Plastered across the newsroom of the Campus Echo, the North Carolina Central University (NCCU) student newspaper, are a collection of laminated, yellowing editions of the paper, dozens of student journalism award plaques, and photos of former Echo staff on campus, at cookouts, and on team road trips. A sign at the top of the door reads “The Denita M. Smith Newsroom,” dedicated in honor of a former student who was tragically shot and killed.
During the school year, the Campus Echo, housed inside the Farrison-Newton Communications Building, is home base for aspiring writers, photographers, and video editors. Each student is charged with narrating life at NCCU, in Durham, and at times, in the rest of the world—and leading the charge for the past 26 years has been NCCU professor and student adviser Bruce dePyssler.
A well-traveled “military brat” with a background in anthropology and a host of odd jobs, dePyssler has an innate ability to adopt new skills and meet people where they are. In the classroom, he was no drill sergeant. With his shaggy hair and glasses hanging around his neck, dePyssler would float through the classroom cool, calm, and collected, offering pearls of wisdom without overbearing.
DePyssler not only built an award-winning program but shaped generations of students, including yours truly, who say “DP,” as he is affectionately called by the NCCU community, wasn’t just their professor but a father figure who made the Echo feel like home, and its staff like family.
After over two decades, dePyssler retired this summer and NCCU is trying to find a replacement.
“I’m not expecting anything less than Bruce,” says Calvin Hall, chair of NCCU’s Mass Communication Department. “Now we just got to figure out who’s going to build on the foundation that he laid.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be somewhere else?”
Before settling down at NCCU, dePyssler lived a nomadic lifestyle. His father, a U.S. Air Force colonel, took dePyssler around the world: California, Washington, Nebraska, Washington, D.C., North Dakota, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.
“After a few years, I’d always go, aren’t I supposed to be somewhere else?” dePyssler says.
As a young adult, he maintained a variety of odd jobs like ice cream truck driver, janitor, and restaurant manager. He even followed a girlfriend home to France, where he worked on a tourist barge in the Canal de Bourgogne. The culmination of these experiences was a natural curiosity and adaptability—traits that would serve him well years later when he fell into a journalism career.
He planted roots in Texas in 1976, where he earned a double bachelor’s degree in history and philosophy, a master’s in communication and development, and a PhD in cultural anthropology, a fitting field of study for a globe-trotter. He taught communications, sociology, and anthropology at universities in Texas and Ohio.
DePyssler landed in Carrboro in 1994. His wife at the time, a communications researcher from Chihuahua, Mexico, got offered a job at UNC-Chapel Hill. DePyssler got hired as an adjunct professor and sought part-time work while finishing his dissertation. An ad for production help at an alt-weekly called The Independent, and its progressive bent, caught his attention. He nagged a manager enough times that they hired him on to help outline the paper.
“They’re cranking out the stories on the paper, and I’d run it through this waxing machine and stick it on these boards,” dePyssler says. “When it’s all done, I’d drive the boards down to the press. It was pretty substantial back then.”
Two years later, as he neared the end of his dissertation—on influential communications campaigns throughout Indian history—he was back on the job hunt. He applied for a teaching position at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. The administration saw that he worked at The Independent and inquired about him leading the school’s student newspaper, The Logos, too. Despite having a newspaper job on his résumé, dePyssler had never written more than a few articles, much less led a newsroom.
Steve Schewel, cofounder of The Independent, tried to convince dePyssler to stick around.
“Before I’m packing up,” dePyssler recalls, “Steve comes to me and says, ‘You know, you don’t have to leave. You can stay. We can keep working you here.’ And at that time, I’d written a few book reviews and stuff for the Indy, but I said, nah I’ll go.”
DePyssler liked living in the Triangle but was enticed by the challenge. He took the job in Texas and soon started to make his imprint on the newspaper program. Tricks of the trade, like AP style and how to construct a lede, were simple enough for dePyssler—used to a life of picking up odd jobs and new skills—to learn, and his background in anthropology and communications meant he understood people and how to tell a story. In a short time, The Logos was bringing home regional awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.
But the program also ruffled feathers with higher-ups. John Tedesco, now an editor at The Houston Chronicle, worked for the student newspaper dePyssler’s first year. Tedesco’s stories on sexual misconduct by faculty and a university president busted trying to smuggle cigars out of Cuba caused a firestorm. Administration threatened to fire dePyssler, he recalls, but he stood his ground.
Soon after, another door opened for dePyssler. NCCU, an historically black university in Durham just 15 miles away from Carrboro, was searching for an adviser to lead the Campus Echo.
The Dude
When dePyssler arrived in Durham in 1999, he made an immediate impression on his students. Before they ever learned about AP style, the students couldn’t help but notice their new professor’s own style.
“He used to wear these shirts and wear his sandals with his toes out and shit,” says Phonte Coleman, a musician and member of the hip-hop group Little Brother, who graduated from NCCU in 2001.
Coleman, an English major with a propensity for creative writing, found his way to the Campus Echo, where he became arts and entertainment editor. He likens dePyssler to “The Dude,” Jeff Bridges’s iconic character from the film The Big Lebowski.
