The Politically Invincible Chancellor

This story was produced in partnership with The Assembly.

On a Sunday night in March, a Delta flight from Atlanta to Raleigh was late, but the delay didn’t diminish the spirits of a team of North Carolina State University students coming off a weekend victory.

One student spotted the university’s chancellor, Randy Woodson, in the boarding area. After some hesitation the whole group crowded around him, snapping photos and filling him in on their recent win.

Although the airport encounter coincided with the height of the March Madness basketball tournament, the teammates were members of N.C. State’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, which had just been awarded chapter of the year among mid-Atlantic colleges.

“I think people in the airport were pretty confused — who’s this older, white-haired guy getting mobbed by 40-some 19- and 20-year-olds?” said Kanton Reynolds, a director of undergraduate programs within the College of Engineering. “A lot of times, it’s the big things, the sports, that get attention, so it was cool to see the chancellor celebrating academics.”

Athletic success has put N.C. State in the national spotlight of late — its men’s and women’s basketball teams made an improbable joint run into this year’s Final Four. But during Woodson’s long tenure, the university has quietly burnished its academic reputation. Among its scholarly wins: increasing the selectivity of the students it admits, improving graduation rates, hiring world-class professors, and attracting tens of millions more in research dollars.

Under Woodson, N.C. State has joined a rarified club of public universities with successful fundraising campaigns of $2 billion or more. And at a time when college leaders are increasingly being called on the carpet by elected officials — in North Carolina and around the country — the chancellor enjoys a warm relationship with members of the Republican-controlled General Assembly and higher-education governing boards.

Woodson’s style is affable and engaged, familiar and low-key. In more than two dozen interviews for this article, people again and again singled out his qualities as an attentive listener. Woodson more often than not stays out of the headlines. “No, I’m not flashy,” he said.

Woodson, 67, has had time to hone his approach. When his current contract expires in June 2025, he will have spent 15 years on the job. That’s three times the tenure of the average American college leader.

Since Woodson’s arrival, neighboring University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has had four chancellors, including one serving now as interim; there have been six presidents, including two interim appointments, of the UNC system. Many who have cycled through those jobs have departed amid contentiousness and controversy.

N.C. State trustees would like Woodson to remain longer — when he was last offered another five-year contract, he agreed only to a two-year extension. He said he would stay during a search for a new chancellor.

“It’s a challenge to follow someone who had such a successful tenure,” said Peter Hans, current president of the UNC system and Woodson’s boss. Of Woodson, he said, “I wish I could tell you what’s the special sauce.”

Woodson has had a tough few months, including a no-confidence vote over the university’s handling of toxins in an academic building. Still, as he heads into what is likely to be his valedictory year, he is poised to go out on a high note. A good part of the credit goes to the temperament Woodson brings to the job. But his style wouldn’t suit just any university: In many ways, Woodson landed at one that was an ideal match for him.

When Woodson was named chancellor of N.C. State in 2010, it was an institution in turmoil. His predecessor, James Oblinger, had stepped down after an uproar over hiring the wife of Mike Easley, who was governor then, to a well-compensated position at the university. The provost and chairman of the Board of Trustees had also resigned.

The Easley brouhaha wasn’t the only headwind for N.C. State — as the Great Recession buffeted the economy and sank state budgets, the university was bracing for painful spending cuts.

Many of the state’s prominent higher-education leaders had deep roots in North Carolina. Erskine Bowles, then the UNC system president, was a former White House chief of staff who had run unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. H. Holden Thorp, at Chapel Hill, was a wunderkind who had been named chancellor at age 43, after moving from the faculty swiftly up the administrative ranks. Both men were UNC-Chapel Hill graduates.

Woodson grew up in small-town Fordyce, Ark., as the son of a middle-school English teacher and a construction-company owner. He stumbled into science when his father asked a family friend to give the electric-guitar-playing teenager a job on his farm. After earning degrees in horticulture and plant physiology at the University of Arkansas and Cornell University, he spent most of his academic career at Purdue University, serving as dean of agriculture and then provost.

Some questioned the choice of a provost in only his third year to lead North Carolina’s largest public college. “What direction is he likely to take State?” Jay Schalin, who works for a conservative think tank in Raleigh, wrote at the time. “Nobody had a clue.”

But Woodson moved to shake off his interloper status. At the announcement of his appointment, he was seated next to William C. Friday, the esteemed former UNC system president who is credited with molding the state’s public colleges into a single system.

