UMD chancellor Charles Nies to also lead Crookston for 18 months
Charles Nies will keep running UMD while serving 18 months as Crookston’s interim chancellor, with a new associate chancellor meant to protect campus continuity.
UMD Chancellor Charles Nies will take on interim chancellor duties at the University of Minnesota Crookston in January while keeping his job in Duluth, a split assignment that puts one of St. Louis County’s largest institutions under a dual-campus leader for 18 months. University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham announced the move, and the system said the arrangement is meant to keep both campuses moving without losing momentum.
Nies will spend time on the Crookston campus this fall with Mary Holz-Clause and the campus leadership team before Holz-Clause retires. Holz-Clause has led Crookston since 2017, and the system plans to create an associate chancellor role there to help maintain progress during the transition.
For Duluth, the key issue is attention. Nies is UMD’s 10th chancellor, he started on July 1, 2024, and he was formally inaugurated in September 2025. As chancellor, he serves as the chief executive of the Duluth campus and leads its strategic direction, a job that touches budgeting, enrollment planning, donor relationships, and campus partnerships. Splitting time with Crookston will test how much of that work can be sustained without Duluth losing focus.
That question matters at a moment when UMD is growing. The campus said it welcomed nearly 2,300 new undergraduate students for the 2025-26 academic year, its largest incoming class in recent years. In a city where the university is a major employer and a cultural and research anchor, leadership stability can shape everything from faculty planning to fundraising and long-term academic priorities.
Crookston brings its own pressures. The campus says it has more than 1,700 students total, with about 700 on campus and about 1,000 online. In September 2025, it said it was tracking toward its highest enrollment year in history, which helps explain why Cunningham emphasized student, faculty, and staff support during the transition.
The University of Minnesota system already runs Crookston, Duluth, Morris, and Rochester under chancellors reporting to the president, and Cunningham became the 18th president on July 1, 2024. Nies’ dual appointment now serves as a test of that structure: whether one chancellor can steady a growing Duluth campus while helping Crookston through a handoff, without diluting either campus’s priorities.
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