Cheyney, Pennsylvania · Founded 1837 · Wolves
“The nation's first HBCU — founded before the Civil War, still standing through every storm since.”
A full documentary on Cheyney's 189-year timeline — 'real stories, real people, real impact' — the single best video overview of the school's history.
The 1982 national runners-up finally get their Hall of Fame rings at Homecoming 2024 in the Marian Anderson Music Center — 42 years after playing for the first NCAA women's title.
Floats, visiting marching groups, and the Cheyney and Virginia State marching bands at the 1995 homecoming — peak-90s HBCU homecoming energy.
Virginia Union's band performing at Cheyney's 1995 homecoming game — visiting-band culture at the old PSAC-era homecomings.
Actual game footage from the 1992 homecoming football game against Mansfield, from the era when the Wolves still played ball.
The first homecoming back after the pandemic wiped out 2020 and 2021 — 'Cheyneyites being Cheyneyites,' with Alpha Phi Alpha repping on the yard.
The alumni memorial from the 2021 homecoming — how a small HBCU honors its own who didn't make it back.
Alumni mix-and-mingle footage from the 2022 homecoming weekend — the family-reunion side of the celebration.
Archival footage from the 1992 May Weekend celebration, preserved in the Cheyney University Memories archive.
A 90s-nostalgia short from campus life in the school's last big-enrollment decade.
Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael) speaking on campus circa 1999, digitized from a surviving U-matic tape — a fragile artifact of Cheyney's movement-speaker tradition.
Jazz organ legend Shirley Scott — a Cheyney professor — performing on campus in 1990 with Charles Fambrough and Bootsie Barnes.
Class of 1964 — the legendary CBS 60 Minutes correspondent; probably the most beloved alumnus in school history.
Valedictorian of the Institute for Colored Youth; educator, Union Army recruiter, streetcar-desegregation fighter; murdered in 1871 defending Black voting rights; honored with the 'A Quest for Parity' statue outside Philadelphia City Hall.
Graduate of the Institute for Colored Youth; the second formally trained female physician in the United States; served poor neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Washington and founded a Woman's Directory Center for women and children.
Architect of the Philadelphia Free Library and the Philadelphia Museum of Art — one of the most accomplished Black architects of the 20th century.
Civil rights advocate and strategist; helped A. Philip Randolph organize the 1941 March on Washington Movement and was chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.
Publisher of the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest Black-owned newspaper in America; earned his B.A. in Urban Studies at Cheyney and later chaired the university's Council of Trustees.
Emmy-winning longtime WRC-TV anchor in Washington, D.C. — one of the most trusted faces in local news.
Charismatic educator celebrated among Cheyney's notable graduates.
Former Chicago Bears lineman who played his college ball for the Wolves.
Wide receiver who reached the St. Louis Rams.
Mayor of Chester, Pennsylvania; attended Cheyney.
Class of 2001 — Pennsylvania's secretary of education.
Star forward of the 1981–82 Lady Wolves (13.3 points, 6.1 rebounds per game); played through the national championship game and became the emotional face of that team's legacy.
Most Outstanding Player of the 1978 NCAA Division II tournament — the engine of Cheyney's only national championship.
All-American on the 1978 national championship team, named in the congressional resolution honoring the roster.
On February 25, 1837, the African Institute opened in Philadelphia on the force of a bequest from Richard Humphreys, a Quaker philanthropist born on a West Indies plantation who had come to Philadelphia in 1764. Humphreys left $10,000 — one tenth of his entire estate — and charged thirteen fellow Quakers with designing an institution 'to instruct the descendents of the African Race in school learning, in the various branches of the mechanic Arts, trades and Agriculture, in order to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers.' It was the first high school for Black people in the United States, opened a full 28 years before the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.
Within weeks of its February opening, the school was renamed the Institute for Colored Youth (ICY), the name it would carry for more than 75 years. Its first home stood at Seventh and Lombard Streets in South Philadelphia, before it moved to a larger building at Ninth and Bainbridge Streets — the Samuel J. Randall School building, which still stands and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In its early years the institute offered a classical education — literature, mathematics, Greek and Latin — to free Black Philadelphians at a time when such schooling was almost unheard of.
The institute's earliest years were led by a succession of Quaker superintendents: Isaac Jones (1840–1842), Joseph Healy (1843–1845), and Caleb Cope (1845–1846), the university's own catalogs record. Their wives served as matrons alongside them. These were the school's fragile first decades — small enrollments, constant fundraising, and a mission that existed only because a dead man's will demanded it.
