 HBCU Digest Radio, welcome back. I'm your host, Jared Carter. This is our presidential series, Conversations with Distinguished Leaders, presidents and chancellors from our historically black colleges and universities. And today, our honored guest is my dear friend, the president of Mother Shaw University, Dr. Paulette Dillard, who if you haven't been paying attention or outside of the orbit of Raleigh, North Carolina, Shaw has been at the center of several big initiatives, just in the last few weeks that involve substantial growth and opportunity, and the opportunity for the school to move boldly into a new direction. So, Madam President, it is an honor to have you on for sure. It's always good to have a conversation with you, Jared. You always seem to have your finger on the pulse of what's going on in the world of HBCU. That's a nice way to put it. I thought you was going to say, most people have their middle finger pointed at you. But that, again, high praise for you. So, Shaw, big news recently, a substantial gift made to the university. Talk a little bit about that, because Shaw has been on an upward trajectory of fundraising for the last couple of years. But this is over the $1 million mark. So, tell us more about that. Yeah, it's real exciting. The Forbes family, and they have significant ties to the university. David Forbes was a student here, and I think was the president of the SGA at the time that Nick was formed here in Raleigh. And Dr. David Forbes' father, Bishop James A. Forbes Sr., received his degree, both his undergraduate and his divinity degree, from Shaw University. So, the remaining six siblings decided that they wanted to make a legacy gift in his honor. And so, during our Founder's Day celebration this October, they made a $1 million gift to Shaw University in memory of their father, Bishop James A. Forbes Sr. So, we were excited because Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. is the acclaimed Pastry Meredith of the Riverside Baptist Church. I mean, the Riverside Church, I'm sorry, in New York. And so, he has retired back to Raleigh, which was their home place growing up. And so, the siblings got together and said, how best can we honor our dad? And they remembered how entrenched he was with Shaw University, not only in getting his degrees, but they lived about two blocks from the university. So, students spent lots of time, they are eating being tutored in French and languages. And so, they have a history with Shaw University and decided that what better way to honor their father than to give back to the institution and the community that he loved so dearly. And so, they called us up and said, we'd like to make a special gift. And we don't get many calls like that. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, people give to Shaw, but it's rare where they say we got a million dollars for you. Right, it's rare. And they come with the chat. That's right, that's right. A lot of times, they come with the intent to do, but not only did they give us this incredible gift, they came with the check and wanted to just pay forward what they were so blessed to have because everybody in the family is well educated and has each made a contribution in their fields. Family-wide, one of the sisters is married to former congressman Ed Towns, so it is a storied family. But they want to now contribute to making a difference in the lives of the young people that are currently at Shaw, the way they remember experiencing it. And so, it was a tremendous gift in a number of ways. And many of them now live in the city. James Ford's moved back to Raleigh about a year ago. And so, not only are they giving us money, but volunteering their time and their influence as well. So this is what I would call a major gift. And that's what's important because it's a lasting relationship or at least a relationship that appears to be building towards something very, very long lasting. And Shaw has that effect on people. As I mentioned, alumni given has really been among the best among HBCUs over the last handful of years. What do you think it is about the message that you have been sending the students and the alumni have been sending over recent years that has resonated with folks to support, obviously a great institution, but not one that you hear every day in national media or social media when people are talking about and thinking about HBCUs. What is it that has made Shaw so resonant? We were just talking about that recently, Jared, trying to really put narrative to what we believe is the reason for that. And what we've come up with, and you and I have talked about it a little bit in the past, is the stories about the impact that Shaw has had on the lives of individuals. And each time we get a gift or something major happens and the story is told, it resonates with people. And they say, that was me, that was me. And something about that makes them want to reconnect and do something for Shaw. And it is amazing. And we've been trying to come up with a way to collect all of these stories so that they can be in a volume somewhere because it comes down to that was me and had it not been for someone or something at Shaw, the outcome for me would have been significantly different. Absolutely. And it's said time and time again. And that is what has me thinking about that storytelling institute that belongs at Shaw University. There was an article written in, I forgot what the periodical was about a month ago. And I think the title was the schools that if you get a degree from these 10 schools, it's equivalent to not having gone to college at all. And so the question was asked of me, how do you respond to that kind of thing? And I said, you don't because