 HPC Dutchess Radio welcome back to our presidential series conversations with distinguished leaders from historically black colleges and universities across this great country. And today our distinct honor is to have the distinguished Chancellor of North Carolina A&T State University, INCAT alum, and leading one of the most dynamic periods of growth for an HPC we've seen in generations, Chancellor Harold Martin. So Dr. Martin it is indeed an honor to speak with you again. I'll tell you it's mine, I'll show you. So Aggie Land has unprecedented growth in enrollment, the largest four-year historically black institution in the country at this point. Record growth over the last two to three years in research funding and expenditures. New facilities, athletic success, across the board where any leader would want to be defined as doing their job well, you are doing it. And I can't say that that's rare, but when it's all cylinders, it's certainly something to notice. I mean, to what would you attribute, obviously your experience and your love for the institution makes that possible, but to do all this at one time, did you see it happening this way, this quickly? You know, it's a great question and quite honestly we've been building toward a greater level of success on our campus since my arrival in 2009. Certainly having the history of the university from my former role here on the campus in several capacities and then having, excuse me, worked in the system office and was aware of what was going on across the UNC system, excuse me, created an opportunity for me to take a look at A&T and where there were opportunities and frame out very aggressive strategy with our board of trustees and with our university's constituents. But admit that we would have to make some really, really tough decisions about our university early and people would have to buy into the strategies we were going to implement and over time we should start seeing progress of the institution grow expansion in new programs and research and et cetera. And I think we're beginning to see the evidence of investments made and decisions made years ago that are now beginning to come together and making a big difference for us. How do you make that work? You talked about your time at the system office and you had experience, obviously very successful tenure at Winston-Salem State. But how do you make that case? Is it a chicken and egg proposition where you get with your team and you create a strategic plan and the legislature buys into investing in that and helping to direct student and student service resources to that proposition? Or do you do well when they say, oh, you're doing great. Now, let's see how we can expand upon that. Great question. Well, I think one of the first things we had to do was have a very open and frank sort of discussion with our internal constituents, our board of trustees, the leadership of the institution, faculty and staff on this campus as well. And so one of the very first meetings I held with our university in 2009, August 2009, I took the opportunity to have spent several months evaluating enrollment, degree productivity, looking at benchmarks for A&T and then comparing that data to other comparable universities in the UNC system and comparable universities around the nation as a whole, seeing where there were opportunities before I ever set foot on the campus and then decided in a risky way to say to our university in my very, very first public meeting with the campus to share that data and to accentuate, if you will, areas where there were gaps and our performance against those of comparable universities in the state and around the nation as a whole. And what I mean by comparable universities is universities that are similar in mission and our mission is a land-grant institution and similar in Carnegie class, doctoral research universities. And then what I mean by gaps, let's say enrollment trends, our enrollment was going down and those universities that were comparable in mission and Carnegie class in the UNC system, their enrollments were trending positive and student success, retention, graduation rates, I was at one place, theirs were competitively higher and the other part of the conversation was the fact that those very same universities that were comparable in Carnegie class and similar in mission at its big stem and similar doctoral programs and the like, quite honestly, they would become in Browner, East Carolina University, UNC Charlotte and UNC Greensboro, those were the comparable universities, Carnegie class, for example, and they were increasingly becoming Browner and I took similar universities outside of the state and showed similar gaps in our performance and those universities performance and so and I said to our university and the faculty, in my mind, these gaps suggest opportunities for university. The challenge for us is assess whether we really want to compete with these universities and close these gaps and so I asked the faculty that fundamental question, do we want to compete and I remember the response was somewhat of a quiet, mousy response, yeah we want to compete and so I said well that's a weakest response I think I would possibly ever expect to get started my tenure as chancellor here and so then someone else responded hell yeah we want to compete. I was surprised nobody yelled out Aggie pride that's that's a stunner to me. But you know that's a critically important perspective because the next few slides after there was a commitment to compete suggested big things we were going to have to do. Plan differently, invest more wisely, perform at a higher level, act differently as a university and that meant lots of change in our university and so now none of us knew what all that meant at the time it was just an open-ended conversation and so we began our journey on that day moving forward, beginning to define