University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) named its first female chancellor last week to lead its 29,000 member student body.

Carol L Folt, 61, said she was excited at her selection to lead the country's oldest public university. She will take on the new responsibility as the university's 11th Chancellor in July at an annual salary of $520,000.

Folt will succeed former chancellor, Holden Thorp, who is set to become the provost at Washington University, St. Louis.

"It's the honor of a lifetime," Folt said. "I just can't tell you how it feels. It's a little bit of a dream state. I am sure that we're going to work together to provide an education equal to any education in the world."

Folt, an environmental scientist, earlier worked with Dartmouth College for 30 years, including serving as a biological sciences professor, dean of graduate studies, provost and an interim president for over a year.

During her tenure as a provost, she initiated a strategic plan to solve a $100 million budget deficit, guided more than 100 undergraduate and graduate students and secured grants totaling $50 million for research in topics such as climate change and effect of mercury and arsenic in human diets, to name a few.

These leadership experiences will come in handy for her to put into practice to compensate for the frequent state budget cuts that the universities are facing.

UNC President Tom Ross said that Folt has the perfect balance of experience, expertise, skills and passion to be an effective chancellor at Chapel Hill.

It was Ross who recommended Folt for the post, and she was later unanimously appointed by the UNC Board of Governors.

Folt hopes to improve the transparency in functioning of the UNC-CH campus.

For the past few years, the university has been entangled in a lot of controversies including academic fraud in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, improper travel spending by university's top fundraiser, NCAA investigation of the Tar Heel football program and special treatment for athletes.

She feels that the university has the potential to excel both in academic and cultural and athletic fields as its students bring in an abundance of talent with them.