 Whenever I have the opportunity to address crowds like you is I'll sit down and I'll start thinking about what the most important things are that I could say at the beginning of a school year or to talk about where it is we need to go and how we need to get there. There's a lot going on at the university. A lot has happened since January. One of the things that we're kind of proud of, we're going to be not just kind of proud of, we're extremely proud of, when we came in we were, there was a plan on the table to switch the university to a totally new infrastructure in terms of our computing environment. We had been granted a, we were given $3 million a year over the course of two years to start working on that infrastructure. When I was being oriented for the job, they told me that we're working on a computer environment that if you, you kind of worked it out like you would do the lifespan of computing equipment. The university is operating on a, in the stone ages and what we're trying to do is get to the 21st century. Shuresh Murugan has been working with his team on that project since before I came, but we were able to get a little boost behind it when I hit the ground and I want to announce publicly that as of 4 a.m. this morning the whole university is on the new platform. This constitutes an investment of three and a half million dollars in new equipment for the university, so we're about halfway through our computer and security upgrades. The task included the development of, or the rewiring essentially of 34 buildings on campus. They had to go in and redo 96 switching closets with over 304 actual switches and, and routers being replaced. So the team worked from after you were gone quite often because a lot of you never noticed the downtime in your computing. A lot of you never noticed that, that things were being turned on and off. I want to give our IT staff a real rousing round of applause for this, and I want to give all of my team, will all of the vice chancellors please stand, those of you that report directly to me, please stand because these are the folk that, please stand. These are the folks that make things work, and I'm extremely proud to work with these folks. I want to go ahead and have a seat, but I want to harken back to a conversation I had last evening with Thresh as we were, where he was in the middle of his day, I was closing out mine, I had to go write a speech, but one of the things that he said to me that I think I would, would characterize as, as one of the hallmarks of this administration and I can say this to a person of my direct reports. We will not accept for Elizabeth City State University anything less than the best of service from our vendors and from those we do business with. When I addressed you back in January, I talked about the reality of the value of understanding the value that Elizabeth City State University brings to the community and the communities that we serve, and it is important that we all adopt the attitude that we do bring value. We add value and as we add value we must demand respect and good service. As good service will be demanded of you. I have the advantage, I believe, over a lot of people of having looked at Elizabeth City State University for a long period of time, from an objective perspective, I looked at the numbers and as I looked at them, I was looking at the numbers and I was asking questions, I wonder how they did that, I wonder why they did that. There were things that I saw happening at this shining star in the east as Jimmy Jenkins identified it that were remarkable for the size of institution and the location of institution like Elizabeth City State University, I mean absolutely remarkable. There are things that are part of your legacy, part of the data that supports and articulates what it is this institution has accomplished that this institution should stand with pride and boast about. We are going to start to surface more and more of those stories, we have started to surface those stories but we will be doing more and more of that as we go along. One of the things just as a point of reference, I looked at your graduation rates. One of the things that happened in the last couple of weeks was the governor was coming to town. I figured if the governor is coming to town he may ask a question about our graduation and retention rates so I figured I better be up on where we are. So I looked at the most recent six year graduation rates that are recorded and that is one year beyond where we are because the 2016 graduating class isn't in the books yet, that will go in in October or November and what not. But when I looked at the most recent graduation rates, it is listed as 38.7%. Now the downside of that for me is 38.7% is down from where you were a few years ago. But then numbers are interesting and revealing when you know what questions to ask and you know where to look for the information. As I dug deeper, I started to see an interesting fact or set of facts. And I looked at, and the UNC system started several years ago when I was doing enrollment management, we argued that there was information that was missing from the success rates of institutions that the UNC system needed to start keeping up with. And one of those bits of information is what happens when a student starts at an institution and then decides to transfer to another UNC institution. And I looked at students who started at Elizabeth City State University and transferred to any other and graduated from any other University of North Carolina system institution. The numbers went from 38% to 42.6%. So there are a lot of students that are starting here and transferring over the course of the last six years that started here and then transferred, excuse me, to other UNC institutions. Well, the UNC system also bought data from the Clearing