what it meant to compete, improving customer service, raising academic standards, improving faculty productivity, enhancing our academic facilities, investing in technology and so we we framed those key things out initially before we ever developed any kind of a strategic plan and began to spend money on the things that were wisest. We took money from things that were less important and began to start targeting our resources against those things that mattered most to begin to position our university to start competing and so that process those investments the decisions we began to make have been consistent with investments we've continued to make decisions we've continued to make year-over-year about our university and so we are now are beginning to realize the benefits of those tough decisions that we made years ago. One of the things that's that helps A&T stand out a lot is that it doesn't appear that there's been a siloed approach in that in that way a lot of HBCUs that have tremendous programs of strength that's what you know them for I graduated from Oregon we're known for engineering you know not known for journalists but we're known for engineering but A&T has become known for diverse strength in liberal arts in engineering in agriculture in education so was was that planning phase to say hey look you know here's some here's some growth metrics for each of you each of these schools each of these departments or was it here's a university-wide charge go out and scale this to what you do that's a great question I'll tell you asking a very good question and I'll say to you that when you think about the land grant mission we have to really define what being a land-grant institution meant and being a land-grant institution means that all academic programs contribute to the realization and delivery of our land-grant mission the liberal arts engineering business agriculture education health sciences all of these academic programs help us contribute to being a successful land-grant institution quite honestly and so with that in mind we then backed away and looked at the degree programs on that campus and the colleges that were delivering and I used the analogy as you know I'm an engineer and so we start looking at a in the context of an automotive engine if you are firing on on three of an eight cylinder engine with three of your colleges doing well and the others aren't that ain't good your engines gonna gonna spit and sputter and etc and we were doing that as a university we were spitting and sputtering we're doing some things well but in the grand scheme things with most things we were not doing well and one of the reasons that was true is because we had not made strategic investments across all of our academic programs in a consistent way we're not set clear expectations and outcomes for all of our colleges to perform at a certain level quite honestly and we had not made many changes in our academic programs and our college framework for 50 years or so relative to our academic units schools colleges etc we had added some new degree programs here and there but nothing in a wholesale way and so we made a very very tough decision it was one of the most strategic decisions we made an investment in and that is an academic restructuring we decided to take all of our academic programs before we ever started making new programs and investing in new faculty we took all of academic yield programs took all the degree program put them in a big bucket and then we put them out one by one and put them in new colleges engineering programs tend to only align with other engineering programs but programs out of our College of Art and Science Arts and Sciences which is a large college right we took lots of those programs and broke them up and took the liberal arts degree programs so those align with liberal arts and we put them in a new College of Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences and created a new college for those programs we created a new college called Health Sciences and we took nursing and other programs out of arts and sciences and created a new College of Health Sciences with psychology and and kinesiology and social work and sociology and and nursing and created a new college there and then we took it all of the science programs out of our College of Arts and Sciences and combined those with a school of technology that we had and created a new college of science and technology we hired new deans almost all of those colleges and we began to add new faculty resources to those new colleges in areas where we knew there were new degree program opportunities for enrollment growth that had grown up over the last decade or two that we did not offer on our campus and we began to frame out those new degree programs and we now offer many of those degree programs today on our campus degree programs that student have an interest in today degree programs that were offered at UNC Greensboro they were offered at UNC Charlotte that were offered at East Carolina and other universities that were comparable hours but we weren't offering those programs that gave a bigger interest to our University of African-American students who were going to these PWIs and record numbers now those students showed interest in our university now they will begin to come to our university in record numbers so we had to make some tough decisions now you can imagine this made a number of our faculty very nervous what's gonna happen to me what causes am I going to be housed in what if I don't fit anywhere if you will and so we have to be open and honest and candid about the process everybody's going to be impacted in a similar way and we were very open and clear and transparent about the process amazingly our faculty supported this process in very significant ways because they knew while it had may have some potential negative consequences for them