 The point is to you. Yeah. Now can you fuck you new. You better not do this to us. You gotta give in. That'd be so cheap to me. Let's go get the new year's credits. New year's credits? There we go. New year's credits? Oh, yeah. We'll give you two of them. Yeah. Let's stop this. Oh, really? I'm gonna take a left. I'm gonna put in about a minute for the 45 seconds. Did you guys get it? Yeah. You really love that? You see a whole lot of yak in here. All right? Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Three. Four. Five. Four. Five. Five. Four. Five. Six. Six. Seven. Yeah, we're live now, we have to see other women, because that's what I'm looking for, but I can't get it to Taylor. No, I know I do. No, we're live now. I am Lynn. Good to meet you. You're here. That's a good thing. There are worse places you need to be able to go every day. The traffic. Yeah. It's still kind of coming down. Oh, there you are. It's the same time. Yeah. It took a while, but we finally got you back. Yeah. Yeah. Is Richard coming? He's all right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to try to get our program underway in a moment. If you'd like to find a seat at a table where there is one, we've got plenty of seats around the room still to get comfortable. Thank you all for, wow, that was a compliant group right there. I tell you what, thank you all for joining us today for the program. We are excited to be here in the Green City and share some wonderful information about the School of Science and Mathematics and some of our recent efforts out in this region of the state, particularly with the new campus we're building in Washington. We've got a full program today. And so here's the ground rules of the program. Okay. First, you have those cell phones on you like I do. You know what to do. Your mind's on loud rain in case my boss called, but he's here now, so I'm going to put it on mute. And so if you are kind enough to do the same, we would appreciate that. If you need the restroom at any point during the program, it's just down the hall of the right here. And we do encourage you to please enjoy your lunch while we're having the program today. We're trying to make the most of your time and be efficient with it. So lunch has already been served for you and you may enjoy that during the course of the next 75 to 90 minutes of our program. It's a full agenda. We're going to take full advantage of this opportunity to give you tons of information. And there will be opportunities along the way to invite questions and comments from all of you. So thank you again for being here. We're going to begin with a special welcome from Dean Fatima Mili, right over here from UNC Charlotte College of Computing and Informatics. How's that? Thank you for being here. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for the invitation. On behalf of all my colleagues in UNC Charlotte and we have several of them here in the room, we are thrilled to be here. We are thrilled to be partnered with NCSSM. And I think an event like this is an illustration of the leadership of NCSSM, the spirit of innovation and agent of change for all of our students and for economic development. UNC Charlotte shares quite a bit with NCSSM in terms of mission, in terms of fashion, in terms of values. But I will say a little bit about UNC Charlotte and the College of Computing and Informatics. And hopefully, after Chancellor Robert talks, you will see that all of these connections are there. So UNC Charlotte doesn't need an introduction, but I'll go ahead and do that. It's a public, urban research university. It's a public university. We're really here to serve the state, to serve our students. We embrace the students who come to us with all of their diversity, diversity in skills and needs and experience. And they do amazing things with us. And we are very proud of the outreach or of the diversity of the students who come to us and who go on and should see them go. We are an urban university. And as an urban university, we have a very strong sense of place. I just wanted to watch a video by Dr. Robert. He used an expression using the power of place or something like that. I thought I would use it, but I don't do it. To revise exactly what he said. But I thought it's a very powerful expression of, yes, what we do is global. The impact of what we do is we address global problems, but we do it using the power of the resources that we have and taking into account the needs of our own community. And this is reflected pretty much in everything we do, including the research that we do. And that's the third characteristic of UNC Charlotte. It's a research university. And the intensity of research going on in UNC Charlotte is really impressive. And I will mention a couple of numbers that can give you an idea of the type of the level of research that happens in UNC Charlotte. And I can much more easily talk about my own college, the College of Computing and Informatics. More than 80% of our faculty have the research funding. So if you're outside academia, it may not mean much to you. That's higher than NC State. Is anybody from NC State? So we're in good company. So another number, the average funding of our faculty is 270,000 per year. And that's also a very good number. And this keeping in mind that our faculty also teach larger number of students, teach more diverse students, and so forth. So again, the things that the faculty and staff of UNC Charlotte do in terms of research among other things is truly amazing. I will say one more number and that will be the end of my dragging part. So in terms of citation, when we do research, that's fine. We publish and we publish for each other. We read each other's papers and the question is how much impact does it have? And there are different ways of measuring impact. One of the ways to measure it is how many people cite you. And when we look at the number of citations of faculty in CCI at UNC Charlotte, we are number 13 in the nation. So again, when we say we are a research university, we're not making that up. It really is backed up by all kinds of data and information. And the reason I'm insisting is that very often we don't really overlook that tradition. And we really want to do that. So a few more things about the College of Computing and Informatics. One of the things that we think is quite distinctive in the college is that we are very aware of the fact that technology is transformative. Technology is transformative. It is part of almost any solution. It can also be part of the problem sometimes if we don't pay close attention. If we are not intentional about what is the impact of the technology that we are producing. And in this respect, in the College of Computing and Informatics, we are very intentional really examining our work curriculum in a way to make sure that we equip all of our students with the habit of mind of always asking a question. I'm designing something, I'm developing something, I'm participating in something, always asking a question. Not just who are the stockholders of this, but who are the stakeholders. And that's a much, much bigger group. Who is impacted by this? Who does this affect? Who pays for it? And most of the time we tend not to ask that question. Again, we don't have that habit of do that every single time. So again, equip them with a habit of mind to always think of the social and ethical implications that we do. And also equip them with the cognitive tools to do that. And we are developing, we are in the process of writing our undergraduate curriculum in data science. And that is a theme that is we throughout. Every year we make sure that the students in their projects and everything that they do. That they cannot design anything without being able to answer these questions. And we are going beyond the education. Also in terms of research, we would like to make it also a practice that every thesis that is published, some of the questions we ask is, who does this impact? What, again, who pays for it and pays in a very broad sense. So, again, that's something that we think is really unique. And looking at other colleges around the country, we are really pioneering this. Making sure that our curriculum addresses the stake. And we know how current these issues are. We hear about them everywhere, every time in the news. And we tend to decouple those who produce the technology. And then those who think about what implications they have. And also those who suffer the consequences or benefit from these. So, I invite all of us to keep that in mind and to make sure that we cross all of these themes and make sure that they are addressed together. So, this is a bit of a glimpse of some of the things that we, who we are in UNC Charlotte. And again, if after Dr. Roberts speaks, you keep wondering what is the connection I'll give you, at least one. We both have history in Michigan. We're both Michiganders, so if nothing else, we have that. Thank you so much. Welcome all. And thank you so much for organizing this and for inviting me. Dean Milley, for taking the time out today to be here. I really appreciate your comments and I think you will see some connections when we get to the end of