first in their family to go to college.

Students earn degrees in more than 30 majors, minors and concentrations. These degrees are as diverse as business analytics, criminal justice, musical theatre, and exercise and sport science, and as high-tech as simulation and game design, and Esports and gaming administration.

The School of Professional Studies (SPS) also offers professional degrees to working adults through online and in-person programs, including business administration, education, psychology and marketing. WPU also has the only Registered Nursing to Bachelor of Science in Nursing (RN to BSN) program in the Triangle.

“We have the best of both worlds,” says Brian Ralph, PhD, and President of WPU. “We have this beautiful, bucolic campus in a vibrant city, which is great for internships. It’s great for cultural opportunities. It’s great for jobs when students graduate. And also, because of the higher education ecosystem here, there are terrific graduate school opportunities.”

Remarkably, on average, 96% of traditional students are employed and/or in graduate school within one year of graduating from WPU. SPS graduates often report promotions or new job opportunities after completing their WPU degree.

“We want to meet students where they are, but also challenge them to reach their goals and dreams,” said President Ralph.

One reason for student success is the 11:1 student-to-professor ratio. Classes are small; students get to know their teachers as well as their classmates.

Immersive learning is another cornerstone of student success. Hands-on experiences are part of every course, and almost all full-time traditional students engage in at least one structured and rigorous internship.

“Students who participate in immersive learning experiences learn and retain information at a much higher rate,” President Ralph said. “They’re not just acquiring knowledge. They are learning how to learn. They are learning how to communicate, create, analyze; to work on projects in groups; and do a lot of different work in a lot of different ways.”

Erienne Dickman was one of those students. A 2020 Communications graduate and now Tourism Director for Chowan County, she credits her professors for not assigning “unnecessary busywork.” Instead, her assignments prepared her directly for her career. In her communications classes, students wrote press releases and were locally published. They helped facilitate live campus events. They worked on strategic marketing plans that were implemented.

She and her classmates even won the Raleigh Public Relations Society’s Sir Walter Raleigh Award for a marketing campaign they created to promote the grand opening of the Alamo Drafthouse through an interactive screening of “The Wiz.”

“Those are all skills I use. I write press releases now. I facilitate and maintain events for downtown Edenton. I do strategic marketing plans for Edenton and greater Chowan County,” Erienne said. “I was able to grow from real-world experiences in the classroom, and then turn around and use that just a year later walking into a career.”

Erienne was recently named a Top 20 Under 40 Trailblazer by Business North Carolina.

To make such learning opportunities possible, WPU partners with over 200 local businesses and organizations. In a recent survey of Fall semester internship sites, 98% reported they would have hired their intern if they had an available spot.

Expanding those partnerships is a critical part of President Ralph’s vision for the future, along with doubling enrollment and making WPU a great place to work and build a career.

“We have amazing partnerships with companies and organizations that are really eager to provide opportunities for our students, but also for our students and our university to provide them value,” President Ralph said. “Because of our size, organizations can come to us to talk about what they would like to see in their future employees and graduates of our University.”

WPU also partners with Wake Technical Community College, where students can engage in several different “two-plus-two programs,” earning a two-year Associate of Applied Science degree at Wake Tech, then attending WPU for two more years to earn a bachelor’s degree. Also a partnership with the Leadership Triangle Alumni Association brings alumni into a leadership class to mentor students.

Just as WPU was progressive for offering educational opportunities for women starting in the mid 1800’s, it is now an innovative and agile institution, focused on meeting the current and future needs of both students and the community.

“It’s a really special learning environment for students because they’re getting all these great immersive experiences in a really diverse environment,” President Ralph said. “As our state continues to get more diverse, we want to continue to open doors for students who are the first in their family to go to college, as well as those students who are from under-represented communities. That’s a really big heartbeat for us.”