at the moment in the long term it was going to benefit them and others on our campus and it was certainly going to benefit our university in that long term so that restructuring Jarrett was a major tough decision set of tough decisions for a university that's deriving substantial benefits to our institution today you talked about the land-grant mission and that is the one from both federal and other other respects corporate partnerships for example one of the strongest veins of how HBCs run at least as a sector the 19th land-grant historically black institutions that has also come with some measure of controversy because states that have an obligation to match that federal funding to HBCs have not done so and he has been recently in the headlines for one of those discussions among the state legislators of the two schools in Carolina to receive land grant funding there's a disparity between you guys and North Carolina state what are the conversations like with you and your governmental relations folks your alumni with the lawmakers to say hey look you know A&T is we're not slacking here we're tremendous what what is the not to give away any secrets or inside baseball but how do you make that case to the to the lawmakers say look not only do the right thing but do the thing that's going to help you create jobs for black farmers do the things going to help you increase your tax base what what is that case me well one of the things we felt was critical important for us to do is is Hansa University's strengths and areas where we knew had strengths and competitiveness in Hansa University's performance performance in areas that make sense to our legislators enrollment growth student success job placement of our graduates increase in research economic impact in our region and etc etc so we were being smart about making our strategic investments in our institution enhancing our competitiveness and successes and then as we began to see the successes of our university and the the clarity that our university was competing with those institutions in the state that they always valued and funded more competitively began to realize these guys are real these guys are very serious and we begin able to make the case to demonstrate it that our university was performing at a level consistent with those of our peers in the UNC system making significant contributions recruiting top students graduating top students increasing research and increasing innovation and deriving more substantial economic impact of our university in the region and the state as a whole we packaged all of that in a very very competitive way a talking points presentations hosting breakfast meetings without legislative delegates going to rally on a regular basis and sharing materials on our university leaving behind talking points meeting with the leadership of the legislature meeting with the governor for example and in each and every one of those scenarios not only were we educating people about who we are and the competitiveness of our institution the impact of our institution we also were very strategic about the resources we needed to continue to be competitive with those comparable universities in the UNC system and pointed out areas where there was a discrepancy or an inequity in funding and those legislators got the message and as a consequence we've begun to see increasing levels of funding both to elevate our university as a doctor research university in the UNC system if you look at the current budget that's currently that's now under unfortunately it's in debate now with the legislature and the governor it has in it about ten million dollars of operating dollars funds to fund graduate education and research on our campus funds to support new faculty positions on our campus and technology on our campus but also in that budget is funding to bring to a minimal level the required federal mandate of a dollar for dollar match of state funds for dollar dollar match for the federal funds we received from a part of our ag extension and ag research for our university those items are currently in this year's budget several years ago we also received funding support for a new engineering building that's now under construction 130,000 square foot new structures coming out of the ground at this moment so our legislature and our governor now recognize that we are a critical asset to this state and certainly the region where we're located as a university now one of the things you also have to realize as well is that if you look globally at where trends are carrying and where industries are flourishing in almost every aspect of our lives technology is becoming the most critical component entertainment food production and food safety transportation systems communication systems for example education for example in every aspect health every aspect of our lives technology is a key piece being that we are one of the three the four universities with the largest stem production in our state and in particular we are the largest producer of minority stem graduates of not only universities in our state but universities in the nation we are a critical asset to every global company in North Carolina that makes a part of its human resource needs recruiting and retaining top technical talent a diverse technical talent and that's very true also of those industries we're trying to recruit to North Carolina every one of them places as a critical part of their decision-making to move to a location that they must have access to a strong technical diverse workforce we are critical to our state and in many ways our nation meeting those growing demands so we are a critical asset so we have positioned ourselves to be a major asset to our state to our region to the nation as a whole and as a consequence legislators understand that departments of commerce understand that and so investments have been made