 Industrial development continues to be a strong conversation starter in the HBCU sector here to join us today is Kentucky State University President Dr. M. Christopher Brown II to talk about new partnerships in a really unique industry to Kentucky and what that means for the area's industrial development and its and the academic enterprise at the state's flagship HBCU so Dr. Brown is a pleasure to have you with us this morning. Welcome good to be here. A new partnership with an association of distilleries in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and Kentucky State is at the center of that. This is paired with a recent gift that can use a part of from the Osio a global distillery or global company or beverage maker worldwide. Is this something strategic for Kentucky State given where it's at, but also the kind of opportunities that are available for job creation for workforce training. Is this something that's very conscious from Kentucky or is this just an opportunity that is coming about because more corporations are looking for partnerships at historically black colleges and universities. No, it's intentional we're in the process of launching our new strategic plan racing towards our highest potential 2021 to 2025 and what was clear when I arrived in Kentucky as a good southern Baptist was despite how we thought in South Carolina that horse racing and bourbon were truly agricultural components despite what your grandmother said about it. Bourbon is what we call the distilled and fermented beverage using agricultural language and horse racing includes everything from the veterinary science to the biology of breeding and Punnett squares to soil conservation and so as an 1890 institution we decided to be more thoughtful and intentional about how we engaged Kentucky's great markets and so our School of Agriculture recently launched the state's only distillation and fermentation program bourbon has a unique history and some of the great initial bourbon makers were African-American though not credited as such and even now we have new African-Americans joining the bourbon industry so we wanted to be more supportive of the bourbon industry it started three years ago two years ago three years ago technically the event was two years ago we hosted in collaboration with a community organization that was set up for the purpose the university tried to hold something called bourbon on the banks which was going to be a bourbon festival focused on history teaching and instruction and the role of African-Americans in the history of bourbon people came from all over the country for a bourbon tasting presentations by our band and the like downtown and African-American bourbon tours so there's a bourbon trail but we had our history faculty take them on the tour again to cite the roles of African-Americans in this rich production so after that we decided to really go full throttle in fermentation and distillation fermentation and distillation I do distillation first is the conversion of any agricultural or food product into a liquefied consumption and so whether you're talking about maple syrup that's distillation whether you're talking about vinegar that's distillation if you're talking about alcohol if you're talking about ketchup or mustard those are all distillation products the fermentation is when we allow the sugars and the carbon dioxide to process in a way that the sugar converts to an alcohol and so we've gone full throttle in that area and fortunately I caught the attention of Diageo who had just opened a bullet plant not far from here and we're so thankful for the million dollar gift because most of the gifts were there were only two extraordinary gifts at a million and for Kentucky State to be one of those two we were greatly appreciative talk about that land grant aspect of this because that was one of the 1980s and they've been in the news a lot lately for the effort to try to push states and the federal government to invest more to help with cooperative extension the opportunities for farmers throughout different regions where HBCU is stationed does this kind of work or this kind of groundwork really support the engagement that you're having with the state in saying this is a sound element of your land grant mission as a commonwealth and if you do well by us we can do well by our constituents I think that's true Kentucky State has traditionally worked in the main lanes of 1890 agricultural activity which is your basic husbandry soil food and nutrition but fortunately we had branched off into aquaculture some years ago which made us unique we are one of the top five aquaculture programs in the nation and that's not among historically black institutions because we're the only HBCU with aquaculture but in the nation and aquatic science we grow our own fish and we also do aquaponics and so when an institution uses its foundation and strength base to branch out into a stretch area that's when you're going to reap your greatest rewards and so we've reaped those rewards and continue to do great grantsmanship and productivity in aquaculture and in this state when the tobacco settlement happened and we had all of these tobacco farms which were no longer growing tobacco product we assisted many of those farms in western Kentucky to convert those farms from tobacco to catfish production certainly we cannot rival Mississippi's catfish production but we do have catfish production in western Kentucky so just like we got out of the main with aquaculture we got out of the main again with hemp we have huge hemp production activities, hemp training preparation harvesting but for all of the talk and I don't want to be racial necessarily there are racial dynamics to hemp production in this country and so we have a farmer who's worked with our land grant and extension who was able to prepare the soil plant, grow a powerful hemp crop harvested for market an unbelievable yield of hemp but when he went to market African-American farmer could find no one to buy right so if you are not in corporate partnership hemp can be a productive farming venue but if you don't have anyone to sell it to so he actually made no money he lost money on a successful crop so but we continue to work in hemp and now we work in distillation and fermentation and this year I just approved us launching two institutional bourbons so the campus will be casking and barreling its own bourbons this year one will be a general mash and the second will be a papa mash because we are also one of the world's leading researchers in papa it's a unique banana-like fruit and so we'll be doing some casking of a papa mash as well it's interesting because a lot of the land-grant institutions deal very well with commodities improve their standing with the things that they can produce and bring to market the kind of research that extends from that whether it be food preservation or insect repellent things like that how does that translate if you had presidents listening to you or alumni listening to you and they're like yeah you know that sounds cool for Kentucky State because they have things that they can put hands on till and bring to market is it possible to take that kind of approach to a traditional liberal arts institution or one that is trying to build brand in tech for example how does an HBCU position or make into commodities things that aren't easily available to market two