House so that they can track by financial aid transcripts where students go anywhere to any institution in the United States of America. And when you look at the numbers of students that started at Elizabeth City State University and graduated in six years from any institution in the United States, your numbers go up a full 6% to 44.7%. Now that tells me a couple of things. When students start with you and then they transfer and they graduate from other institutions, it means they intended to graduate. It also may mean we didn't do as good a job as we could have, should have, continuing to recruit those students once they had enrolled in our institution. So what we have to do is look inwardly, look at the institution and ask the question and be ready to answer the question for our students, why should your degree at the end of the day say Elizabeth City State University? One of those things, and I had prepared some slides but I decided because of time I'm not going to go through all of that. Some of these slides I'm going to put on the website because I want you to see them. We are in the process of moving through the strategic, looking at the strategic plan that this faculty and this institution developed back in 2014. It is the last strategic plan that was generated through public comment. It was indeed reviewed by the faculty and administration and approved by our Board of Trustees. It is dated a strategic plan for Elizabeth City State University 2014 through 2019. When I went back and looked at that strategic plan upon arriving here, I looked and I realized that all the kinds of things that had been touted as new since then fit within the context of that strategic plan that had been generated by the institution. So we are putting that strategic plan out there because we want you to look at it. In addition to that strategic plan, what has happened over the course of the last couple of months is my team has set and they started to develop operational plans. Now the operational plans will be what will we do this year to move us toward the accomplishment of our strategic goals. And so they start to look at things like the development of platforms that support student success, the development of technology infrastructures that support academic and work and other communications environments. They start to look at what the operational elements are that we will be doing this year. We are going to put that out on the, there is more discussion that is going to be going on about it, but we are going to generate a website so that you can see what the seven operational initiatives are going to be and what the goals are going to be under those because those are going to be the things that are going to affect your life over the course of the next year. Those are the things you are going to ask to participate in helping to shape, design and make work for the institution. Those teams are already being pulled together. The leaders have been selected. The teams are being pulled together and that work on those operational plans will continue. But what is behind all of that? What is, we have got to do the operational planning and the operational planning by the way. The operational planning will drive the budgeting process. So if you think money, then you think what are we going to do in terms of our work effort here, and then you think what is it that we are driving toward over the course of the next five or ten years, then you are talking strategic plan, operational plan, budgeting process. We are going to make those processes transparent so that the entire institution and the communities that we serve know exactly where we are going, where we are trying to get to and how far along the road we are. And when we hit milestones, like this switch over to a 21st century computing center, we are going to trumpet it loud and long. We are proud of that and we are going to let people know that we are proud of it and that we are Elizabeth City State University and making progress. Now, let's go back and take the look at the institution. Let's look inwardly for a second. Let's ask the question, why are we here? What is it that we should be looking at that drives how we dialogue with one another, how we interact with the communities that we serve, how we interact with each other and our students? For me, I always like to put it in context. We are a member institution of the University of North Carolina system. The University of North Carolina system was actually founded in 1971, but it was pulled together from institutions that were born out of communities that had an interest in the evolution and having access to higher education in those communities for targeted populations. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was founded on December 11th, 1789. University of North Carolina was founded to educate the sons of the landed gentry in North Carolina with the goal of providing North Carolina with stable leadership going forward. North Carolina State University was founded March 7th, 1887. It was founded for the purpose of educating the sons of wealthy farmers who were with the goal of stabilizing the working economy of North Carolina going forward. Elizabeth City State University was founded March 3rd, 1891. The stated purpose was to develop or provide the opportunity for economic development and educational opportunities for the colored citizens of Eastern North Carolina. Now, why do I pick these schools and talk about these particular founding facts? Well, first of all, that's history. That's real. That's how the institutions got formed. All three of the institutions have evolved to more expanded mission over time. