Chancellor's Biography

Dr. Anne Ponder

Chancellor, University of North Carolina at Asheville

Dr. Anne Ponder became the sixth Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Asheville in October 2005. She began her tenure by leading a campuswide collaboration to create a dynamic and viable five-year strategic plan and revised mission statement.

With this focus, UNC Asheville has made major strides as a national leader in the liberal arts and has become a one of the top choices for students seeking a rigorous and multi-faceted educational experience.

During her tenure, the university was chosen as the first national headquarters for the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges and several majors in Religious Studies and Anthropology have been added to the curriculum. Dr. Ponder has encouraged innovative collaboration that resulted in a UNC-Chapel Hill satellite pharmacy education program. Building new partnerships with local governments, scientific agencies and non-profit organizations have resulted in agreements with Mission Hospital Systems, the City of Asheville, the Renaissance Computing Institute and others for enhanced learning and research opportunities for students and faculty. This emphasis on collaboration, one of Chancellor Ponder’s hallmark traits, also led to the cultivation, with other campus and community leaders, of some of the largest multi-million donations in the university’s history.

Chancellor Ponder oversaw the largest building projects in UNC Asheville’s history, including New Hall classroom building; Sam Millar Facilities Management Complex; Zeis Science and Multimedia Building; and the Wilma W. Sherrill Center, which houses the North Carolina Center for Health & Wellness and the Kimmel Arena. In each of these projects, environmental sustainability has been a key feature, as dictated by the university’s strategic plan. These green efforts – combined with countless others across campus – have earned the university a host of awards, including repeated recognition as one of the lowest energy consuming agencies in the state.

A strong advocate for community service, Dr. Ponder is a member of the Mission Hospitals Audit Committee, the Asheville Community and Economic Development Alliance, the Children’s Welfare League and the WNC Community Foundation’s Women for Women. She also is a board member for the non-profit Kendal Corporation.

Before becoming Chancellor at UNC Asheville, Dr. Ponder served for 10 years as president of Colby-Sawyer College, a private liberal arts college in New Hampshire. Prior to that appointment, she held teaching and administrative posts at Elon College (now Elon University), Guilford College and Kenyon College.

Chancellor Ponder, who holds a doctorate in English from UNC-Chapel Hill, is a nationally known expert on institutional effectiveness, strategic planning, and fundraising and resource development. She has been a frequent faculty member of Harvard University’s Institutes for Higher Education and wrote the chapter on strategic planning in the American Council on Education’s book “Leading America’s Branch Campuses.”

A native of Asheville, Chancellor Ponder is the daughter of the late Eleanor and Herschel Ponder, both of whom trace their Asheville family roots to the 1780s. She is married to award-winning writer and publisher Christopher Brookhouse.