points one for the land-grant for any of our HBCU land-grants it's critically important to focus on commercialization and commodification how do you help all of the majors in your institution and your land-grant cooperative extension work focus on bringing it to market at a prior institution we were working rapidly on the commercialization of our hot sauce production we had a poultry processing unit I learned lessons there and so here at Kentucky State we don't have a poultry processing building but we have a mobile poultry processing unit which is like 18 wheeler that we drive from community to community to help people process and lastly because every state every city nation is interested in farm to table the ability for those 1890s to work on farm to table is low hanging fruit to use old language as it relates to our industry as a whole I think it's critically important as we look at our liberal arts mission every one of the HBCUs will have a liberal arts component and then they'll have the pre-professional component and if they've got graduate education they may have the professional component the key is to center and it's popular now may not have been as popular when I first arrived workforce readiness as a part of your approach to the academic delivery of programs the reality is the same as it was in the 1800s early 1900s to the civil rights era when families send their young people to our institutions whatever our name is it is that families hope that this institution will return to them a young adult who can be gainfully employed and be transformative for their family and possibly transformative for their community and so we did something called the green ribbon here and so we reorganized our colleges reorganized our majors so all of our programs follow what we call a triangle approach so we have a discipline and sitting on top of that discipline is a workforce application of that discipline and or a possible graduate school application of that discipline so we have and all of our departments are now combined with that focus so you have math as your primary discipline and on top of math we have computer science and then we have applied mechanics and cyber security we have English as our base discipline and then we have mass communications and journalism and so we have biology and now we have nursing and pre-med so all of our focus is on being sure that after a person has completed four years and that's what we're giving you four years and we've decreased our time to degree that's very intentional you've got four years you've decreased that time to degree and you should when you leave here either be in work gainfully employed or in graduate school and I'm not talking about working at enterprise car rental I'm talking about working at Sam's Club as a manager you need to be working in an area that is related to the discipline from which your major is based part of the challenge of that persistence to degree obviously is resources every HBCU confronts this all of higher education is confronting this particularly as we think about students from low income communities and households the state is in the midst of a capital campaign that's focused on three distinct areas all aiming towards the student experience and student success can you talk a little bit about the status of that campaign and what you hope to do once you achieve the final mark yeah well we're looking at resources in three areas one which is state support which is critically important too many institutions have let the state off the hook and I'm excited we just had sign or die yesterday the legislature just ended and after after what was ultimately multiple years of loss of funds in performance funding this will be the first year that we gain funds in performance funding from the state as well as the state offered new funding for mandated programs just for us to experiment in some areas so you want to focus on your state funding second we have increased our grantsmanship everyone should be engaging in the pursuit of extramural funds to support their work and their students work and then lastly capital generation and so we've not done an annual campaign or annual fund or anything since then we've been raising funds I launched the KSU Forward campaign but it wasn't a goal it's just a part of our development portfolio but this year it's our 135th anniversary will be 135 years old in May and so at first we were going to go back to the state and we were going to go back to the state and so at first we were going to do a $1.3 million annual fund just separate and apart from other giving but we've already reached the $1.3 million in the silent phase we were surprised and so we moved it now to $3.5 some people use the $3.9 internal goal but publicly stated at $3.5 just for our annual fund and that's 100% for scholarships and tuition assistance and then the final question when you think about all of the positive things going on that are reshaping the academic enterprise and the money that you're bringing in for student success and institutional capacity building in the end what does is there ever such a thing as a completed temple for an HBCU because I've heard you say in the past that all you can do is build towards a platform that another president can use is there a level of completion or is it just stepping stone and that you have to derive your satisfaction from that no and that that is the goal that should be your intrinsic reward and so I'd always heard president and so on and when I went to the Harvard's new president's training they talked about that every president in their best state is interim that you should go at knowing that there were men and women who served before you and that there'll be men and women who served after you and that's when I started putting a number before my presidency at and so it's the 18th president or whatever because I know there were 17 people before me there'll probably at least 17 people after me and it happens here sometimes my staff my colleagues my team will get frustrated and they'll be tired and I will say to them I said Harvard was founded in 1636 it is the best endowed and one of the best funded institutions in our nation and they have not perfected their work and if Harvard founded in 1636 with billions of dollars in resource capacity and social and cultural capital cannot perfect its work certainly Kentucky State founded in 1886 with only millions of dollars and a hundred million dollars in economic impact cannot perfect its work in one year I've been in four years so we will always have work to do and so my goal is to stretch the institution as far as possible to build it to solidify that construction and then to pass the baton so it's very important I think in our community that we begin to think about presidential leadership as the manifestation of the board and the institution's needs at a particular point in the university's history so are you doing fundraising are you doing capital construction are you doing repair and renovation so sort of known as a fixit president so if they're I like solving problems so that's the kind of place that I really thrive in and driving that to the next level and what becomes exciting for me is looking back to the new places I've been even as provost and seeing the initiatives, the structures the activities that were began doing my leadership continuing to drive institutional effectiveness