There is a particular kind of institutional knowledge that does not transfer through handbooks, does not survive reorganizations, and cannot be replicated by anyone who did not build it slowly, over decades, through repeated acts of investment in people who were not yet certain they deserved it. Winston-Salem State University is losing that kind of knowledge this year with the retirement of Dr. Dennis Felder, and the HBCU community owes it to itself to name what is being lost and what, because of his 42 years of work, will remain long after he has left the building.

Dr. Felder arrived at WSSU in 1984 as a young faculty member with a doctorate from Kansas State University and a foundational understanding of what HBCU education could do for students who needed an institution to believe in them before they fully believed in themselves. He knew this not from theory but from biography: he was a graduate of Alcorn State University, and he carried that formation into every classroom he taught for the next four decades. “Alcorn State made me and gave me an opportunity to thrive,” he reflected near the end of his tenure, “and that’s what I’ve tried to pass on here” (Journal Now, 2024). In that sentence lives the entire philosophy not career services as a department, but career development as a personal obligation passed from one generation of HBCU graduates to the next.

HBCUSHACK was built to archive what the yard produces. What Dr. Felder produced is worth archiving with the precision and respect the work deserves.

William Quintin Hayes is among the most documented examples of what the Felder model yields. Hayes played at WSSU from 2003 through 2007, was selected in the fourth round of the 2008 NFL Draft, and went on to complete an 11-year professional career with the Tennessee Titans, the St. Louis and Los Angeles Rams, and the Miami Dolphins (Pro Football Reference, 2019). He was a High Point, North Carolina native not a recruited five-star prospect, not a transfer from a Power Five institution who was developed at a CIAA program by a professor who held him to a standard he did not always welcome and later acknowledged he needed. Hayes has since returned to give back to WSSU, donating to the athletics program and serving as an honorary captain the natural conclusion of a mentorship relationship that begins with accountability and ends with gratitude (Journal Now, 2019).

The method behind this outcome was neither glamorous nor particularly modern. Head coach Robert Massey described it from personal experience: “When Doc’s name pops up on my caller ID, I answer without hesitation. He typically rings me around 5 or 6 a.m., and there’s always a reason behind his call” (Journal Now, 2024). That reason was academic accountability a player had missed class, and Dr. Felder had already noticed. Monte Ross, the men’s basketball coach at North Carolina A&T and a 1992 graduate of WSSU’s Sport Management program, offered the student perspective with similar directness: “(Felder) rode me pretty hard, but I needed that. Trust me” (Journal Now, 2024). This is the voice of someone speaking from the other side of a career that worked looking back at the friction that made it possible.

I had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Felder’s Sport Management class during my tenure in professional sports, working across NFL and MLS organizations. What I encountered in that classroom was a level of professional preparation and intellectual seriousness that reflected the standard of the man who built it. Those students were not being prepared to impress an interviewer. They were being prepared to sustain a career a distinction that reveals itself not in the first job but in the fifth.

HBCUSHACK archives what the HBCU yard produces because that production is historically undervalued, inadequately documented, and insufficiently celebrated by the institutions and industries that benefit most from it. Dr. Dennis Felder spent 42 years producing outcomes that professional sports franchises, university athletic departments, and community organizations across the region have benefited from directly often without naming the source.

We are naming the source.

Dr. Dennis Felder. Alcorn State University. Winston-Salem State University, 1984 to 2026. Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Sport Management. 42 years. One yard. A pipeline that runs through the entire professional landscape of HBCU athletics and will continue running long after his name stops appearing on the faculty roster.

The yard remembers, Doc. Rest in the work you’ve already done.

References

Journal Now. (2024, October 21). Esteemed professor Dr. Dennis Felder leaving his mark on athletics and his students at WSSU. https://journalnow.com

Journal Now. (2026, May 14). Winston-Salem State professor Dennis Felder retires after 42 years. https://journalnow.com

Journal Now. (2019). William Hayes, a former WSSU standout who is retired after an 11-year NFL career, is ready for the next phase of his life. https://journalnow.com

Pro Football Reference. (2019). William Hayes career statistics. https://www.pro-football-reference.com

Winston-Salem State University. (n.d.). Dr. Dennis Felder — Staff directory. https://wssurams.com