President of Raleigh’s William Peace University to step down. Who will replace him?

Brian Ralph, the 11th president of William Peace University in Raleigh, will step down at the end of the academic year, the university announced Friday.

Ralph has held the presidency of the private university since 2015. With a background in admissions and enrollment, he came to Peace after previous roles at Queens College in Charlotte, Bethany College in West Virginia and Hocking College in Ohio.

At Peace, Ralph led the university through the COVID-19 pandemic and added multiple academic programs, sports and partnerships to the university’s offerings.

“William Peace University is a special place that my family and I have had the privilege to call home for almost 9 years,” Ralph said in a news release Friday. “I am grateful for all that we have accomplished together and I want to express my deep appreciation for the faculty, staff, alumni, Board of Trustees, and the many friends of WPU in the Raleigh region for the roles they have played in advancing this wonderful institution.”

Ralph said he was “most proud of the Peace students I have had the privilege to know and engage with whether it was at a theater performance, athletic event, research presentation, or a casual conversation on campus. Our students are not only remarkable individuals but also make up a very special community.”

“It has also been rewarding to watch them go on to accomplish amazing things after their time at 15 E. Peace Street,” he said.

New leader named for two years

Also Friday, the university announced that the WPU Board of Trustees had appointed one of its own members, Lynn Morton, to serve as president for two years while the university prepares to conduct a national search for its next president.

Morton joined the board last year after a decades-long career in higher education, including a five-year term as president of Warren Wilson College, a private, liberal-arts college in Swannanoa, near Asheville.

At Warren Wilson, Morton “led multiple initiatives to increase enrollment, introduced two new scholarship programs to offer greater access to a Warren Wilson education, fostered relationships with the local community as well as regionally and nationally, and had notable fundraising results year over year,” the WPU news release said Friday.

Morton also worked for more than 30 years on the faculty and in leadership roles at Queens College, spending almost a decade as the school’s provost and vice president for academic affairs.

“It will truly be a privilege to serve Peace University, located on a beautiful historic campus in thriving downtown Raleigh. As a Board member I’ve been impressed to see the intentional ways that Peace draws on its urban location to offer career-focused immersive learning to both traditional undergraduates and adult learners,” Morton said.

“My heart is in education, and my experiences as a faculty member and administrator in student-focused intimate learning environments like Peace have shown me how this model of education can transform lives.”