Randy Woodson has been steering NC State as its chancellor since 2010, but his tenure is about to come to an end, per a report this afternoon from Erin Gretzinger at The Assembly.
This feels like a surprisingly abrupt development, though it seems his exit has been looming for a while—on his terms, to be clear there. A profile on Woodson by The Assembly earlier this year noted that when presented with a five-year contract extension, he would agree only to a two-year deal. That runs through next summer.
That profile offers some examples of Woodson’s positive impact at State:
Over the years, a good university has become better and stronger: Research expenditures have increased to more than $633 million, the highest in N.C. State history. Five-year graduation rates have climbed from 67 to 83 percent, and first-year retention is at 93 percent. Nearly 49,000 applicants vied to enroll as freshmen or transfers at N.C. State this year, for 7,350 spots, nearly double the number of applicants in 2010, Woodson’s first year.
No question that he’s done a great job on the fundraising side while strengthening NC State’s academic reputation in general. In those respects, he’ll be a tough man to replace. We’ve been fortunate to have him this long—UNC has been through four different chancellors since 2010, for instance.
Things have been a bit rougher for him lately, however; the Poe Hall debacle didn’t put him in the best light, and he was also behind the controversial decision to flip NCSU’s ACC expansion vote to allow for the additions of Cal, Stanford, and SMU. He has refused to answer questions about the latter.
Perhaps the added stress from those developments pushed him to move on a bit faster than he’d planned to. In any case, NC State now has a critical, and difficult, task immediately in front of it.