Former NC Central administrator will lead Winston-Salem State

A former N.C. Central University dean and professor will be the next chancellor at Winston-Salem State University.

Elwood L. Robinson, provost at Cambridge College in Massachusetts, was elected chancellor Friday by the UNC Board of Governors. He’ll start the Winston-Salem State job Jan. 1 at an annual salary of $260,000, succeeding Donald Reaves, who is stepping down after eight years.

Robinson, 58, is a native of Ivanhoe, in Sampson County. He is a 1978 NCCU graduate who earned a master’s degree at Fisk University in Tennessee and a doctorate in clinical psychology at Pennsylvania State University. He trained as a research associate at Duke University Medical Center in the early 1990s.

He joined the faculty of NCCU in 1984 and was director of a federally funded program that provided research opportunities for minorities. Forty percent of students in the program went on to earn doctorates, according to the UNC system.

Robinson was chairman of NCCU’s psychology department and directed the university’s Alcohol Research Center. In 2006, he was the founding dean of NCCU’s College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, overseeing nine academic departments.

In 2012, he left North Carolina to become the chief academic officer at the private Cambridge College, a 5,000-student school geared toward working adults. The college has seven regional academic centers across the nation and in Puerto Rico. Most courses are taught evenings and on weekends, with a heavy online component.

Winston-Salem State is a public historically black university founded in 1892. It has 6,200 students and offers 43 undergraduate and 10 graduate programs. WSSU is the third-largest producer of nurses in North Carolina.

This story was originally published September 26, 2014 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Former NC Central administrator will lead Winston-Salem State."