North Carolina A&T To Name Its Next Leader
The UNC System Board of Governors is expected to approve James R. Martin II, a current vice chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh, as the next leader of the country’s largest HBCU.by Joe KillianJune 21, 2024
Martin was one of three candidates the 13-member search advisory committee forwarded to UNC System President Peter Hans, who chose him as the final nominee to put before the UNC System’s board of governors. That board’s Committee on Personnel will meet at 11 a.m. Friday morning, followed by a full board meeting at 11:30 a.m. to officially elect Martin. Those meetings will be live-streamed.
A&T plans to hold a special announcement event at noon at its Alumni-Foundation Event Center, 200 N. Benbow Road. It will be live-streamed on the university website.
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Martin earned his B.S. in civil engineering from The Citadel and both his master’s and Ph.D. in civil engineering from Virginia Tech. He taught at Virginia Tech from 1990 to 2013 before becoming chair of the Glenn Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Clemson. Martin left Clemson in 2018 to become dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, and assumed his current vice chancellor position there in 2022.
Though he comes from an impressive engineering and leadership background at agricultural and technical universities, three search committee members told The Assembly they had some misgivings. At A&T, Martin will lead the nation’s largest historically black college or university (HBCU) despite never having attended, taught at, or led an HBCU. Those members asked not to be identified so they could discuss the confidential search process.
“There were candidates who had that experience, of the culture of the HBCU, who were products of the HBCU,” one search committee member said. “I would not say it is disqualifying if that’s not the case. But we have had a lot of success with leaders who come from A&T and who come from the world and the culture of HBCUs.”
Search advisory members don’t get a final vote on the nominee Hans puts before the system’s board of governors. There was no evidence this week members of the board of governors, who will take a final vote on that nominee, shared concerns about Martin’s HBCU experience.
Martin would succeed current A&T chancellor Harold Martin—no relation. The longest-serving chancellor in the UNC System, Harold Martin has been at the helm at A&T for 15 years. In that time, A&T went from a beloved but struggling regional university to the nation’s largest HBCU, with explosive growth in student performance, the footprint of the campus in Greensboro, funding, and prestige.
Martin, the first A&T graduate to become the university’s top leader, also had experience in administration at the UNC System and as chancellor of another HBCU in the system, Winston-Salem State University.
“Chancellor Martin has been a once-in-a-generation, transformative leader for A&T and those are large shoes to fill,” said another member of the search committee. “But I believe that the new chancellor will be met with open arms by our university and he’ll have every opportunity to succeed here.”
Joe Killian is The Assembly’s Greensboro editor. He joined us from NC Newsline, where he was senior investigative reporter. Before that, he spent a decade at The News & Record covering cops and courts, higher education, and government. A North Carolina native, he’s been living and writing in Greensboro for more than 20 years.
