Chancellor

Chancellor Charlie Nelms has led North Carolina Central University since 2007. During that time, despite a challenging budget climate, he has intensified the university’s emphasis on student success, setting ambitious goals for increasing student retention and graduation rates.  These goals were given first priority in the strategic planning effort Nelms led to successful completion in 2010.  In keeping with this priority, Nelms reorganized the University College to provide comprehensive advising and academic support services for all entering students and he instituted programs to improve the academic success of African-American males in particular.

Nelms established a new vice chancellor for research and economic development to better manage the university's growing research sector.  In 2010 – 2011, university faculty received more than $25 million in sponsored research grants.  This year, the university has embarked on the development of a Ph.D. program in integrated biosciences that is scheduled to enroll students in fall 2012.  These will be the first doctoral students at NCCU since 1964. 

Chancellor Nelms has dramatically improved the aesthetics and physical assets of the campus with the infusion of more than $75 million in new construction of a nursing building, residence hall and parking deck, and millions more in renovation of existing facilities.  It was Nelms’ inspiration to move the historic Holy Cross Catholic Church across campus to its new location on Fayetteville Street alongside the new Centennial Garden.

In 2011, Nelms published A Call to Action, a policy directive intended to spur a national dialogue concerning the revitalization of the historically black colleges and universities as an important sector of American higher education.

Before coming to NCCU, Nelms served as vice president for Institutional Development and Student Affairs for the Indiana University system. He was also a chancellor twice before.  In 1987, Nelms began a seven-year tenure as chancellor of Indiana University East, and in 1994 he was named chancellor of the University of Michigan at Flint (UMF). There, he resolved a significant campus budget deficit, reversed a four-year enrollment decline and secured more than $75 million in private gifts to UMF.

Active in professional, civic, and higher education organizations, Nelms is past chair of the NCA Higher Learning Commission Board of Trustees and the National Advisory Board of the National Survey of Student Engagement.  He also served as chair of the American Council on Education (ACE) Commission for Leadership Development and currently serves on ACE’s blue ribbon panel concerning accreditation.  Nelms is a member of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Board of Trustees and serves on the board of directors of the American Association of State Colleges & Universities.

Nelms is a native of Crawfordsville, Ark., and earned his undergraduate degree in agronomy and chemistry at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, graduating in 1968. He earned a master's degree in higher education and student affairs in 1971 and a doctorate in higher education administration six years later from Indiana University. Early in his career, he taught and held administrative positions at Earlham College in Indiana, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Indiana University Northwest in Gary and Sinclair Community College in Ohio.