You might have noticed a few weeks back when the D Building on the Charleston campus was given a new name: The Paul E. Meacham Student Services Building.
Is Meacham a donor? A connected politician? An important graduate?
No. He’s just the guy responsible for the entire College of Southern Nevada Charleston campus, that’s all.
CSN president Dr. Michael Richards and President Emeritus Dr. Paul Meacham at a ceremony honoring Meacham.
“Today is quite a historic day for the College of Southern Nevada,” CSN’s president, Michael Richards, told a crowd gathered Friday inside the newly named building.
Meacham, who grew up in Alabama long before the civil rights movement took hold, served as president of CSN back when it was still called Clark County Community College.
This place has been around for 44 years, and Meacham was president for fully one-fourth of that time, 11 years, from 1983 until 1994.
Elected officials, CSN officials and more praised Meacham as a visionary leader whose legacy goes far beyond establishing a new campus for the college. He was the first African-American president of any college in Nevada, paving the way for minorities to serve as president elsewhere in Nevada. He fought for faculty, he fought for the college, and he fought for the students, always.
Dr. Paul E. Meacham
“That’s pretty high praise for an old time country band director,” Meacham, now 79, told the crowd following speeches from a variety of dignitaries.
Meacham oversaw tremendous growth in southern Nevada, and at CSN. He knew the original campus on Cheyenne and the newly opened one in Henderson weren’t going to be enough.
And so he battled. He established a new campus on a dirt lot on the corner of Charleston Boulevard and Torrey Pines Drive, land that was a gift to CSN from the federal government. But if CSN didn’t build on that land soon, it would be lost.
Meacham fought with all he had. And he won. The first building, now called the Claude I. Howard Health Sciences Center, opened in 1988. More followed, many more. Today, the Charleston campus is the largest of CSN’s three campuses.
Meacham said when he was approached and asked if he’d like a CSN building named after him, the decision on which one was easy: The Charleston student services building.
Students are why we’re here. They’re why CSN exists at all, why Meacham fought so hard for all those years.
“In honoring me,” Meacham said, “you honor this institution, and you honor yourselves.”