NC State University’s first woman chancellor Marye Anne Fox dies
Former NC State University Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, who helped raise the university’s profile amid rapid growth, died Sunday night at her home in Austin, Texas, after a long illness, the university announced Monday. She was 73.
Fox is the only woman to have led the university. She was appointed chancellor in 1998.
“Even with all of her many accomplishments, what stands out to me is that Marye Anne perpetuated the notion that NC State needed to raise its expectations as a premier academic institution,” current Chancellor Randy Woodson said in a statement. “Her leadership changed how we think of ourselves as a university and elevated NC State’s stature as a world-class academic institution.
In his statement, Woodson noted Fox’s work in lobbying the North Carolina state legislature for the historic $3.1 billion University and Community College Bond Referendum and in expanding the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The university used the money from that bond to build a science research center that included industrial laboratories, classrooms and greenhouses for horticultural science. It opened in 2004 and was named the Marye Anne Fox Science Teaching Laboratory in her honor.
Fox left N.C. State in April 2004 to become the chancellor of the University of California San Diego, where she was also the first woman to be appointed as permanent chancellor.
She stepped down from that role in 2012 after leading the university during a “historic era of extraordinary campus growth and unprecedented financial challenges,” according to UC San Diego.
Fox was an active and nationally recognized scientist throughout her leadership career. She was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama for her “research contributions in the areas of organic photochemistry and electrochemistry,” according to the National Medals website.
A lasting legacy at N.C. State
The N.C. State campus grew substantially under her leadership, with the number of endowed chairs and professorships, scholarships and buildings on the Centennial Campus. During her tenure, fundraising expanded, new multidisciplinary programs were developed and the university added to its number of patents.
The university also gained national recognition for its science and technology programs.
When Fox left N.C. State, her tenure was described as one of energy and involvement by The News & Observer. She was popular among state legislators, Wolfpack alumni and students.
“She pushed for change, despite a culture that often has favored reflection and consensus over quick-decision making,” the News & Observer reported in a 2004 story when Fox stepped down. And she made it clear that “NCSU could be distinct from its older sibling, UNC-Chapel Hill.”
“I think she immediately set the tone for someone who leads with enthusiasm,” Peaches Gunter Blank, then-chairwoman of NCSU’s Board of Trustees, said at the time.
Fox left NCSU with “a higher research reputation, more superstar faculty and hundreds of millions more dollars in fund-raising pledges,” the N&O reported in another story about her departure in 2004.
Fox elevated N.C. State while being “praised for her dazzling public charm,” the N&O reported, detailing a few moments that stood out during her six-year tenure.
As a new chancellor, Fox visited a Raleigh fire station and slid down the fire pole, certainly an unscripted move.
One night that Fox looked back on fondly was when 400 students showed up on her doorstep at 1 a.m. protesting the shortened library hours, The N&O reported in 2004. After a long talk in her front yard and a few days of work, she found the money to restore the hours.
And a student leader shared his memory of her partying with UNC System student body presidents at a conference in Boone. She sang karaoke and danced on stage with them, Tony Caravano, former student body president and student member of the Board of Trustees, told The N&O when Fox left NCSU.
However, her time in Raleigh wasn’t without controversy.
Fox was censured by the N.C. State faculty in 2003 after she fired two top administrators, despite objections from their boss, then-Provost Stuart Cooper. He promptly quit because of the decision. But after management and leadership coaching, she smoothed things over with faculty within a year, according to news reports at the time.
A career in science and academia
Fox was born in Canton, Ohio, where she grew into a “budding young scientist,” according to an NCSU online exhibit about Fox.
A fourth-grade teacher sparked Fox’s interest in science when she told the class that the Russians had launched the Sputnik satellite. The event inspired more science education in schools and fueled Fox’s curiosity in the subject.
As a senior in high school, Fox wanted to be a teacher, but found success in chemistry at Notre Dame College, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Fox honed her research skills during a fellowship at the Illinois Institute of Technology and while earning a master’s degree in organic chemistry at Cleveland State University.
Fox earned her Ph.D. from Dartmouth College, where she had her first son, Bobby, while a doctoral student.
She came to N.C. State from the University of Texas, where she had been for more than two decades as a chemistry professor and vice president for research.
Fox had her second son, Michael, while she was a professor at UT and was back in the classroom teaching just one week later. Her third son, Matthew, was also born in Texas. She married fellow University of Texas chemist James Whitesell in Jamaica in 1990 and gained two stepsons.
In 1984, Fox was named one of “The Best of the New Generation - Men and Women Under Forty Who are Changing America” by Esquire Magazine for her work in the field of organic photoelectric chemistry. In 1994, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
In 2001, then-incoming President George W. Bush pursued Fox for a job as national science adviser, but she declined the offer. Later that year, Bush named Fox to his board of science and technology advisers. Other universities also recruited Fox during her time at NCSU.
“There are few women in science today more sought after than Marye Anne Fox,” Bill Friday, former president of the UNC system and a friend of Fox, told the N&O in 2004.
At the time she received the National Medal of Science, she had earned three patents, authored five books and published more than 400 scientific articles, the website said.
This story was originally published May 10, 2021 at 4:01 PM.
