 If everyone can please find a seat, we will get underway. I'll also make the requisite announcement that if you have a cell phone on, you can place low odds of that. Please mute the sounds on that device. We are going to be videoing today's events so that we can share as broadly as possible. So we do not want to interfere with that with any of our cell phones going on. As we have clearly been underway, I want to first thank all of you for making time to join us today for this special event and our arrival here to Shelby and Cleveland County. We're excited to be here from the School of Science and Mathematics. I also want to acknowledge our friends from beautiful pain architects who have painstakingly transported and then re-created the model that you see in the back of the room of the campus that is going to be breaking ground in about eight months out in Burke County, the city of Morganton. And we are over the moon at a definition that that campus is beginning to realize in the time development process and they have a phenomenal job. So please, before you leave today, they will remain on the program to walk you through the elements of the campus. If you have questions or just want to get a firsthand look at what the students are going to be greeted by when they arrive at campus in 2021 on the opening. The last piece I'm going to say we're getting out of your way is to thank, in particular, our special guests from the legislature here today. We have representative Hastings in the room. We have course head senator Westmoreland in the room. And we have our speaker at the house Tim Moore in the room. And we are going to invite speaker Moore up to the Vody Enterprise in Roosevelt and some remarks and then we'll follow that with remarks from our chancellor, Todd Roberts, an update on the insistence of Morganton campus being constructed. And then our also our telegraph who is the alumnus of the school who will be our featured speaker before we finalize the agenda with a panel of some wonderful friends and colleagues from around the region speaking to energy, data science and what the city for that program. Thank you again for being here today and that further view on my speaker Tim Moore. That's a picture of what I'm going to do. First of all, welcome to Shelby. We're glad to have you here with us today. We're honored that you all chose to be here and chancellor. We appreciate you coming to Cleveland County today. And I would be remiss if I didn't say while you're here, when you're done, you really ought to try the barbecue here. Okay. And those from points east really ought to try the barbecue. And thanks to some of my colleagues back east. I want to thank representative Hastings for being here as well. This is actually a pretty busy day force here in the county. This afternoon, around three o'clock, we're going to be presenting a check for $9 million to the community college for an advanced manufacturing facility. That was a provision that we were successful in getting in our state budget this year to help out. And this would be, it's important to stress that that is going to be a regional center. That's not really for just Cleveland County. That's going to be a region. So those of you who were from counties in this general vicinity, I think you hopefully find that a benefit to your students as well. I can't say enough good things about the school science and math. And I think that it ties in, when we talk about economic development, when we talk about education, it's a multi-leg school, right? We need to have those who are going into technology. We need to have those who are going more over arched path. We need to have those going into medicine, all these things. And we also need to have those students who are going into career technical education. And so it takes all of that for our economy, for our society to function. School science and math plays a very valuable role in that by preparing many of our best and brightest. We've done a number of things, of course the tuition waiver for graduates in the school science and math. You can then go to our universities free of charge. That's huge. The way that the outreach is happening, and of course this western campus, to make sure that those kids who are in this part of the state can find it easier to get to. Now I'll tell you, in this part of the world, we say Durham isn't Eastern North Carolina. Okay, just understand that. Some of my friends down East, in Goldsboro might say that that's not. So that's up for debate. But I will say that I do think that there are plenty of students who could be served very well by this campus, not only in terms of the full-time residential, but the many things that you all do, Todd, with coordinating the students through the distance learning and the other programs, it's a great asset. And I can think of numerous stories of kids who've graduated from school science and math and gone on to be very great things. And a variety of those. We know that science, technology, engineering, math are critical to the development of our state's economy. And so it's an honor that we're very fortunate that our state has this asset. So we want to thank you for that. We want to welcome Michelle. We thank you for coming here today and thank you for what you're doing for so many students and families across the state. Thank you. Thank you, Speaker Moore, for your remarks and for being here. And I remember just as the speaker said, thrilled to be here in Cleveland County in Michelleby. It was a beautiful drive over from Oregon to this morning. And hearing about the Advanced Manufacturing Center that you're going to be here today to unveil is great news because it's really not far from here. I do think that our students would have an opportunity to benefit from that. So congratulations to the community college here and the county for that. And I want to say as well that we wouldn't be here today. This project would be here today with all of the support of people. And all of our friends and the general assembly and the speaker has been a champion for this project. And gone about on numerous occasions. As you know, the Connect in Siobhan was the beginning of this work formally. The $58 million was allocated by the state of this project and the general assembly allocated an additional $50 million for this project in the most recent session. And the speaker was instrumental in the department that happened. So I can't say it again. Thank you enough to speak more for your support for this project. And we're here today with all of our friends and the general assembly and the speaker in particular. I wanted to start with a little bit of an overview of the school. I know that there are several folks here who know something about the school. We have a number of our trustees who are here and I want to thank them for being here. We have several folks from Berk County, the county commissioners and others from WPCC who are here that have been intimately involved in the project. But for some of you, you might not know everything there is to know about the school and we opened in 1980 as the first school of our kind in the world and to the speaker's point. Our state has supported this institution and made the opportunity that NCSSM provides to students across North Carolina for now 39 years. And 11 states and several other schools around the world were developed and modeled on the NCSSM. But one thing that I think as a North Carolinian and a Native North Carolinian myself that makes me most proud is our state of all the other states in the country who started after us. They all started like us making it available at no cost to students in their state. We're the only one who still does that. So our state should be given a huge thank you for making this opportunity available to students across our state because the way that they do that it truly allows any student who's talented and motivated regardless of the code regardless of their families that are willing to pay this kind of opportunity. And as the speaker referenced there are numerous stories of young people that have had this experience and have given back our state in a way that has helped our state grow. I have a distinction and one of the things that I think people don't often recognize as well is that we're a part of the University of North Carolina system. We're one of the 17 constituent campuses. We're the only one that's a full high school and