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now is over 60% women. There's no argument about that. North Carolina State University serves over, well, right at, they're approaching 50% women. If you pull the School of Engineering out of North Carolina State, they are over 60% women also. Sometimes curricula make that kind of huge difference. Elizabeth City State University, one in four of our students is not an African-American student. The diversity that permeates this campus every day is an important part of what we've evolved to be and where we can go from here. It is important that we understand the importance of that. The best thing Elizabeth City State University can do. And you all know I've been on the road a lot. I've been out, I've been talking to leaders across North Eastern North Carolina and in Raleigh and talking about what is it that this institution, what role does this institution, must this institution play in the uplift of this region and of the state? And I've concluded from those conversations that the best thing we can do for North Eastern North Carolina and our constituencies wherever they are is to grow. When Elizabeth City State University grows, we generate jobs. When Elizabeth City State University grows, we spend dollars in the local economy. When Elizabeth City State University grows, we turn out students and I have had the pleasure of talking to the products, the students that have been produced by this institution, your proof of concept, if you will. This institution turns out well-prepared students ready to be productive in the job markets that they go into. In all fields, it is important that we own that fact. It is important that we revel in that fact and it's important that we get better at it. The challenge we're going to face as we move forward is how do we manage all of these multiple identities that we now, they now are part of us, but we really haven't stopped to parse them out and own them and say, how do we respond to this part of who we are? How do we respond to that part? I'm going to articulate just some of them. This is not going to be a comprehensive list, but it is a list of the things that I know as an institution. We're going to have to ask ourselves, how do we look relative to this part of who we are? As the University of North Carolina System Institution, we are what is called an access institution. We were founded as an access institution. We were founded to bring people into higher education who might otherwise not have access to higher education. What does that mean in a 21st century context? Who is the population that we're going to be out there going after relative to our role as an access institution? Now, one of the things that I learned a long time ago is that people define access and there are different philosophies about access. There are people who define access, if you set the goal at getting over a 20-foot wall. There are people who would define access is, okay, let's go out and get a 10-foot ladder, prop it against the bottom of the wall. Let people climb that 10-foot ladder and then figure out how to get the other 10 feet. But you've given them a leg up. That's access. One other way that access is defined by people is, well, let's take that same 10-foot ladder, hang it from the top of the 20-foot wall, and if people can figure out how to get to the 10-foot ladder, they can get over the wall. That's access. My perspective on access, and I hope I can sell you this idea on access, is that as an institution, we look at that 20-foot wall and we build a 27-foot ladder prop it against the wall and you climb a ladder like you're supposed to climb a ladder and you get to your goal. That's what an institution like Elizabeth City State University is founded to do. That's what an institution like Elizabeth City State University has shown over the years that it is capable of doing. That's what an institution like Elizabeth City State University has demonstrated that we are very good at. This notion of access, that's our bailiwick, that's our space, and we're gonna own it. We're already are very good at it and we're gonna get better at it. And HBCU, historically Black College and University, the goals for which HBCUs were founded, the mission's not complete yet. I harken back to the speech that our student speaker gave at commencement and he pointed out how valuable it was to him in his growth as an individual that he had a place and he had a space where he could learn what it meant to be valued and require other people to value him and grow so that he could move forward into a larger society as a whole person. The mission of the HBCU is not complete yet. There still are plenty of students and I would argue there may even be more students now and more households, more parents that want their students to have an experience that allows them to come into a viable learning environment and come out and become and come out of that process whole and healthy. So the mission is still there. We're a regional university. We must be committed to serving the Northeast region of North Carolina. This is a region that has economic challenges. This is a region of out migration at this point. It's out migration by the younger people that are moving to the center of the state, of the other side of 95, if you will, to the metropolitan areas looking for opportunity. What is it that we can do to educate our students and help them create enterprises that stay home in North Eastern North Carolina? And when they go forward, that they remember how they got there so that they're willing to make their donations to Elizabeth City State University. We're a facilitator of economic growth. We put over $231 million when we are on our stride in economic impact into the area per year. But what we have to do, and that's the return on investment for the investment that the state makes in the institution. One of the other things that makes a difference in this area is that there's about a $3 to $1 return on investment of tax