Chancellor Randy Woodson will give his annual Fall Address Monday at 10 a.m. in Stewart Theatre.
A few months into his fifth year in his position at NC State, Woodson is proud of the work he has done, and he still hopes to accomplish more in the upcoming academic year.
In Woodson’s tenure, the university’s endowment has grown from $503 million in 2010 to being within reach of topping $1 billion in the near future, which can only mean more good news for students and faculty as it allows for financial flexibility and the ability to respond when a need emerges.
One of the developments Woodson plans to mention is the North Carolina Legislature’s recent scheduling of a $2 billion bond referendum for March which will allow a vote on funding for two building projects at NC State — the Engineering Oval Project and the Plant Sciences Project — totaling about $162 million.
This cost will not be footed by the government alone; the university has already raised 50 percent of the total funding for the Engineering Oval Project from private-sector donations, as well as 30 percent of the total funding for the Plant Sciences Project.
The goal of these projects is to move closer to fully relocating the College of Engineering to Centennial Campus and to further the university’s mission to encourage interdisciplinary research.
If the bond were to pass, construction on both would begin in fall 2016.
Woodson said in an interview with the Technician that though he took office in the wake of one of the most difficult times in public higher education, the university has been able to raise its reputation while many others struggled.
“What I’m most proud of is that we’ve been able to navigate [The Recession] and keep positive momentum and grow the university’s reputation each year through a time when a lot of universities are struggling to keep moving,” Woodson said.
Woodson said in his 2015 Annual Report that collaboration between private entities and public institutions is his “key to progress.”
NC State now ranks second in state and local government-sponsored research among U.S. land-grant universities without medical schools and seventh in the nation when it comes to the number of new companies created as a result of our original research.
“What I knew about NC State [when I arrived in 2010] was that it was one of the best-kept secrets in America,” Woodson said. “This is without a doubt one of the best public universities in the country, but it was undervalued in the marketplace — the perception of it nationally wasn’t as strong as I knew it to be.”