we're proud of that relationship. The university system is proud to be having a presence in this part of the state. This is one of the, the matter of fact, the part of the state, the largest part of the state doesn't have a UNC system presence so we're proud from the system perspective to be coming into this part of the state as well. As I mentioned, the thing about the school that the faculty leader want to come to work at is that the UNC system is all about opportunity. If you look at what we do, we started with 680 residential students in Maryland. We're going to serve an additional 300 students on our campus in North Carolina. As the speaker mentioned, we now educate more than 800 students across the state for our business education programs. So not every student wants to get up and leave their home community. They want to stay and so they have the opportunity to be part of our online program. We partner with school districts across the state to provide high-level stem courses through video conference. And so we have teachers teaching from our studios on campus in class of 25 students in a high-level stem course. And those students, they need eight different high schools in a sequence of video conferences. And so again, brings opportunities to students in parts of the state that they may not have those same opportunities. So as you see, I think one of the greatest examples shown is the back of our state. We are serving students through our programs in every single county in North Carolina. We have, as you can see, only 2,500 students this past year in our various programs. And when you give young people in our state the opportunity, they can achieve great things. We have most of our students go on to earn four-year degrees and they also get back to state through community service and have it for many years. And they also go and make our state proud by winning international and national competitions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These are just a few of those examples. We often hear that students in our country can't compete globally in the meantime in particular. But it's just not true. You know, an example of like here, students in our state go out and win the core international mathematics competition in 48 different countries around the world. So we have talent in this state and we are a child that they can compete with globally. Our alumni also go on to do amazing things. Christina, you see here, is currently, she's an astronaut. She will be heading to the space, to the National Space Station very shortly. And in the spring, we hope that she'll be communicating with students on our campus and talking about the experience of being an astronaut and being on the space station. And our graduates go on to earn 10 degrees, three times greater than the national average of 68%. That's one of the reasons the state set up this school. It gives students all across the state the opportunity and to hopefully have them earn 10 degrees to help the state continue to grow economically. Also, our alumni, the majority of which live, 60% live and work in North Carolina, and we have about 10,000 alumni now and maybe in fact an economic impact study we did, one of the 500 billion annual economic impacts in the state of North Carolina. The state invested about 22 billion annually to operate the school so that's a pretty good return on investments. And we appreciate the state's investment in another campus here in Western North Carolina. As I mentioned, 11 other states have schools like us and not a single one of them in a second campus. So that commitment and investment that started in 1980, the state has doubled down on that investment and as you can see, the phase rate dividends for the state, our alumni, or if they do. Also, one of the things that we're here today, we're doing a series of these events to focus on data science and the importance of data science. We have a raw ranging curriculum at the school but one of the things that is really important for us is the growth and importance of data science in our state. Our past school and department at the school is engineering and computer science. Five years ago, we did not have an apartment in engineering and computer science. Now, we're offering courses that you see here in that area. And the state, if you look at a recent department of commerce, did a recent study on the importance of data science to the future of North Carolina and its economy. I know we have both a free college who are leaders in this space helping to prepare students but the future of North Carolina is economy. This is one of the great opportunities that we have and for us, the importance of building a pipeline. How do we, at the secondary level, prepare students to be ready to go on to community college or university and to be able to work in this space. And that's one of the goals for us to move forward with our campus in Morganton. One of the key components of this campus will be some unique curriculum in the area of data science. Our goal is to build, like we have for 38 years, a model curriculum in data science to the secondary level in this country. It's not going out. That's our goal that we're moving forward with. We're excited to have partners and we'll be benefitting from folks like the folks at concrete college and UNC Charlotte. They were at our event. Esther, Ben, and Charlotte. And the many others across the state, in particular our alumni, who have tremendous expertise in this area help us think about what does that program look like and how do we prepare North Carolinians moving forward to help be in this space in our state and in our country. And we are, you know, really fortunate to have one of our alumni and Taylor Rockman do his native song show in North Carolina here today. Just share that experience and we'll do that a little bit later. But he's a great example of what's possible because Taylor and another one of his classmates started their first company as seniors at NCSSM and have gone on to be successful if you're more from Taylor a little bit later. But I just wanted to give you a little bit of an overview of the school and as a whole and kind of the actors are going to come up now and talk a little bit more about the projects in mortgage in particular. And so again, let me just say thank you to everyone in this room. Everyone in this room is a partner in school in different ways and we look forward to your continued support and partnership as we move forward and again, I just want to say thank you to our friends in the General Assembly particularly to people from your leadership and helping make all this possible. It wouldn't be your day without you and we're happy to be here at the show. It was beautiful my first time to the Grant Center and it's absolutely gorgeous there. Thank you for having us today and we look forward to continue working on it. At this point I want to say thank you to our project director for the Morganton Campus and it's been on more nearly two years now and as soon as we realize this was going to be reality in 2016 we went out and hired them and things are a fantastic job and providing leadership to this project. So, thank you Chancellor Roberts and again I want to acknowledge the presence today and support from the speaker and in particular for having to leave a little early for his multitude of events he has going on today and so we appreciate that you're being here as long as you're able as well as your colleagues. So, as we go right out along the way Chancellor is out here with a broken bucket here. So, we're going to figure out what's going on here there we go I think the space broke the presentation there we go Okay, so my role here is to give you a very brief snapshot of how we arrived at this point at the Morganton Campus and why we invested in this opportunity back in 2010 there was an acknowledgement that the School of Durham while performing exceptionally well in terms of accommodating students and growing enrollment really there was no more room in we had 680 students the campus had expanded with a capacity that could really grow no more in a third way effective way and it's boxed in it's 27, 28 acres in Durham that really has no room to grow beyond that and so the legislature and as well as the UNC system took notice of that and commissioned a study and that feasibility study identified a number of options including the Morganton that were considered