When Friday invited Woodson to breakfast, he accepted. Until Friday’s death, in the fall of 2012, the pair met monthly for early-morning talks about the history of North Carolina higher education and the difficulties of running a large university.

Even without tutorials, Woodson had an intuitive understanding of the job, said Jim Jenkins, a retired longtime editorial writer for the Raleigh News & Observer, whose father once worked as a senior assistant to Friday. Friday, an N.C. State graduate, recognized Woodson as a fellow southerner who came from a university that, like N.C. State, was focused on agriculture and engineering and steeped in the land-grant mission of serving the state and its citizens.

“This is the job that Randy Woodson was supposed to have,” said Jenkins, who counts Woodson as a friend.

Other institutions, reportedly including the University of Florida, tried to poach Woodson. To keep him, the trustees approved a retention bonus, which, when paid out in 2021, made Woodson the highest-paid public-college president in the country, according to a Chronicle analysis. Woodson and his wife, Susan, an artist, donated the $1.5-million bonus, which was privately raised by the board, to the university for scholarships.

One of Woodson’s earliest big swings at N.C. State put scholarship front and center. The program to recruit top professors to interdisciplinary clusters focused on real-world challenges, such as the digital transformation of education and creating sustainable energy systems, and has become a national model.

Woodson has applied a scientist’s linear problem solving to his role as chancellor. Those who have worked with him call him patient yet decisive, able to cut through complex issues. “He can handle a lot of ambiguity,” said Thorp, who resigned in 2013 but has stayed in touch with Woodson.

Woodson’s unshowy command of the day-to-day has steadied N.C. State. Many members of his team are long-serving — Woodson has had just one provost, Warwick Arden — and he doesn’t micromanage, colleagues said.

Those who work with him also credit his no-surprises approach, building trust by speaking forthrightly and alerting them to issues that are simmering before they come to a boil. “I knew if he was calling me, I needed to know,” said Margaret Spellings, who was UNC system president from 2016 to 2019. “I never asked a question where he didn’t already have a game plan.”

Engaged scholar. Visionary leader. These descriptors are common for successful chancellors and presidents. But good ole boy — that’s what Spellings, who also served as U.S. secretary of education for President George W. Bush, adds to her catalog of Woodson’s qualities. “He’s just a lot of fun to be around.”

Most Sunday afternoons, Woodson joins a group of 10 or so very part-time musicians — among them a judge, a criminal-defense lawyer, and a podiatrist — to play bluegrass at the apartment of Jenkins, the former editorial writer. His song is “East Virginia Blues,” the Carter Family standard. “He does his job as well as anyone could,” said Richard (Gus) Gusler, a Raleigh lawyer and friend. “But it doesn’t eat into his life.”

Woodson has a warm, low voice that is quick to break into an appreciative chuckle. His approachability has made him popular with alumni and donors and stood him in good stead at the statehouse. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him in a situation in which he wasn’t comfortable,” Hans said.

To spend time with Woodson is to witness his ability to relate to whatever group he is with, without appearing phony or put on. “The man, the myth,” he called out to E.J. Thorne while crossing campus recently, slapping the N.C. State event coordinator on the shoulder. Woodson always singles him out with that greeting, and has since Thorne started at N.C. State seven years ago, Thorne said. “I mean, he meets thousands of people.”

At a reception, Woodson listened as recipients of a university study-abroad scholarship — all of whom were first-generation, low-income, or other students underrepresented in international study — talked about how going overseas had been life-altering.

When it was his turn to speak, Woodson told the group that the first time he’d boarded an airplane he was already an assistant professor. He so values experiential education that he supports scholarships for study abroad and undergraduate research out of a special chancellor’s fund, he said.

After his remarks, Woodson lingered to take selfie after selfie with students. Laicie Ray, a senior, hugged him, although it was the first time they had met. “You always have this image of people in high places as scary, but he is someone who cares.”

Ray, an international-studies and biochemistry major, said she wouldn’t have been able to afford to go abroad without the financial help. As a Black woman, she hasn’t always felt like she fit in at the predominantly white university, but winning the grant, and then talking with Woodson, made her feel “appreciated, included. It made me feel kind of seen.”

