© 2024 WFAE
90.7 Charlotte 93.7 Southern Pines 90.3 Hickory 106.1 Laurinburg
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
An in-depth look at our region's emerging economic, social, political and cultural identity.

UNC Charlotte Chancellor Philip Dubois Leaving For Personal Reasons

Gwendolyn Glenn
UNC Charlotte Chancellor Philip Dubois

After 15 years at the helm of UNC Charlotte, Chancellor Philip Dubois says he plans to retire to Reynolds Lake Oconee in Georgia. Dubois announced on Tuesday that he would be stepping down June 30, 2020, giving university officials a year to conduct a national search for his replacement.

At a press conference today, Dubois says the timing of his retirement, which came as a surprise to many, was based on personal reasons.

“It was difficult because I really enjoy the job but about 8 to 10 months ago Lisa and I started to talk about what would retirement look like and when it would occur,” Dubois said. “On March 23, our oldest son and his wife had twin boys in Atlanta and that sealed the deal. So I feel very blessed to have been chancellor for this long and I simply wanted to go out on my own terms and that’s what we’re going to do.

Credit Gwendolyn Glenn
UNC Charlotte Chancellor Philip Dubois takes questions about his recently announced retirement, as his wife Lisa looks on.

Dubois says the April shooting on campus that left two students dead and four others wounded had almost no role in his decision to retire now. He says he needed to be here this year following that tragedy and continues to work with the victims’ families.

In terms of his legacy, Dubois pointed to a 43% enrollment growth since 2005 and working with the board in 2008 to add a football program to the campus.

He says his top two achievements focused on new facilities and transportation.  

“First, was the building of the Center City building, my first building here,” Dubois said. “It was important that we reach out to center city Charlotte and the business community and that gave us a visible presence that we had not had. Secondly, light rail. That was a success that I worked on for 13 years and it will be more so in time, particularly with our hotel conference center now under construction at the JW Clay station.”

Dubois says if the university’s enrollment is to continue growing, the next administration will have to find ways to fund new facilities to accommodate that growth. He says he will be available to the UNC System to act as a consultant or mentor to new chancellors in the future but he has no plans to teach or take on any research projects.

As for any regrets, he says over his tenure he's still not been successful in getting people to stop referring to the university as UNCC. He prefers UNC Charlotte.

Gwendolyn is an award-winning journalist who has covered a broad range of stories on the local and national levels. Her experience includes producing on-air reports for National Public Radio and she worked full-time as a producer for NPR’s All Things Considered news program for five years. She worked for several years as an on-air contract reporter for CNN in Atlanta and worked in print as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun Media Group, The Washington Post and covered Congress and various federal agencies for the Daily Environment Report and Real Estate Finance Today. Glenn has won awards for her reports from the Maryland-DC-Delaware Press Association, SNA and the first-place radio award from the National Association of Black Journalists.