Charles L. Reason took charge as the institute's first principal in 1852 and served until 1856. Reason was himself a pioneering Black educator and mathematician who had broken barriers in New York's free Black schools. His appointment set a pattern that would define the institute for the rest of the century: leadership by formidable Black educators who treated the school as both classroom and battleground for civil rights.
Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett succeeded Reason as principal, serving from roughly 1857 to 1869 according to the university's catalogs. Bassett was a towering intellect who held the school together through the Civil War years, when its students and teachers were pulled between classrooms and the Union cause. When he left the principal's chair in 1869, he stepped directly into history — President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him U.S. minister to Haiti, making him the first African American diplomat in American history. (The diplomatic appointment is well-established history, noted here from general historical record rather than the Cheyney sources opened for this profile.)
Fanny Jackson Coppin, herself a former slave, became principal in 1869 and held the post for 33 years, until 1902. She is credited with advancing the institute's curriculum far beyond its trades-and-teaching roots, and her name outlived the century: Coppin State University in Baltimore is named for her, and in 2022 the city of Philadelphia renamed Andrew Jackson Elementary School in South Philadelphia after her. Her tenure also produced the school's most famous graduate — Octavius V. Catto, the ICY valedictorian who taught English, mathematics and classical languages at the institute, helped recruit Black regiments for the Union Army, led the fight to desegregate Philadelphia's horse-drawn streetcars, and was murdered in 1871 by rioters trying to keep Black men from the polls. In 2017 Philadelphia unveiled 'A Quest for Parity,' a bronze statue of Catto outside City Hall — the first statue on Philadelphia public property dedicated to a single African American.
In 1902 the institute left Philadelphia for a farm 25 miles west of the city, on land connected to George Cheyney in Thornbury Township — a campus that straddles Chester and Delaware Counties to this day. Hugh M. Browne led the school through the relocation, serving as principal from 1902 to 1913; Browne Hall on the campus still carries his name. The move was a gamble: trading an urban home for 275 acres of rolling Pennsylvania farmland. It worked — the rural campus became the school's permanent identity, and the name 'Cheyney' became attached to the institution from about 1913 onward.
With the school settled on its new land, the first of its signature stone buildings went up: Emlen Hall, constructed in 1903 as a residence hall with administrative space and expanded twice through the 1920s. The Melrose Cottage, a stone farmhouse built before 1785 that had been the home of Quaker farmers and later of Mary H. Cheyney — a pioneering woman physician who treated Black and white patients alike and was the only woman on the eight-doctor staff when West Chester Hospital opened in 1892 — became the president's house, a role it served from 1903 until 1968.
A Carnegie library rose on the young campus in 1909, the stone building that still anchors the historic quad as Carnegie Hall. It was expanded in 1968 with classrooms and academic space, and today its upper-floor 'Great Room' — holding art and used by the president for hosting guests — is one of the university's signature spaces, while the addition houses the Academic Success Center, the Writing Center, and a computer lab. A Carnegie library on a Black teacher-training campus in 1909 was itself a statement about what the school intended to become.
Dr. Leslie Pinckney Hill — educator, poet, and humanitarian — became principal in 1913 and would lead the school for 38 years, until 1951, longer than anyone before or since. Hill is treated in the university's own histories as the founder of the modern institution. His period at the Melrose Cottage president's house is remembered as the cottage's era of greatest significance. He steered the school through the name change to Cheyney Training School for Teachers in July 1914, through World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II, and through the long climb from trade school to degree-granting college.
In July 1914 the school's name was changed to Cheyney Training School for Teachers, to match the purpose and nature of its work. Around 1913–1914 the institution began awarding degrees for the first time — the root of the oldest-HBCU debate with Lincoln University, which was founded in 1854 but chartered as a degree-granting college from the start while Cheyney, founded in 1837, did not issue degrees until its eighth decade. In September 1920 the school opened as a normal school with state approval for its graduates to receive Pennsylvania teaching certificates, and in June 1921 the first class graduated with the new state diplomas. Cheyney's identity as a teacher factory — the supplier of a huge share of Philadelphia's Black educators — was sealed.
In June 1918 the student newspaper, The Cheyney Record, was first published, edited by Evangeline Rachel Hall and Laura Wheeler Waring. The Amistad Research Center holds copies from 1927 to 1949, and they read like a who's-who of Black intellectual life dropping by a tiny Pennsylvania campus: Langston Hughes read his poems at a Cheyney NAACP chapter meeting in April 1927; George Washington Carver came in November 1930 to talk chemistry and his vision of synthetic food; W. E. B. Du Bois lectured in 1937 as part of the centennial program; and a student named Milton James interviewed Albert Einstein on racism, warfare, and the atomic bomb for the February 1949 issue.
