WSSU Lands Nearly $45 Million in State Budget Plus $500K Gift to Launch Graduate-Prep Program

Winston-Salem State University is poised to reshape both its campus and its student pipeline with money arriving from two directions: nearly $45 million in the 2026 North Carolina state budget and a separate $500,000 gift from the Cannon Family Charitable Trust.

The state funding targets the places where Rams learn and the workforce paths they enter—renovating major campus buildings, expanding scholarships, supporting nursing education and boosting eligible employee pay. The Cannon gift targets the next step for individual students, funding graduate-school entrance-exam preparation and summer internships through a new program called ASCENDNC.

Together, the commitments pair Raleigh's backing for WSSU's physical and workforce infrastructure with philanthropic support for students navigating the costs and connections needed after college.

The dual funding streams arrived as Chancellor Bonita J. Brown marks approximately two years of leadership at the historically Black university. Brown became WSSU's 14th chancellor and first permanent female chancellor on July 1, 2024.

The North Carolina General Assembly passed the 2026 Appropriations Act, Senate Bill 257, on July 2, 2026, with the House approving it 88-21 and the Senate passing it 35-10. Governor Josh Stein signed the budget into law on July 7, 2026, enacting Session Law 2026-41, North Carolina's first full state budget in more than two years.

Nearly $40 million of WSSU's allocation is spread over two fiscal years for capital improvements: finishing the renovation of K.R. Williams Auditorium and advancing modernization work at Eller Hall and Pegram Hall.

The K.R. Williams project carries a $62.7 million price tag. It will fully renovate the existing auditorium, which seats more than 1,600, and add a 45,000-square-foot, three-story expansion housing additional lobby space, a studio theater, dressing rooms, a lecture hall, classroom and studio spaces, a student gallery and faculty offices. By mid-2026, the project had moved into active bidding for Package 3A, covering renovation and expansion work; its site-work phase was approximately 45% complete in September 2025.

Eller Hall is undergoing a full renovation, including a new elevator, and is in the Programming Phase, with LS3P serving as the principal design firm. Pegram Hall, built in 1937 and offline for several years, is undergoing renovation and the addition of an elevator and is in the designer-selection phase.

Beyond capital projects, the budget includes WSSU's entry into the Cheatham-White Scholarship Program, a fully funded, four-year merit-based scholarship established by the General Assembly in 2017 to support incoming freshmen at NC A&T and NC Central University, with up to 20 scholarships per university. The budget also establishes WSSU as a key partner in the new Nursing Fellows Forgivable Education Loan Pilot Program to bolster the healthcare workforce, provides 3% salary increases and one-time bonuses for eligible employees, and includes new opportunities to strengthen Rams Athletics.

In 2025, the state had already allocated $112.5 million in capital funding to WSSU for its Health, Physical Education, and Recreation Complex, demonstrating prior momentum in Raleigh for the university's capital priorities.

The Cannon Family Charitable Trust's $500,000 gift, payable over five years, targets barriers students encounter after they arrive on campus. The trust is a single-donor entity established upon Charles A. Cannon's death in 1971 to continue his charitable interests, funded by the Cannon family estate from Cannon Mills.

Of the gift, $125,000 is allocated for graduate entrance-exam preparation—covering the GRE, LSAT, MCAT and GMAT—and $375,000 funds a summer internship program connecting students to nonprofit and community-focused employers. Academic ambition alone does not cover exam-prep costs or open the door to career-building work experience.

Chancellor Bonita J. Brown said, "This support strengthens our ability to remove barriers, expand opportunity and empower our students to achieve their fullest potential."

The graduate-preparation investment comes as WSSU rebuilds a portion of its academic mission it had previously scaled back. The university discontinued most graduate programs in 2010 to focus on undergraduate education but re-established the Graduate College in December 2022; new graduate enrollment surged 31.2% and total graduate enrollment increased 14.3% in Fall 2024. WSSU's total enrollment stands at 4,972 students as of Fall 2025, with 4,293 undergraduates and 679 graduates.

Winston-Salem State University is a public HBCU founded on September 28, 1892, as the Slater Industrial Academy by Dr. Simon Green Atkins to train African American teachers. It joined the University of North Carolina System on July 1, 1972, as one of its 16 constituent institutions.

The question for Winston-Salem and WSSU is whether the dual investments will deliver measurable gains—more students entering graduate programs fully prepared, more internships completed, more nursing students joining the workforce, more degrees earned in modernized facilities. The ASCENDNC program's five-year funding horizon and the multi-year capital construction timelines mean the full impact will unfold over the remainder of the decade, making this week's announcements a down payment on WSSU's next chapter rather than its final word.