He was NC State’s first Black student body president. Now, he’ll serve as chancellor.
In 1987, Kevin Howell became the first Black student body president of NC State University.
Nearly 40 years later, he will be the university’s first Black chancellor.
The UNC System Board of Governors voted unanimously Tuesday to approve Howell to be the Wolfpack’s next leader, ratifying system President Peter Hans’ nomination. Howell will succeed Chancellor Randy Woodson, who will retire after 15 years at the helm of the Raleigh university.
Howell, a Shelby native who studied political science at NC State, holds a law degree from UNC-Chapel Hill. He is not a career academic, marking another first for an NC State chancellor — but representing a growing trend in higher education broadly and in North Carolina, notably with the appointment of career finance executive Lee Roberts as chancellor of UNC last year.
Still, Howell will bring plenty of experience in university administration to his new role, having served for nearly two decades in leadership roles at NC State and in the UNC System. He also has experience working in state government and politics, serving as a liaison with the General Assembly for Gov. Jim Hunt and Gov. Mike Easley, both Democrats.
Currently, Howell serves as chief external affairs officer for UNC Health and the UNC School of Medicine, a role he has held for a little over a year.
“Kevin is the personification of what makes NC State an extraordinary institution,” Hans said Tuesday, “the kind of place where a talented young man from Cleveland County can find a home, break ground as the first-ever Black student body president, and then choose to devote his life to the upkeep and uplift of public education.”
Howell greeted members of the NC State community, including students, faculty, university leaders and several elected officials, Tuesday afternoon at a festive event in Talley Student Union.
“It’s good to be home at NC State,” Howell said after taking the stage to a standing ovation and cheers.
Howell will assume his role May 5, with a salary of $600,000.
Returning to NC State
Collectively, Howell has previously worked at NC State for more than 15 years, serving under three chancellors, including Woodson.
Beginning in 2006, Howell served as assistant to the chancellor for external affairs, a role that positioned him to be the university’s top lobbyist and the manager of NC State’s relationships with the state legislature. Also during that 10-year stretch, Howell served as interim vice chancellor for advancement, interim associate vice chancellor for alumni relations and executive director of the alumni association.
Howell left NC State in 2016 to take a then-new role as senior vice president of external affairs for the UNC System under former system President Margaret Spellings. In that position, in which he was a senior adviser to Spellings, Howell oversaw communications, state and federal government relations and economic engagement, among other areas, for the public university system.
Howell returned to NC State in 2018 to become the university’s vice chancellor for external affairs, partnerships and economic development, a role in which he led efforts to “support NC State’s role as an economic driver” at the local, state and federal levels.
In 2019, under Howell’s leadership, the university received the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities’ top award for economic engagement. In a 2020 interview with the Hunt Institute, Howell compared the award, which recognized three of NC State’s economic development programs dedicated to developing students’ potential for entrepreneurship and leadership, to “winning a national championship.”
Howell held his role as vice chancellor for nearly six years before leaving NC State for UNC Health in early 2024. Announcing Howell’s departure, Woodson said Howell would be “greatly missed” at the university.
“Over the years, Kevin has built an incredible team and helped coordinate the university’s relations with local and federal government leaders, supported the creation of partnerships and spurred economic development investments with significant impacts for our university and our state,” Woodson said at the time.
Beyond his employment at NC State and in the broader UNC System, Howell is also noted for his involvement on several boards across the Triangle, including those of the North Carolina Symphony and the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.
Now, less than 18 months after he left NC State, Howell will return to lead the Wolfpack.
Becoming chancellor at a ‘monumental moment’
He will become chancellor at a time of major, increased scrutiny of higher education nationwide. Under directives from President Donald Trump’s second administration, universities across the country are grappling with mandates cutting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and the possibility of significant cuts to research funding, among other impacts.
NC State recorded more than $630 million in research expenditures in the 2022-23 fiscal year, according to the leadership profile used to attract candidates during the chancellor search, placing it among the top public universities without a medical school for research spending.
Already, in response to Trump’s orders and other “financial challenges” at the state level, NC State leaders have enacted a pause on hiring across all 10 of the university’s colleges. College leaders are also encouraged to be “conservative” in their use of funding, provost Warwick Arden wrote in a memo last month.
Hans said Tuesday that Howell is “profoundly well-suited to the greatest challenge that higher education faces in our fraught moment.”
“And that is maintaining broad bipartisan support for our public mission,” Hans said.
And, Hans said, Howell has a “competitive drive” that will benefit both him and the university in his new role.
“The Wolfpack is ready to run in this new and formidable age, and I believe Kevin Howell is ready to lead them,” Hans said. “There can be no sense of complacency. Change is accelerating, and he must lead the Pack forward.”
Howell, acknowledging that he will become chancellor at a “a monumental moment in the life of our university,” committed himself to the task ahead.
“I pledge to be the right person, at the right time, for this university for many, many years to come,” he said.
The search process
Tuesday’s announcement of Howell’s hiring marked the culmination of a roughly six-month search to find NC State’s 15th chancellor, a process that began in earnest with the search committee’s first meeting last September.
In giving his opening instructions to the search committee, Hans — who serves on all chancellor search groups across the system, or appoints a designee to do so in his place, and picks the final candidate to submit to the Board of Governors — spoke highly of Woodson’s 15-year tenure as chancellor, noting the university’s increased graduation rate, research successes and the growth of its endowment under his leadership.
But Hans cautioned the committee against finding someone to mirror Woodson.
“The goal of our search is not to replicate Randy Woodson, who has been a defining leader for this chapter of NC State’s story,” Hans told the 13-member committee. “It is to find the right leader for NCSU’s next chapter, someone who can seize the opportunities at hand in one of the fastest-growing, fastest-changing states in the country.”
Woodson, for his part, said Tuesday was “a great day for this university” and praised Howell’s dedication to and experience with NC State.
“I couldn’t be more proud for NC State and for our future,” Woodson said.
Among the several traits Hans told the committee he hoped to find in NC State’s next leader were an “eagerness to put knowledge to work” for the benefit for the people of North Carolina — which Hans called “NC State’s great strength” — and “an easy rapport with business partners, donors and policymakers.”
Given Howell’s previous roles and experience, which placed him at the intersection of politics, policy and business on behalf of the university, he is likely to check those boxes and many of the others Hans listed in his initial message to the search committee.
“NC State needs a leader who understands that this university’s greatest innovation is the melding of practical wisdom and academic expertise in the service of public good,” Hans said Tuesday. “And I’m proud we have just such a leader, a person who not only believes in the transformational power of this great university, but has lived it.”
An online survey for members of the NC State community to provide input on their desired qualities of the next chancellor attracted more than 4,000 responses before the search committee met for the first time — likely setting a system record, according to Hans.
The committee contracted with Parker Executive Search of Atlanta to conduct its search, using the same firm that UNC-Chapel Hill officials selected to find its chancellor last year.
Search committee chair Ed Stack, also a member of the NC State Board of Trustees, said the candidates considered for the chancellorship included those from traditional academic backgrounds, as well as business executives, military generals and even “congressmen,” he said.
Chancellor searches in the UNC System are confidential, meaning it is unlikely that the identities of the other candidates who were considered during the process will become publicly known.
This story was originally published March 18, 2025 at 9:54 AM.