Pennsylvania took ownership of the school in 1922, making it a public institution. That state tie would be both lifeline and leash for the next century — funding the campus's growth and, much later, nearly strangling it when appropriations and enrollments fell. The state-owned era also set up Cheyney's eventual place as a founding member of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.
Dudley Centre went up in 1933 as the campus's original gymnasium, a rectangular two-story stone, wood and steel structure. It was later renovated into a performing arts center with a 275-seat auditorium, mezzanine, and green room — and it still serves student events and activities today, alongside the renovated Marian Anderson Music Center as one of the two theatres in the university's Center of Excellence in Communications Media, Fine Art and Entertainment Arts.
James Henry Duckrey led from 1951 to 1965, guiding the college through postwar expansion; the science and laboratory building later renovated for the ThinkUbator biotech project carries his name. Leroy Banks Allen followed for a brief 1965–1968 tenure in the turbulent late sixties. Then came Dr. Wade Wilson (1968–1981) — himself a Cheyney alumnus, former star athlete, and industrial arts professor — who became an active, visible presence in Harrisburg's legislative arena on the university's behalf. The administration center built in 1979 and occupied in 1981, now housing the provost, finance, registrar, financial aid and HR offices, is named for him.
Vaux Hall was constructed in 1960 as the industrial arts center, named for Quaker financial supporters George Vaux Sr. and George Vaux Jr., who had furthered Humphreys' bequest to the institute through the Emlen Trust and vigorous fundraising. For decades it housed metal technology, drafting and CAD, photography, radio and broadcast sciences, and the printing graphics program that was a Cheyney staple into the early 1990s. Today it serves fine arts and information technology — a building that tracked the school's own shift from trades to the creative economy.
In 1972 two future Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famers walked onto the same small campus in the same year: John Chaney took over the men's program and C. Vivian Stringer took over the women's. Chaney would amass a 225–59 record over the next decade. Cheyney became one of only three universities in history to employ future men's and women's Hall of Fame head coaches at the same time. The 1970s turned Cope Hall into one of the toughest gyms in small-college basketball and put the oldest HBCU on the national sports map.
On March 18, 1978, the Cheyney State Wolves — ranked No. 4 — beat the No. 1 University of Wisconsin–Green Bay 47–40 in Springfield, Missouri, to win the NCAA Division II men's basketball national championship, the school's first national title. Andrew Fields was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, All-American Milt Colston starred, and John Chaney was named NCAA Division II Coach of the Year. Forty years later the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.Res. 771 celebrating the anniversary and naming the whole roster — John Butts, Duane Coleman, Colston, Fields, Kenny Hinson, Jeffrey Hutcherson, Roger Leysath, Gerald Mills, Charles Murphy, Gilbert Saunders, Arthur Stone, and John Walter. The men's program sits 7th all-time in NCAA win percentage, with 16 PSAC conference championships and four Final Fours.
Coached by C. Vivian Stringer, the 1981–82 Lady Wolves went 28–3 and climbed to No. 2 in the national rankings. When the NCAA staged its first-ever women's basketball tournament that spring, Cheyney — still a Division II school — crashed the Division I party: the Lady Wolves beat Auburn, then N.C. State by 13 in Raleigh, then Kansas State by 22 in the Elite Eight, then Maryland 76–66 in the national semifinal at Norfolk Scope, stretching their win streak to 23 games. The run ended March 28, 1982, with a 76–62 loss to Louisiana Tech in the championship game. More than four decades later, Cheyney remains the only HBCU — men's or women's — ever to reach a Division I Final Four or play for an NCAA national championship. After Stringer left in 1983, Winthrop McGriff took over and led the Lady Wolves right back to the Final Four in 1984, becoming the first Black man to coach a women's team to a Final Four — and the only one for three decades.
In 1983 Cheyney became a founding member of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), created that year from the state's teachers colleges, and took its current name: Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. C.T. Enus Wright (president 1982–1985) led the school through the transition. The university name was supposed to mark arrival — a full university in the state system, not a college. It would be followed by a revolving door of presidencies: LeVerne McCummings (1985–1991), interim Valarie Swain-Cade McCoullum (1991–1992), H. Douglas Covington (1992–1995), interim Donald Leopold Mullett (1995–1996), and W. Clinton Pettus (1996–2004).