my slides beyond the Michigan connection. And I also want to thank all of you for taking time out of your day to be with us today as well. My name is Todd Roberts. I'm the Chancellor at NCSSM. We're doing a series of these events around the state to focus in on a couple of things. One, our efforts to grow what we do in the area of data science for students across North Carolina and the world and to highlight our second campus that we're opening in Morganson, North Carolina which is going to have a unique focus on the area of data science in an interdisciplinary way and want to make sure you're aware of both of those and the folks in this room. We think there's potentially some great partners here like UNC Charlotte and Dean Milley who are developing an undergraduate curriculum in the area of data science. Our goal was to develop a model curriculum in the data science at the secondary level which there are none and our institution has been a leader now for 39 years and an innovator in the STEM field and we think this is an area that's important for us to lead in going forward and I'll touch on that in just a little bit. But I want to give just an overview of the school and I see a lot of familiar faces here and I have to meet some new folks who've had children graduate from the schools. Some of this for those of you who know the school well, you'll nod your head I hope and you probably can do the presentation for that part of it. And we're here in Charlotte in particular today to focus on one sector of data science in a way and that's the impact of data science in the financial sector and no place better to do that than Charlotte, North Carolina and nobody better to do that than our keynote speaker Carl Rideen who's an 89 alum of the school and is a co-founder and CEO of Precision Render who is a leader in the Fintech space globally so he'll be able to highlight and emphasize that point. But just a little bit about the school, we opened our doors in 1980 and if you go back to the first slide that's the campus in Durham up there with the aerial photos we can take taken by one of our students from the groan that he built so that's the Durham campus and Kevin will talk a little bit more about the future campus at the bottom in Morganton. But we opened in 1980 as the first school of like nine in the world and so 39 years later we've had the great fortune to educate a lot of amazing young people in North Carolina and had the great support of the state to do that over all of these years. And we were a model for another 18 schools like us around the world. There's 11 others in the United States, states that have them and we just finished recently in the past couple years in partnering with the school of Thailand that's open to school that's modeled after NCSSN. We're also a part of the University of North Carolina system some that don't know the school don't realize that we're one of the 17 constituent campuses of the University of North Carolina. So UNC Charlotte is one of those 16 other university constituent campuses and so we're treated just like UNC Charlotte within the big scheme of the UNC system and so it's been a great place for us to be as a full constituent since 2007 and unlike in some ways maybe the university campuses we're heavily dependent on state funding because the state has for 38 years an amazing way provided this type of education that our students get at the school with no cost to them and so we're heavily dependent on state funding but what that has allowed is for students no matter if there's a family's financial ability to be able to have this kind of education that is in my opinion the best high school education in the United States. I always think about UNC SSN and an opportunity because of the fact that we educate students from all over North Carolina and just to give you a little bit of a flavor of what that looks like we bring students in legislatively mandated from all 13 of the congressional districts in North Carolina so we get great diversity on campus, geographic and otherwise we have 680 residential students who live in Durham, 11th and 12th graders and then as you can see we educate another 400 students through our online program those are students that apply just like residential but maybe didn't normally come and so we teach them in a virtual program and we also partner with schools across North Carolina to teach another roughly 450 students through synchronous interactive video conference our teachers are teaching in our studios and our campus to a class of 25 students and those 25 students may be from 8 different high schools in North Carolina, high level student courses that they can't necessarily get in their home community and the state has allowed us to do that at no cost to all of these and so really broadened opportunities across North Carolina and we also have a robust summer program as you can see teaching more than 1100 students in our various programs so nothing I think highlights is better than if you take the map of North Carolina we're touching students from every county in North Carolina and many students along the way, 2,500, a little more than 2,500 through our various programs this past year in North Carolina so we have a broad reach and helping to educate kids across the state and I like to think about when you give talented students from across our state an opportunity, great things happen so if you look at a little bit of that data almost all of our students go on to four year colleges and universities the ones that don't typically might have started a company and they see that as a better route than maybe the four year degree and it has been for many of them and so we also have an ethic of community service at our schools since its beginning and our students do extremely well across the country and world and academic competitions you often hear about students in the United States in particular North Carolina not able to compete on the global stage and that's just not true you take talented kids like those we have and they do things like win the Singapore international mathematics competition against 48 other countries across the globe and so again opportunity is equals achievement for students just to highlight some of our alumni and what we do, Christina is an astronaut and she's readying to go to the International Space Station and so this spring we hope that she'll be up at the space station talking back to students on our campus at NCSSM so she's preparing to make that trip as we speak and we have about 68% of our students go on to earn their degrees in STEM fields which is three times greater than the national average and that's really what our school was set up to do build those opportunities and grow that talent here in North Carolina and then our alumni at which we have about 10,000 alumni now a large portion, a little more than 60% live and work in North Carolina and you can see a little bit of a list of what they do and through their efforts for our state contribute back about 500 million in economic impact annually to the state of North Carolina the state invests about 22 million on us to operate our school and so that's a pretty good return on the state's investment over all of these years and this is just a few of our alumni that you see there and you'll hear from Carl and just a minute one of the things I wanted to talk about in reference to data science is the unique thing about our school is the curriculum as a part of the university system we have really total control over the curriculum and so our teachers have over the years developed a really engaging curriculum in all areas we have 30, more than 30 different math classes at NCSSM and we have students in our two years students that will take 12 math classes over that two-year period at NCSSM so there's plenty of different opportunities across the curriculum and then another big thing we try to focus on is giving students real-world learning experiences and so whether that's two days a week or on campus or during the summer students have opportunities to do research at great universities like some students in the summer who live in Charlotte the research at UNC Charlotte or in the triangle at our university there, the RTP one of the fastest growing areas in our curriculum is five years ago we did not have a department of engineering computer science we had some courses but we didn't have an apartment and now we have a full-fledged department with seven or eight different faculty in the department teaching this variety of courses that you see and one of the areas that we see a real demand from students and an opportunity for the institution is in the area of data science if you look at the state of North Carolina is really seeing data science as the future of one of the key ingredients in the future data science is a real opportunity space for us in our state and so one of the things that we need to be doing is to prepare those students who are going to be part of that workforce and not only that but part of our mission is to prepare students who are going to be leaders in those fields and so we see a real opportunity at the high school level to develop some curriculum in this space