Woodson’s record of interpersonal deftness can make its absence glaring. That’s been the case recently as he’s dealt with Poe Hall, which houses education and psychology faculty. Preliminary tests last fall found that several rooms in the building were contaminated with toxic chemicals once used in building materials, at rates much higher than federal safety standards. Administrators closed the building, forcing the relocation of faculty offices and classrooms.

Raleigh news station WRAL has documented 152 cases of cancer among people who worked or studied in Poe. Woodson and other officials have been circumspect in their remarks, saying they could not definitively assess the risks or decide whether to permanently close the building until comprehensive testing is completed.

“I’m a scientist,” Woodson told WRAL last month. “I tend to make decisions based on the availability of data and information. And at this point we don’t have the data and information on our building.”

Such statements have been derided as legalistic, scripted, and sterile when those who have been affected by the health crisis say they want openness and empathy. “It feels like we’re really just a public-relations concern for them,” said Stephen Porter, a professor of higher education who has had an office in Poe Hall for the past 13 years.

In February, Porter spearheaded a vote of no confidence by the College of Education faculty in Woodson and Arden, the provost, for the university’s mishandling of the investigation. “I think the trust is gone,” he said.

Herle McGowan, a professor of statistics and chair of the faculty at N.C. State, said she understood that administrators were limited in what they could say about Poe Hall. Still, McGowan, who meets monthly with Woodson, would like the chancellor to publicly express more sensitivity and sympathy, as she said he did in private. “I wish there was a different emotional tone.”

In an interview, Woodson acknowledged that Poe Hall, along with Covid and a rash of student suicides, has contributed to one of the most challenging periods of his tenure.

It’s a complicated time for college leaders across the country, as the climate for higher education has grown increasingly contentious. Candidates have made the perceived liberal bias of colleges a political foil. Lawmakers in 28 states have introduced some 84 bills restricting or banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programming. Last week, a key committee of the UNC system board voted unanimously to repeal the system’s diversity policy and eliminate DEI offices and positions.

But N.C. State has largely remained out of the partisan fray. Many credit Woodson. “He’s got a cagey ability to know just how to navigate politics,” said Stanhope A. Kelly, a former chairman of the N.C. State board.

At a time when public statements can get college leaders into trouble, Woodson, who is politically unaffiliated, steers clear of polarizing issues, said Ed Weisiger Jr., a Charlotte businessman who is the current N.C. State chair. “He knows how not to step in tar,” said Weisiger. “He doesn’t create his own problems.”

That might not fly on some other campuses around the country, where presidents have been criticized for their silence on national and world events like the Israel-Hamas war. But an institutional-neutrality law passed last year forbids North Carolina colleges that receive public funds from taking official positions on controversial issues.

Elected leaders call Woodson straightforward in private. “I feel very comfortable that when I get information from him, I’m getting frank information,” said Sen. Phil Berger, a Republican who leads the state Senate.

Rep. Donny Lambeth, a Republican from Winston-Salem, said Woodson regularly makes the 10-minute drive from the N.C. State campus to the Legislative Building, and not just when he has a legislative or budgetary ask. This casual networking has helped the chancellor build relationships with lawmakers that put him on firmer footing when he has a specific request or is dealing with a potentially sensitive issue. “It’s why things don’t boil over into tensions,” said Lambeth, a senior chairman of the House appropriations committee. “He can pick up the phone and call the leadership. Not many chancellors can do that.”

Woodson frequently reminds legislators that N.C. State is a state resource; for example, its agriculture faculty can consult on crop damage after hurricane destruction. And Lambeth said he regularly brings students, professors, or alumni with him to advocate on issues, to put a human face on an academic program or capital need. Since the recession, state support for N.C. State has increased.

Ask for examples of Woodson’s savvy as an operator — say, a hard-fought legislative triumph or the defusing of a thorny governance issue — and just about everyone demurs. That’s rough going for a profile writer, but it suits the chancellor just fine. He is content to stay under the radar, exercising a kind of quiet diplomacy.

“I’m not a big marketing or politicking guy,” he said. “I try to do my work through relationships.”

Woodson has had nearly a decade and a half to cement those connections. And he has something else working in his favor: He’s not the chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill.

N.C. State’s sister institution has long been at the center of the state’s political, cultural, and social debates. In recent years, as the General Assembly and higher-education governing boards have shifted rightward, it also has become a lightning rod.

