When Dr. Russ Sharples ’75, an alumnus of Pfeiffer College, served as VP of Student Development and Dean of Students at his alma mater, a Pfeiffer student from the Midwest found himself in a difficult spot. His father had died suddenly, and he lacked the money to pay for a flight that would get him back home to attend the funeral.

Sharples had established a fund to help students with special emergency needs, and a plane ticket was purchased. Fortunately, the fund didn’t disappear after Sharples’ seven-year stint at Pfeiffer came to a close in 2016, the year he also ended a distinguished career in higher ed administration. It lives on as the Sharples Student Support Fund, underwritten with contributions that Sharples and his wife, Pfeiffer alumna Susan Ingram Sharples ’76, make to it each month.

Sharples, who lives in Albermarle, N.C., can still relate to what that suddenly fatherless student was facing.

“I didn’t have any money in college,” he said. “If something like that had happened to me, I don’t know where I would’ve gotten the funds. Students have enough stress on them, just from normal college life. If we can do something to relieve external stress, then that’s what I want to do.”

Sharples added that the fund named for him has helped many students get through situations that might otherwise prevent them from attending class or graduating. It’s but one of many ways that Sharples worked behind the scenes to “make things better” during his career as a college administrator. This began at Stanly (N.C.) Community College (SCC), where he held several administrative positions for 32 years until his appointment at Pfeiffer, which he relished because it presented him with fresh challenges in a place he loved.

Sharples’ first encounters with Pfeiffer were unusually special. When he was about 7 years old, he moved with his family from Upstate New York to the Stanly County area, where his father helped build the Tuckertown Dam for the Alcoa company. The dam would take about 2 and a half years to complete, and during that time, the Sharples lived in a trailer park near Pfeiffer’s campus in Misenheimer, N.C.

Sharples frequently made Pfeiffer’s campus his playground, and when he did, the students were very welcoming of the young boy in their midst.

“My experience was just so wonderful,” Sharples said. “I would walk over to campus, and I was just so amazed at how these big college guys would allow me to play ball with them.”

Eventually, even though Sharples would end up attending high school in Wilmington, N.C., there was no question about where he would attend college. Because of his childhood experiences at Pfeiffer, he had fallen in love with it. “That’s the only school I wanted to go to, the only school to which I applied,” he said.

Sharples, who majored in History at Pfeiffer, earned a master’s degree in that subject from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He also holds an Ed.D. degree in higher education leadership from N.C. State University. He began working in administration at SCC with the aim of getting his foot in the door at a place where he might also teach history. Although Sharples would teach history on occasion at institutions other than SCC, he discovered that administration was his true calling.

“I really became interested in working directly with students full-time as opposed to just teaching in the classroom,” he said. “I liked to address and solve problems by working creatively with the students.”

Sharples gained a wealth of diverse experience from his time at SCC. Among other things, he served as the financial aid director, a position that fit him well because the experiences of the students he served were very much like his own.

“My parents could not afford to send me to college, so I paid my way through,” he said. “I had some empathy, and I commiserated with them because I was not that far removed from where they were.”

At SCC, Sharples also oversaw continuing education programs that ran the gamut, from training police officers and first responders to teaching a firm’s employees how to administer CPR, work a forklift, or develop as leaders. He also led SCC’s transition from an in-person culture to one in which a lot of business is routinely conducted online. 

When he joined Pfeiffer as VP of Student Development and Dean of Students, Sharples had planned to work on an interim basis for just one academic year. Until the spring of 2010, his role was to oversee the areas of student life, residence life, student activities, counseling, and discipline. However, 2010 came and went, and Sharples, who just celebrated his own 50^th class reunion, stayed on.

“My interim position of nine months ended up lasting seven years, and I enjoyed it all. I really did,” Sharples said. His love for Pfeiffer’s students became his principal motivation: In 2015, for example, he purchased dinner for the Pfeiffer’s men’s soccer team after it had won the NCAA Division II Men’s Soccer National Championship in Pensacola, Fla., capping off an undefeated season.

Thankful for the great start the Pfeiffer gave him, Sharples remains committed to paying it forward in as many ways as possible during his retirement. In addition to underwriting the Sharples Student Support Fund, he is a member of the Devoted & True Society, which recognizes donors who have pledged a gift of $1k or more for five years, and he is a supporter of the Falcon Club. He volunteered many hours on the fundraising committee for Pfeiffer’s Center for Health Sciences in Albemarle, where the Sharples Student Lounge honors his parents. “I owe a lot to Pfeiffer,” Sharples said. “It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to support it in a variety of ways.”