Despite appeals from industries to get his engineering expertise, James Woodward has built his career in the field of education

James Woodward has a passion for building things that last. In his spare time he makes cherry and walnut furniture by hand in the garage of his North Carolina home--an avocation honed in the mandatory shop classes he attended at Georgia Tech. As chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Woodward is working to build that state's next great research university.

A 32-year veteran of higher education, Woodward, AE '62, M AE '63, Ph.D. '67, nearly missed what he considers his "high calling".

"I was waiting to hear from NASA," said Woodward, who was facing a three tour of active duty in teh Air Force after receiving his doctorate from Georgia Tech.

"I was contacted by people at the Johnson Space Center and Hunstville. Then the Air Force Academy contacted me and asked me if I'd like to spend my tour of duty teaching there. I said, 'No, I want to work with NASA.' They said, 'If it doesn't work out, let us know, but here is our deadline.'"

When the dealine came, Woodwared committed to the Acadmey. Within a week, he heard back from both Johnson and Huntsville. But they were too late.

Throughout his career Woodward was romanced by private industry for his engineering expertise, but chose to stay in higher education. He went on to hold teaching and administration positions at North Carolina State University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 1989, he was looking for a change, and UNC-Charlotte was looking for a new chancellor.

"I took what I thought was the best opportunity in the country to make an impact within a finite period of time," Woodward siad. "In 1989, Charlotte was clearly a major city that was underserved by higher education."

In eight years at the helm of UNC-Charlotte, Woodward has brought the school--North Carolina's fourth largest university--to a position more worthy of what he calls a "secondary global city".

His leadership has meant in increase in enrollment by more than 30 percent (to 17,000 students), in endowment from $10 millin to $70 million and in status to a doctoral degree granting institution--with two of the first three doctoral programs being in engineering.

But his most impressive coup has been to successfully secure funding for UNC-Charlotte's University Research Park--the nation's fifth largest university--affiliated research facility--just a stone's throw from the prized Research Triangle Park of Duke University, North Carolina State, and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Woodward worked to cultivate the untapped private support of Charlotte's community leaders, including the chief executives fo Charlotte based NationsBank and First Union Corp. He also took UNC-Charlotte from the bottom of the state's priority list to bring in $71.4 million in public funding last year.

"If you're a public university, you can use the bureaucracy associated with being a public university as an excuse for not being entrepreneurial," Woodward said. "But when legislators have to choose between 50 to 100 worthy causes that you cant' really quanitfy, there is a tendency to invest where you can be confident of a return--in those universities who deliver and don't make excuses."

For UNC-Charlotte, part of paying off on that investement meant raising $32 million in private capital to fund 20 new facutly chairs for high-profile scholars.

Woodward can personally attest to the inmpact of world-renowned faculty. After earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in the early 60's, he switched to engineering mechanics to become the first doctoral student under Tech professor and Wernher von Braun cohort Helmut Bauer. Bauer's work in non-linear oscillations was intergral to NASA's burgeoning space program and brought with it substantial funding to the Institute and to Woordward, whose dissertation was subsequently sponsored by NASA.

While UNC-Charlotte's entrepreneurial focus has inspired confidence among its benefactors, Woodward's primary concern is the balance between teaching and research.

"As we began to build the research capacity here, we were already aware that public higher education was being criticized for its lack of attention to teaching," he said."We simply said 'We're not going to make that a same mistake here.'"

To that end, UNC-Charlotte set aside five of its 20 endowed chairs for professors who were also outstanding teachers.

"Each year, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching selects four outstanding professors from around the country," Woodward said. "The person selected last year was a UNC-Charlotte faculty member show runs our honors program, and we have just hired another person who won this national recognition at another institution."

Not suprisingly, Woodward considers an engineering education tops.

"I've always believed that an engineering education is one of the best educations, period, whether you want to be an M.D. or a university president or a lawyer," he said. "There's a very ordered foundation to it, and you are taught to solve problems. I don't do engineering anymore, but I sure do deal with a lot of problems."

In 1973, Woodward earned his master's in business administration from the University of Alabama-Birmingham. His management skills would earn him distinction as Charlotte's Manager of the Year in 1995 as he had a record-setting regional United Way campaign.

Of his legacy at UNC-Charlotte, Woodward expects no more than he does form the many cribs and bedroom sets he has hand-crafted for friends and family over the years--simply to have built them strong enough to stand the test of time.