as a site for the campus and when there's only a spoiler alert at this point Morganton was selected it was slotted into the E.C.N.C. bond that you've heard and when that passed in March of 2016 we had our martial arts as an institution as you began advanced planning for not only a physical campus but we delivered in Morganton upon opening in 2021 as has been noted as advanced planning went on we learned the actual cost of this project would require on top of accelerating construction costs anywhere in the world we also were facing more well-defined programs for working to pay and others and that led to the need to petition the legislature to provide additional 15 million funding and as has been noted we are incredibly grateful that they there's a gap of $10 million more that we have articulated if it is needed and we are going to raise that privately at the institution to be able to open the campus in a way that is equal to the opportunities available in Durham for all of our students the defining features that averse to our advanced planning process are really critical elements to bear in mind about the institution as it relates to the second campus in Morganton we went into this not really knowing what we didn't know we didn't know what would be the importance of working to that it is in Durham and where there might be commonalities and where we might direct it into some few opportunities for NCSSM on the second site and so we went through the process of advanced planning and in doing so identified these defining features that our work trustees approved last September in particular I'm not going to involve you with some key points to note NCSSM working to deliver that application process to students who have the opportunity to identify their top choice which program they want to compete for first if they're not selected do they want to advance the other pipelines for consideration so we're going to go through the process of making sure that we have the opportunity to identify the top choice which program they want to compete for first in consideration so that is how that will roll out when we get recruitment in fall 2020 for that inaugural class we will be engaged in academic calendar that is consistent across campuses and of course that are delivered by faculty which are higher the same exact way we do so today all of our faculty possess advanced degrees at NCSSM and about 50% of them there's opportunity that you may have included by now that we are exploring data science that is already something happening present day in Durham in our online program but not necessarily it is well defined a way that we think we might be able to build out in Borginton as a concentration that really engages a number of different disciplines and does so in a way data science throughout the curriculum so we're excited to see some of that NCSSM protecting our academic core humanities math science computer science engineering but also surrounding that with embedding throughout data science and particularly seeing a number of different pathways that they manifest itself through you're obviously here today one of our events we have one yesterday in Charlotte as well as sustained by the culture so we're excited about the opportunity that is being explored and the response we've got from folks like you around the state came to participate in this discussion we have given good attention here to the $15 million provided this past session but the equally important is that the initial start-up funding where the campus was also provided recurring and non-recurring dollars by the legislature this is the verse operating fund to the point that it needs to be when we have the doors open in 2021 we're now in phase two of planning like I said honestly that I have no idea how many phases there are but this is the second and so we are excited to be arrived at this point we've already initiated activity in our external engagement campus operations steering team which brings together a number of different external experts around the community in Worthington or County throughout the Unifor region and really all across North Carolina we're bringing those books together with all the institutional leadership to really challenge norms and practices present a core campus in Durham that understand where we make some progress in designing a model that is both efficient and effective on both campuses and allows it to be a sustainable model for many years to come so we are appreciative of all those serving on those steering teams and we want you three additional steering teams in months ahead whether this fall we will tackle the curriculum and course catalog we intend to build out in Worthington in addition to that the student life that will happen through service learning and experiences in and around the community and of course our teaching and learning collaboratories is one of our blue side considerations for our new campus where we might be able to centralize professional development activities for the state if there is interest in enthusiasm and that from our colleagues throughout the university system and other institutions and so the teaching and learning collaboratory is something that will get better definition as we move forward in the years ahead and we look forward to setting that conversation between you and me today and then of course the people who follow you see in the back that model costs $7,300 and so we are going to be pursuing this activity that you see pictured on the slide in the immediate term we'll begin the militiamen vacant work this fall on site the break ground by early June and then have 24 months of consecutive 24 consecutive months of construction and activity occurring on that site such that we're ready to open within August of 23 months for students the site itself for those not familiar with this is I-40 that runs along the bottom of this Pentagon our friends from Piedmont Community College are located in the southwest quadrant there they have about 80 students in enrollment that range from Pre-K all the way through the end of high school curriculum and this used to be a part of the campus Eastern Regional and they serve up to 600 students residentially years ago that site has largely been abandoned over the years and this is not an opportunity to breathe life into that land preserving some of the historic architecture of significance while also building new construction of this educational district along the western half of the Eastern District this is the zoom in view of the campus as you can see you have a good child up in the back in specific and again there is some paperwork in the back you can take with you today if you'd like to walk through some of the functions that are located throughout the campus in these various facilities the one piece we turn that into a bed space which we illuminate the auditorium on our campus this will accommodate 450 to 510 attendees inside and it will be multi-purpose in nature so it's not going to be set up only for a theater performance or for a guest lecture handling it from academic competitions to weddings to banquets and so on we hope this will be an asset to the region or community this element here of the Wellness Center it is included in the model but it's important to know that we can't afford it today and so this is a really core of a vision that is in the advanced planning stage as we speak this is the only element of the project that the state funding will not be able to handle given the cost of construction and so on so this is what will be the outcome of our $10 million campaign an hour and a half so the Wellness Center is pictured in all of our visuals because it's an important component of the master plan vision for our students who are live on-site but we also recognize that it will likely be a trailing project that we would hope to overcome in the second year of operation of the campus this provides you a zoom in lens of the campus core what's operational in 2021 all of you linked to the video of the presentation but also linked to this slide deck and one of the elements that you have the opportunity to click on at that time is this image in the center here if you click on that it will take you to a digitized slide through of the campus so you can get a sense of how it will all be connected by the central quarter of the academic street and also some of the powerful business views that are created on that