Schexnider Resigns as Winston-Salem State Chancellor

Black Issues in Higher Education, Dec 9, 1999

WINSTON-SALEM -- Dr. Alvin J. Schexnider announced last month that he is resigning as chancellor of Winston-Salem State University to become an administrator at Wake Forest University-Baptist Medical Center.

Schexnider will switch jobs in January, he says. He will become the medical center's director of health policy development.

His resignation leaves both public universities in Winston-Salem searching for new leaders. Chancellor Alex C. Ewing announced in May that he would leave the North Carolina School of the Arts at the end of this academic year.

Schexnider came from Virginia Commonwealth University to replace Dr. Cleon Thompson Jr.

In May, he brought in a retired state auditor to take over as the school's chief financial officer after a series of financial embarrassments. An internal audit of his spending in 1998 determined he violated university spending policies by having school employees perform jobs for him, including taking his children to school and delivering exercise equipment to his home.

Then, a financial audit by the state auditor in August also pointed out several shortcomings in the school's handling of financial records, including errors that left $460,000 of the school's endowment in the wrong places.