Performing arts center named in Belcher’s honor
The academic unit that is home to Western Carolina University’s programs in music, stage, screen, art and design will be known as the David Orr Belcher College of Fine and Performing Arts in honor of the late WCU chancellor, who died June 17 at the age of 60 after battling brain cancer for more than two years.
The university’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved the naming of the college for Belcher in recognition of his background as a classically trained pianist and his impact on higher education and the arts at WCU and across Western North Carolina.
University policy on name designation for facilities and academic units allows for the naming of appropriate spaces in recognition of exceptional service to WCU, higher education and/or the people of North Carolina by members of the university faculty, staff or student body after they have completed employment or enrollment, said Acting Chancellor Alison Morrison-Shetlar.
“I hope that Chancellor Belcher would be well pleased by this recognition, which strikes me as an appropriate coda to his career as an artist and an educator,” she said. “While he may have left us — and far too soon, at that — his legacy will live on through the creative and pedagogical endeavors of those who will follow in his footsteps.”