for every life that was changed by Shaw, it speaks to its value. So I'm not going to try to disprove when you look at ratios, debt, how much money people make when they graduate from Shaw, those are not the arenas in which Shaw has made its name or its legacy. It's been the magnitude of the changes that have been made in communities and the world because a graduate of Shaw wanted to go do something bigger than earn a paycheck. And you can't argue that when you're talking about metrics and business indicators. You can't win in that discussion, but I can win in the life-changing discussions. I can win on the stories of individuals who have gone on to change the landscape in education, change the landscape in law. Exactly. And so that is the thing about Shaw that it's hard to characterize with people who the experience go, that's what makes Shaw special to me. And we have yet to be able to really capture that in such a way others understand the Shaw effect. Well, it's coming. It appears that it's coming. There's a wave of people who understand and you have the university in great position to capitalize on that. But let's talk about some other opportunities that the university is undertaking. And this is really unique to HBCUs, at least from a public perspective where a lot of people know about what's going on. Shaw is embarking on a land assessment survey to talk about the university, its surrounding properties, its real estate as an asset to Raleigh. And I think that that's important because as a lot of our metropolitan and rural based campuses start to think about what is the future of our revenue model look like? What is development and zoning around us look like? It's important to do something like this and you guys are doing it. Tell us more about the process of trying to get this done and what it involves and what you think will be the outcome. Oh, I'm excited to talk about that. In fact, we launched this initiative this coming Sunday. And so I'm really, really excited. What it is is a land use assessment. And this particular assessment is being done by a group called the Urban Land Institute. And this is an association or organization made up of architects, developers, urban planners, you know, artists that belong to this organization that's been in existence for, you know, over 35 years. And what they do is they're, it's a professional organization and they are members of it. And what they offer to institutions of all kinds is they will assemble an advisory panel that includes developers, urban planners, lawyers, a whole group of professionals in that space. And typically your panel is from outside of your geography so that they're not influenced by what is going on in your local landscape. So they identify about eight or nine such individuals on a panel. And that panel, we prepare what are the questions that you are trying to answer as it relates to your institution. And of course we are located in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, one of the fastest growing cities in the nation, you know, among the top places to retire, the top places to do business. So it is at, you know, an unbelievable growth rate. And so we are sitting here trying to determine, you know, how do we leverage our position so that our students have the greatest student experience. We are contributors to the growing, you know, business landscape while we're sitting in an opportunity zone able to help the community in which we live. And we realized early on that we're in, we've got great professors and we know the business of education, we don't know the business of land development and youth and city planning, et cetera. So we determine what better use of a resource is there than to assemble these professionals to come in and do this kind of work. And what has been exciting is they've never done it for a historically black college and university. And so, you know, so the briefing book and the questions they've, you know, they've, I had as we develop the scope of work has been really, really fascinating. And so what happened is we put together a list of over 200 names of stakeholders, other higher ed institutions, elected officials, community folk, bankers, developers, to ask them, would they be willing to sit through a panel interview for one hour, you know, to talk about their view of Shaw, you know, their view of downtown and what are some of the possibilities? Additionally, they're working with the city to see the city plans independent of what Shaw is doing. And so all of this happens over a series of by date. So on Sunday, the panel and the institution will meet and, you know, meet each other and get comfortable. Monday, we will tour all of the properties around Raleigh and the proximity to other institutions in Raleigh. Monday, we'll have a reception with all of these various stakeholders. Monday, I mean, Tuesday all day will be panel interviews. And then the panel will spend the next two days putting together a report about what they found and what the opportunities are that they have identified. And on Friday, we will have a public meeting to share the finding. Do you think the novelty of something like this, because you said this particular group that's doing the assessment has never worked with an HBCU before. Correct. Do you think that the, I guess that because that this has not been done before, it gives way to some folks to having hesitation about it. In other words, how would you address now, you know, we can, you and I can talk about this. There have always been rumors because of where Shaw is located in the literally smack in the middle of downtown if you've never seen it. Beautiful canvas surrounded by office buildings and all kinds of stuff all over