site so with that I'm going to close out my remarks and let you know that you are welcome to come to Morganton and Berk County anytime I'd be happy to tour you around the site as they exist today explain to you the vision as it will unfold over the years to come and also explore partnership opportunities with you whether it's the educational sector the business industry sector the economic development sector whatever it may be we're excited to take up residency here in Berk County I am living in Morganton now so I am on site all the time and I'm happy to engage with you or your partners and advisory boards at any time that may be appropriate are there any questions specific to the Morganton project before we continue the program maybe we flew by very quickly and just wanted a little clarity on them yes or I would have signed a great presenter so we went on to reward him that's a good job so now we're going to transition to our star of the show here Taylor Grockman I'm glad I went to Fort Teller not after him because he is a phenomenal individual he's a proud alumnus of the School of Science and Mathematics and he's someone who you've heard already my owner about his activities when he was a student on site in Durham and the incredible impact he made even more important to me has been what he has done in the years since as it relates to what he's paid for for other students then to SSM for alumni community then to SSM and the way in which he continues to give back no matter how far away he may drift thank you Taylor for being with us today for joining us in this presentation and sharing your thoughts and reflections on the time in SSM a little bit about what you've been today I'm going to transition our presentation here for Taylor on one of Chancellor Robert's slides described how 99% of SSM graduates have been taught to earn an undergraduate degree I remember the first call where we liquidated my college fund and I used it to buy some of my servers and hire some classmates for the summer after I graduated and we worked as hard as we could that's when I remember the second call I said hey our BC decision is about two weeks after university with a final sentence that's would it be okay if I took a chance my parents said yes and so that's how electricity was born we started on calls customer calls on the shared payphone in the middle so nowadays I do data science I'm just going to briefly just describe for you what it actually is I'm trying to be able to practice in person what is it actually it's good to be home I would say that's my mathematical education started here at Sheldon High School graduated 1999 from science math but I spent my school with very influential teachers here in Lakeland County so a huge convince to the Sheldon School System okay we'll go quickly so it starts with counting in my opinion there's only three types of things to count natural phenomena like strikes rain levels as a precip mechanical events you've heard of things and been moving along the assembly line other great things to count and finally human decisions how long did that person spend on that web page there's an event that's just started it's called the back swipe so when you're using your phone to look at something we actually record if you go backwards to look at it again as a signal of human interest so there's really five components to data science the first is statistics so I call them the one this is what we do a lot of individual things we can count on our fingers or our toes look at the individual things but when there's too many to actually look at that's what we call the meaning of the population really all statistics is is an expression language to deal with many things deal with that diversity deal with the complexity of lots of things moving together statistics is just part of the mathematical family so you've got the number of theory probability but statistics is special because it gives you the best jobs it gives the most of the words the most of the most statistics the accountants the actuaries the analysts the quantes quantitative as we call them today are now getting the best jobs and what's happening is that the quantitative skills are now mixed in with the rest of the professions you've got to not only be good what you're trained in but you need a background in quantitative analysis as well we don't go to our companies that to be hired you've got to have a thought of if your AP statistics is successful so the second component that makes it happen is big data and this has been a popular term now for over a decade and some results have come from that the first one is tooling so we now have off the shelf tools we have open source we have commercial packages we're teaching these tools in school now where you don't have to build it anymore you just go pull it off the shelf and you can start to saw through lots and lots of data yourself we have some powerful visualization tools where now we can communicate to audiences that may not be experts in the fields using the the infographics or the animated commercials that are explaining to audiences what's going on without them needing any specialists we have throughput I'm a huge fan of the Amazon Web Services in the cloud instead of needing to go buy rack servers I can just go turn them on and turn them off as I need to and so these systems now process millions of events in real time measurements you get an internet of things there's sensors now we can edit it and everything the 5G networks are coming online and so the whole purpose of fifth generation wireless is that now devices can be always on always measuring see a lot of folks wearing fit mitts it's that all these events now are being automatically counted and measured and fed back into these big data systems and finally around big data we have automation now these decisions can be made to the edge one of my favorite robots is done with the EMW factory and the specialist robot that puts in the seats in the car and it runs faster than any human could possibly put in the seats as quickly as cars come down to the center so now we get into the new stuff so the machine learning is an emerging field and I wanted to sort of describe to you so you know what it is going to be part of this new curriculum at NCSF so it starts with modeling and it's so cool that there's a model of the campus in the back of the room modeling is basically creating software representation of things that exist in the real world once you build a model you can use it for a lot of different things similarity are two things like each other clustering let's build a bunch of pockets let's build five or six pockets of things and look at it that way or novelty what's really special in this data stream that backspike didn't happen what type of person is backspike models also provide forecasting and simulation so that you know what's coming ahead of time and most importantly these models are at scale we can execute thousands of simultaneous models in web storm prediction business prediction and help us make these decisions all the leaders today have a responsibility of data-driven decision making and many of these decisions derive from computer models so that you can decide am I in a loose scenario am I going to run out of a certain type of resource in my business where are my vulnerabilities but also these models can make recommendations for your business really telling you guide you where to go this is what Quanticated Analysis help business lines to you so we'll talk a little bit about the future artificial intelligence so artificial intelligence is the next step you don't want to machine learning and there's a lot high graphics so I hope to dispel a little bit of that this morning where artificial intelligence really helps us is in hidden problems where we don't know we most humans can't observe the relationships between events happening there's some mystery happening there AI will help elicit that hidden information and bring it forward the artificial intelligence problems are often layered which means that it's a chain of events it's not just one thing but there's a branch of outcomes and what's especially fascinating to me is that some of our successes with artificial intelligence spar representations of natural models so the brain the neural network one of the most successful is the artificial neural network A&M and models are competed and selected through natural selection another