In 2021, for example, the Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, which like all campus governing boards in the state is politically appointed, balked at giving tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and creator of the controversial “1619 Project,” a flashpoint in debates over race and history. Hannah-Jones’s hiring was seen as a big get on campus, but donors and others pushed back. Although trustees eventually approved her appointment, the incident made national headlines, and Hannah-Jones declined the position, criticizing Chapel Hill leaders for failing to stand firm under political pressure.

“Chapel Hill seems to suck all the oxygen out of the room,” said Deanna Ballard, a former senator who was co-chair of legislative committees on higher-education policy and appropriations. She could not recall a single hot-button political issue involving N.C. State during her eight years in office.

While N.C. State supporters may feel overlooked, there is a benefit to not being under so much scrutiny, said Hans, the current UNC system president. “The relentless focus on the smallest things at Chapel Hill gives him running room at N.C. State,” he said of Woodson.

Take Silent Sam. Chapel Hill students and professors wanted the Confederate monument gone from campus, but they ran into opposition from lawmakers and governing-board members. The white-hot dispute and inability to find consensus led to the resignation of another Chapel Hill chancellor, Carol Folt.

Four years later, in early 2022, N.C. State dealt with its own troubled tribute to a segregationist past, dropping the word “Dixie” from its alma mater. The trustees voted to alter the opening lyrics in the university’s song on the recommendation of the alumni association.

“Making this change is simply the right thing to do,” Woodson said in a statement. Rather than a months-long uproar, the revision warranted a 10-paragraph article in The News & Observer.

With little fanfare, N.C. State has also renamed campus buildings with ties to figures with problematic racial pasts.

The difference between N.C. State and Chapel Hill isn’t just a reflection of external pressures but of internal ones. Chapel Hill students are known for their activism and liberal politics, while N.C. State students, faculty, and alumni have tended to be less outspoken. The contrasting campus climates require separate skills of their leaders, said Spellings, the former UNC system president. “The perfect chancellor for N.C. State would not be the perfect chancellor of Chapel Hill.”

That’s not to say there aren’t disputes, but they often play out in private meetings rather than in the media. N.C. State has dealt with controversies during Woodson’s tenure — an athletics scandal, racist graffiti, the bathroom bill — but they seem to die down as quickly as they flare up. When there was alarm that the university was losing professors of color, said McGowan, the faculty leader, the administration appointed a task force to work on Black faculty retention and support.

While Schalin, the commentator, who works for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, said N.C. State “lacks a huge radical presence,” he also gave Woodson credit, saying he “appears to be possessed of considerable charm and political acumen, and that reduces the potential for scandals erupting.”

“And of course,” he added, “luck matters.”

If it’s a matter of luck, Woodson is fortunate to have timing on his side.

He leads a STEM-focused university in a tech-aspirant state. Under Woodson, the number of start-up firms spun off annually based on N.C. State research has tripled. A recent analysis by Deloitte found that academic programs at the university, whose motto is “Think and Do,” have the highest return on investment for graduates among UNC system colleges.

When you turn out engineers and scientists, explaining your institution’s relevance may be pretty straightforward, although Berger, the Senate leader, said “success is not guaranteed.” Woodson and N.C. State are “a good match of leader to institution.”

A scientist himself, Woodson is an able, and eager, messenger. In the middle of a recent interview, he stopped to give a demonstration of the Hunt Library’s bookBot, a robot that can retrieve some 2 million books from the stacks. In his free time, he puts his chemistry skills to use brewing homemade beer.

It can be easy to forget that when Woodson first arrived, “things just weren’t clicking for us,” said Arden, the provost, who has been at N.C. State since 2004.

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.

But with these advances come trade-offs. It has become more difficult for the sons and daughters of North Carolina taxpayers to get admitted to N.C. State, and access issues are particularly acute for students of color. The share of Black students has stagnated over the past decade, at 6 percent, in a state where one in five residents is African American.

Woodson is concerned that N.C. State will not remain accessible to North Carolinians. One of his strategies: partnerships with community colleges that include early mentoring and advising for potential transfer students.

Such challenges ultimately could be up to his successor to tackle. The chancellor hasn’t announced his departure, and Weisiger, the board chairman, said he holds out the possibility of another contract extension. But N.C. State’s Randy Woodson era is coming to an end.

It will be impossible to find another Woodson, and that’s as it should be, Weisiger said. He has been a chancellor for his moment, helping stabilize N.C. State and make it into a land-grant university for a modern North Carolina. “For our next chapter,” he said, “we’ll need the right leader for that time.”