A look back as he readies to move on to life’s next chapter
FAIRMONT — It was the NBA, not the Ph.D., that occupied the thoughts of Johnny Moore in 1985.
That was the year he landed in Little Rock, Ark., to play the game on scholarship at tiny Philander Smith College.
He didn’t have to go far.
Moore was an Arkansas kid.
He grew up down the road near President Clinton’s hometown of Hope.
And hope was what was burning for his desire to play the game in the pro ranks.
He was a hardwood scholar: A fleet point guard with a sweet, arcing jumper.
It wasn’t long before he started pulling down 28 points a game for the Panthers.
Basketball and academia are two different games, however.
For example, when he went looking for a professor one day and saw the sign on the door reading “Dr. James,” he was impressed.
He thought the guy who taught math — was a physician at the same time.
“I didn’t know ‘Dr.’ meant ‘Ph.D.,’ in that case,” he said.
It probably didn’t even matter, he reasoned since the NBA had a locker for him anyway.
“That shows you where I was at the time,” he said Monday afternoon, at Pierpont Community and Technical College in Fairmont.
“But my professors never gave up me,” Moore continued.
“They could have just pushed me to the side.”
Instead, they pushed him out front.
Moore didn’t crack the NBA, but he did earn a Ph.D., and became president at Pierpont four years ago, after holding teaching and administrative positions in Arkansas, Texas and Florida.
He also coached high school and college basketball at various points in his 30-year career.
And now, the 54-year-old is again going back home to serve as chancellor of Arkansas State University-Newport, a community college similar to Pierpont, in a state demographically similar to West Virginia.
His aging father still lives there, he said, along with several other relatives.
His wife, who is a teacher, is an Arkansan as well, he said, and the move will be a way to introduce their two teenaged children to a sense of place with deep familial roots.
Moore starts his new job Feb. 8, just as soon as he completes his current one Feb. 1, he told reporters.
At Pierpont, he oversaw a college that includes 5,000 students and an operating budget of $26 million.
In May, it joined just six community colleges nationwide to participate in the Project Vision pilot program by the National Science Foundation.
At ASU-Newport, he’ll be just as student-centered, he said.
Most of the people on its campus are first-generation college students, and some of the ones taking instruction are incarcerated.
The school is part of a Pell Grant pilot program that gives educational opportunities to prison inmates.
Relationships forged are relationships forged, he said.
“I’m leaving Pierpont,” he said, “but I’m not losing contact.”
In spring 2021, in whatever form it takes from the pandemic, a group of Pierpont students will turn their tassels and go forth — to specialized jobs or four-year degrees, even.
His students, he said, with some of them starting out the way he was 35 years ago.
Paradoxically, Moore said, the pandemic has helped focus and magnify the mission, with online enhancements and a renewed focus on students’ emotional health.
“COVID-19 sped up some of the things we really needed to do.”
Pierpont, meanwhile, is readying to launch a national search for Moore’s replacement.
TWEET@DominionPostWV