that will be a model not only for North Carolina but for the country the second part of our mission is to advance the education of the state and we've done that over the years by helping to create opportunities and share those and this is an area that we think we have a real opportunity so we are going to be part of the series of events and we look forward to working with UNC Charlotte and their department on helping us think about what this looks like at the high school level a model program and we also are really interested in developing a particular institute for artificial intelligence and machine learning because as was mentioned it's not just about the technology it's the components that go into that in terms of the entrepreneurship and the ethical issues that are related to data science and particularly AI and machine learning so we're in the process of doing this and our campus in Morganton gives us a unique opportunity from the ground up to think about what this looks like in a curriculum in high school and so at this time I'm going to turn it over to Max or just a little intro for Kevin when we started the conversation about opening a second campus in Morganton, North Carolina the conversation began really about four years ago with the state and we were through the North Carolina Connect model program were able to get funding for this and so we brought on Kevin not quite two years ago to help lead this project and has done a fantastic job of going from where it was just a conversation to as you'll see now a reality that will open in 2021 so it's exciting times for NCSSM and for the state that we look forward to the role we can continue to play in helping to move the state forward in serving the kids of North Carolina so at this time I'm going to turn it over to Kevin Thank you Chancellor Robert so my hope here in the next few moments is to just walk you through a snapshot of how we got here with the second campus that is coming in Morganton and what we really see is the tremendous opportunity for the institution and for the state to maximize the impact around this second physical location out in the western part of North Carolina before I do that, I think the best illustration we have for all the wonderful things you've heard about NCSSM is our alumni and I just want to ask our alumni in the room if they could just raise their hand real high, show some pride here these folks, there we go this is a wonderful cross section of individuals who are achieving amazing things across a number of businesses and industries and I hope that you will have an opportunity before we all scatter at the end of the program to just visit with and chat with some of these folks for a few moments to understand the compression and impact that the institution had on them and how they have really paid it forward in the state, they're doing tremendous things and some have come from as far away as South Carolina today to be with us not across the border, the coast so it's very appreciated that you all are with us today so as we look at the second campus that is coming to Morganton one of the reasons that we're doing this is simply there's no room at the end if you look at the Durham campus it is land locked our alumni would tell you that it's about 27 acres and we make the very most of it, we serve about 680 students on site in that campus and when the state started to recognize that we could grow no more in our residential program the question was called how could we grow the feasibility of the study was conducted as Chancellor Roberts referenced and that led to the identification of Morganton as a possible site many folks had asked me why Morganton is a beautiful place it's a wonderful place but of all the places in North Carolina why Morganton there's really two primary reasons that are important to consider one is that it has 800 acres of publicly held land in the center of Morganton that are possibilities for campus like this that do not require the purchase of land to put it on and so that is a very real consideration for the state the second reason is because there is a huge groundswell support throughout the Hickory and the Norm Morganton area extending out to Asheville, up to Boone, down to Charlotte, folks who are really encouraging the state to look west for the second campus of this institution and Morganton really jumped out as an opportunity because it was central to all of these possible places we will interface with the new campus so with that the institution learned of Morganton's inclusion in the Connect MC bond $58 million was appropriated in that bond as soon as it passed in March of 2016 and that point forward the institution got its marching orders to make plans to build and then operate a second campus in Morganton for 300 students that would open in August of 2021 so we are on the clock and we are still on the timeline holding to that commitment with the state and looking to make this vision a reality it is important to note that the $58 million wasn't exactly well informed from present day construction dollars needed for projects such as this nor the scope of activity required for a campus like this this is not going to look like a high school that may pop up in any community around the state it is a residential program it has different needs for facilities for operation and as a result we have a different size budget than was originally conceived for the idea of the second campus because of that the state has come through in a significant way in the last session to provide an additional $15 million in funding for the construction of this campus so that brings our total to $73 million that has been made available through the state to construct the Morganton campus we have a little bit more we have to raise we are going to do that and open it in 2021 we are proud of what we are able to deliver some defining features these features came out of some work we did with the friday institute at mc state university and in our core planning team process last year in 2017 we wanted to grapple with some really core questions to the campus of morganton and the institution overall things such as the naming convention for the campus well we have the same application standards the same faculty credentialing standards the same academic calendar these were all open questions because our institution has never built a second campus before and so we needed to understand exactly what's going to look the same and what maybe will look a little different the defining features articulate ways that we are going to hold true to the standards of the institution that have grown and evolved over the last 39 years and so you can see on there we are going to have one application for the institution a student applies they will have the same standard for admission in any program whether it's online, in Durham, in morganton students will have the choice of deciding what's their top choice that's the funnel they'll go into first and then they'll continue to advance into other funnels for consideration if they list other programs they want to compete for same with faculty and staff we're going to be hiring the same quality of personnel we've had all these years in Durham in fact some of the folks in Durham are chomping at the big to try to move out to morganton but we are going to have about 100 positions that we intend to fill full time in morganton by the time we open the campus in 2021 and you can see a number of other elements referenced here that speak to these core questions that we examined as it relates to data science some of the initial work that we did with the friday institute with our core planning team explored where there may be space for some innovation in our curriculum we have kind of our academic core from Durham from all these years and we intend very much to stay true to that to have our humanities division in computer science and engineering science and mathematics but around the edges there was some awareness from our core planning team maybe we could start to operationalize some concentrations on this campus that can expose students in a very intentional way to some pathways related to this emerging area of data science and so we see it very much as an interdisciplinary concept and one that touches any number of fields and disciplines we've only listed six here because these have risen to the top through the exploratory work and thus far an asset inventory we did throughout western North Carolina to understand where we could see intersections with educational and industry partners we're exploring that today we'll be doing so again tomorrow in Shelby an event focused more on renewable energy in data science and then we are intending to have two more events later this fall one in the triangle next month and then one in Asheville in November and you'll learn about those with some information we put out in the weeks ahead those will focus more on technology and climate science and sustainable agriculture in particular so this is not a one-time conversation it's the start of an ongoing series of conversations that will feed into our academic program activities over the next 16 to 18 months as we develop the curriculum, the