“He just seemed like that cool professor that probably smoked a lot of weed,” Coleman says. “My first impression was this dude is not your typical kind of buttoned-up, stodgy professor.”
Despite his laid-back demeanor, Coleman and others say dePyssler brought out the most in his students.
“He was a nurturing presence,” Coleman says. “He always looked out for all of us on the Echo. He went hard for us, and we went hard for him.”
Resources to produce the paper were limited in the early years. When dePyssler took over, “the Echo was zero,” he says. “It was nothing.”
A singular table that sat in the middle of the room bowed from the weight of the one desktop computer the program had, and there was no staff camera; whoever had their own camera was the photographer. Students worked lean and scrappy to produce the paper, developing their own film photography and dropping off the paper layout at the printing press themselves.
Those circumstances didn’t deter dePyssler or his students. Again, as he did at Incarnate Word, dePyssler quickly developed another award-winning program. Those early achievements gave him leverage to pressure the student affairs office for more resources. Advertising revenue started flowing, too. Soon, the Campus Echo could afford better computers and more cameras. The Echo’s growing reputation reverberated across campus.
Sheena Johnson Cooper, class of 2005, became interested in joining the Echo staff after a professor took notice of her writing skills and encouraged Cooper to further explore her talents.
“You heard those stories, and you walk in the Echo and you see the newspapers plastered on the wall, you see the awards plastered on the wall, and you just got this feeling like this is something special, and it just drew people in from all walks of life,” Cooper says. “Everybody has a story to tell, and the Echo was your playground to do it.”
But also like at Incarnate Word, the Echo under dePyssler’s guidance provoked the administration, and again, dePyssler stood behind his staff and their reporting.
As a rare female sports reporter, Cooper spent hours interviewing players and coaches who referred to her with terms like “babe.” She says dePyssler encouraged her to lean into those challenges and be “powerful and unapologetic.” Together they confronted administration and coaching staff, and Cooper persuaded them to ensure student journalists were treated with respect while on assignment.
The Campus Echo came into conflict with university administration again years later while investigating the sudden departure of a vice chancellor at the school amid rumors and accusations. Echo reporters were stonewalled by administrators and school police at every turn.
“Regardless,” staff wrote at the time, “the Campus Echo will continue to search for the truth in every story.”
But perhaps the most significant clash was over Denita Smith, a former staff photographer who was shot and killed in 2007 by a woman described as a jealous ex-girlfriend of Smith’s fiancé. Rony Camille, who was the Echo editor at the time and had worked with Smith, led a campaign to name the newsroom in honor of Smith, but the administration pushed back.
“I remember DP spoke at Denita’s funeral on our behalf, and it was so beautiful,” Camille says. “I spoke at the memorial service on campus, and I made an announcement that we would be looking into renaming the newsroom after Denita. And there was a whole applause, but the administration was sitting in the front row and none of them applauded.”
Camille, with dePyssler’s support, rallied his peers to make the name change anyway.
Under dePyssler, the Campus Echo won a staggering 300 student journalism awards. DePyssler and Echo staff launched the Bull City Doc Squad, a rotating team of students who made films like Upbuilding Whitted, which was pivotal in bringing attention to the historical significance—and desrepair—of Durham’s first high school for African American students. There wouldn’t be a Mass Communication Department at NCCU if not for the Echo, says Hall, the department chair.

Former staff—some of whom still return to the nest to support the next flock of Eagle reporters—have gone into teaching, public relations, community development, music, and yes, even local journalism, like Rashan Rucker, class of 2003, who won an Emmy Award in 2008 for documentary photography at the Detroit Free Press. And on July 12, dePyssler received one more distinction: Durham mayor (and fellow Eagle) Leonardo Williams proclaimed “Dr. Bruce J. dePyssler Day” during a Zoom call with more than 70 former students and colleagues brought together by the clarion call of their former adviser and surrogate father’s retirement.
“He built a powerhouse,” Camille told the INDY. “He built something that we can all look back and be proud of.”
A home away from home
In 2001, dePyssler, the newsroom dad, piled the Campus Echo family into a passenger van for a trip up to D.C. to visit the USA Today offices. The van was as lively as the Echo. Coleman was “doing his hip-hop thing,” as dePyssler describes it, and DP, students say, was driving with the lead foot of a taxi driver during rush hour.
Seeing USA Today was a shock for students who had so far only experienced the Echo newsroom.
“Walking through the newsroom,” Coleman says, “I was like, ‘This just seems really boring and really white.’”
Reporters sat in sterile cubicles, and there was no music playing over the PA. The visit crystallized a feeling dePyssler and the Echo students already knew: they had something special back in Durham.
Rarely was there a dull moment inside the Echo, especially in the first decade of dePyssler’s reign, before working remotely became common and the Echo still produced a physical paper. If staff weren’t in class, or asleep in the dorms, they were in the newsroom. Music was always in the air, either from students like Danny Hooley, who loved a good reggae tune, or from demo CDs that record labels sent for review. Reporters chipped away at stories or lounged in the room, laughing and joking about college life.
