Faculty in the College of Education will consider a call for separate votes of no confidence in Chancellor Randy Woodson, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Warwick Arden and Dean of the College of Education Paola Sztajn over how NC State is handling the discovery of PCBs, chemical contaminants linked to cancer, in Poe Hall. 

WRAL reported a vote will be held online and collect responses through the weekend, so the results will likely be revealed Monday.

A vote of no confidence is a symbolic gesture to indicate faculty disapproval — faculty don’t have the power to fire the chancellor or other members of University leadership. UNC System policy says the Board of Governors has the authority to dismiss the chancellor, and the chancellor has the authority to dismiss administrators such as Arden and Sztajn.  

If a vote happens and is passed, it would be the first time in NC State history that faculty has passed a vote of no confidence in University leadership. 

The closest parallel circumstance to this at NC State was in 2003, when the Faculty Senate voted to censure then-Chancellor Marye Anne Fox for her choice to fire two top administrators. A censure is similar to a vote of no confidence in that it carries no disciplinary power. Fox left NC State in 2004.

Appalachian State Chancellor Sheri Everts was the subject of a vote of no confidence in 2020, with faculty citing her response to COVID-19. The Faculty Senate voted in favor of the resolution, but Everts remains chancellor today. 

Leadership at UNC-Greensboro recently faced similar tensions between faculty and administrators. The Faculty Senate at UNC-Greensboro censured the University’s chancellor and provost Jan. 29 over frustrations in the decision process to cut academic programs, NC Newsline reported. 

In 2023, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that no-confidence votes have increased in the last decade — it tracked 24 votes in 2021, 15 votes in 2022 and 23 in the first nine months of 2023. This is in comparison to eight in 2011, seven in 2012 and nine in 2013.

A 2022 Chronicle analysis of no-confidence votes from 1989 to 2022 found that 51% of the time, a university president subjected to one leaves office within the next year — but these exits are rarely linked to the vote.  

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