catalog and so on for the campus this is a recap just in case any of you go back and see your legislators tell them we thank them in this event please we appreciate that we did receive the $15 million in support as well as some critical startup funding to be able to hire some positions and have some critical operating dollars to begin this work our institution does not have a lot of bandwidth to expand our portfolio of service and activity without funding to do it and so as a result we made some appeals to the legislature and they came through 100% on our ask this last session and now those asks will continue over the next three to four years as we build up our operating funding to a point of full-scale scope of campus we're in phase two of our planning I like to honestly tell folks I have no idea how many phases there are but this is the second and so we are excited to be here we are at the point now where we have five steering teams that we are forming some are already in place some are being built out as we speak so by the end of this calendar year we anticipate that all five will be in operation and they are examining different elements of really operationalizing the core planning teams master plan for the campus and so they are thinking about things like external engagement bringing partnerships into play, the operation and infrastructure of the campus really looking at best practices not just for how we operationalize the infrastructure but how we deploy personnel how we achieve efficiencies on that campus and overall in the institution we are forming synergies with regional partners in Worgenton and Burke County throughout the Univore and beyond our academic program and student experience teams are looking to begin their work at mid-fall and they will really take the next step in articulating precisely what kind of curriculum we are going to deploy on site the faculty we will need to do that so we can get into that level of granular consideration the student experience steering team will look more at what will student life be like on this campus as it relates to athletics and clubs and student government, intersections with the community, service learning all these different activities that are part parcel with our experience today but also very driven by the context in Durham and so we have a different context to be mindful of out in Worgenton and finally the teaching and learning collaboratory this is really a blue sky consideration for our work with the Worgenton campus part of our mission in fact half of our mission is to advance public education throughout the state of North Carolina there's been an open question raised as to the idea of physically locating some activity in Worgenton on this campus that would really persist in engaging K-12 higher education as well as our friends excuse me here in some regional think tank this is why your front is supposed to be muted people no one listens to me so we are excited at this opportunity to do just that the last part of this is just to review the project scope as it relates to the campus itself maybe a few of you in the room are excited about what is actually going to be constructed on site we have 73 million dollars to build out renovation and new construction of the campus the site here I'm going to use this pointer to show I-40 for those of you familiar with it on the bottom of this pentagon is really there's 103 and 104 if you're driving out to Asheville you'll go right past this in Worgenton give us a call stop in and see the site we're going to be located in this area right here and this is a zoom in of it right next door to the North Carolina School for the Deaf and just to the north of western Piedmont Community College our campus is going to be on 62 and a half acres the developed campus is actually only about 23 acres right here but we've got some woods and so we're going to have a nice set of green space on this campus on this rolling terrain in Burke County the campus includes all of this except for this future wellness center this is identified as what we'll be raising private support to build out and hope to have as a traveling project that would open in 2022 is our goal the wellness center itself this is the rendering of it for the low low price of 10 million dollars it's yours so give me a call if you're interested to be able to try something new in Worganton and that is to package all of these wellness functions in one space so in Durham they've been decentralized historically where we have recreation, a health clinic, counseling services, athletic training and so on we want to bring them under one roof and give them all the exposure and connectivity that they can enjoy in one facility so that's the goal with this new structure this is a rendering we just got developed at the core of the campus it's very exciting to see it with life occurring on that campus this building is Goodwin and behind here is Joiner Hall these are historic renovation projects new construction would be the wellness center, the commons the dorm and then we also have the barn out of view after today's presentation you're going to get this presentation on email and I would invite you to click right here when you do and you'll see a fly-through of the campus from really the ground level of all the new buildings being created that's your quick snapshot of what we're doing out in Worthington again, the work is ongoing we started it, the ramp up in advanced planning last year we're continuing through the active phase of work and we're going to move forward with hiring personnel, brain non-steering teams and having more of a presence on site in the next 18 months Goldbean, August 2021 we're open for business with our first class any questions about anything I shared that either I went through too quick through or something I didn't cover that time I read two questions if there are any at this point, no questions that's a sign of a great presenter right there so we're going to just zip right along here I have the pleasure to introduce to you Carl Rydine who is one of our all-star alumni for the School of Science and Math and I think I could go on and on about Carl, he wouldn't appreciate that instead I'm going to say one thing about him and that is he is the example of how an alumnus or an alumna can make an impression on their institution give back in a way that is meaningful, impactful and allows students to realize opportunities that perhaps we're not there during one's own experience Carl has done this and that, he's been a model for us as an institution, he served on every board we have probably multiple times and we appreciate his service to the school, the state and to be here today to share with it his presentation with us, thank you Carl so I don't have a presentation so I was just going to talk and for those of you who have, there's a couple of folks from my team I'm good at telling stories and when I get started sometimes it's the saying around the office that you just got Carl which means it got you into an office and I told you a story and I think it would be an affectionate link I hope it would be an affectionate link so why don't we try these three parts and try to keep it to 10 minutes or so one is why I'm so passionate about the school and why I care so deeply about it I'll talk to the chancellor about the school has had a transformative impact on my life and the trajectory of my life and it's really a debt that can't be repaid if they're an equity investor in my future so I feel the need to continuously give back and pay it forward and provide those opportunities to other students and also to see it expanded so I want to talk about three things one is why I'm so passionate the second thing is Morganton and what it means for the school and what I've seen as an outsider I see it kind of like the flicker within the faculty of the school and within the community as a renewal process and I think that's really important and the third piece I'll touch on which I may give short duty to is what I truly believe is the transformative impact of AI machine learning data science on the future so the school's mission is wonderful I helped a strategy team create it or part of it but I'm going down to one simple statement the goal of the school is to build the leaders that the world is going to need 20 years from now so we've got to think about where the world is going to be when I was at the school I was lucky enough to go there they had a Bax and an UV 4000 which for those who know is a mini computer up in the top of Watts Hall and for students you had a Commodore 64 an Amiga PC, AT or something in your dorm there was a set of kids on my hall who competed in the it was the world math modeling competition and the problem was pretty fascinating it was here's the inventory of all the it was the 80s so it was Don Johnson and the running and stuff and the problem they gave was here's the inventory of all the assets the US Coast Guard has along the coast of Florida and the Gulf here's the range and the distance from they can be seen, their fuel economy all the parameters that the drug smugglers used to get shipments into the US how do you optimally deploy those