William R. "Randy" Woodson
Chair of the Board of Trustees and Chancellor, NC State University
Dr. William R. “Randy” Woodson became the 14th chancellor of North Carolina State University in April 2010. He leads the largest university in North Carolina, with more than 34,000 students and a $1.5 billion budget. Dr. Woodson arrived at NC State from Purdue University, where he served as executive vice president for academic affairs and provost. He took on the role of provost in May 2008, after serving nearly four years as the Glenn W. Sample Dean of Agriculture.
Prior to that, Woodson was the associate dean of agriculture and director of the Office of Agricultural Research Programs at Purdue from 1998 to 2004. Woodson’s career has been shaped by the land-grant university system, receiving BS, MS, and PhD degrees in horticulture from the University of Arkansas and Cornell University, respectively. He joined the Purdue faculty in 1985 as a professor in the Department of Horticulture after beginning his academic career at Louisiana State University in 1983.
Prior to his administrative appointments, Woodson served as head of the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue and was a visiting scholar at the École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Toulouse, France. Woodson has received a number of professional honors during his career, including the Purdue University Agriculture Research Award, the American Society for Horticultural Science Outstanding Researcher Career Award, and the B.Y. Morrison Medal from the USDA-Agricultural Research Service. He is a fellow of the American Society for Horticultural Science.