‘A lot to be grateful for’ as academic year starts

Two weeks into the fall semester, The Well sat down with Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz to discuss milestones and future priorities. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

How was your summer? Did you and your family take a vacation?

We had a great summer. We were still very busy here, getting ready for what has turned out to be a wonderful start to a more normal fall semester. But we worked in a couple of getaways.

I was inducted into the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Hall of Fame in Philadelphia, which was supposed to have happened two years ago but was postponed because of the pandemic. It was a very special occasion for me, my family, and my UNC colleagues and former students who were able to attend. And Amy and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary at the beach in early August. We had family coming and going for most of that week.

You and others from the Carolina community traveled to the Galapagos for the 10th anniversary of the UNC Center for Galapagos Studies. How was that trip?

I couldn’t be more pleased with what we’ve been able to accomplish there over 10 years in partnership with the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. We celebrated the anniversary with a conference on island sustainability, which included Carolina faculty, students and administrators and about 150 researchers from around the world.

We’re establishing a strategic plan for the next 10 years looking at issues around climate change, sustainability, coastal resilience, public health and more. I’ve seen the success that comes with having a plan where you can identify your priorities and then meet goals so that you’re not trying to do everything. I know our experts will develop a road map that will position the center to build on its strengths and areas of distinctiveness for future success.

You are co-teaching a class this semester called The American Professoriate. What are you hoping students will learn?

We started off by asking them to read “What Universities Owe Democracy,” by Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels. He spent a full day last winter speaking about his book and meeting with Carolina students and faculty. The themes in that book align with Carolina Next: Innovations for Public Good. He talks about four key functions of a university: preparing civic leaders, promoting civil discourse, enabling upward mobility and producing and disseminating new knowledge. After that, we talked about the foundations of the Academy, from its ancient beginnings to the post-Civil War period and the rise of land grant universities, when U.S. higher education started to look like what we see today.

But there’s a practical side to this class, too. These are mostly third-, fourth- and fifth-year doctoral students who will be out on the job market soon. This class helps them understand the tenure promotion process, the importance of academic freedom, the different types of universities — whether they are research-intensive or more liberal arts in nature — and how that can change the reward system for professors. We hope at the end of the semester they will have a better understanding of the Academy in general, not just the foundations but also the more practical components that will prepare them for great success.

I took a similar class as a graduate student at UVA, and it had a big impact on me. I might not be in this role if I hadn’t taken that class. I became interested in studying some of the great academic leaders who have gone on to have a major impact in higher education. I hope that this course will have the same kind of impact on these students.

I’ve said it before, but my favorite place on campus is in the classroom with our curious students. I reminded them on the first day that they should always ask why, that they should never just accept something as truth or fact because someone in an authority role said so. Teaching this class grounds me.

When you were dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, you led the development of the new IDEAS in Action curriculum, which launched this fall. What are some of the highlights, and how will it better prepare students for the future?

The College Thriving class is going to be important. This is a one-credit course that helps students get off to a great start with foundational competencies. It’s especially important in supporting our large numbers of first-generation college students.

Then there is the Triple I course — Ideas, Information and Inquiry. I think that is going to be a game changer for us, putting three faculty from different disciplines in front of a group of students to help them better understand how they solve big challenges. I hope it will expose students to different majors and disciplines that they never would have imagined. We graduate more double majors and students with a major and minor than most of our peer institutions.

The content of these new courses is important, but also the logistics and implementation are critical — course availability, how advising is nested within those foundational courses, how students are preparing to choose a major, among other things. We’ll be looking closely at the end-of-semester evaluations from these students. Their input is important to help us think through how the logistics are working.

The job market has been in flux. How is Carolina helping to address career development for faculty and staff, as well as undergraduate and graduate students?

The third strategic initiative of Carolina Next, Enable Career Development, is critical, more today than we ever imagined when we launched the strategic plan in January 2020. Becci Menghini, vice chancellor for human resources and equal opportunity and compliance, and her team have done a great job creating the Future of Work at Carolina initiative. This initiative pilots different working environments, trying to create opportunities for upward mobility so that we can retain our very best employees. Because of the legislative salary increases, we’re finally able to provide meaningful raises, and I hope that will continue.

As for students, we’re looking at how to reimagine career services. We have to create opportunities for more internships. The pandemic was tough on internships, and we need to increase our efforts to make sure our students have the opportunities they need. The new IDEAS in Action curriculum will help. It has a real emphasis on experiential education — study abroad, internship opportunities and directed research with our faculty. We’ve learned from alumni surveys that those experiences have a big impact on career development.

At Carolina, about 10% of our undergraduate students are Carolina Covenant scholars. Candice Powell, who directs that program, has been amazing in securing funding to connect Covenant students to Carolina alumni to help get them into internships. Coming out of the pandemic, that’s been difficult, but we stayed the course. And even if some of those internships were virtual internships, students still learned a lot from the experience and made connections with different companies.

The University’s research enterprise recently topped its previous record for annual award totals and now exceeds $1.2 billion. Tell us about the value of research and why it’s important for North Carolina and beyond.

As I’ve said, the number is nice, but more important is the impact that those dollars have on our research outcomes. Most of what we do is around improving humankind. I’m proud of that.

A lot of universities struggled during the pandemic, but much of our research during those two years was related to COVID-19. That certainly helped keep our numbers climbing. But more than that, it’s the fact that we have deeply committed people who stay true to our mission. People want to fund our world-class faculty and researchers because they know we have a great track record and a great road map. People believe in us because they see the collaborative approach we have to solving big problems.

We should be very proud of the life-changing work we do, not just in the biomedical and life sciences areas, but in the social sciences, whether that’s our faculty in political science, public policy and sociology doing important work promoting democracy, or the important work we’re doing across the state through the School of Government. I’m proud of the way that everybody is participating in this record-breaking year in terms of research dollars.

Carolina has a longstanding tradition of promoting and protecting free speech. How will the University continue to advance those efforts this academic year?

Our faculty came out in support of the Chicago Principles (based on a 2014 report by the University of Chicago’s Committee on Freedom of Expression) a few years ago, and our Trustees recently endorsed that alongside the Kalven Report (released by a 1967 University of Chicago committee). The Kalven Report reminds us that the University should welcome all viewpoints and be careful about taking a stand that could be interpreted as representing that of the University or a school or department.

What the Trustees endorsed reaffirms what we have been doing and the fact that free speech is not just important, but vital to our University.

Nearly three weeks into the fall semester, what encouragement would you offer faculty, staff and students?

Try to find opportunities to reengage in a way that you haven’t been able to during the past couple of years. We have so much programming to offer our community members. I have loved getting around for the different welcome events, talking about our new students and our new curriculum, the upcoming athletics season and the revival of the Tar Heel Bus Tour in mid-October.

I’ve also been out meeting with employees — the staff at Campus Health and Carolina Housing and many others. These are the people that helped get us through these past few years. I wanted to say, “Thank you and what can I do to help you?” I realize it has not been easy. Let’s look back at what we learned and try to provide opportunities for everybody to have a better working, living and learning environment.

I want to be sure that we keep the ongoing mental health challenges on our minds, knowing we all have a role to play. A lot of that can be done by just having conversations with people. Ask people how they’re doing. Ask how you can help.

The other thing I would remind people of is that Carolina is a place that matters. At the end of October, Carolina, along with Harvard, will go before the land’s highest court to defend our holistic admissions practice and the importance of educating a diverse student body. We’ve had a record-breaking fundraising year, over $800 million. I spoke earlier about our record-breaking research funding. We’re building out the innovation corridor through our downtown partnership. There’s a lot to be grateful for. So many people believe in us.