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This story has been updated to reflect the official announcement.

Randy Woodson, the long-serving chancellor of N.C. State University, announced on Thursday that he would be retiring at the end of the 2024-25 school year.

“Serving the people of North Carolina as your chancellor has been the greatest honor of my professional life,” he said in a video announcing his departure.

Woodson, 67, has been in the role for 14 years–three times the tenure of the average American college leader. In a profile that The Assembly and The Chronicle of Higher Education published earlier this year, Woodson was roundly praised as an affable and engaged leader who has largely stayed out of the headlines. 

“It’s a challenge to follow someone who had such a successful tenure,” said UNC System President Peter Hans of Woodson’s tenure in the profile. “I wish I could tell you what’s the special sauce.”

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The school created a webpage honoring Woodson’s legacy, including increased research spending, improved graduation rates, and quadrupling the school’s endowment.

A leadership vacancy at N.C. State brings the total number of chancellor openings in the system to four, including UNC-Chapel Hill, Appalachian State University, and Elizabeth City State University. 

Four other campuses have recently named new leaders as well. North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro recently announced that James R. Martin II would succeed chancellor Harold Martin, who had been at the helm for 15 years. Over that time, A&T went from a beloved but struggling regional university to the nation’s largest HBCU.

Karrie G. Dixon, who served for six years as chancellor of Elizabeth City State University, started at North Carolina Central University earlier this month. Bonita J. Brown also started as chancellor at Winston-Salem State University this month, coming from her most recent role as interim chancellor at Northern Kentucky University. And Kimberly van Noort started at UNC-Asheville in January.

At a meeting Tuesday for the UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor search, Hans attributed the large number of active chancellor searches to a combination of delayed retirements due to COVID and natural turnover in leadership roles. 

The average tenure of college presidents has shrunk in recent years, to 5.9 years in 2023 from 8.5 years as of 2006 and 6.5 years as of 2016, according to the American Council on Education. 

Hans said the system remains in a good position compared to the national outlook, pointing to the long tenures of chancellors like Martin and Sheri Everts, who stepped down from Appalachian State in April after a 10-year run.

Chancellor searches typically take between six to nine months to complete, Hans said on Tuesday. Appalachian State formed its search committee in late June, and Elizabeth City State University will start its search later this year. The UNC-Chapel Hill search is well underway, and the committee announced Tuesday that it may have to expedite the search due to competition and confidentiality concerns.  

“There’s a mix—a different mix at each institution,” Hans said in discussing the other leadership searches on Tuesday. “I feel so good about the recent choices we’ve had.” 

Erin Gretzinger is a higher education reporter at The Assembly. She was previously a reporting fellow at The Chronicle of Higher Education and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. You can reach her at erin@theassemblync.com.