assets along the coast of the US that's a pretty tough problem and these kids strung telephone wire through the trees from the back to the MV in the top of we didn't have the internet or networking or wifi they strung telephone wire through the trees into the dorm down through the hallway into their rooms and were constantly running simulations and then went to Washington DC presented their findings competed against Stanford, MIT Berkeley all the big names and then they won the competition it was the national undergraduate competition for math modeling they called him the war they thought it was a small school in North Carolina that was going to win this thing I thought it was a small college in North Carolina the kids come up and they're high school students they're like wait you can't win this and the chancellor at the time to his credit said well technically the rule says it's open to any undergraduate institution and you don't get much more undergraduate than high school and they let him keep the award but then they closed down the competition for future years so the saving embarrassment of the other folks a little bit about me and how I ended up among the group of folks like that I was in Michigan North Carolina single parent household with my mother she was a waitress sold radio advertising for our country music station I was telling Laura on the ride up here I actually have met Waylon really and all the boys but I was a free lunch kid in school I tested really high on all the tests I was in the AG program the GT program I used to join the folks in Raleigh where you would figure out what to call us but in 8th grade I probably missed it 25 days in school just not showing up I probably spent another 20 in school suspension nothing horrible I do something mildly funny against the rules and they would say you know I got to put you in school and I would go and the reason was I was bored out of my mind I wasn't being challenged to the three that was necessary I was a high B student all those things 9th grade had a teacher and it was Ms. Joyner she was teaching geometry which was an advanced class for about all of junior high school in Wayne County and she said my job is not to teach to the bottom my job is to teach to the top I'm going to make sure no child here is left unchallenged because this is the top class we offer the first time I sat up in my chair and I said this is home this is what I've been waiting for that year I missed one day of school I was really ill I had 100 average in all of my classes and the next year I was president of the honor society that I had never been a member of and the reason was because Ms. Joyner challenged me right in 10th grade I went to southern only high school and nice people there but I was with two teachers kind of read from the book and I could see myself kind of backsliding to where I was and Ms. Joyner reached out to me she said you know they built a school for kids like you it's in Durham where you need to go so I applied in the interview process interviewed Ross Baker who taught embryology and evolution and I told her in the interview I said we need to build a school for kids like me and she let me in and she agreed I guess when I was there for the first time I was around who's parents were doctors and professors and saw the world differently and the kids who won that math competition the kids who were taking the highest math possible you get to see that they put their pants on one leg at a time literally you get to see they put their pants on one leg at a time and they're just like you and I will tell you the experience I had going to that school really did change the trajectory of my life I went on to NC State it's really like it was weird because I was never before IBM the advanced medical device start-up went back to MIT which by the way I didn't know what MIT was I didn't know what that meant and so being exposed to it at the school I got a bachelor's degree in MBA and worked at Bain was in the initial capital business started a business in 2009 which was precision lender we've then grown it to about 150 people spread around the world with offices now in Charlotte, Kerry London, Sydney Manhattan we opened some other ones so I think that's it for now and we employ quite a few people here in the state and we built a great place we've got great partnerships with banks around the world from Bank of America to the United States here today and why what I'm so passionate about the school is I think about where I would be without the school I wouldn't have been a statistic I would have never been a dropout I would have never, the stuff I was doing to get this was to put me in jail or anything it was just I was going to be mumbled through and one of the things that I think about is in North Carolina our most precious resource is the young people we have and I think in many ways our education system all good it kind of swanders that natural natural resource it doesn't let them be all they can be and the schools motto which I love which is I accept the greater challenge they attract a certain type of kids who when the proposition you give them is leave all your high school friends that you've known forever where you're probably going to be number one in your class be challenged like never before academically, socially, every way possible and you probably have no hope of being number one in your class here you're probably going to have a moment where you go oh god what's going to happen to you and the kids are like they're a whole different breed and you attract them and you give them a place in the community which I think is quite amazing so I was listening on this board but Eric Trollen was on there he scratched the surface of a lot of utilities in North Carolina Red Hat was built around Eric Trollen Pendo was also built around Eric Trollen in Raleigh in precision lender and there's plenty of others I teach an entrepreneurship class there and how folks come back in Laura's class Alan Klein is a partner out of this equity partner he was a creator of Fentango which you probably use to book movies you kind of dig under the surface and you start finding these things and I tell folks if we can simply find a way to keep all the talent we have in the state keep them here in the state the economic impact we have in this state would be mind boggling we talk about $22 million a year into the school $500 million of impact if you have a machine you put $22 million in it gives you back $500 million how much do you put in the machine? you put more into it so when the rest of part two why I'm so passionate is I had a chance to come to this school and it wouldn't have been a significant impact on my life when the opportunity to open a western campus opened up for me I look at it every year I don't know how many students you had to apply last year but we turn away an enormous number of students that I know would have the school would have the same impact and they would have the same impact and the world and so the chance to expand that both through distance education through outreach through the interactive video conferencing and through another campus and expanding that educational opportunity I think is absolutely critical and I think it's an amazing thing also doing it on the western part of the state to fully engage the western part the businesses, the community the academic institutions, the western part of the state just as the school is done in the triangle really really well there's some magic that we can I think transplant to the western part of the state the last piece I want to talk about and then I'll stop is what I truly believe is the transformative nature of AI machine learning and folks talk about it as the fourth industrial resolution I think it probably is when I was starting out at school science and math again we didn't have internet or wifi or smart phones or any of those things so they started telephone work through the trees to make that stuff work I was starting to see that within the school with the kids building robots, building vision systems vision systems that seems magical to me where it can automatically track a ball and catch a ball and this is amazing stuff and the kids are doing it on their own learning on their own and pulling it in and the school actually gave the platform for the last 40 years was the impact that computers and digital technology have had on our world and the school I think led that and you can see that with Aristotle who had had and I think building leaders in the world that the world is going to be 20 years from now the changes that AI machine learning are going to have across every aspect financial technologies environmental technologies, all the things is going to be staggering and we have to build the leaders who know how to not just build the technology but to build it with the right purpose for the right ends and to be aware of all of the consequences in social, economic, ethical everything and the school is really amazing at building this across interdisciplinary things it can do it actually much more nibbly than a university even and so I'm working with the Chancellor now to build that institute within the school and