technique called genetic operators so it's fascinating it's recursive that we're using this technology to cross-space natural processes so this is what a neural network looks like this is the kind of stuff that I do so the applications are fascinating one of the best ones in our machine vision where robots can now look at pictures look at real-time video and come to conclusions things that we wouldn't naturally see ourselves one of the favorite open source projects for this year is the encounter and this algorithm can even capture high speed speeds like a blur across the brain and it can count ingress and egress of these natural events natural phenomena of e-commerce so the application for e-commerce really the business value they provide though is around optimization how do I get the most value out of my revenue line how do I make my customers a hackies it's an optimization role but where what most of the general audience does understand is that these networks these AIs are very single-tasking they're not sophisticated they're doing they're good at only doing one job so they still need us so I've got a far future this is a fun topic the network mind I am a huge science fiction reader this is one of my favorite series the EMX series and this collective culture they're all AI network mind driven and they keep us humans around just for entertainment this is where people learn about us my world's networks it's worth a good research recently uncovered that that fun guy networks connect to tree roots and they use sequences of carbohydrates and chemicals to let the trees change information through the forest floor for added research but where what's important to know for the coming decades is that the humans are still needed we have something called mindfulness all of us in the room can think about how we think and no AI system can do that yes so to finish I'm going to talk a little bit about what I do today today and how us humans are working with robots my latest venture a new company in Durham North Carolina Magic Hunter and we believe that the investments and patents and intellectual property is actually a signal three to four years ahead of where the commercial markets are built we've proved in this time and time again our data sources we take weekly publishings from us and train our boss and their people have an agency what we do is we build a whole data science machine learning software system around that the robots help us with automated collection tens of thousands of documents every Tuesday morning they're waiting for us before the sun comes up thank you robots what are analysts of its seasoned legal professionals what they do is they actually spend their day now training robots rather than doing the work themselves and so they'll develop but make mistakes they'll make corrections and my software is not watching what they do so training is one of the upcoming careers of the future and finally the humans really provide the most value of verification when a robot makes a mistake they're going to correct it's very accurate track before it goes up for the customer so this whole relationship between robotic systems and human intelligence is evolving and I believe that that's going to be one of the VCs of the computer science program at SSSM so we'll look at our products real quickly we have 22 areas now of creation and it's again recursive because a lot of the innovations happen around medical diagnosis can computers help read imaging can they help read results and come to a recommendation and around cybersecurity automated intelligence systems to protect against threats and defense we like to look at what the corporations are doing on a weekly basis so we can see where the competitive landscapes are and our customers love this intelligence and what's exciting about today's panel is we're also studying the renewable energy economy around energy storage which I believe will be the next physical investment after renewals battery systems at the substation level to store this energy and settlements as we potentially begin to add new service providers into the existing distribution networks how are they going to get paid these are two areas of innovation to see and then this is one of our data visualizations this is what my team and I create to help our customers understand what's going on and we break things down so these are actual results of our machine learning algorithms helping to break down the documents on that magic numbers technology was made possible this summer from an intern from the north of classical science and mathematics so if you join us in terms did amazing work at about $10 an hour building these new machine systems with intense focus that none of us have later on in our careers we have a lot of distractions students coming out of NC as a sound have full focus and for every dollar that you put in you can get a multiplier reward now we're back it's important to get back one of the ways that I get back in schools through the government for our development every year we give direct funding for entrepreneurial projects to the students through an application process so I give back in both monetary units and time limits to the school hopefully so finishing today I saw the addition to the Tim Moore sign on the highway I also saw this highway in the highway sign on the Inkleyville County so I read and it looked like a research and what it means is that here right now we have two things one we have a network of suppliers that are ready to provide new businesses and services and two Inkleyville County we have a need for investment so then you look at the sign you're drawing on going out of town it means those two things we've got the supplier network we have a need for investments and the community is ready to start new businesses here so our challenge is at businesses down is creating the leaders that the world will need 20 years from now so through the entire curriculum we're training students to not only do the technical tasks but to also think about why they're doing it the music the liberal arts education the history of education is all component in that so that these leaders in the future can make the right decisions especially when they've got real challenges around how to apply an artificial automated system you want them to have a rich background and be able to make the right philosophical decisions and this time today was a moderate speech here we're going to have a panel discussion to continue the conversation I'm going to invite Megan and Elizabeth up here to join Taylor and our IT guy there is this thing straight for us thank you Kevin and while we have a moment I want to recognize that we have some other fragments in the audience I think are Dr. Brockman it's been a while since I've seen you hey it's good to see you welcome and Ms. Brockman nice to see you Jack great to see you and my name is Brock Winslow I'm from I'm our Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement and I'm also a graduate of the school class of 1986 and it's obviously a lot harder to get into the school now than it was when I came to the presentation yeah this next phase is going to be a bit of a conversation and we hope to have some audience involvement as well but first I wanted to ask our new participants to just take a moment and introduce yourselves and your property and what it is that made you start with you hi all I'm Maggie Robinson and I'm the Chief Operating Officer at the Collider which is a non-profit based in an actual North Carolina and it's the first entrepreneurship and innovation center in the United States to focus on the commercialization of products that use weather and climate data to prepare for adapt and become more efficient in climate change so we offer programming to help build companies and connect with resources and cultivate by the talent we focus on early-stage hybrid companies and represent a new industry which is web services I'm not from North Carolina I'm originally from Syracuse, New York and when I speak today I'm speaking primarily on behalf of Western North Carolina good morning thank you for having me here it's been hours of science and mathematics Elizabeth I'm going to do the energy we are an energy company that serves 7.5 million customers for energy services across the Carolina Florida Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana we also provide natural gas services to 1.5 million customers