dollars that come into the institution. There's over a $9 tax avoidance, if you will, for students who, because students who get university degrees tend to be healthier, stay employed, and be more productive as citizens. They pay taxes instead of live on other people's taxes. So it is important that we understand our role in supporting economic growth in the area. We are a facilitator of educational excellence. When I hear legislators and others talk about dwindling support for K-12 education here in Northeastern North Carolina. And I look at this institution and I remember that this institution has supported educational excellence across those counties, or at one point, did for years. And that the folk who engineered those efforts are still here in this community and still part of this faculty. That's our space. We need to get into that space and work with those school systems. We know what the problems are, and we can help come up with solutions to move those school systems to where they need to be. I said in my first address to you, I've never seen a situation where there is true and sustainable economic development that did not include a, did not include an uptick or a high standard in the educational systems in that region. K-12, community colleges, Elizabeth City State University, we have to invest in that process. That's our space. Now we got a new identity that we're going to have to look at. The identity of an NC Promise institution. Legislation has been passed. It's made us part of a group of three institutions where the legislature has said they're going to foot the bill to help write down the cost of attending Elizabeth City State University, Pembroke State University, and Western Carolina University. Now it's important that we all understand. They did not say it cost less to attend any of those institutions than it does today, or will cost less. They are going to put the money in from legislative resources to make up the difference between the tuition that will be charged and what the families will pay. Now what that means on our end is we have to be clear that the costs or the price that families pay does not affect at all the high level of education they get from an institution like Elizabeth City State University. That's going to be, and we ask for additional resources to do a market study marketing campaign. We've got to get that message out because we know there are elements in our society that would want to capture that message in a different way. We've got to let the world know who we are, what we're capable of, and why as an NC Promise institution we're probably going to be the best bet. How are we going to do all this? What should our numbers look like? Our enrollment has been dropping. We're nervously watching what happens this year. But let's look at what the numbers say about what's possible around us. When we look at traditional age college students, traditional age college students, that has been the focus of a lot of our recruiting to date. Traditional age college students, and when you look at the people who follow the stats on this, they are renewable resource. Every day children are born. 18 years later, they reach a point where their parents want them out of the house in a relatively safe place, okay? Places like Elizabeth City State University are good places for those families to send their children to learn, to grow, and to be well educated and prepared for the future. We've got to capture that message and capture, recapture our space in those markets. But that's one market. Let's take a look at transfer students. Transfer students, there's been more and more effort to try to get students to go into community colleges and then transfer from community colleges into the university system. Well, we have partnerships with those community colleges. We need to tend those partnerships. We need to work those partnerships. We need to make sure that those students coming to us for the final two years of their education or the next two years of their education come to us having been advised well. They fit well into our systems and they can move through and progress toward degree in a sound fashion. So transfer students is a market that we're going to be looking at. But traditional age college students, transfer students, a couple of markets. College students are getting older. One of the things that I had the pleasure of doing, I used to teach a course in the American college student and it struck me one day, when an instructor walks in, when you walk into your classrooms next week, the range of ages is not what it used to be. You're not looking at just traditional age college students. You're seeing students coming back to school and they're coming back for different reasons. Some are coming back because they dropped out or stopped out. Some are coming back because there's a need to retool. The area in which they focused has either become obsolete or there's need to update skills. So they're retooling. And there's some that are coming back simply for the pleasure of learning. I learned, I got my degree, I got my job, I had a successful career. Now I want to go back and study the things I really wanted to study at the beginning when I was young. And they're coming back into our classrooms to do that. We are capable of and we must provide the opportunities for adult returning students to do that. We are going to make a significant effort to go after military-affiliated students. And military-affiliated students will be defined as all five branches of service, active duty, veterans, and their dependent families. We're gonna make a special emphasis focusing on our Coast Guard base just down the street a bit. There are 3,500 people that work at the Coast Guard base every day. Almost all of those 3,500 people have educational benefits. Let me say that