Randy Woodson

Woodson was elected chairman of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities for the 2013-2014 year.

In 2010, Woodson succeeded Interim Chancellor James H. Woodward to become the fourteenth chancellor of North Carolina State University, the largest university in North Carolina. One of Woodson's first acts at NC State was to initiate the formulation of a ten-year strategic plan for the university. The result – The Pathway to the Future: NC State's 2011-2020 Strategic Plan – is the framework that guides university administrators in long- and short-term decision making. It was approved by the NC State Board of Trustees on April 22, 2011.

Under Woodson, NC State received the two largest gifts in its history. In 2010, Lonnie C. Poole Jr. and his wife, Carol Johnson Poole, gave the university $40 million, which increased NC State's endowment by 10 percent. The majority of the gift was designated for what is now the Poole College of Management. Support was also designated for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and for the construction of a clubhouse at NC State's golf course on Centennial Campus. In 2013, the Park Foundation donated $50 million to begin an endowment that will provide permanent funding for the university's existing Park Scholarships program.

Woodson began his teaching career as an assistant professor at Louisiana State University in 1983. He was on the faculty at Louisiana State until 1985, when he joined the faculty at Purdue University. At Purdue, Woodson served as both the director of the plant biology program and as the head of the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture from 1995 to 1998. Then he became the associate dean of the College of Agriculture and director of the Office of Agricultural Research Programs. He served in that position until 2004, when he was made the Glenn W. Sample Dean of Agriculture. In 2008, Woodson was named Purdue's provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

William Randolph Woodson (born 1957) is an American plant physiologist and university administrator. He is the fourteenth and current chancellor of North Carolina State University.