The most enthusiastic response in Chancellor Randy Woodson’s yearly celebration of NC State’s accomplishments came when he mentioned a new program that will directly benefit the people who make the university great.

Woodson announced the creation of a tuition scholarship for the children of full-time staff and faculty, beginning in the fall of 2016, capping off his annual fall address Monday morning in the Talley Student Union’s refurbished Stewart Theatre.

Full details about the privately funded program will be announced soon, Woodson said, but he wanted to share news about the new the program at the annual address, in front of the people who work hard every day to educate, to conduct research for and to operate the state’s largest university.

“We want to be able to recruit and retain the best talent here for our faculty and staff,” Woodson said afterwards. “Most universities around the country provide some benefit like this to their employees and we’ve not been able to before now.

“We are an institution of higher learning and we have so many people who work hard every day to accomplish our mission. This is for them.”

The benefit will begin as a minimum $2,000 annual scholarship for the dependents of full-time employees who qualify for admission to NC State—a discount of about 25 percent for annual tuition and fees. The scholarship is available for a maximum of four years for each eligible student.

Like most UNC system schools, NC State has a tuition waiver policy for full-time employees working on undergraduate, graduate or doctoral degrees, but this is the first program to provide educational assistance for their families.

“We will need to grow the endowment to make it happen,” Woodson said. “I will make that a priority. I hope other employees will join me in doing that and I hope we can convince other donors to help us with this effort to retain talent.”

Woodson says there is enough scholarship money reallocated to start the program, but there will be additional efforts to expand it through the Faculty and Staff Giving Program and other sources so it would eventually cover an even higher percentage of a recipients’ educational costs.

Woodson spent much of his time at the annual address highlighting the accomplishments of students and faculty, from groundbreaking research to outstanding student accomplishments to unprecedented giving from donors.

“As a community, we have achieved many milestones over the past year,” Woodson said. “New scholarships, the strongest student body in NC State history, record research support, unsurpassed rankings and record levels of giving are just a few of them.

“But I used the word ‘milestones’ for a reason—they are not goalposts. This is just the beginning, one step on a pathway to the future.”