in Ohio, Kentucky Tennessee and Carolina we are a large obviously a large utility one of the largest in the United States I sit in our renewable energy group active energy and I'm on our regulated side which means I'm focusing in on the states and in the Carolina Florida and the West I'm going to be speaking a lot today about our investments in renewable energy the trends we're seeing from a utility perspective as we're advancing energy technologies we've made a significant shift we've invested over 6 billion dollars in renewable energy to date and we have a lot of support here in the discussion today great thanks so much and even that we are a school and we are as Taylor observed attempting to accept a challenge to prepare young people for the types of careers endeavors that we continue are engaged in I wanted to just kick off the conversation by asking your question now from your perspective are we how are we doing in terms of as a state and in preparing young people to really embrace the types of opportunities that you are engaged in on a daily basis and I think one of the good values are there we're just working on today yeah so we work a lot with federal and college students at the lawyer and they do some of the STEM high schools out and it's absolutely undoubtable that students recognize that renewable energy is the future but there are a number of elements that I think we work a little bit more on helping them understand that the transformation of the energy sector is going to take time to integrate renewables and to economically make that shift we really need to work of that sector or could that they could be part of that sector and that they can be part of that innovation and revitalization and introducing them to how data science meshes the renewable energy because I talked to you right now we have two amazing high school students who are very intelligent and yesterday I wanted to prepare for this just ask them how they thought data science meshed with the energy sector and if they want to do that I'm not really sure I don't really know the careers in the energy sector so I thought that was really telling and I just think how do we even get these career paths on the average high school radar how do we get interested in data science and using data science for work in advancing and transforming the energy sector I'll spring board off the next comments a shift that we're having to make intentionally and thoughtfully it's not something that's going to happen overnight we definitely feel that as we transition and retire role plans for example and make more investments in natural gas and renewable energy our objective our primary objective is to serve customers reliably and affordably and we want to do that in a clean manner but as the costs come down we want to take advantage of those time it's not snap your fingers and all of a sudden there's you know solar and storage for everyone so I do think no one provides a great opportunity to remember to in the country for the amount of solar capacity installed and do energy play a big role in that we've connected about three gigawatts of solar energy so that's like third parties others is making investments at home we have from a career development perspective where I said I think there's significant opportunities inside the business so you think about kind of the operational components of solar installers and mid technicians and our commercial business which I haven't even talked about but within our regulated business but we're looking for a lot of is folks at business degrees finance degrees who understand how to originate new programs because we are hearing from our customers a lot of our large business customers that have significant sustainability goals that won't programs that will help them reduce their independence from current and integrate more renewables and energy storage and it's complicated because we're in a regulated environment where we have there's considerations there we have to think about considerations for the next so I would just emphasize it's not always the technical pieces of how to go about installing these facilities but also the skills behind that to create and originate the programs all of a sudden it's shown that Duke is taking a more proactive even a more proactive effort in our workforce development recruitment we have expanded our office and we have a state person named Megan she'll share that information later but she is solely devoted to North Carolina and October is Career Energy Awareness Month and we're going to be out across the state places like this talking to high schoolers talking to college students telling them about the curriculum and again that education needs to be simply educators all to the ages of the first so how do you tap that passion of a Terrell County middle school mathematics teacher and I believe that the outreach program is the disidentification that NCCSF is doing is going above and beyond what the state provides equipping these creative minds and the edge tools to really enhance their passion and then extend it on to students but the opportunity is how we enable the educators at the edges to be passionate creative and have responsibility to do what they want to do that's an interesting observation in that intersection of offering opportunities within your own organizations that you've all talked about that you're employing for the summer and then you were mentioning you both mentioned the intern and you and your arts and the previous conversation which is prior to to us walking in here how do you exploring empowering those educators at the edges that you're just talking about as inspirational students that you can get into your organizations who make valuable contributions you can get go how is that how can we do that system right now it seems like it's happening in a sort of long surrounding but what thoughts do you have about doing that systemically and how do you go out doing that in your organizations sorry yeah I think it's going to be through creative partnerships and so what I think about that I think about the partners that we have so like the Center for Energy Workforce Instruction which we chair there's the research triangle P-TAC cluster that are on that edge that you talk about that are out there in the field working with innovators and entrepreneurs and I think it's going to take a consortium if you will of groups that are dedicated to reaching those educators and and getting them you know to think a little bit differently about about these opportunities I don't know that I have a sort of public response for you in terms of a systemic but I think just that continued proliferation of education there's a lot we're uncovering in terms of means of like a doing energy for example we have a group that's really focusing in on analytics and we know that we're going to need more data scientists we've been partnering with organizations like Utility Analytics Institute and we're part of those calls and conferences where we're engaging with other utilities and other energy providers around what are you doing pretty data data scientists so I think it's going to take the conglomeration of all of that and then reaching the educators to educate them on okay knowing that these are the kinds of skills we need what how do we bridge like that right and how do we get to the students early enough the other key product just make is I think every knows this but we have a big focus on this last year right so you've got to start really young I think and build before as you make and also comment on the observation that one of our I think this is not a math or this is education or education or this is standard there's opportunities for those schools for yeah so we we're a start of innovation so we right now mostly have resources to focus on engaging with seniors in high school and in colleges and universities and I would echo this that the organizations that have the needs and have the intellect and the knowledge of scientists meteorologists that are at our friendships but we don't have the students so we need to be building bridges to not necessarily the individual students but working at the higher academic levels so that they can see okay you know we're seeing the choir some of the straps of the choir really working on XYZ we try to offer events like hackathon we have our first time of day hackathon that is we're trying to get not just the students