Dr. Marshall Stewart announced as 16th president of NDSU after months long search

2 hours ago

Juliana Pelaez,

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) — North Dakota State University has named Marshall Stewart as its 16th president, following selection by the North Dakota State Board of Higher Education.

“I’m grateful for their vote of confidence, and I can tell them one thing I’ll assure them of is I’ll do my best every day. I can’t promise you perfection, but I will give you perfect effort every single day,” said Stewart.

Stewart comes from Kansas State University, where he is currently serving as the executive vice president for external engagement and chief of staff. During his career, he has focused on student leadership, land-grant mission delivery, and building trust-based partnerships across campus and community. He says that with his new role, he will be focused on building relationships with the community.

“All those stakeholders that make North Dakota State what it is. I want to be a partner with you in that. I’m here to facilitate that in this part of my life, and I look forward to that. And that journey that has brought me here, one thing that it has taught me is that if you’ve seen one university, you’ve seen one university,” said Stewart.

Stewart has set several goals for when he begins, which include bringing up enrollment, lowering the debt for students, and providing the best student experience.

“How do we make sure that a person that comes here early or on time, low debt, has those experiences, and then at the same time knows that they can come back and get a micro credential, a credential, a certificate, all of that rolling up into a graduate degree if they want to do that,” said Stewart.

While he has estimated that it will take about three to five years to bring up enrollment, he is certain that bringing in the opportunities for students and connecting with people across the state will bring growth to the university.

Stewart will continue to serve out his term at Kansas State University over the next three weeks and succeed Interim President Rick Berg on May 28th.