DURHAM -- N.C. Central University's Board of Trustees on Wednesday approved raising the university's intercollegiate sports to Division I in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. 

Leaving the Division II Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association will entail "some sadness," said trustee Glenn Adams. 

"It's been good to us, and we've been good to them," Adams said as he reported Tuesday's vote by the Trustee-Student Relations Committee, which he chairs. 

But the committee, and on Wednesday, the full board, decided that after years of study and deliberation, switching to the MEAC and Division I -- I-AA in football -- is the right move. 

On Adams' motion and with no debate, the trustees' voice vote was unanimous. University officials in the meeting hall applauded. 

In other business, the trustees approved a $200 tuition increase and $100 in other general fees for undergraduates next school year. The increases still must be approved by the UNC Board of Governors. In addition, they approved plans for a biotechnology and pharmaceutical law institute in NCCU's School of Law. 

NCCU was a founding member of the MEAC in the early 1970s but left it a few years later, when the MEAC, originally Division II, was reclassified Division I. In the MEAC, NCCU will compete against other historically black colleges and universities that offer comprehensive curricula and masters' degrees, said NCCU Chancellor James Ammons. Its CIAA rivals offer mostly bachelor's degree programs, he said. 

"We will be reunited with some of our historical rivals," he said, mentioning Howard University, N.C. A&T University, Norfolk State University and Hampton University. Increasing NCCU's sports-fan appeal will in turn increase its competitiveness in attracting high-achieving students, he said. 

NCCU will start adding MEAC teams to its roster starting next year as part of a five-year process. The former Aggie-Eagle Football Classic will be replaced next year with two classics, one co-sponsored by the Capital Area Sports Foundation that will be played in the Triangle against a Division I-AA HBCU, Ammons said. The other will likely be against a member of the SWAC (Southwestern Athletic Conference) in a major city outside North Carolina, he said. 

Afterward, trustees gathered with students from NCCU's Sound Machine marching band as an official from the Honda Battle of the Bands formally invited the band to participate for its second year at the event Jan. 28 in Atlanta. 

"It's a good thing for us," said band member Ebony Pugh of the sports reclassification. "In the CIAA, we don't travel as much." 

Also Wednesday, trustees and other university officials participated in a ribbon-cutting at the newly restored Alexander-Dunn building and honored longtime journalist and campus public-relations official Alex T. Rivera by naming the campus sports hall of fame, which contains his photographs, after him. 

"I was pleasantly surprised," Rivera said in an interview. "I didn't achieve this honor by myself." 

NCCU founder James E. Shepard hired Rivera, who had dropped out of Howard University because of finances and was working for the Washington Tribune in Washington, D.C. His last photos for the newspaper were of singer Marian Anderson's historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter 1939. He then covered NCCU while still a student, graduating in 1941. He was in the Navy during World War II, then worked for newspapers and NCCU, covering major events in the civil rights movement in Durham and nationally. 

Asked which was his favorite sports photo he'd taken, Rivera thought for a while, then said: "[Basketball coach] John McLendon, winning the CIAA championship." 

Staff writer Mike Potter contributed to this article.