as I did we're actually getting more mid and early career professionals than students which is which is interesting and they're bringing along cohorts of students from their schools but getting them to play with the data and understand that you don't need to be a world class data scientist there are avenues and people in the program willing to teach you that same thing we have conferences we're going to have some of your collider camp which is a Saturday and Sunday this is what it takes to be an entrepreneur this is what it takes to be a scientist and here's the climate tapped on top of that so and all of these which hasn't been brought up yet but really focusing on the inclusivity and equity elements we're trying to build programs with that in mind because something has come up as a climate change we can't resolve for that everyone on board and that to our perspective before pitching it back to Taylor I wanted to comment that I really appreciate as you mentioned Zero County and that's way up in the north as you already say there's lots more of everything of people there and the county and across the way that's the premise and it just sort of touched on the theme that I think is relevant for this category is how do these types of opportunities that we're talking about how do we include the rural centers and the state with opportunities are held from those centers rather than from Rashal and our national reserve with our national reserve I would say there's a perfect example on the first floor of the grand site this morning there's a new energy branded bull hide market piece explaining what it takes to be a new energy line that type of investment to market it all over time replacing that content out into the schools out into the rural communities the edges it really is a show of over support it's about you've got to have an educational agenda versus the corporate revenue agenda but I think we can achieve that I was honored to be part of the corporate planning team for me as this is that I've ordered to campus this past year and one of the big special components of this customer campus is the community and the corporate support for what we're doing and I would like to work with the educators at the edge just little things like that would be a start yeah just tagging around to that we have a strong partnership with the community college system and on the and about the market piece for the line workers we are actually working right now with community colleges to have a consistent curriculum for the line line technicians if you will so that's really exciting because that's still a question about how you reach many people and do it in the wrong way right the other piece I would say is that we're fortunate and we touch so many parts of the state we serve so much the state so naturally we're embedded in the communities everywhere we serve and we have significant grant investments and times how we're putting in the communities they're volunteers and I think we have a lot of outreach that we're just doing naturally and so there's an affinity to build that relationship and bring those communities along and educate them on what we're doing the transformation that's happening and I'll ask you to elaborate what you did to be a great example prior to getting into the performing family yeah that's a big thing to bring to that yeah so we have a 65 megawatts solar facility in Dublin County works all solar plant significant size 65 megawatts even one megawatt is 5 acres so 300 50 I don't think we can do that I was an exchange by the way so I'm really so but anyway that emphasis like a number of the farm the solar plants that were developing were purchasing a land from farm owners in this case not always but in this case this is more than a family for generations and the gentleman that we purchased the property from was just so thrilled that at our women cutting we he spoke and he brought his kids and they brought their kids and he just was talking about how excited he was to be able to repurpose the farm land for this purpose because otherwise it was just going to sit idle and so I feel like I now have something to pass along to my kids and great kids instead of future generations so that's the kind of thing that number were in the rural communities like that where there is solar they have a lot of solar in rural communities now we're putting that money back into the community revitalizing for a new purpose so that's a good exciting opportunity back to the original the opportunities that this type of centers on solar communities yeah that's the thing that we as a young organization we have been talking about how do we how do we engage not just the city of Asheville and from the county we have a ton of resources available on our fingertips that are including the rural infrastructure and climate data and all these amazing brilliant minds but how do we tap some of the the entrepreneurial the the really dedicated people that are living in rural counties and to be honest that's Asheville work and climate data is the niche climate technology is even further down that hole and really right now we're focusing on just building a diverse and unique opportunities out there even more with National I think we're also working on it and still we've been working on it for four years and our mission is to provide opportunities to students from across the high state I think the chance to relate to this presentation that we and that students and students really try to think about how to create these opportunities interested at this point if there are any thoughts or questions on what the audience about any of these topics or anything slightly related this is sort of an opportunity to sort of hop in and interject to the conversation or ask a question and upload this evening and then I don't know I'll keep asking about chance or questions they will allude to this his comment says you think about the growth of artificial intelligence machine learning and science and impact on society both from a employment standpoint and others one of the things that we kind of think about is we plan a curriculum around this not just the technical sign up how we have to do this thinking about the impacts of technology or broader society so we'll get the thoughts because I have the importance of battery but you have where you see as we have more more machines being able to do things that humans have done from a employment standpoint how should we think about that or how should we guarantee the growth of your individual jobs that are there and jobs that may be impacted before or years there's something that I think is important that we figure out developing technologies what are the impacts for those so the industry that I've been referencing is rapidly growing every year right now 130 billion dollars to be spent by businesses and governments to better understand the rest of the climate and so we are building an ecosystem that is possible for the startups but largely our startups are mid-career professionals who have left academia and something a trend machine learning and data processing as they are having their models and their apps and their programs do there's still a high touch consulting element to almost all of the companies and the products that are being offered in that market right now because it is new we are trying to we try to work together and convene industry makers from across all sectors and there is no chief climate officer we understood and dissected all across the organization at the sustainability level and in the order and because of that there is no one machine learning solution so I do think being expert thinking good at communicating is something that I don't know I can hear the camera take away from him and I remind him of this element and filling these products so I do see opportunities in my world at least for scientists for new years for years and for designers yeah when I think about I guess there's two problems to it one is I think about the deep energy portfolio and that shift that we are making which is you know significant it is like turning a big ship but if we're we're targeting to invest another billion dollars just over the next ten years in renewable energy and natural gas and so I think about all the jobs that go with that I'll give kind of a data point that might be helpful tonight um it's back in 2012 e-merged around progress energy merger time frame um progress