Derrick Magee has been appointed associate vice chancellor of campus enterprises at N.C. Central University. Magee, a doctoral candidate in the Belk College of Business, will defend his dissertation in fall 2022.
Prior to NCCU, Magee was the senior associate athletics director for business affairs and director of auxiliary enterprises at Alabama State University, helping to develop more than $80 million in new athletics facilities and create the ASU Athletics Business Office. His leadership experience also includes roles as associate athletics director and chief business officer at the University of Cincinnati where he managed a $40-million operating budget, a $120-million debt portfolio and developed $15.5 million in new facilities.
Experience in these positions formed Magee’s research interest in the survival of permanently failing organizations. Intercollegiate athletics, for example, may be a losing business with only 2.3% of programs generating a profit, but they can have valuable benefits for an institution beyond its bottom line.
Magee chose the Belk College of Business DBA program on the basis of Charlotte’s strong reputation as a research institution, its three-year duration, and because he preferred a brick-and-mortar campus program. He is enthusiastic about how his experience has strengthened his role as an administrator and knows this academic credential from a strong research university like Charlotte increases his credibility as a member of NCCU’s leadership team.
“When I use statistics and research to support my ideas, they are backed up by my degree. I look at things from a much wider perspective now,” Magee said. “I ask different questions and understand how areas are linked together and why it matters. Part of creating a business plan, for example, is to determine the return on the investment, but the wider view is also to consider its potential economic impact on the community.”
Magee looks forward to the opportunity to teach at the university level and hopes to pursue this avenue going forward. “I really don’t have a choice,” he said. “When you have knowledge and information that can be helpful, you have to provide that to students and members of the community.”
Reginald Silver, associate dean for Graduate and Executive Programs in Charlotte’s Belk College of Business, said, “Derrick is an experienced professional who has now added doctoral-level research skills to his toolkit. He continues to be a great ambassador for our DBA program, and he demonstrates the high level of accomplishment that we have represented among our DBA scholars. From the moment I recruited him, I knew his career was on a trajectory to executive leadership in higher education.”
Summing up his experience in Charlotte’s DBA program, Magee said, “Belk College of Business offered an amazing learning environment. The faculty is so smart and engaging, eager to push you to be better and to keep you on track. And the members of my cohort were rock stars. It was life changing.”