to ensure that we are continuing to prosper we're continuing to grow and benefit from the investments that the state needs to make an university to continue to be a shining example of what excellence looks like and so we're very excited about what we are in that conversation you route some folks up at the recent me with faculty the back to school kickoff where you talked about you had a similar conversation to what you had nine years ago with you know when what does it look like if we're doing better now it's a conversation what it is what does it look like if we're the best yeah is that a is that a similar I guess acclimation process to get people used to hey we're we're going to be a school that may have soon 20,000 students we're going to be a school that is is hand in hand with Greensboro as a as a campus you know a city a college a college city is that an easy sell to make or do you find that there's some reticence among some of your stakeholders it is a very easy sell to make today I would say the predominance of our stakeholders are very proud of our success today they understand that we are not forsaken in our HBCU history and traditions they recognize that today they recognize that we can both be an HBCU and be excellent at the same time they recognize that today obviously you have to help bring people along so that they recognize what you're trying to accomplish as well as the universe and so we've got lots of stakeholders who are integral part of our discussions on a regular basis but you also have to keep moving the ball you can't if we decided to start resting on our laurels would be one of the worst things we could possibly do there are enormous opportunities ahead of us that I share with our faculty and staff last week some of our best work in my mind now is out in front of us it's ahead of us we've got to continue to position to enhance the excellence of academic programs even more broaden the degree program offerings we provide to this community in this region in the state we've got to continue to increase our research we've got to continue to think beyond what we are today and so I asked really tough questions about how good do we really want to be and so instead of asking the question about competing ten years ago as I did I asked a question this time about how transformative do we want to be right how how much do we want to be a part of helping to change the economic posture of Greensboro and Guilford County and in particular how much do we want to be a part of helping to create wealth and East Greensboro where a university is located this is the area of Greensboro that's the predominance of minority families live and grow and raise their families quite honestly raise their children quite honestly and we are an integral part of what we call East Greensboro and we have to continue to be a part of the leading conversation in leading conversations about how do we ensure that we are helping to attract start-up companies and new companies moving to North Carolina and to this part of the state to set up their shops and manufacturing facilities their headquarters in East Greensboro and bringing retail and jobs and opportunities to this community and so we've been very vocal in this space we've been very clear about this in conversations we've met very extensively with city leadership the manager I said a manager the mayor of the city city council our city council delegates who represented our area of the community for example and I assure you that today this group of individuals are all aligned on in an agreement that we have to do business differently here in Greensboro we must develop strategies so that everyone benefits all areas of our community benefit from economic growth and prosperity quite honestly and we've got to continue to drive those discussions and that's what land-grant institutions do and then the final question for you and again we appreciate your time you've always been regarded sector-wide as one of the you know the really quiet gentlemen of the HBCU president and chancellor hierarchy you're not riled up in meetings when you go out of town you know everybody looks at you kind of like one of the deans of our of our leaders but in recent years you become very much more active on social media and telling jokes on Twitter and catching catching guys on campus who don't have on the anti shirt we got on a duke shirt or something like that was that big was that a process of not becoming more comfortable as a leader but becoming more comfortable with that being a role of a college president and it kind of signals to me that you you got a lot of years ahead of you like you really just hitting your stride and you're gonna do this for a while is that true that's the plan and and and just as I look at our university and areas of opportunity for growth and opportunities for continued success also look at my leadership style and areas for me to personally grow and where I can make a bigger difference by changing the way I do some things quite honestly and I was not very active in social media at all and decided that this would be a great space for me to be able to communicate more effectively with a larger group of our constituents and others in our community and around the nation about the great things we're trying to do here and and try to grow into this space grow more comfortable using social media I think social media can be a pitfall if you're not careful with how it gets managed sir and so I've always tried to use it in a very effective positive healthy way and I try to be a good example of that to our students as a whole as well quite frankly because I certainly want to make sure that as an example to them that we are helping could prepare them to be successful leaders in their professions as entrepreneurs or accountants or engineers or health care providers or whatever they may be I want to leave