energy to energy had about a dozen people in our renewable groups together that were really focused on thinking about all the interconnections that come with to a grid of these facilities in North Carolina we have renewable portfolio standard that requires that 12.5% of our energy resources will come from renewable energy or energy efficiency um resources by 2021 so there's a compliance target that we had to make sure we were meeting fast forward to today we have over a hundred people in our organization um and we have people that are as I mentioned um business developers that are actually going out and developing procuring um large scale solar projects and developing those we have groups a group that's focused on customer solutions um so understanding meeting with our customers I think spring morning on Beckins Point this is a concept of critical thinking and communications we'll never go away can't replace that with I don't think it was a point to robot this so and knowing how to navigate those waters I think regularly with customers like Walmart and Google and Facebook but also other customers that are you know from the region that are you know don't have the already 100 goals and but do have some state and legal so being able to think thoughtfully about programs that could be designed um in different ways for each of them right um customized um and I think I have to say some strange but I know a lot of conferences and there's there's I think a lot of benefit in having educators and and potential students on Sydney's conferences because what's being discussed in these conferences um over and over again is the shift that we're making and what is that what are the things that it entails and how we effectively get there and I think the workforce piece too as well and so understanding what those nuances are um and from a regulatory perspective from an operations perspective from a climate perspective I think can give people a better sense um the last thing I wanted to say was we do have a sustainability group that do energy for a number of years but I guess growing those kinds of jobs as well um and and then again understanding is going to continue to be um something that we're going to need in addition to the technical pieces today we're going to take care of the comment on that talk you know I would thank you my opinion is that STEM education is just one component of an overall general education and that students have time they've got all the time in the world and the mind is still very valuable at the early age and so my opinion is that you should stay generalized as long as possible learn your history as if they tried to repeat itself and when we're out talking about STEM just be aware that there's folks in the room that have a different perspective that's okay I think the the recent observation is that these quantitative skills are in addition to what you can and the camera places it's just a modifier it's a catalyst and we're all going to need that next level of productivity to be successful and I think that STEM in combination with a classic education is the most powerful Brock I wonder if I might put our friends from on the spot here I just think as an outgrowth of the Chancellor's question as it relates to the ethical considerations societal implications around what we're talking about there I think there's a model program growing the intersection between cybersecurity and ethics that is I would think potentially destructive and how we approach some of this and how you can generate enthusiasm around that program if you don't mind give me a few words today I don't mind at all thanks I'll yield one to you Thanks Kevin Paul and I are in machine college we're in our sixth year teaching cybersecurity we go for batches of science and cyber we go to NVA and cyber management social history and cyber we've got a lot of partnerships at the federal government bubble the industry bubble and we're looking forward to a partnership with the Oregon State School because we think there's a pathway for so many branches we need a cyber program such as ours our I want to add my here, here to tell you your comment about the little arts of weak accommodation really weak accommodation with little arts and STEM it's a better combination the soft skills the competencies with little arts of reading, writing de-work all the soft skills that the workers the workforce requires come through the accommodation of the student in the student center company our particular the state of in our cyber program is that we come at this as a 103-year-old faith-based institution that's always taught a character of ethics is that the human elements of STEM and human element of cyber security is at least equally important to the tech class sector so what we've seen so frequently is that the major cyber programs at large universities and we've heard this from industry-wise the graduate people were really good at technically but they don't know how to talk to the person and they don't know how to pay for education at all and they say very quietly to us we never ask they say very about us and we're not sure we can trust them and so there are a lot of schools that will be able to teach to character of ethics and laugh at American higher education and we think there's a real gap in the national conversation about the subject of higher education K through master's on this ethics and character of the front because in cyber security we think that the trust really matters so that's a particular amount of support we're also an NSA HHS designated center out of the facts so we've got our academic credentials at the top tier of the national food chain in cyber education but we don't think that's enough Thank you for sharing that with a fantastic asset for the question of Carolina and region in general and any other comments that build on that I know we have some fantastic engineers in the room and I'm speaking of I guess I've got a good voice so I have to stop but let's call out better trouble Chops are telling you to see Charlotte I think this point is really important the questions we have from our faculty are really excited about the job opportunities we know the demands there but the real question is should it be needed and that's where the conversation is high school bachelor's job that's where the question is not the technical skill it's where the limits should be and I appreciate your commentary about it having the human element still have a matter of fact but there is a concern that some of this is a fascinating analysis of the boundaries and what exactly should be thanks so much for that comment and I do want to be sensitive to past and time I think New York schedule is about a year at 12.30 and I wish I could I had a comment that was all of them would be pre-vote but don't but I guess Taylor might so thank you and to this with all but maybe I'll have you with me I thought it's maybe some time this weekend you could Google I actually got some lots three laws of robotics there you have your homework thank you so much everyone for being here and for engaging with us it's a great challenge thank you for the future sort of renewing our schools for them to stay just in such a great challenge so thank you for our panelists thanks all of you I'll only require a moment of your time before we let you stand up and enjoy the model with our team for getting back on the road today that is not a one-time connection for our colleagues here they have been tremendous supporters of this project in and the institution overall and we appreciate that and we hope we go out to casual we partner with that program we appreciate doing energy not just today but having a presence on our steering teams and making real impact and how we think through the infrastructure one little thing I put a bow on that brings a point around the pipeline to occur a little bit about the collider and some of the activities happening there one of the startups that is happening in that space at the collider is an NSSO alumnus who has interns working with him and who is doing fine resilience the startup and it's an astral event that there is sitting to meet this other alum who is at the collider he introduces Megan and the domino just keeps falling and it shows the mainly the 10,000 alumni with the impact around the world today is spectacular we thank you for your support your investment and NSSM and wish you a wonderful day thank you