Dr. Jeffrey A. Cox Bio
Dr. Jeffrey A. Cox is the 11th president of the North Carolina Community College System.
Cox is a native of Alleghany County, North Carolina and brings three decades of academic and leadership experience to the System Office.
Cox graduated from Appalachian State University in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science in English-secondary education. He later received his Master of School Administration degree from ASU and then his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
He began his teaching career in Greensboro and Sparta, where he was awarded the North Carolina Principal Fellows Scholarship. He served as assistant principal at Indian Trail Elementary School from 1998-2000, and then as principal at Benton Heights Elementary from 2000-2003.
From 2003-2005, Cox served a successful stint as Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction with Lee County Schools in Sanford, NC.
In 2005, he took on the role of Superintendent of Schools for Alleghany County, where he served until 2014. During his tenure, he helped lead the district to its highest academic achievement in the district’s history. He was appointed by former Gov. Bev Perdue to serve on the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards Commission in 2011 and was also appointed to the Governor’s School of North Carolina Board of Governors in 2013. In July 2014, Cox became the fifth president of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro.
Cox also was appointed by the N.C. State Board of Community Colleges to serve on the MyFutureNC Commission, a group of top North Carolina thought leaders from the education, business, philanthropy, faith-based, and nonprofit communities and ex officio representatives from the North Carolina House of Representatives, Senate, and Governor’s office established to discuss state education and training needs, identify obstacles to meeting those needs, and generate policy recommendations. It was this group that set the post-secondary attainment goal for the state to have 2,000,000 North Carolinians ages 25-44 with a post-secondary degree or credential of value by 2030.
Cox was awarded an Aspen Presidential Fellowship for Community College Excellence in 2017 – one of 40 college leaders in the country selected for the prestigious program. While president at Wilkes, he also launched a new five-year strategic plan to expand the College’s efforts to improve the economic mobility of local residents and beyond.
Cox and his wife, Reba, will be relocating to Raleigh from Wilkesboro. They have three young adult sons: Dylan, Evan, and Zack and one lovely daughter-in-law, Shae, Dylan’s wife.
