Roanoke College AD job ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ for Pulaski County grad Curtis Campbell

Roanoke College announced Tuesday it has hired Campbell, a Pulaski County High School graduate, as its new athletic director.

Campbell, 59, will be stepping down as the athletic director at NCAA Division II member Morehouse College in Atlanta to take the reins at Division III member Roanoke.

Campbell’s wife, Sereta, is also a Pulaski County graduate.

“I have family in Virginia, friends in Virginia. … So we do have some roots there,” Campbell said Tuesday in a phone interview from Atlanta. “Roanoke was a place  that I had looked at. I’d go to their website to see if they had something available. And of course, there’s never turnover at Roanoke.

“When I saw that [athletic director] advertisement, I knew right away that that was something I was going to throw my hat in the ring for.

“I’ve moved around a lot and lived in a lot of different places. … If the opportunity ever presents itself where you can be back close to home where you have family and friends, … a lot of people take advantage of that opportunity.

“The opportunity to come to Roanoke was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that hadn’t presented itself in … [more than] 30 years.”

Scott Allison will be retiring as Roanoke’s athletic director at the end of June. Allison has been in charge of Roanoke’s athletic department since 1989.

Campbell will be the first Black athletic director in Roanoke College history. Campbell will be the only Black athletic director in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference.

“I think [Roanoke College] President [Frank] Shushok [Jr.] … wants to increase diversity at the college,” Campbell said. “I’ll definitely wholeheartedly get behind that and support that from an athletic standpoint.”

Campbell’s first stint as an athletic director was at Division III member Blackburn in Illinois. But since then, his athletic director jobs have been in the Division II ranks — Stillman, Tuskegee, Western Oregon and Morehouse.

So why is he returning to the nonscholarship world of Division III?

“I do like Division III as far as no athletic scholarships,” he said. “We have some great students at Division III that play the sport for the love of the sport. It’s just a good environment.”

Roanoke’s football hopes also intrigued Campbell.

The college announced last month that its board of trustees had approved Shushok’s proposal to add football, on the condition that the school meets its June 1 fundraising goal of $1.2 million.

Roanoke College vice president of advancement Kim Blair said Tuesday that the school is on track to meet that goal.

“Somewhere in the future we’ll be making some announcements about possibly adding football as a varsity sport at Roanoke and that is an outstanding opportunity, to be a part of that,” Campbell said. “I think they’re right on target for the [fundraising] goal that they have, that it’s going to move forward.”

Campbell has plenty of familiarity with football as an athletic director. Morehouse, Western Oregon and Tuskegee all have football. Blackburn and Stillman had football when Campbell worked there.

“I know what it takes to have a good, competitive [football] program, so I’m sure that probably helped me [get the Roanoke job],” he said.

Campbell has never started a football program from scratch before.

“That was one of the things to me that was exciting,” he said. “When was the last time you did something for the first time? Having an opportunity to do something I’ve never done before was appealing to me.”

Campbell has been an athletic director at three HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) schools — Stillman, Tuskegee and Morehouse.

He figures his HBCU experiences could come in handy at a Division III school.

“From my HBCU experience, we’re used to doing more with less a lot of times,” he said. “You learn how to stretch a dollar. You learn how to manage a budget. I think a lot of my colleagues at all [of] Division II, whether they’re HBCU [or not], and Division III and even smaller Division Is are all grappling with how they’re funding their programs and stretching their dollars. I’m good at stretching a dollar.”

Campbell served in the U.S. Army after graduating from Pulaski County. After his Army stint, he earned his bachelor’s degree from Longwood and his master’s degree from Radford. He worked at Radford and Virginia Tech in nonathletic roles.

He worked in the athletic departments at Big Ten member Minnesota and Division II member Kentucky State before becoming the athletic director at Blackburn in 2005. He became the Stillman athletic director in 2007 and the Tuskegee athletic director in 2013. He took the Western Oregon athletic director job in 2017.

He has been the Morehouse athletic director since 2020.

“We’ve done some good things here. We’ve added a turf field and a track and scoreboard,” Campbell said. “We got the gym floor redone.”

Morehouse associate athletic director Phillip Wallace Jr. said Roanoke College is getting a great person in Campbell.

“I’ve learned a lot from him,” Wallace said. “I’ve known him for over 15 years. … He’s open to new ideas. He’s very approachable. … He’s someone that gets along with everyone.”