New Hanover High is the oldest existing high school in Wilmington. The original building, designed by William J. Wilkins and constructed in 1919, underwent a complete renovation at the start of the 21st century. It is a part of New Hanover County Schools.
New Hanover is the most diverse high school in New Hanover County. The school's ethnicity is 50% Caucasian, 43% African-American, 5% Hispanic and 2% of other ethnic classification. The school has an enrollment of 1,721 students & staff of 930 people. Before moving to its current location, the school was known as Wilmington High School. As such, it opened in 1798, making the school today one of the oldest public high schools in North Carolina.
Notable Alumni
James Goodnight is a billionaire businessman and software developer. He has been the CEO of SAS Institute in Cary, NC since 1976, which he co-founded that year with other faculty members of NC State University.
Goodnight remained CEO of SAS Institute for more than 35 years as the company grew from $138,000 its first year in business, to $420 million in 1993 and $2.43 billion by 2010. Under his leadership, the company grew each year. Goodnight became known for creating and defending SAS' corporate culture,[16] often described by the media as "utopian. He rejected acquisition offers and chose against going public to protect the company's work environment.[3] Goodnight has maintained a flat organizational structure[18] with about 27 people who report directly to him and three organizational layers.
HSM Global described Goodnight's leadership style in a framework of three pillars: "help employees do their best work by keeping them intellectually challenged and by removing distractions; Make managers responsible for sparking creativity; eliminate arbitrary distinctions between 'suits' and 'creatives'; Engage customers as creative partners to help deliver superior products.“
In 1981 Goodnight was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. In 2004, he was named a Great American Business Leader by Harvard. That same year he was named one of America's 25 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs by Inc. Magazine.