UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor to Resign Amid Scandals
The chancellor who has led North Carolina’s flagship public university for four years will step down next year in the wake of scandals involving academic fraud, improper travel spending by fundraisers and special treatment for athletes.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp will step down in June after the end of the current academic year and return to teaching in the chemistry department, where he had been a longtime professor and former chair, the nation’s oldest public university said Monday.
“I will always do what is best for this university. This wasn’t an easy decision personally. But when I thought about the university and how important it’s been to me, to North Carolinians and to hundreds of thousands of alumni, my answer became clear,” Thorp said in a news release.
Thorp met privately Friday for almost an hour with the board overseeing the 17-campus state university system, and several members of the Board of Governors said they thought Thorp was doing a great job. Thorp’s successes included the campus attracting $767 million in research funds last year and raising the school into the Top 10 U.S. public universities for attracting federal research funding, board members said.