Around 1999, Kwame Toure — the activist born Stokely Carmichael, who coined 'Black Power' — spoke at Cheyney as a guest speaker, and the talk was recorded on U-matic 3/4-inch videotape. Only a DVD copy of the second of two tapes survives, and it circulates on YouTube today. It is a small, fragile artifact of Cheyney's long role as a stop for Black movement figures — from Du Bois and Hughes in the 1920s and '30s to Carmichael's generation at century's end.
President W. Clinton Pettus launched a $36.5 million, five-year campaign to refurbish five buildings on the historic quadrangle — the heart of the 1902 campus that he felt had been abandoned for the newer upper-campus buildings of the 1970s and '80s. The plan: a new administration center, a student services center, the registrar and admissions offices, all designed to pull foot traffic back to the center of campus. One of the buildings, Emlen Hall, became the on-campus home of the Keystone Honors Academy, and the university committed up to $5 million in scholarship money — a staggering sum for a school that once considered $100,000 in scholarships a good year — to attract academically strong students, aiming for 200 honors students a year.
Cheyney's band program, which had gone quiet, was re-established in 2005 by a determined group of students, and Professor Allen Gardner took the podium as Director of Bands. He built a program spanning marching band, concert band, pep band, jazz ensemble, jazz combo, and woodwind and brass ensembles, open to music majors and non-majors alike, as part of the university's Center of Excellence in Communications Media, Entertainment Arts & Fine Arts. The marching band took the name the Soulful Sound — and it has carried the school's spirit at homecomings, parades, and showcases ever since.
Michelle R. Howard-Vital (2007–2014), acting president Phyllis Worthy Dawkins (2014), and interim Frank G. Pogue (2014–2017) led Cheyney through its darkest modern stretch. Enrollment collapsed from about 1,470 full-time students in 2008 to under 700. The school borrowed more than $30 million to stay solvent. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education put Cheyney on probation in 2015, and by 2017 the university was openly fighting for its accreditation — and its survival. Alumni, students, and community leaders formed 'Heeding Cheyney's Call' and sued the Commonwealth, alleging decades of racial discrimination in state funding of the historically Black university.
Cheyney marked its 175th anniversary with a gala at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where the Cheyney University Concert Choir performed under the direction of Marques L. A. Garrett. It was a rare celebratory beat in a decade otherwise defined by budget cuts and accreditation fights — a reminder, staged in downtown Philadelphia, of how long the oldest HBCU had already endured.
Aaron A. Walton became Cheyney's 13th president in May 2017 — and within months made the decision that defined his early tenure. In December 2017, after a 1–10 season, Cheyney suspended its football program: the most expensive sport to run, and one the school could no longer afford. Head coach Chris Roulhac learned the news in a meeting with the president, telling reporters, 'We always held out hope that the program could be saved.' The final win was a good one — a 56–28 thrashing of rival Lincoln University in the Battle of the First. The program had already missed a Turkey Day Classic date with Alabama State that fall for lack of money. In March 2018 Cheyney announced it would also withdraw from the NCAA and the PSAC at the end of the academic year, dropping to independent status for basketball and volleyball. PASSHE, meanwhile, agreed to forgive more than $30 million in loans if the university could balance its budget over four years.
On November 21, 2019, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education reaffirmed Cheyney's accreditation, finding the school back in compliance on planning, resources, and institutional improvement. It was the culmination of two years of fundraising, a first fiscal surplus in eight years ($4.4 million, announced in 2018), and enrollment growth of 32 percent. The relief was real but temporary: in 2023 Middle States put Cheyney on probation again, warning accreditation was in jeopardy over several standards. The warning was lifted in 2024, and a full reaffirmation followed in June 2024, with the next self-study scheduled for 2030–31.
After the pandemic wiped out the 2020 and 2021 homecomings, Cheyney's alumni came back to campus in force in 2022 — 'it was Cheyneyites being Cheyneyites,' as one alum's video put it: lifelong friends, good food, good vibes, the alma mater sung loud ('Cheyney, Cheyney, Alma Mater...'). The 2022 footage even catches Greek life on the yard, with Alpha Phi Alpha among the orgs repping. Two years later, at Homecoming 2024, the university honored the 1982 Lady Wolves with a Hall of Fame ring presentation in the Marian Anderson Music Center on October 12, 2024 — organized by Ray Jones '83 and Tina Payne '84 — finally giving the team that played for a national title its due, 42 years late.
