HIGH POINT, N.C., Sept. 8, 2022 – The High Point University Board of Trustees has appointed Chris Henson as chair, Mark Webb as vice chair/treasurer and Shirley Frye as secretary.
This announcement at the start of the 2022-23 academic year follows the university welcoming its largest total enrollment in history of 6,000 total students and 1,600 new students. This number of new students exceeds the total enrollment of 2005, when HPU President Dr. Nido Qubein began leading HPU through a total transformation. The next major wave of HPU growth includes a $400 million investment in four new academic schools and facilities, a new library, new housing for hundreds of students, an enclosed parking garage and additional campus improvement projects.
“These leaders have positively impacted our campus and the surrounding community in immeasurable ways,” says Qubein. “High Point University appreciates their wisdom, advocacy and commitment to our institution as we continue to transform and march onward with faithful courage.”
Leading the Board of Trustees through this growth will be Chris Henson, a 1983 HPU graduate. Henson was president and chief operating officer of BB&T until it entered into a merger of equals to form Truist, and post-merger integration he retired as Truist’s senior executive vice president and head of banking and insurance. He is a native of Boone, North Carolina, and graduated cum laude from HPU, with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He was named one of the 10 outstanding seniors of his graduating class.
“High Point University is near and dear to my heart for so many reasons,” says Henson. “I look forward to helping the institution achieve its purpose by continuing to build upon its academic excellence and grow as the premiere life skills university.”
Henson is a graduate of the Young Executive Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Duke University Advanced Management Program. He began his banking career in 1985 when he entered BB&T’s Management Development program and served BB&T/Truist in various roles before being named chief financial officer in July 2005.
The Henson Reflection Garden, between Couch Hall and the Charles E. Hayworth Memorial Chapel, was given in honor of the loving marriage of Henson and his wife Kim, who were wed in the chapel. Henson is a major supporter of student scholarships and has been a member of the HPU Board of Trustees for more than 15 years. He has also been a board member for various chambers of commerce, foundations, nonprofits and served as chairman of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County 10 Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. He also chairs the Trellis Supportive Care (formerly Hospice of Winston-Salem) $5 million capital campaign.
As a student, Henson was a member of Alpha Chi honor society, Delta Mu Delta honorary business fraternity, Junior Marshalls, Society for the Advancement of Management and Baptist Student Union. In 2015, Henson received the HPU Alumnus of the Year award.
Mark Webb is a 1983 alumnus with a bachelor’s degree in marketing/management and a native of High Point. In 2018, he received the Alumnus of the Year award. He owns and operates Interstate Foam and Supply, Inc. in Conover, North Carolina, where the company employs more than 500 associates. IFS was founded in 1981 to serve the furniture industry and has since grown to become a major fabricator and distributor of polyurethane foam components.
HPU’s Webb School of Engineering and Conference Center are named in honor of the Webb family’s contributions to HPU. The Webb School of Engineering became HPU’s ninth academic school and was the sixth academic school since Qubein became HPU president. The new academic school aligns with HPU’s mission to prepare students for the world as it’s going to be, says Qubein.
Webb and his wife Jerri Webb are successful business owners and strong HPU advocates. They live at Lake Norman. Webb has also served on the Solution Partners Board of the American Home Furnishings Alliance and is currently serving on the Catawba Valley Leadership Foundation Board. Their son, Connor Mosack, is a class of 2021 entrepreneurship graduate pursuing a career as a NASCAR driver. Mosack has been seen in a purple and white car adorned with HPU letters zooming around a NASCAR and TransAm2 series race on Fox Sports.
“As HPU prepares the next generation of leaders, my family and I are honored to serve and support the future of HPU students and the values of God, family and country HPU represents,” says Mark Webb.
Shirley T. Frye, a longtime educator in Greensboro, North Carolina, received recognition in May 2022 with the Triad Business Journal’s Outstanding Women in Business Special Achievement Award. It was the most recent of many accolades she has earned in her lifetime, including The News & Record Woman of the Year Award in 2017 and the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, one of North Carolina’s highest civilian honors.
After she earned her Bachelor of Science in education and English with highest honors from N.C. A&T State University, she taught at Washington Elementary School then earned her master’s degree in special education and psychology to become a special education teacher in the Greensboro, North Carolina, community.
Frye later returned to N.C. A&T as assistant vice chancellor for development and university relations and as a special assistant to the chancellor. That led her to serve as a special assistant to the president and director of planned giving at the neighboring Bennett College. She also worked for the state Department of Public Instruction and retired as vice president of community relations at WFMY News 2, where she won an Emmy.
Throughout her career, Frye has been a devoted community volunteer. She previously served on the High Point University Board of Trustees, N.C. A&T Real Estate Foundation Board, on the Greensboro City Schools Board of Education and chaired the steering committee for Action Greensboro.
“HPU is unique,” says Frye. “Its leadership, faculty and staff all work together in helping the student population, psychologically, academically, physically and spiritually. It’s what I call developing the ‘whole person.’ The students get the theoretical and the application sides while there. When graduation time comes, the students are ready for their chosen profession with lots of vigor.”
In the 1970s, Frye led the integration of Greensboro’s two segregated YWCAs, serving as the new organization’s first president, and her work became a model for YWCAs across the country. Greensboro’s newest YWCA building is named in her honor. Her leadership, civic engagement and dedication to public service is matched by that of her husband, retired Justice Henry Frye. He was noted as the first African American student to complete all three years of study and graduate from the University of North Carolina School of Law, the first Black man to be elected to the N.C. General Assembly in 1968, the first Black man appointed to the N.C. Supreme Court in 1983, and the first Black chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court in 1999.
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