the place. But do you think that that fuels rumors of, uh-oh, Shaw is getting ready to sell land. And do you think that it's fueled by some of the things that have gone on at other schools in the area that have started to relinquish properties, relinquish buildings, land? Does that, do you understand if people have hesitations about it and how do you respond to that? People have hesitations about it. And in fact, you know, there have been recent headlines, you know, to that of that, that, you know, people think it's a done deal. But we, you know, that doesn't give me pause. And the reason that I think the work hasn't been done necessarily with HBCU is that, you know, until we started this process, I wasn't even aware that an organization called the Urban Land Institute even existed. And so I think it's more of a, you know, not knowing what's available to you until you start wrestling with an idea. You know, that you find a group like this. And I think that as people become aware of, you know, it's an independent, you know, third-party group, you do not have to accept any of the recommendations. They just lay it out and then they're done. They don't have a dog in the fight. They have used their best professional skills to offer you options. And I think that the fact that they haven't worked with an HBCU is that we're just now getting to the point where we're, you know, we're really wrestling with P3 partnership, opportunity zones. Some of us have been more advanced than others. You know, Chaladega, you know, has done, you know, free market tax credits. And they've been able to leverage that to do some significant building on their campus. So as we become more, you know, while we're leveraging our assets, I think that more organizations like ULI will be used for our benefit. So I think that, yes, there will be rumors. There have already been rumors and have been, I've been in Raleigh since 2012. And when I arrived in 2012, that was even the discussion then. That the goal is to have the city or developers acquire, you know, the Chal property. And I think the difference in using this process is it puts Chal in the driver's seat in deciding what is the path forward for Chal that benefits Chal long term and puts Chal in the driver's seat as opposed to being the victim of the desires of others. Yeah. Well, it's hard to mention you guys and the growth that you guys have had and not have the context, even in, you know, the back of our mind in a silent way about what's going on down the street at St. Augustine's. Now you guys are rivals, everybody knows that. But you also, and maybe people all over the country, listen to this, don't realize, you also have worked together on a lot of things. Yes, we do. Coalitions for academic development and student access. What was it a year ago where you guys decided to partner with the athletic facilities? So you guys work together closely. When you see some of the things that have gone on with St. Aug over the last one or two years. And there was a recent article in the Triad Business Journal about, you know, calling for the two schools to work more closely together. Again, with the Whisper Committee, do you think that inevitably or by choice, there will be a path moving towards even broader consolidation of the operations of the two schools? And do you have any concern that the people who love both schools, alumni and students on both sides, will fight that and what could be the result? I have been very, very pleased with the reception of the two schools working together to utilize the stadium. And that has gone without a hitch. And, you know, both sides have applauded that move. What St. Aug and Shaw have determined is that individually, it's gonna be tough to fight the fight that we have in North Carolina for the survival of the private institution. And so, you know, if we each are fighting using the same resources, we have a far better chance together than we do individually. And we are so similar in course offerings, you know, location, even athletic competition. We are very much alike, so we're more alike than we are different. And so that offers the opportunity for us to approach ideas of cost sharing, cost sharing of faculty, of front end and back end processes. And things like that can be done with each of us maintaining, you know, our unique identity. And I think that, you know, that is more of a likely scenario or reality than being, you know, constant competitors. President Balkan and I have been in discussions. We've had our CFOs in conversation with each other. Our chief academic officers have been in conversations with each other. And in fact, our student affairs leaders have been working on a joint project to offer emergency disaster relief training for our students as a composite. And so, you know, it is really not, you know, so far fetched because we've kind of been doing it, but we've been doing it not under the guys that we are attempting to merge, but we are attempting to figure out the best places that we can work together to the benefit of both institutions. And what is so interesting, Jared, is that we do that as part of a consortium for independent colleges and universities. We do it as part of the co-operating Raleigh Colleges Consortium. So what is so, you know, unusual about, you know, two HBCUs doing the same, you know, thing? And so we don't see it as much of a, oh my God, as I think our alumni and others might perceive of it, but they know that we are talking and that we are supporting each other in all the ways that we possibly can. So I just say, stay tuned, because I think you are going to see, you know, more, you know, announcements of ways that the two institutions are gonna be working together.