again. There are 3,500 people less than two miles down the street. Almost all of those 3,500 people have educational benefits. Those people who are in on rotation, they harken to another set of experiences that we're gonna have to, and another identity, another group that we're gonna have to look at. And those are the students who want to work on online degrees. And I want to make a distinction here. We've got a lot of online courses, but as a faculty, or as faculties, and as a university, we have to make that step toward putting together very good online degree programs because a military personnel that's on rotation, if they start with you face to face, and they have to go on rotation, if they can continue online, the data is clear that they will. So we need to get into that market. We need to capture our part of that space. So the military-affiliated with an emphasis on the Coast Guard and online degree programs are areas that we are going to be looking at active involvement with. I'm gonna circle back and make just a comment about, because you hear a lot about the, a lot of complaining, if you will, about the millennial generation. I've watched this generation with interest for a while, and I've looked at how they respond and what the differences are between them and other generations. Through all of the complaining, what we must understand and accept is that the biggest problem that millennial generation has is us, okay? We taught them how to be who they are. We facilitated them, we provided them with the toys and the distractions. We even built the distractions for them and programmed them in. We taught this generation to be who they are. Their biggest problem is us. But now let me tell you the scary part. As we look at this generation, the generation, you look at the generation research and this generation is most like what has been identified as America's greatest generation. That was a generation that took the tools of the turn of the century and built enterprises worldwide. They built governments. They built monoliths to their monuments to their existence around the world. America's greatest generation, this generation, this millennial generation has been identified as most like them. And they have the same access to tools that the greatest generation had. The tools now are the tools of technology and the tools of technology in their hands will now be coupled with extreme wealth. Because even though we struggle with our economies, America is still the largest economy in the world and there is wealth among our youth and there are tools that our youth are learning how to use. And as Ollivander said when he talked about Voldemort, Voldemort was a great wizard, a terrible person but a great wizard. Theodore Roosevelt said if you educate a man's mind and fail to educate him morally, you will have created a menace to society. The millennial generation's biggest problem is us. If we fail to educate them, if we fail to connect with them, if we fail to teach them how to think about the world as it has been, where we came from, where we are now and where it will go, they will be ill-equipped to make the decision. They will be ill-equipped to make the decisions that the world they face will require. So it is really important that we look at educating them very, very carefully. Finally, I'm going to talk just a little bit about what we want to see with, where we wanna go with the Elizabeth City State University experience. I see our students, I see Elizabeth City State University students graduating and going into areas where they're writing the computer programs and developing the algorithms that drive the smart tools of tomorrow. I see them building great enterprises. Your graduates have already shown the capacity to do that. Your future graduates as we invest in this process will be able to do even more in that regard as we get better at educating. But I also see them as writing and performing the music of tomorrow. I also see them as the people who care about and comfort the downtrodden. I want us to understand that we, because of the way the world is shaped and because of the way, and incidentally another just a data point, the majority of the jobs that will be available to people in the future are jobs that will require post-secondary education. And the larger number of those jobs that require post-secondary education will require at or beyond the bachelor's degree. So this is not an institution in danger of going out of business. This is an institution that must find its path to articulate who it is, what it does, and how it does the business that is at hand. This is an institution that does indeed have a place in the future. This is an institution that will grow. As I was looking at coming to Elizabeth City, a lot of, I got a lot of advice and one of the pieces of advice that I got is when you get there, you gotta find a niche. You got to develop a niche that the institution can latch on to and that the institution can own and that that becomes what they identify with. And so I started to look at our academic programs and we've got some great academic programs in some very interesting areas. We could do that. But let me suggest to you that as we go through this next year, let's consider that Elizabeth City State University move into the space and adopt as its niche the pursuit of excellence. That's a field that every curriculum can play in. Every department can play in. It doesn't matter whether you're on the facility staff or on the aviation staff or faculty, you can play on the field of the pursuit of excellence. And I've seen it happen on this campus. There are people on this campus that take great pride in what they do and they do it very, very well, all over the campus. I'm gonna suggest to you as your chancellor that we think seriously about adopting that person.