Fall 2025 brought the numbers Cheyney had been chasing for a decade: 851 students enrolled, up 38 percent from 617 the year before, with 360 first-time students — more than double the prior freshman class and one of the largest incoming classes in 15 years. Retention hit 77 percent, the highest in three decades. PASSHE reported fall 2025 enrollment up 37.9 percent, the highest level since 2014. Ninety-one percent of students live on campus, and the school has hit housing capacity — a good problem for a university that nearly closed. The state backed the momentum with a $5 million Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant for the ThinkUbator initiative — a biotech incubator leasing wet-lab and process-development space to biologics, cell and gene therapy companies on campus, anchored by a renovation of the Duckrey building's infrastructure. RACP had awarded Cheyney $12.5 million across two years.
In September 2026 — eight years after Cheyney concluded that NCAA Division II athletics were financially unsustainable — the university broke ground on a new athletics complex, its first major athletics infrastructure investment since leaving the NCAA and PSAC. The athletics department, still independent, now sponsors men's and women's basketball, men's and women's cross country and track and field, and women's volleyball, with 2025–26 basketball schedules featuring NCAA programs like Delaware State, Maryland Eastern Shore, Bowie State, Virginia State, Kutztown, and Lincoln. Whether the investment becomes a path back to NCAA membership is an open question; for now it is a statement that the oldest HBCU intends to compete again.
The biggest rivalry in the Black college universe might be the 24 miles of U.S. 1 between Cheyney and Lincoln — two schools that have educated the sons and daughters of former slaves for close to 200 years, arguing over which came first. Cheyney (1837) claims oldest HBCU by founding date; Lincoln (1854, degree-granting from the start) claims oldest degree-granting HBCU. On the field it was the Battle of the First(s), and Cheyney won the last football meeting ever played, 56–28, in 2017 — the final victory before the program was suspended that December. The rivalry lives on in basketball: Lincoln appeared on Cheyney's 2025–26 independent schedules.
🥁 Soulful Sound Marching Band · since 2005
The Soulful Sound is a reborn band, not a continuous one — the program was re-established in 2005 rather than carried unbroken from an earlier era, and the university's own 2010 press release says so plainly. It performs at homecomings, the Concerned Black Men's band showcases, Labor Day weekend parades, and campus spirit rallies. The band's home facilities include the Dudley Centre theatre and the renovated Marian Anderson Music Center. Directors before the 2005 re-establishment could not be verified from the sources opened for this profile — the pre-2005 band history is a genuine gap, not an oversight. On the music side more broadly, jazz organ legend Shirley Scott served as a Cheyney professor, and a 1990 performance of her quartet on campus survives on video.
Re-established the band program in 2005 with a determined group of students after it had gone quiet, and built it into a full program — marching, concert, pep, jazz ensemble, jazz combo, woodwind and brass ensembles, open to music majors and non-majors — inside the Center of Excellence in Communications Media, Entertainment Arts & Fine Arts. He was still listed as Assistant Professor and Director of Bands in the university's own 2017 news coverage of the football spirit rally, and the Soulful Sound has played homecomings, band showcases, and parades under his baton ever since.
Cheyney carries the full Divine Nine. Homecoming footage — including the 2022 return after the pandemic cancellations — shows Alpha Phi Alpha repping on the yard, and the NPHC presence runs through step shows and probate season on the nation's oldest HBCU campus.
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Built in 1903 as a residence hall with administrative space and expanded twice through the 1920s, this four-story stone building became one of the quad's anchors. After the early-2000s quad refurbishment it became the on-campus home of the Keystone Honors Academy, housing honors students in suite-style rooms.
The original Carnegie Library building, expanded in 1968 with classrooms and academic space. Its upper-floor Great Room holds art and hosts the president's guests; the addition now holds the Academic Success Center, Writing Center, and computer lab, with Library Services planned as its future home.
Constructed in 1933 as the campus's original gymnasium, this 14,000-square-foot stone, wood and steel building was later renovated into a performing arts center with a 275-seat auditorium, mezzanine, and green room. It remains in use for student events and activities.
Built in 1960 and named for Quaker benefactors George Vaux Sr. and George Vaux Jr., who furthered Humphreys' bequest through the Emlen Trust. It housed metal technology, drafting and CAD, photography, radio and broadcast sciences, and the printing graphics program that was a Cheyney staple into the early 1990s; today it serves fine arts and information technology.
