 The HBCU leader known well for being in the building now has a building named after him on his alma mater's campus, North Carolina A&T Chancellor Dr. Harold Martin joins us today with some exciting news. A building that is near and dear to your heart and particularly in your research and your professional interests is named for you today by order of the Board of Trustees. First, what is it like to be an Aggie and to now have a building named after you, particularly as a sitting HBCU Chancellor, which is very rare? What is that experience like for you and within the context of your career? Thanks very much, Jared. I know I think the excitement and enthusiasm for me has been the great pleasure of leading my alma mater as Chancellor and having the pleasure of working with some exceptional individuals on our Board of Trustees and on our leadership team and within our campus. For me, it would have been a crowning joy for the incredible work we continue to do and a blessed to do today for our university. Certainly, I'm humbled and honored by the recognition by our Board of Trustees in naming this building. Quite honestly, it wasn't an expectation, but it's a recognition that should be shared with a lot of individuals who've played an incredible part. My family who've always been supportive of the work and we have done throughout my career and serving here at North Carolina A&T as Chancellor. And so I feel very blessed, very humbled, very honored by this recognition. Before we talk more about you and your deserving of such an honor, let's talk about the facility itself. So North Carolina A&T is the top HBCU in the country for the production of African-American engineers. And so what is it like having led a school, particularly the College of Engineering at A&T, to watch its evolution over these years to become so powerful in that industrial right? To not only bear your name, but to see it come to fruition as to what your vision for it could be even over some years to evolve to the place where it is today. That's a great question and has multiple parts. And I think I would trace back to my days as a master's and undergraduate student at A&T and incredible faculty. I had an opportunity to work with who shaped me, demanded the best of me and mentored me during that window. And then when I went off to graduate school to pursue my PhD at Virginia Tech, and as I looked around and observed that there were no other persons who looked like me in the PhD programs across the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, helped me realize that this was a problem, quite honestly. And so it has always been then my drive, even as a young faculty member, to do the same things for bright students in our School of Engineering at that time, that my predecessors, faculty and others who had invested in me and over time derived additional opportunities to begin to help shape a School of Engineering, now College of Engineering, dedicated to attracting exceptionally bright students to our university and investing in them, they write faculty and resources to produce increasingly larger numbers of African American engineers in the country. It never was our intent to be the largest producer, but by doing the right kinds of things, investing in academic programs, strong curricular requirements, partnerships with industries and agencies have led to the distinction as a largest producer. And we take a great deal of pride in having the distinction of being the largest producer. This investment in the engineering research and innovation center on that campus will only enable our ability to continue to grow enrollment, enhance our impact in producing well-prepared graduates for the marketplace, but Jerry also helps to improve and enhance and strengthen our research posture as a research doctoral research university in America and grow our research, grow our innovation. And equal is importantly derived from that innovation, what we do to enhance our economic impact in East Greensboro, Greensboro, Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina and North Carolina as a whole. Our economic impact continues to grow to about $1.5 billion today. I assure you with this new facility and the expansions we're doing across our university, we will continue to see our economic impact grow substantially. And that's the role in my mind that our university must continue to play and I'm excited about what this new facility will bring. It's a large building, it's very intimately designed with classrooms and research space that will enable our university for years to come to continue to grow and sustain research, research innovation, and degree productivity for our university and exciting possibilities for what that means. And that's what I'm excited about quite honestly. How have you effectively grown the engineering component of A&T when you already have an obligation and a strength as an agricultural land grant school? And you're already exemplary in the traditional liberal arts. How do you balance all of those things to one, secure support for a facility and two, continue to see that as an asset in the evolution of that part of A&T which is already doing so many dynamic things in so many areas? Well, we've been very clear about our university as a land grant, a very proud land grant institution. And we have embraced the fact that we are a doctoral research university. With those two key elements of continued investment by our Board of Trustees, our university leadership team, we have realized that to continue to compete among our top peers as universities in America's doctoral research land grant institutions, we've had to make the case and expand the resources to build excellence across our university, not just in engineering, not just STEM, not just agriculture, but also in our de-college business, in our College of Health Sciences. And believe it or not, land grant institutions do a great job in the arts and humanities. And so we're very critically focused on building excellence in the arts and the humanities on our campus. And that has required that we diversify our resources, both in making our case with our legislature and our governor and the UNC system, the broad estate appropriations as investments. We have made the case by engaging in a very rich and competitive fundraising capital campaign to expand the private dollars we derive from our corporate partners and friends of our university and our alumni who are more generous today than they've ever been in the history of our university. So we cannot let deficiencies in the form of resources and other areas limit what we are seeking to be in the future of our university. So we're breaking down those barriers and we're building the strategies and infrastructure and demonstrating the successes we need to have to continue to position our university to be a major player in higher education. And that's what's exciting about our university. We are breaking down those barriers. We're pushing beyond those limits that even we had imposed on ourselves over the years and that others have imposed on us and defining our future in very significant ways. And from my perspective, we have to continue to define our future and bring constituents along with us. And we're fortunate today that we have a growing number of partners, our university system, the board of governors, the governor, the legislature, our alumni, very proud alums who are very, very much engaged in our university's future, business leaders, corporate partners, foundations. And that's what our peers have done over the years. And we're simply taking a page out of the successes of our peers. And we are tailoring those strategies to best fit our university. And so while we have achieved some very good things today, which we're very excited about, I think our best work is still ahead of us.