T. J. Bryan

T. J. (Thelma Jane) Bryan is an African-American educator who rose from poverty in rural Maryland to become the first African-American woman to be elected by the University of North Carolina (UNC) Board of Governors (BoG) to serve as Chancellor of one of its constituent institutions.

Born on August 21, 1945, Bryan is one of six daughters born in Scotland, Maryland, to Joseph Webster Bryan and Mary Gertrude Bryan (née Holley). Neither Joseph nor Mary Bryan completed high school, but significantly two of their daughters (T. J. Bryan and Myrtle Elizabeth Bryan Dorsey) earned doctoral degrees and became higher-education chancellors—Bryan at Fayetteville State University (FSU) and Dorsey at Baton Rouge Community College and at St. Louis Community College. While Bryan served as FSU Chancellor, she established the Mary and Joseph Bryan Nursing Scholarship in honor of her parents.

A low-income, first-generation college student, Bryan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Morgan State College; she graduated as valedictorian of her class in 1970. She earned a Master of Arts degree in English from Morgan in 1974 and a Ph.D. in English language and literature from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1982.

From 1978 to 1998, Bryan was a faculty member at Baltimore’s Coppin State College (later University), where she rose to the rank of full professor. While at Coppin, she revised and directed the honors program and founded and directed one of the nation’s fourteen original Ronald McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Programs. Also, during this period, she served in progressively more complex academic-administrative roles—as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Journalism for three years; Dean of the Honors Division for eight years; and Dean of Arts and Sciences for seven years. One of the most significant national recognitions of her strengths during this period was her selection as the only recipient in the state of Maryland of a 1986-87 Fellowship for College Teachers from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

From 1998 to 2002, Bryan was Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University System of Maryland. Four years later, in 2002, she became Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs at the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.

In June 2003, Bryan made history when she became the first woman elected by the UNC Board of Governors (BoG) to serve as Chancellor of Fayetteville State University. Bryan was also the first African-American woman elected by the BoG to lead a UNC institution.

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