Flight Path
Karrie Dixon ’97, ’03 EDD charts a course for student success while trailblazing in university leadership.
When Karrie Dixon ’97, ’03 EDD was named N.C. Central University’s 13th chancellor in June 2024, and subsequently installed this past April, she did more than take the helm at a university and become an NCCU Eagle.
She made North Carolina history as a leader.
Dixon, who previously served as chancellor at Elizabeth City State University from 2018 to 2024, is the first woman to have led two campuses within the UNC System as a chancellor.
“I’m honored to be able to be the first to do that,” Dixon says. “As a woman leader, there’s not many of us in these positions across the country. We have to do better when it comes to building a pipeline and investing in women in leadership.”
“We have to do better when it comes to building a pipeline and investing in women in leadership.”
Leading a UNC System university was a sensible destination given Dixon’s path. She is a proud product of North Carolina public education, coming to NC State as a first-generation student from Winston-Salem, N.C. She wanted to work in television and further studied speech communication and rhetoric in her graduate work at UNC Greensboro. When she was given a class to teach as part of a postgraduate assistantship, her trajectory totally changed. “The lightbulb went off,” she says. “I enjoyed seeing my students develop over the semester. I enjoyed seeing them blossom from the knowledge, the conversations that were taking place in the classroom.”
That led Dixon to start looking at barriers that keep students from attaining success, and she knew policy would be the way she could affect change in the state. That’s exactly what she’s doing today at N.C. Central University.
Dixon says one of the great challenges for historically Black colleges and universities around the country is enrollment. This is not the case at NCCU, where she’s directing the highest level of enrollment growth in the UNC System this past academic year. That growth has driven increased demand for student housing in Durham. On average, Dixon says, about 29% of students live on campus within the UNC System; NCCU houses 38%. Dixon is working to build housing partnerships and generate solutions. “It’s something I want to continue to focus on,” she says, “because what I don’t want to do is to turn away any student who wants to be here.”
Dixon, 50, balances the challenges — like housing or figuring out the future of artificial intelligence in higher education — with getting out and talking to as many students as she can. “A highlight for me is coming here and meeting the students, hearing their stories and hearing where they’re coming from, across the country and right here in the state of North Carolina,” she says. “I have met some amazing young people who are going to do some great things in this world.”
And if they recognize her historical significance in UNC System history, even better. “I try all the time to empower women to believe in themselves and believe in the opportunities,” she says, adding advice she regularly offers. “When you shatter glass ceilings, keep the glass shattered so other women can come through that ceiling and have great opportunities.”
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