I'd love for you guys to join and help us on that thank you guys for listening and for being here today and speaking with us and as an example and quite frankly Carl mentioned the many alumni but when he tells his story about the impact on the school and his life and the transformational nature of it that really captures the essence of what the founders of the school intended when they opened the school so at this point we're to turn over to my colleague Brock Winslow who's going to help facilitate a panel discussion a number of the folks that have already spoken to me and Carl and some others who are going to join us here on the panel discussion with some props around the topic of data science and its importance and we also will have some opportunity to open it up to the audience as well so Brock and I'll invite our panelists up and we'll get you guys seated up here I think the first thing I'll do is um we'll start here let's start and I'll just ask you all to introduce yourselves and your role please, thank you thank you so much hello I'm Trevor Runberg I work at Bank of America the street precision lender is the solution that we have implemented in the wholesale bank or the global bank so the clients that we serve that are really commercial clients anywhere from about $5 million in revenue all the way up to our Fortune 500 companies whether they have cash flow loans or real estate loans we think about the profitability of those loans and what those loans provide us the opportunity to do with our clients whether it's selling additional services whether it's advisory services or access to capital markets or basic market management and this is the one of the precision lenders solution helps us make better decisions how do we use data around making better decisions hey good afternoon Catherine Briggs and I'm with that precision lender and I lead the development so we grab new business and then also the client success so we take those clients like a bank at Bank of America and we make sure we continue to deliver a measurable and increasing value for those clients I'm Laura Jackson and I'm NCSSM class of 90 did you mention you were like it's already up there you can't undo that you may have heard of the 1990 science and math lady unicorn and basketball team we went 24 and 30 that year and I work now at precision lender I came here from SAS and I have been doing data science before data science was cool it was called predictive modeling my background is in operations research and computer science from William and Mary and NC State and I have been so fortunate to come to precision lender to help build the brain of Andy she's our assistant who knows how to help deliver insights to help the people that work at Bank of America and our other clients to price loans were informed based on based on past data so you guys knew who I am I told the stories I'm class of 89 at science and math folks you're there for two years so Laura is my junior KV is her junior forever they're your junior I'll just speak loudly interested to build on some of Carl's thoughts about where he grew up in North Carolina and the impact that science and math had on you then maybe even in ways that you never could have foreseen to help you be where you are now just to kind of kick it off since we have so many alumni of this community and the audience Trevor asked me that same question so I would say I was probably on a reasonably good path I was here in Charlotte at Myers Park High School for me though science and math as an only child it was really the first time I was around with a lot of other kids and I mean a lot of other kids in your house to 10 or 20 kids on your dorm hall and then the diversity of that you guys know what Myers Park looks like it looked even less diverse 30 years ago or 20 years ago so that was phenomenal and then just the independence that these young kids get they're allowed to make mistakes but it's in a safe way where they're supported by the faculty and the dorm counselors and the rest really transformative and then I would say the last thing I didn't even think about it so I'll mention something but certainly there's kind of gender norms even more so 20 or so years ago I was here when Ashley Ryder was there who is one of the smartest math folks and I was like oh my gosh a woman a girl is the smartest in our school because there is usually one that's always the smartest and so that was really you didn't see a lot of that here in Charlotte that was the impact I think the biggest impact for me was socially coming from not being challenged as you mentioned I definitely wasn't headed towards jail or anything or even in school suspension but to suddenly be just another fish in the sea of fishes and to feel normal or average to have I was hungry for more and more more challenge in my class work but to be able to share that hunger and passion with a bunch of other kids that was huge Oh remind me where you grew up Born in South Carolina by the grace of God came to North Carolina and I grew up in Statesville and then moved to Durham just before starting out I'll let you keep the microphone and we'll just sort of work it this way but sort of another question just sort of on our discussion in regard to the employees and precision might be something of an exception because they're coming from science and math maybe but or in terms of the students that you're seeing coming to your school are we doing a good job of these days in pairing young people for the kinds of careers that you offer and precision render the kinds of workforce you need and like American for the type of education that you can offer So the question is are you doing a good job and in any case Carolina in general I think So let me speak to kind of what I've heard here which is this is the exact type of employee that I'm looking for if I think back to three years ago is I run a strategy function that looks across our wholesale portfolio which is a very large portfolio I would say that 90% of my staff had a very clear business background came from the line understood how we delivered to the client if you look at my staff today I would say upwards of about 40-45% have some level of quantitative ability some level of coding ability advanced coding advanced math backgrounds came through the bank in our quantitative analyst programs so it's a key need in kind of understanding how we deliver information to analytics to really making better decisions because it's not just you got the data and it shows up right there's a huge chain of events that need to happen in terms of what you do with that data and how you actually bring it to bear for making better decisions so it's very important to me so I'm not going to ask your question I'm not going to answer your question directly the question is are the students who are coming to us prepare the way they should be and we think about it completely differently in the sense that traditionally universities have used the mindset of filter we want this specific profile this specific preparation this specific behavior and you come in we filter you out you're in or you're out and that has as a result of that we have struggled with diversity for a long time in addition we cannot compare ourselves to the students who come to us today there are different generation different needs different anxieties and different assets that we didn't have so until we open up that window and say forget the mom that I have let me see what I have here and how do I enrich that how do I promote that how do I help that we no longer ask that question are they ready for me the question is are we ready for them is there science science of learning, science of motivation that can help me understand this new generation of students this diverse generation of students some of them will be bright like this this bright and have had all the all the right preparation and so forth and some of them will be as differently bright and bring in a completely different set of experiences that help them in completely different ways and we take the challenge on us to learn how do I help them sorry if that's difficult actually I think that was a perfect segue into maybe the next line of conversation which is North Carolina is a big state children great students from all over the state come to our school and to yours and they're obviously capable of engaging in this moment in regard to data science how do we as a school system both in the undergraduate level and in your graduate programs but then extend back to the secondary secondary school you know earlier in the evening begin to prepare them for that moment and expose them so very often at this age the high school kids and even freshmen students not necessarily understand many of them come to computer science not knowing exactly what computer science is what computer science career is and very often they come with a very narrow view of what that is and help them connect with some of their interests some of their skills with what this discipline is again always try to broaden who contributes to this discipline so we are currently developing our undergraduate degree in data science and we started out by putting some design principles