Tolson New NC State Trustee

E. Norris Tolson, president and CEO of the N.C. Biotechnology Center in Research Triangle Park, has been appointed to NC State’s Board of Trustees by Gov. Bev Perdue.

Tolson has served the citizens of North Carolina as a business and policy leader for more than four decades. He graduated from NC State with a bachelor’s degree in crop science and agribusiness in 1962. After a stint in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps from 1963 to 1965, he joined Dupont, where he held various research, marketing and sales assignments in the company’s agricultural products and electronics business for 28 years. He was assigned both domestic and international business responsibilities and lived in Europe for several years before retiring in 1993. He then served in some of the top policy positions in the state. He was a two-term legislator (1994-1997), secretary of commerce (1997-1998), secretary of transportation (1998) and secretary of revenue (2001-2007).

Tolson, of Pinetops, N.C., serves on the NC State Board of Visitors and the Alumni Association board, as well as the College of Education Foundation. He also is a member of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Alumni Society.