Queens of Charlotte and Elon University announce plans to merge next year

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Queens University of Charlotte and Elon University announced Tuesday that they plan to merge.

At the conclusion of the merger, which is expected to come by August 2026, Elon will operate Queens “in partnership with existing and legacy leaders,” the universities announced in a news release. Queens is a private college of about 1,800 students in the Myers Park area, according to the school’s website. Elon is located between Greensboro and Burlington in a town by the same name. It’s also a private school and has a total enrollment of about 7,300 students.

“We are definitely stronger together,” Elon President Connie Book told The Charlotte Observer. “This bold decision by our universities ensures that in 100 years, the founders’ missions can continue to thrive. This is a decision that creates strength and it’s built on educational opportunity as the necessary seed for a community’s future.”

Queens Acting President Jesse Cureton said the departure of former Queens President Daniel Lugo, which was announced in 2024, prompted the school’s board to start looking at growth opportunities. Cureton was the board chair at the time.

Initially, conversations centered on graduate program partnerships between Queens and Elon, and each university formed committees to talk about what that could look like.

“We met in March with the strategic growth committees and started with this conversation around collaboration, and we were very excited about the Elon culture with Connie’s leadership and Elon just being an impressive university,” Cureton said. “They’ve been the North Star for Queens for quite some time, we thought, ‘If we were interested enough to talk about partnerships, we should be interested enough to do something much bigger than that.’”

A merger entered the conversation around four months ago, Cureton said.

What will Queens, Elon merger look like?

Much about what the merger looks like is still undetermined, Book and Cureton told The Charlotte Observer. Tuesday’s announcement is that both schools have signed an “intent to merge,” Book said. The schools will work out the parameters of the merger over the next year.

But not much will change overnight.

“On day one, and probably the next two or three years, there’s not going to be a whole lot of change for Queens in leadership and their staff,” he said. “Nothing changes tomorrow. These integrations typically take three to five years.”

The Queens Board of Trustees will continue to be an active board for the next four years, while current Queens students are enrolled. After that, 10 members of the Queens board will join Elon’s current Board of Trustees, which has 37 members, to form one 47-member board.

There may be additional staffing and leadership changes down the line as the schools examine “efficiencies,” Cureton said.

The schools will also merge their combined $2 billion in assets.

Meanwhile, Book said, students at each institution will immediately be able to take courses and pursue programs only available at the other school. For example, Elon already has a graduate law program in Charlotte, while Queens has a music therapy program, which Elon doesn’t currently offer.

“This is going to turn out to be one of the most important things to ever happen in Charlotte,” Hugh McColl Jr., former chairman and CEO of Bank of America and a longtime civic leader in Charlotte, said at Queens Tuesday morning. “This is a tremendous gift for the city.”

Will Queens University change its name? What about sports?

When the merger is complete, the school may have a new name, though one hasn’t been chosen. Cureton and Book alike said the name will honor Queens University’s 168-year legacy in Charlotte.

“We’re committed to having the Queens name as part of the new naming structure,” Book said. “We’ll have a more fulsome exercise with branding and getting community feedback, but Queens has a special place in the heart of the city because of its legacy there and its contributions to higher education, so we’ll want the new name to preserve that.”

Queens officially became a Division 1 school in sports after announcing plans to do so in 2022. Cureton also said there will continue to be athletics at both campuses.

It’s not immediately clear how many similar instances of a merger there have been in the United States. But Cureton said he thinks more schools will merge in the next few years that Queens will be a “bellwether” for the NCAA.

Elon is growing in Charlotte

It’s not the first time Elon expanded west to the Queen City in recent years. It opened its Charlotte regional center in South End in September 2023 — where it offers classes to law students as part of the university’s part-time Law Flex Program. A new physician assistant program will open at the facility in 2027, and Elon undergraduates majoring or minoring in sport management can also currently take classes at the Charlotte regional center. Book said students at Elon’s Charlotte Regional Center will now be able to use facilities such as libraries and workout spaces at Queens, which sits about 3 miles away.

For each university, Cureton and Book said, the merger represents not just opportunity, but also fortification amid state and federal funding uncertainties. Together, the institutions will have a combined $600 million endowment and a student population of around 10,000.

“It’ll be 2026 or 2027 before we really know the impacts of cuts, whether the federal cuts or state cuts, but we’ve seen enough that we’re gonna have to be proactive,” Cureton said. “We’re going to have to be stronger together and have a partner that can allow us to be more stable.”

But, Cureton and Book said, the biggest motivation behind the decision was the chance to expand options for students.

“To grow the opportunity, to leverage the markets that we’re in – that’s been the biggest driver for us,” Cureton said. “This is really driven by an opportunity to improve the academic curriculum experience for students and to build upon the legacy of these two great institutions.”