Housing and Residence Life
Edwards Honored by Recognition, Grateful for Peers and Career Path
By Wyatt Crosher, Assistant Director of Communications for Student Affairs
When Donny Edwards earned a Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs (VCSA) Award for his efforts surrounding the construction of Wilson Hall at last year’s divisional awards ceremony, it was more than the shock of the moment that Edwards felt when he heard his name called by Vice Chancellor Bailey.
Housing and Residence Life’s (HRL) director of facilities operations said the award felt like the closing chapter of a book that had been in the works for more than half of his UNC Charlotte tenure.
“I was surprised by Bailey, and could have honestly been brought to tears right there,” Edwards said. “It was like this six-year journey felt like it came to an end.”
Edwards started his higher education career after attending graduate school at Texas A&M. He worked as a residence education coordinator at a small school in Colorado for three years before deciding he was ready to no longer live on a college campus.
That was what initially led Edwards to North Carolina, but first as an associate director at Davidson College. There, Edwards was more involved in residence life, and did so for two years before realizing he might want to move to a different lane within the field.
“About halfway in, I started to get more and more involved on the facility side of things — operations and housing assignments — but also coordinating with the physical plant people around the custodial work, and then maintenance needs and then projects,” Edwards said. “I fell in love with that process.”
Edwards began attending conferences focused on housing operations and facility management, and ultimately ran into John Storch, Charlotte’s then-director of facilities operations. Storch eventually emailed him about an open position, and Edwards applied for and accepted the position of assistant director. When Storch retired, Edwards was promoted to director.
The director position is, according to Edwards, a lot of handling projects and making sure that the team has the proper resources to do what they do best. It also involves a lot of communication with the residents, associate vice chancellor and staff. It’s that communication, the connections he has created through it and his passion for the field that has kept Edwards at Charlotte for what will be 11 years at the end of the semester.
“I have been really blessed with a great team, not only the people that I oversee, but also others in the department. It feels like family in that regard,” Edwards said. “I also really like all the work that I do, especially where I can make a difference. To just produce good work and see our team be successful, that's a huge thing.”
Among that good work that Edwards helped produce is Wilson Hall, Charlotte’s newest residence hall that holds more than 670 students. The hall, formerly known as Phase XVI, underwent a lengthy process from initial idea to eventual formation, a process that was slowed significantly by factors out of Edwards and his teams’ control.
“The design happened in like 2018, and Moore Hall came down in mid-2019, so the construction of Wilson started later that fall. And then of course 2020 rolled around and COVID put a stop to it,” Edwards said. “For a while, it seemed like that project might not actually happen. And so it sat, kind of dormant for two-plus years, and then finally everything came back in line, but we had to essentially start over.”
Edwards was along for each of those steps. While he was far from the only one to be involved in its creation, he was proud to earn the Vice Chancellor’s award in honor of everyone who came together to make it happen, as well as for all the time and effort that he put into the six-plus-year process.
“I was in a weird position on those projects because they are truly handled by facilities management. But one of my big roles is to advocate, and to push as hard as I can to get the work done with the quality we need,” Edwards said. “It's not like I built it myself. But to be recognized for just the amount of emotional toll that I put into it was really nice.”
Edwards went from an initial career path within residence life to finding his passion in facilities operations, and it has resulted in a lengthy tenure at the University, which included a promotion to director, taking over the reigns of the supervisor that made him interested in Charlotte in the first place.
His interest in the field, and what inspires Edwards to do his work well, is the underrecognized impact it has on every student — and potential future student — attending the University.
“For a school like Charlotte that's not the big state flagship, in order to draw students and draw the best students possible, having really good facilities is super important. When they come to campus and look at the facilities, that might be a differentiator for them,” Edwards said. “I always have the mindset that we need our buildings and residence halls to be top quality, to help us maintain our competitiveness in attracting and keeping students. I think we're really an important piece of the University puzzle in that regard.”