that will guide the whole design so some of the design principles it has to be multidisciplinary it has to be inclusive and we want to make it and the same thing some of the slides that you had listed a number of areas in which you are applying data science we want to actually ignite the interest in data science for students interested in economics interested in in social sciences students interested in criminal justice students interested in geography, urban planning etc. so we are trying to design the curriculum so that every student can see some problems that relate to their interests and then the math and statistics becomes the tool that they apply to that this does not exclude those students who love the math and statistics and want to and that's what brings them into the to the discipline so we are also really attractive but trying to make sure that we are we are inclusive in terms of disciplines I was just going to say a practical application of doing I mean I think when I think about some of the quantitative rotational programs that we have at the bank and some of the individuals that come through and I'm not quantitative by background one thing that I have heard over and over is I want to work with data because what they see in our world is that the data is actually messy and it's not neat and that a clean data set is easy to learn on but it's not actually what you get day one on the job so more practical application when folks start with education also they focus on the knowledge that is transferred what I learned at Science and Math more than anything else was how to learn and so the World Economic Forum I think had a study of 65% of the jobs that our kids will have don't currently exist and I think if you kind of played that back in time the same thing was true so you're learning how to learn not just what you learn you're learning how to learn collaboratively with others and learn from those around you at Science and Math the community does a tremendous job where a lot of folks come in used to be the top person and it takes you down a notch and fuses you with a great deal of humility in a really good way and I think there's something magical about taking the best kids from their own state and infusing humility on where they're not going to be number one putting them in a social circumstance where they have to learn to work with others you're in a dorm with a bunch of folks strangers you just met yesterday and being able to work as part of a team being able to work as part of a community and being able to learn how to learn is probably the most important thing and if you do that kind of directionally correct with where the knowledge they will need everything kind of works out that's my belief I would always put a plug in too for the liberal arts education so I was talking to Tom earlier one of the most impactful classes I had at Science and Math wasn't actually a Science or Math class right? if we can get the right answer sometimes what we forget is why am I answering this question is this even the right question and that was the part that to me kind of came to life at Science and Math I had gotten straight A's at Myers Park and gotten the right answers but I had no idea what was even asking the question I just wanted to add that I've interviewed a number of day scientists who have come from neurology or some of the different subjects that were on the slide before and it's interesting how they maybe first set a passion for a subject area and then fell in love with the techniques and where else you would quiet other people I think have this this way I love the math and I remember learning the toolkit of functions in the Icon class Introduction to College Math and you had to memorize these 10 functions and you could see oh you can apply it here or you can apply it there um we picture view and then seeing everywhere you could apply it that was exciting to me but if you can reach both kinds of people cause of course there's two kinds of people but at least and also introduce them with the um concern or the impact positive and negative that would be great school can I send my kid there she will be the second class and at this point we want to make sure that we reserve some time for your questions here in the audience does anyone have a question or comment even on some of the thoughts that you've heard shared with us just now about either the education about how we're positioning it as a state to um engage in the sort of new phase of the economy if you will and how this particularly applies to the western region of the state or charlotte since we're here in charlotte someone has a question I was really happy to hear the approach that you see charlotte's taking as they develop out their curriculum and thinking about the not only the technology but the impacts of that technology that we have because I think often times and this article is just in the end of this week it's the human promise of a.i. revolution and it talked a lot about that in the sense that the technology seems to expand at such a rapid rate in that that often times we don't think about the impacts until it's half a dirt and the genies on the bottle so to speak and so I'd love to hear what you guys are thinking. I know this is a big part of what you think about charlotte and as we're thinking about the a.i. and machine learning and science and math and how do we make sure that we effectively integrate that throughout the process and not after the fact I think people know I have pretty strong opinions in this case I hate the term a.i. I mean it's out there everybody uses it but if you look at the definition of it it basically says whatever computers can't do until they can which makes it almost by definition aspirational because as soon as they can do it you get in your car and your iPhone says you're probably going home it's five minutes to home in the traffic take this route that's not a.i. anymore it's there really the kind of thing that I think where a.i. is a.i. quotes around it is really making progress in people's lives intelligence augmentation being able to augment the human make the human better build ironman suits not terminators we're trying to build things that amplify the human and amplify the humanity not something that replaces that destroys it and I think there's a sea change coming a lot of the news media is excited about a.i. is going to destroy jobs and other things but when you look in the jobs they're talking about a lot of times there were jobs that were outsourced to other countries where a person was taking data out of this system and putting it in this system all day right they were doing something the machine should have been doing and I think we're going to switch from the world where we interview people to say is this human worthy of this job where we actually interview jobs is this job worthy of a human and if you flip that around you start thinking of it that way and you start saying well what's the things that make this uniquely human empathy and judgment connection with other humans those things are going to become much more valuable because just moving data around and the other stuff it will be automated away so I think it's connecting that full circle with the interdisciplinary approach that we've talked about where there's philosophical issues there's ethical issues and I believe in what it means to be human connected with the technology you're building if you want to build the leaders of the world these 20 years from now that's what you need to do that's fine I have strong views on this but can you tell me she actually knows that or not yeah I don't know in terms of the impact of AI on jobs I think it's much bigger than what you were saying we think of course some jobs they should be automated because nobody should be doing that all day but the truth of the matter is most of our jobs have a good percentage of them that is that and the automation is not happening by saying these jobs disappear, these stay it's automating bit by bit pieces of our jobs and we may be moving towards a society where not everybody will have a job or there won't be as many jobs as there are people and that's something that we need to think about very hard and to say right now we self-define in terms of what we do and if you take that we're at loss and I talked about the anxiety of our students earlier that's part of the things that we need to start thinking about and you are more than what you do there are other things the notion that what you do all day from when you wake up until you go to bed is work, it's not university, it has always been the case so there is that aspect the other aspect and I'll point to my colleague Dr. Chukesh who with other faculty their research is on some of this is one of the aspects that we think about is how these large unintelligent systems if we don't pay attention they take some of our biases and so forth and they reproduce them, magnify them legitimize them and most of the time we have no clue that that's happening so this is why thinking about these problems in a deliberate way is extremely bad it's a very complex problem it's a very broad problem and this is why we're very passionate