At the center of it all was the eccentric, mild-mannered, hippie anthropologist, DP, or, uh, his DP-ness, DP-er, or El DPerino if you’re not into that whole brevity thing.
Students fed off the creative energy. Producing the paper was a team effort, especially on deadline. In addition to the daily happenings on NCCU’s campus, the Echo covered important cultural touchstones like 9/11 and the election of Barack Obama (the headline read “Obama Reaches Mountaintop.”)

Students say they never saw dePyssler lose his cool, apart from occasional frustration over deadlines. He was more “traffic cop than probation officer,” Coleman explains, providing guidance for student journalists to find their own way rather than imposing his own.
“He let us be who we are but we had guardrails, and the more comfortable we got with how who we were fit into this idea of putting out a news product, he would remove the guardrails,” says Mike Williams, class of 2003 and former Echo editor.
As one of his many former jobs, dePyssler worked as a chain restaurant manager in Texas, a role that helped shape his leadership style years later at the Echo.
“It’s a weird balancing act of giving people the room they need to do the job. You can’t be too heavy-handed. The thing in restaurants was always like, ‘Look, this is a bitch. I know it is. I didn’t invent capitalism. This is what we’re stuck with. Let’s do the best we can, and let’s enjoy ourselves.’”
Many former students say dePyssler was like a father figure to them. Students often brought in their kids; they weren’t allowed in class and childcare was financially prohibitive, so dePyssler opened up the Campus Echo as an unofficial daycare.
“The Echo office was home away from home, the staff were like family, and DP was like Dad,” Cooper says.
Keke, daughter of former student Stacey Hardin, class of 2005, grew up in the newsroom.
A photo of Keke beaming with joy during horseback riding lessons that dePyssler gifted her hangs right above his desk. He also taught Keke photography and supported her gymnastics lessons.
“We got attached, and I was kind of like a substitute dad for her for a while,” dePyssler says.
Another photo shows Coleman, his son—born while Coleman was a student at NCCU—and his son’s mother, a fellow Eagle, at a staff picnic. DePyssler was one of the first people Coleman shared the news about his son with.
The daycare tradition passed down through the years. Nada Merghani, class of 2023 and former editor, still saw rugrats running around the newsroom.
“A lot of that is DP’s doing,” Merghani says. “Even down to the name of the newsroom, the Denita M. Smith Newsroom, being named after a student who was so tragically killed shows the level of care that, like, it was always all about the students.”
Some tough sandals to fill
Five years into his tenure at NCCU, dePyssler, the globe-trotter, flirted with taking a position at a small college in Lugano, Switzerland, teaching students “like Romney’s kids and the children of oil sheikhs,” dePyssler says. The school flew him to Switzerland for interviews and eventually offered him the job.
“When I came back, the students here were just going, ‘DP, you can’t leave, man.’ That was the closest I came to leaving. That was a tough decision.”
He devoted the next two decades to the Echo and its staff, cementing his legacy in the annals of NCCU history.
“I mean, he stopped wearing sandals a long time ago, thank God, but those are some tough sandals to fill,” says Hooley, a colleague of dePyssler’s in the Mass Communication Department since 2014.
DePyssler’s successor will have to make tough decisions about what direction to take the program and how to train students for an ever-changing industry facing challenges the Echo also faces, like artificial intelligence, fractured audiences, and a glut of information and entertainment options.
“How do we interest students in what journalism has to offer as a profession, and then how do we deal with the challenge or opportunity, depending on how you look at it, of what AI means in terms of that job? Because there’s always going to be the responsibility that journalism has taken on as a profession to report and enlighten and inform the masses of people,” Hall says.
NCCU has narrowed down the search for dePyssler’s replacement but hasn’t yet filled the role.

DePyssler doesn’t have plans to slow down in retirement. He is refocusing on documentary work and already has his next assignment: a film about Adrian Maldonado Jr., a young queer Latino man running for city council in Salisbury. DePyssler also plans to spend more time in Sierra Leone, where his wife, Kadiatu, is from and where the couple plans to adopt three children, mentor young professionals, and produce a documentary about the country’s decade-long civil war.
“A lot of men really struggle with this, you know, their whole life is tied up with their work,” dePyssler says. “My father was a good example. He just kept volunteering at the base for like 40 years after retirement.”
For dePyssler, packing up the Echo office was like packing up the home your kids grew up in after you become an empty nester. He delayed the process, packing up a box or two and letting them sit for a week, contemplating what his next chapter might look like.
On his last day, he pulled keepsakes off the walls—old photos, notes from students, a letter from former NCCU chancellor Julius Chambers—and left most of the award plaques and old newspapers up for posterity. Sitting in the office alone, replaying the highlights in his mind as he soaked up his newsroom for the last time, tears slid down his face.
“That’s the first time I really got emotional,” dePyssler says. “I was just in there on my own, like, damn man, I spent a quarter of a century in here.”
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