CSN building named for first black president of a Nevada college

When Paul Meacham was just a boy of 4 living in Tuscaloosa, Ala., he was at home reading while the other children were out playing sports.

More than seven decades later, the adult version of that studious boy pulled a rope that dropped a tarp and revealed his name over the College of Southern Nevada’s Student Services building.

Despite the rain, a couple of hundred people massed at the college’s West Charleston Boulevard campus to witness the renaming of Building D in Meacham’s honor. For 11 years, he served as CSN’s president, the first black president at a Nevada institute of higher education.

Before Meacham, there had been seven presidents of the school, if you count the interim presidents, said professor emeritus Candace Kant. It averaged out that CSN, then known as Clark County Community College, had a new president every 19 months.

Meacham was an administrator at a Texas college when then-Regent June Whitley led a national search to hire the fledgling community college’s next leader.

In 1983, Whitley discovered Meacham, who was tasked with turning the sprawling Bureau of Land Management desert property on Charleston, between Rainbow and Jones boulevards, into a new campus for the college. At the time, the location was at the edge of the city.

Today, the Charleston campus is CSN’s largest.

Meacham’s folksy personality and hard-work ethic buoyed students and faculty from the moment he came on campus, when he was faced with his first financial crisis, said professor emeritus Thomas Brown. Enrollment had dropped sharply, threatening the jobs of 10 faculty members at the time.

Brown said Meacham tightened the school’s budget and curbed spending. No faculty member lost a job. And Meacham earned a reputation as stingy, Brown quipped.

During Meacham’s leadership, the college’s enrollment double from 10,000 in 1983 to 20,000 in 1993, Brown said.

Even as he was honored Friday, Meacham heaped praise upon others who helped the school. Ever humble, Meacham spoke of the support he received throughout his life from his family.

Meacham grew up in the Deep South and overcame the racial discord of the time.

“I outniced them,” the 78-year-old said. “People can handle ugliness. They can exploit it. But if someone continues to be nice to them, they start having second thoughts and start feeling ashamed. That was a big part of how I succeeded.”

Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regent Cedric Creer, who along with his fellow regents voted unanimously in December to have the building named after Meacham, said Meacham’s legacy is a “testament to the sacrifice generations before me made.”

“For him to come from there, to where we are now, to have a building named after him …is really bigger than monumental,” Creer said. “It’s a great day.”

Contact Francis McCabe at fmccabe@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512. Find him on Twitter: @fjmccabe