Chancellor Woodson Announces Plan to Retire (2024)

Chancellor Randy Woodson, a transformative leader who guided North Carolina State University to new heights in student achievement, research output, facility expansion and fundraising, announced today that he will retire on June 30, 2025.

The UNC System will appoint a search committee for a successor in the near future.

Woodson’s 14-year tenure – the third longest for an NCState chief executive in the university’s history – has been marked by vast improvements to NCState’s academic measures, research expenditures, entrepreneurial spirit, financial and facility growth, and overall reputation.

“For 14 years, Randy Woodson has perfectly captured the pragmatic brilliance of NCState,” said UNC System President Peter Hans. “Like the university he leads, Randy is sharp, good-natured, and eager to get things done for North Carolina. It’s made him a great colleague and one of the most effective leaders in this state.”

Under Woodson’s leadership, NCState developed and implemented two 10-year strategic plans that set the priorities for the university’s progress in a number of areas, including enhancing student success, investing in faculty and infrastructure, supporting interdisciplinary scholarship, pursuing organizational excellence, and engaging locally and globally.

Over the past 14 years, graduation rates rose for all student classifications, with steep increases in undergraduate rates. Retention rates also increased. Interest in attending NCState also grew over Woodson’s tenure, as more than 45,000 high school seniors and community college transfers currently seek to become part of the Wolfpack.

Soon after beginning his position at NCState, Woodson led the implementation of a cluster-hiring program – the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program – that has become a national model for breaking down disciplinary walls and attracting more world-leading faculty members. More than 75 faculty have been hired in 20 different clusters, ranging from bioinformatics to visual narrative.

“Randy Woodson has been an exceptional chancellor for NCState,” said Provost Warwick Arden. “During his leadership NCState has increased significantly in student graduation rates, extramural grant activity and research, and development activity with completion of a very successful campaign and dramatic growth of the endowment. Our national rankings have soared resulting in greater national visibility and greatly increased student applications, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. This of course has been achieved by a dedicated team of individuals but Randy appointed many of them and has led the way. After working with Randy for 14 years I can tell you he is a person of great integrity, intelligence and vision. He is passionate about the role of higher education and especially about the success of NCState. We owe him great gratitude.”

NCState’s research enterprise flourished under Woodson’s leadership. In fiscal year 2017, NCState’s research expenditures exceeded $500 million for the first time in the university’s history and have exceeded or met that level ever since.

The spur in research funding also helped foster entrepreneurialism campuswide. NCState has generated more than 190 start-ups and spinoffs during Woodson’s tenure; these have added more than $1.2 billion to North Carolina’s economy every year. In the past five years alone, there have been more than 1,000 invention disclosures, 700 commercialization agreements, 350 patents issued, and nearly 975 new patents filed.

Woodson focused on growing NCState’s endowment as a top strategic priority. The endowment value has increased from $350 million in 2010 to more than $2.2 billion currently. These funds help the university plan for the future and help ensure stability.

Woodson led the university’s most ambitious fundraising campaign in its history: a $1.6 billion campaign that raised $2.1 billion from more than 128,000 donors. That result put NCState in rarefied air among public universities, with only 12 others surpassing the $2 billion barrier.

New campus facilities also now dot NCState’s landscape, including the James B. Hunt Jr. Library, arguably the most technologically advanced library in the world; the renovated and expanded Talley Student Union; the Lonnie C. Poole Golf Course, praised for its environmental stewardship and the Carol Johnson Poole Club House; Fitts-Woolard Hall, a building necessary to transition engineering programs to Centennial Campus; and the Plant Sciences Building, home to the Plant Sciences Initiative researchers that will redefine plant science research in the United States. The Integrative Sciences Building, which will empower NCState to create new kinds of molecules, to image and visualize molecules, and to develop technologies that use these molecules, is in progress.

NCState consistently received national and international acclaim as one of the best public universities, as a best value, and as having some of the best colleges and programs available. Accolades come from U.S. News & World Report, Kiplinger’s, The Princeton Review/USA Today, The Scientist, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and others.

Woodson served important roles in national organizations, including as chair of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities council of presidents (2012-2013) and chair of its board of directors (2013-2015). He also chaired the finance committee of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Division I (2021-2023) and served on the organization’s Board of Directors (2017-2023) and Board of Governors (2019-2022). Woodson also served as chair of the Business Higher Education Forum (2019-2020).

Among many other honors, Woodson recently received the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s District III Chief Executive Leadership Award (2024), was named to the Business North Carolina Power List (2024), and received the Association of University Research Parks’ Award of Excellence in Leadership (2023).

Notably, Woodson and his wife, Susan, are known for their philanthropic spirit. They generously provided the seed donation to fund scholarships for employee dependents. They also proudly promoted public art, like the new Reds and Whites art installment near Hunt Library on Centennial Campus which sits, fittingly, on Susan Woodson Plaza.

More information is available at the Celebrating Transformation website.

-kulikowski-