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North Carolina A&T State University Provost and Vice Chancellor Tonya Smith-Jackson has been named the new Chancellor of Rutgers University- Newark. The Rutgers Board of Governors overwhelmingly accepted her nomination, which was jointly announced by incoming President William F. Tate IV and departing President Jonathan Holloway.
Dr. Smith-Jackson graduated from North Carolina State University with MS and PhD degrees in Psychology/Ergonomics and Interdisciplinary Industrial Engineering. She earned a BA in Psychology from UNC-Chapel Hill; and graduated from the inaugural class of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
Before becoming Chancellor, she served as Department Chair of Industrial and Systems Engineering, as interim director of a cybersecurity center; director of the Human Factors Analytics Lab and co-director of the laboratory for Cyber-Human Analytics Research for the Internet of Things (CHARIoT). She also worked as an assistant, associate, and full professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech for 14 years. In addition to teaching in universities and community colleges in North Carolina, New York, Virginia, and Germany, she was an engineer at IBM and Ericsson Mobile Communications.
Dr. Jackson describes herself as “first-generation, low-income student.”
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“My lived experience taught me that higher education was not necessarily designed for everyone,” Smith-Jackson said.
“It’s our challenge to continue to reimagine and redesign these important ecosystems that we build around the learners that we serve so that everybody can be successful,” she said.
According to Rutgers, Dr. Smith-Jackson has spearheaded the development of three new doctoral programs, the first artificial intelligence bachelor's degree program in the state, and significant increases in graduate assistants and research staff at North Carolina A&T, the largest HBCU in the country. In addition, some of Dr. Smith-Jackson's recent research has been on helping formerly incarcerated individuals find employment and training in information technology. She has also written about the value of introducing undergraduates to STEM research.
Dr. Smith-Jackson's appointment with Rutgers will take effect on August 1, 2025. As part of her agreement, she will receive $515,000 annually in base pay, along with an additional $25,000 to $77,000 per year in incentive compensation, with a guaranteed minimum of $51,500 in her first year. She will also receive $30,000 annually in deferred compensation.
