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Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) is a rural HBCU nestled in the northeastern corner of North Carolina and located about an hour south of Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Tameka Gibbs, assistant director of employer relations and special projects, explains that “there are no luxury hotels here. But Elizabeth City is known as the ‘Harbor of Hospitality,’ and that’s what we provide for our employers who visit our campus.”
That hospitality—a strong component in building fruitful relationships with those organizations that recruit ECSU students—is a foundational element of ECSU’s efforts to overcome any potential limitations associated with its rural location.
Another is its institution-wide dedication to facilitating positive student outcomes.
Amber Lennon, Ed.D., ECSU’s director of career and professional development and QEP, points out that Elizabeth City is in Pasquotank County, one of the state’s Tier 1 counties. This tier system is conducted annually by the North Carolina Department of Commerce and ranks the state’s counties based on economic well-being. The most distressed counties are designated as Tier 1, indicating higher unemployment rates and lower household median incomes.
Among ECSU’s student body, approximately 57% come from rural counties and about 51% are Pell Grant eligible.
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Register here“Many ECSU students have socioeconomic challenges. What that looks like for us is that we are working with students who, through no fault of their own, are arriving to ECSU less prepared and less exposed to professional opportunities,” Dr. Lennon says.
“However, we have a new chancellor who sees the need to focus on student learning and success. These are embedded in our 2025-30 strategic plan, highlighting our efforts to increase not only student learning, exposure, and preparedness but also their postgraduation outcomes.”
The relationships ECSU Career Development forges with employers are a catalyst for student success. Gibbs connects with employers to get a sense of their goals and bring back that information to the career development team to develop a plan that involves students, faculty, leadership, and other campus partners to meet these goals.
When employers arrive on campus, Gibbs meets them to give them their parking pass and a campus map, and she stays with them throughout the day, so they can maximize their time at ECSU.
“We know the amount of time and money they're investing to come to our campus is significant, so we make sure that we're available,” she says.
“We try to arrange for executive leadership, such as our vice chancellor for student affairs, to meet with recruiters,” Gibbs says.
“We try to get the right people in the right places, and I think has helped us strengthen a lot of the relationships that we've built. It takes a lot of intention for organizations to recruit on our campus, so we are definitely appreciative of the development of our employer relations efforts because we've built and are growing some really great partnerships.”
The ECSU Career Development team has implemented employer takeover days, when a single employer comes to campus to brand in high-volume areas, speak to classes and student organizations, connect with faculty and leaders, meet students one-on-one, and benefit from other interactions.
Employers also host events at the campus’ newly renovated bowling alley to network with students in a fun, informal environment.
“We definitely try and personalize their experiences based on the time they have and what they want,” Dr. Lennon says.
“Some of them want to hit the maximum number of classes. Tameka sent out an email right after our Faculty-Staff Institute at the beginning of the semester and said that we have an employer that wants to come to campus in February and asked if they can carve out 10 to 15 minutes for them to come to class. Most of the time, it works out so that they're in the same building and they can then classroom hop.
“Or they'll meet students in the Student Center, which has an eatery, our bookstore, and the cafeteria, which normally has a DJ in it, so there’s a lot of hustle and bustle on those days. We build out their experiences based on what they want, and we put a tight agenda on them. They're spending their money, time, and resources, so we want to make their visit worth their while.”
ECSU also holds virtual employer engagement summits, which have been successful for employer outreach and to provide and gather information. Career development invites executive leadership to give an overview of ECSU and its students. Then, the career development team talks about how employers can get involved.
“It’s informational for the employers because they can learn about our students and what majors we offer, and it's informational for us because they talk about trends in recruitment and their recruitment timelines,” Dr. Lennon notes.
“That's been helpful for building relationships and finding out how we need to prepare our students to apply for these internships and to these entry-level jobs.”
These relationships bear fruit. For example, the State Employees’ Credit Union (SECU) Foundation works with ECSU to provide an annual $100,000+ grant to support paid internships for the university’s students. This funding allows students to take internships with government agencies and nonprofit organizations across North Carolina. Through the SECU program, ECSU has supported 100 students in securing paid internships across the state—expanding access to meaningful, career-building experiences—since summer 2021.
There are other positives. Now, having grown over the past five years to a staff of four, ECSU’s career center has been able to increase its First-Destination Survey knowledge rate from 64% in 2021 to 87% in 2025. Another indication of the increased focus is the growth in employer engagement, leading to career development outgrowing its current space for career fairs.
Dr. Lennon and Gibbs offer several recommendations to other rural HBCU’s when working to attract employers to campus:
- Be informative—Tell them directly what you're offering so that they can see the benefit for their company. When they can see the benefit, it's very impactful for them as they can see their return on investment and know they won’t be wasting their time and resources by coming to campus.
- Tell your students' story—It's especially important for rural HBCUs to tell their students' story. ECSU highlights its students' resiliency and adaptability, and educates employers on regional context so that they understand the unique traits that the students are bringing. For example, students from a rural county may be less likely to want to go to a big city or they may never have flown before so they have a fear of flying. Coach employers to, for example, help the students find safe places to live or tell them what restaurants to go to so the students feel comfortable taking this leap to a new place.
“As an NC Promise institution, ECSU makes sure that education is accessible, that our students have opportunities, and that we facilitate upward mobility,” Dr. Lennon says.
“When it comes to career development, we want to make sure that we're having transformative conversations with students who may not have had or would not have considered opportunities. We want to help our students realize that their career dreams and everything that they want to achieve—whether it is a job, graduate school, entrepreneurship, or something else—is attainable and to the best of our ability, we will provide the resources, relationships, and networking opportunities so that they get exactly what they need to find their success.”
Amber Lennon, Ed.D, and Tameka Gibbs will present a session titled “Rural Doesn’t Mean Limited: Innovative Recruiting at a Small HBCU” during NACE’s 2026 HBCU Summit.