this institution they've also we also want them to be very successful what they do but also want them to be effective in reaching back into their communities where they grew up and what they're living to bring forward others to be successful as well and so helping to use the tools we have at our disposal to be more impactful and more effective in creating success and and I also believe very firmly about say that campus constituents on a regular basis there's several things I try to rephrase on a regular basis one we're trying to be excellent at everything we do excellence is not cheap so we have to continue to raise money and invest wisely on our campus quite honestly and that if we want to be amongst the largest institutions in America for African-American students attend college then what is going to be our impact we're graduating more graduates in areas of greatest need to our nation if we're not we're not impacting and being a been the largest doesn't mean anything substantive quite honestly and so I'm very much interested in outcomes and impact more than I am being the largest HBC in America in America quite honestly and so we talk often about what difference are we making as a university in our communities in our region and the state and the nation as a whole and so those drive us in very significant ways and one of the great fortunes for me here is that we have an incredible board of trustees to work with that's very businesslike in helping us frame strategy for the future and we have an exceptional leadership team here that works very very well together very collaborative and engaging but we have a great faculty and staff that's now buying into a great and positive future for our university which I'm excited about and athletics as well I always believe that athletics plays a very big part in your university and its image and reputation I've observed how other large universities use the success of athletics to excite alums and fans and fans and friends of the university and as a result those fans and friends write checks and bigger checks right honestly and and I've always been a firm believer that students go to college and want to go to college for their winners they most often universities who win national championships it's an uptick in applications for admissions and they see uptick in private fundraising and we certainly have seen that as evidenced here at A&T and what kind of what kind of pressure does that yield because I think the success that you guys have had not just even in football which is the most notable thing or the most noticeable thing but men's and women's basketball bowling I mean there's a number of things that you guys have won championships in track and field obviously I mean all across the board but does that create a new kind of pressure from alumni to say all right you know we're running all over the meag it's time to think somewhere else and that's one delegation and then you have others who say no no no we we love being in the meag we love running the meag I mean how do you kind of balance with success in sports also comes the spiciness from alumni so how do you sure navigate that space that's a great question as well and then and quite honestly we want to have those kinds of debate we we routinely go through with the UNC system a redefining of our university's peers every university does in the UNC system and as you grow and prosper you have to continually reassess how you benchmark yourself or compare yourself to other organizations the private sector does it other nonprofits do it institutions of higher education are beginning to do so in a much more substantial way I observe that through my role in the central office for our PWIs especially the more successful our PWIs were regularly and routinely identifying their peers and benchmarking themselves against their peers and continually evaluating themselves against national rankings and alike we have to compete in the same space quite honestly and so in athletics in this instance obviously the more we continue to be successful at recruiting successful student athletes and competing successfully in sports more fans of our university ask the question are we thinking about doing other things are we going to remain in the meag are we going to join some other FCS conference similar to what Hampton did a year ago for example are we thinking about moving to FBS and football all of those are relevant questions and so we without exception in conversations with our Board of Trustees after always continually be asking ourselves what's next for our institution how do we remain competitive how do we ensure that we're remaining in the mix of institutions that are attractive to students in the future our ability to continue to retain top faculty and staff on our campus our ability to continue to raise money and so all of those discussions for us are very real and very relevant discussions that we have and will continue to have and out of those will come decisions either to do something different or remain where we are or not seek to move from our R2 research university to an R1 research you have to look at where your resources are going to come from can you afford to do these things and if you elect to do these things would you be able to maintain a high level of competitiveness as well and so we want to continue to be smart about what we're doing here and so we don't shy away from the conversations there are very passionate Aggies who love being where we are love to me act and don't want to do anything differently there's a growing population who are very competitive in their workplace they're doing exceedingly well in their professions and they know what competition looks like and they know what the market share looks like and they want to make sure that they are on the market continues to think the same way in a business like way as well and so