that these are really problems that we started discussing and facing and engaging in and putting resources I find this fascinating because I know it's about computers so my question may be ignorant in this room but two perspectives because I heard Elon Musk talk about AI it was terrifying and first of all I did NCSSM and I have two children that are going to have gone through why isn't computer science just like math and English why isn't it required all the way through not everyone is a mathematician but everybody takes math you need to know a little sort of going through it seems like that's where education ought to be from the ignorant who sit back here and know nothing and I've also noticed with my own daughter in the the gender gap with computer science who was the unicorn in 2015 she became very even though she had the NCSSM experience she did some programming when she got to Georgia Tech she was so intimidated because everyone knew more than her that she was like I can't succeed at this so she's going to be an engineer biomedical engineer and is moving down that path and she immediately got into a really competitive computer engineering program and was I am so much less prepared because kids have been doing things since they were 13 there almost needs to be two tracks so that's just my personal anecdote we'll ask Laura to comment that story is very familiar I take my path math was required from the beginning and I started when everybody else started and I don't like to fail and I was good at it and kept going computer science I never took it up as a programming I never took it up as a hobby and I got to my junior year of college math I'm sorry an introductory programming course was required for math majors but it all this long is like good now I have to take this class I loved it computer science is math it's math and I I had never started it before because I remember at those what's it called the fish bowl it's science math used to be the baby room newborn room at the hospital I think it became a computer lab and you could see the people that you had a program at science math and they weren't girls and they weren't they didn't have skin that had seen the sun I'm sorry to be sorry about that because they were passionate about that and had been doing it as a hobby for a long time and with you all the way I think it would be a great idea to have computer science taught alongside math, English history I'm sure I'm pretty sure thank you so there are two ways to answer the question of why isn't everybody taking computer science in high school the first very practical easy answer is we don't have enough teachers and and we will not most likely that we will not have just that problem for a long time it's an issue with education it's an issue with teacher pay it's a multi-faceted issue I think that on the side should computer science be taught in high school that's another philosophical question you mentioned the value of broad education I'm a very strong supporter of that I think when you are in your so-called education the broader exposure you get the better so I'm always hesitant to say okay let's make room for this new technology or this or that the question is at the expense of what and that again we have to be very careful with saying okay everybody starts programming programming is math I agree and to some extent yes you can even if you haven't learned how to program you can start at the university level not everybody in computing agrees with me on this there are several who are pushing for everybody taking computing in high school but again my opinion is let's keep education as broad as possible for as long as possible because in the long run when you're facing your second or third or fourth career in your very long life it's that broad foundation that will be very useful for you the issue of intimidation is very real it's a cultural issue that it's we have kids who come in with different levels of preparation it tends to be divided along the gender line as well as the socio-economic lines because some schools can work computer science teacher some schools cannot and it's something that we're very much aware of and doing a number of things in CCI at UNC Charlotte to address that but it's not a simple problem anytime you talk about culture there is no one-dimensional solution there is no fast solution it's a long process again one of the reasons that precision lender has been successful is that we're not a company full of coders and developers right so out of the background as a banker and a borrower and working for a regulator experience and exposure and perspective it's the blend of both of those things just a precision lender but really probably any fintech company that improves the likelihood of success it has to a tech company that has two female members here as a part of the panel it's a great testament that one thing about one of the ways that we're beginning to think maybe think of this as my colleague Kendall Hangeman we're starting to think do you have computer science seems to isolate it computational thinking how do you integrate computer science and computational thinking in a variety of different topic levels like we were thinking about interdisciplinary infusing that so it's not a standalone computer science class per se but how do you integrate programming as a tool within a class study epidemiology very valuable and how do you build that in that way as opposed to necessarily standalone courses and so getting more integration into the mainstream classes is one way that we're beginning to think about that a little bit and that's one the ways we're trying to implement that across the state through our extended programs division as well and being kind of of the time I'm going to wrap this tie a little bit of a bow on this and make sure everybody is headed back out according to schedule but I just wanted to make the observation and really sort of inspired by all of your comments that Chancellor Kevin kicked this off that our school operating for almost 40 years now was really founded to kind of build on comment to think and prepare think about prepare children for the future in a future that we could not even perceive at a particular time and here we stand sort of on the precipice of opening a school in Morganton and we have permission really to do that in a really enthusiastic and innovative way yet again and so what a great opportunity it is to join together with alumni, many of you in this room members of the business community thank you so much Trevor for being here thank you for being here Fatima for higher education and our constituent partners in the system to really convene and begin thinking again and anew about how we prepare for future that we can predict but I think with this team obviously we have a lot of optimism about our ability to do that so thank you again for being here we so appreciate your participation thanks everybody in the audience for being here we really appreciate your time here today and if there are no other housekeeping announcements there's always a housekeeping announcement we'll be here to mix and mingle as long as you're able to be here thank you so much Brock and let's give our panel a hand for just want to make the comment to build out what I said earlier that we are going to share the slide deck with all the attendees today so you can familiarize yourself in greater detail so choose with the institution, the Morganton campus is being built out and so on we'll also keep you abreast of updates related to the Morganton campus that's being developed we are going to break ground in June we believe of 2019 and construction will go from there so if you have a kind of an urge to get out there and see the site as it looks today before we start taking buildings down and building new ones please reach out to us myself or Dana in our office be happy to engage with you and show you the site and talk to you about ways we might partner with you your business, your institution whatever it may be we are very blessed that our red carpet has been rolled out for NCSSM throughout West North Carolina I have been on the job for about 20 months and traveling around all of West North Carolina inclusive of Charlotte it has been just phenomenal to see the number of industry partners and education partners who are really over the moon about NCSSM coming out physically to Morganton and between the high tech corridor and the innovative work that is happening throughout West North Carolina we are excited to be on site already and begin to build out partnerships that will grow our curriculum and inspire our students to consider all sorts of pathways in the future so again thank you very much for investing your time today for your support of the project and I will allow Chancellor Roberts to come up for one final closing remark as he's having a picture so I'll let Kevin have the last word and all I can again say is thank you for the time today and please stay engaged as Kevin mentioned in this project and the school as a whole I think it's an exciting time for our institution transformational and also a really exciting time for our state as well so thank you again for being here.