Built in 1979 and occupied in 1981 as the new home of the Office of the President, named for alumnus and fourth president Dr. Wade Wilson. It now houses the provost, the vice president for finance, the mailroom, registrar, human resources, financial aid, and related support offices.
President W. Clinton Pettus's five-year campaign to refurbish five buildings on the historic quadrangle — Biddle Hall and others — creating a new administration center, a student services center, and registrar and admissions offices, all to pull campus life back to the quad. Emlen Hall became the Keystone Honors Academy's home in the process.
The state kicked in $38 million to renovate six vacant and deteriorating buildings around the quadrangle — one to become a cultural center, others to become the president's office, classrooms, and a 60-bed suite-style residence hall — explicitly aimed at luring back students and donors as enrollment and alumni giving declined.
Humphreys Hall was slated to open for fall 2013 as a suite-style residence hall reserved for Humphreys Scholar students, joining Truth, King, and Emlen halls and a new 400-bed suite-style residence hall as the campus's five residence halls. Truth Hall is designated for women and King Hall for men; Emlen is reserved for Keystone Honors Academy students.
The university's music center — named for the Philadelphia contralto — was renovated in the mid-2010s as part of the Center of Excellence in Communications Media, Fine Art and Entertainment Arts, giving the Soulful Sound and the concert choir a modern home. It hosted the 1982 Lady Wolves' Hall of Fame ring presentation at Homecoming 2024.
The state awarded Cheyney a $5 million Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant for the ThinkUbator initiative: a biotech incubator leasing process-development and wet-lab space to biologics, cell and gene therapy companies on campus, anchored by a renovation of the Duckrey building's infrastructure. RACP awarded the university $12.5 million across two years — a deliberate play to attract high-achieving students and grow enrollment.
The university advanced plans to restore the 240-year-old Melrose Cottage — the pre-1785 stone farmhouse that served as the president's house from 1903 to 1968 and knew its greatest significance under Leslie Pinckney Hill — and convert it into a Welcome Center and gateway to the university's history, displaying part of its special collections, housing a gift shop, and relocating the Admissions office there with trained student and staff guides.
In September 2026 the university broke ground on a new athletics complex — the first major athletics infrastructure investment since the 2018 NCAA/PSAC withdrawal. It lands alongside the enrollment rebound and the reaffirmed accreditation as the physical symbol of the comeback: the oldest HBCU building for competition again.
The coaching legends are the staff story at Cheyney: John Chaney (men's basketball, 1972–1982, 225–59, 1978 national title) and C. Vivian Stringer (women's basketball, 1972–1983, 1982 national runners-up) — both future Naismith Hall of Famers on the same campus at the same time, a distinction only three schools in history share. Winthrop McGriff succeeded Stringer and took the 1984 Lady Wolves back to the Final Four, becoming the first Black man to lead a women's team there. On the academic side, jazz organ great Shirley Scott served as a Cheyney professor, and Marques L. A. Garrett directed the concert choir at the 175th anniversary gala.
In office since May 2017; made the football-suspension and NCAA-withdrawal calls, negotiated the $30M+ loan-forgiveness deal with PASSHE, and led the accreditation fights and the 2025 enrollment rebound.
Was leading the athletics department around 2021–22, when she was working to hire a new women's basketball coach and restart the program and to get the 1982 Lady Wolves honored; the program's later leadership transition was not pinned down in the sources opened for this profile.
The university's own 2026 communications describe Reynolds — a veteran of nearly two decades in Division I athletics — as the leadership shaping the future of Wolf athletics around academics, student development, and the new athletics complex. His exact title was not confirmed in the sources opened; listed here as athletics leadership, not as athletic director.
Hired to lead the Wolves back onto the court after the program missed the 2020–21 season during the pandemic; a Simon Gratz (Philadelphia) product returning to his hometown.
Philadelphia Tribune publisher who chaired the university's Council of Trustees through the accreditation crisis years and co-signed the 2019 letter celebrating the reaffirmation.
Cheyney is small and residential by necessity and by culture: 91 percent of students live on campus, and by fall 2025 the school had hit housing capacity. That makes for a tight-knit yard where everybody knows everybody — the homecoming videos feel like a family reunion because, at 851 students, it nearly is. The campus sits on 275 acres of rolling hills 25 miles from Philadelphia, with the historic stone quad at its heart, and the student body has always skewed toward first-generation, low-income Pennsylvanians — nearly three-quarters qualify for Pell grants. The vibe in the footage is unpretentious and loyal: small numbers, long memories, and a chip on the shoulder about being first.