Q: What is one thing you would like students to know?
A: I think the one thing I would like students to know is that NC State is a big place. We’re the largest university in the state, and it can be overwhelming to students, particularly new students coming here. So the one thing I would like students to know is that we have a lot of support for them across campus. Whether it’s in health sciences, whether it’s in smaller groups that they can become affiliated with … mainly I want them to understand that they’re not alone here. That we work hard to provide a lot of various ways to support our students. Their physical health, their mental health, their academic progress … all of those things are critical to the success of students. So, the one thing I would really like students to know is to seek out and ask questions. Do research and find out what’s available to them at NC State so they can find their niche, their community, their group, and that will be helpful for them to be successful.
Q: What one big thing are you pushing to happen this year?
A: I’d say that the biggest time commitment that I have is our capital campaign and raising money for the university. I’ll give you an example: Last year we had an all-time high of raising $208 million for NC State. So we’re in the early phase, what we call the nucleus phase, of a campaign for the university. The reason for that is because we can be a good university with state support and the tuition that we receive from students, but we can’t be a great university unless we do a better job of obtaining private philanthropy and growing our endowment. Of our peer groups, we have one of the smaller endowments. Endowments are used to support everything from scholarships to faculty-endowed professorships … everything that really elevated the university and keeps it accessible and affordable. That means financial aid for students increasingly has to come from private resources because we have restrictions from the Board of Governors on how much of our state appropriation and tuition we can use for financial aid. So the biggest occupier of my time, my chief job, is to be an advocate for the university. Being an advocate for the university primarily involves being an advocate for those various groups that support the university financially: the General Assembly and donors.
Q: What are some of the other smaller things you’ll be working on this year?
A: Well, since I’ve been here, this is my sixth year, we’ve never had a, what I would call, a growth budget. So, the university has been—well higher education in general but certainly NC State—has had budget challenges every year. So one of our highest priorities and the thing we spend most time on is figuring out how to use our limited resources toward our strategic goals. My administrative team and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to allocate resources in a way that keeps NC State strong in an environment when money from the state has been cut every year we’ve been here. Now this could be the best budget we’ve received in the last six years from the state. It could be, but it hasn’t been determined yet. They’re still fighting but the early indications from both the House and the Senate. It’s not a growth budget, but it’s not nearly the cuts we’ve received in recent years. So it could be an easier year for managing the financial resources, but not dramatically so. For example, out of the six years I’ve been here, we’ve only had money for raises one year. Our faculty and our staff, you know, we compete in a global economy, and we’re competing with some of the best universities in the country. When we’re not able to provide routine raises … now the good news is we’ve had the flexibility to support faculty and staff when we were threatened to lose them. We’re doing everything we can to deploy our resources to keep the university strong.
Q: Does it ever get exhausting to constantly be raising money and hosting individuals?
A: Look, I knew what I was getting into. This isn’t … I’ve been a dean and a provost. I’ve worked for universities for 30 years, so I know the nature of the job. Exhausting isn’t the word I would use. It definitely can be a time-consuming occupation, but the good news for Susan, my wife, and I, we were just talking about this the other night, the summer kind of gives us a bit of a reprieve. We still work just as hard, and I’m here every day the legislature is in session, and I’m doing alumni events and all of those things throughout the summer, but I don’t have as many night and weekend events. During the academic year, I average something on my calendar five or six nights a week. Now they’re not all at home, but we probably average, between August and the end of April, almost four events a week just at the residence. You know, it’s a very public job. If you think about a university leader of a big university like ours, you have multiple stakeholders, people who have an interest in the university. Students are the biggest because they’re the ones we’re here for. Alumni are big too because alumni rely on the connections the university empowers for them to be successful, and we look for them to give back to the university. The legislature is a group, and then I have two boards that I report to: the Board of Trustees for the university and the Board of Governors for the system. I got a lot of folks that need the attention of the chancellor; so stressful or exhausting … it’s not that. Someone said to me the other day, ‘Chancellor, you’re working awfully hard.’ I said I grew up on a farm. It’s not hard; it’s just stressful. You know, I’m not bailing hay.
Q: Do you have one concern for the year? Something that you know might be difficult to accomplish?
A: I think we’re in a little bit of a period of uncertainty with the UNC System because we’re looking for a new president. I wouldn’t characterize it as a concern; it’s just when you’re looking to get stability to the system and new leadership, that’s something that we’re all watching carefully. The president of the system plays a big role in advocating on behalf of the system to the state. So that’s one thing that’s in the back of my mind. I don’t sit here and worry about it every day, though. It’s a pretty stressful time for our county right now. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to read the news every day and see the tension that’s going on in America, and sometimes that can translate into challenges on campus, so that’s why I started the conversation with the health and safety of our students. So, one thing that I do spend a lot of time working with Dr. [Mike] Mullen and others on is if we’re doing everything we can to give our campus the level of security and safety students need to feel free to peruse their education ventures. It’s a bit of an unsettled time right now in higher education, and I think that translates to activities here on campus as well.
Q: So you gave some advice to students and mentioned health and safety, is there something you are looking for from students? We know what you’re offering; are you looking for us to offer something to you?
A: One of the things that is true about NC State is we’re a very competitive university. We have very bright students here. In fact, I was just looking at the numbers; almost 80 percent of our students were in the top 20 percent of their class. We have great entrance scores, et cetera. One of the things I’m excited about for our campus is that we have a lot of intellectual horsepower with our students and our faculty, and so my hope is that NC State continues its emergence as one of the leading research universities in the country. We’re a research powerhouse. A lot of our undergraduates see in kind of a peripheral way because they interact with the faculty, but we lead a lot of big national, high-visibility and high-impact research projects. That’s something I hope our students increasingly benefit from by doing undergraduate research, by getting involved with the faculty, by understanding … it creates a very different environment. We’re a top-100 research university. When you’re at an institution like ours, the faculty are different than let’s say a small liberal arts college because of the nature of the work our faculty do. Increasingly, I hope that our students take advantage of and get involved with the faculty that are doing interesting things at the cutting-edge of their discipline.
Q: Do you have a specific fundraising goal you’re working with or is it just as much as possible?
A: We’re a little reluctant to say it, but here’s the truth: In the nucleus phase of a campaign, your goal is to raise as much money as possible, and then when you publically launch and announce a goal, you have reasonable confidence of success. So we haven’t publically announced our overall goal. Our real goal every year is to raise more than we did the year before. What I will tell you is that we’re really focused on growing the endowment. So you understand what endowment means—it’s money in the bank. It’s money that spends off spendable money every year so you can count on it in perpetuity … forever.
Q: How close are we to hitting the $1 billion mark?
A: We’re very close. We ended June 30 with $984 million. That’s about as close as you can get if you wanted to round. I mean we’re pretty close. Honestly, I’m shocked because people have responded very positively to the campaign. We’ve got major scholarships endowed like the Parks Scholars and the Goodnights Scholars. The Goodnights Scholars are 200 students fully supported from a single scholarship. We continue to grow other scholarships for students across campus, so that’s a big deal. When I got here I said I hoped our endowment was at $1 billion within 10 years. Well it got there in five … almost. So now the board is pushing to double it, and I’m like, ‘come on, man!’ When you set a fundraising goal, you have to be careful that sometimes the economy and what’s going on in the greater macro economy can affect your ability to raise money. We just know we have to raise more private money so we can continue to support our students, keep tuition low, and obtain the best faculty and all the other things that go along with being a world-class university, which is what we’re shooting for.
