- Hello, I'm David Crabtree here on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Coming up, we'll talk with the chancellor, Dr. Aswani Volety, about the future of this campus.

- [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[bright music] [lively music] [lively music] - Thank you for joining us and Chancellor Volety, it's good to be back on your campus.

- Welcome.

- Each campus within the UNC system, each university has its uniqueness.

It didn't begin in a vacuum.

Give me the brief history of UNCW.

- Yeah, I'm very grateful for the citizens of New Hanover County.

Way back in 1947, 1940s, I should say, late forties had the foresight to tax themselves to create a college.

That time it was a junior college.

Later on became a four year college.

And in 1969 it became part of the University of North Carolina system.

That's when it became UNC Wilmington.

So what started off as a teaching college for accommodating World War veterans coming back, the university started with 238 students and now it is almost 19,000 student institution with bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and doctoral programs.

So it came a long way, but I'm really grateful to the citizens of New Hanover County who supported this institution, nurtured it to make it what it is today.

- You talk about 19, 20,000, maybe, by the time we get into the new academic year, you have been chancellor here, the seventh chancellor.

You've been here for three years.

- Yes.

- Almost.

You were here before teaching and a dean.

What is the job of Chancellor like for you?

- Oh, to paraphrase my daughter, nothing really, because she says, all I do is sign a lot of papers, have a lot of meetings, make a lot of phone calls, send a lot of emails.

Technically, I suppose that is true, that is what I do.

But getting aside the role of a chancellor is to oversee not only the operations of all the academic programs, infrastructure, anywhere from student affairs to academic affairs, to fundraising, to business affairs, infrastructure, other things, but also a lot of relationship building.

You are the pace of the institution, but it is liaising with the city council, county commissioners, chamber of commerce, board of governors, state legislature, donors, alumni.

So there are a lot of moving pieces to it, but really to make sure that the, I work with the faculty, staff and students as well as the community to set a collective vision for this institution to be what it could look like for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

And make sure that I bring in the resources necessary for faculty, staff, and students to do what they do well and really get out of their way.

In some ways it is like a CEO role.

You or the chancellor is the CEO, for lack of better terminology.

You have the chief academic officer, chief financial officer, and so on and so forth.

- You taught for how many years?

- Oh, I graduated in 1995 with my PhD and I've been in some form of academic environment since then.

Whether it is a postdoctoral researcher or a faculty member since 1999.

So a good 30 plus years.

- Okay.

Do you still actively work in research?

- I was very active in my research till about a year or two ago.

I have a full fledged lab.

I published, I work with students.

I review grant proposals, manuscripts, et cetera.

But off late, I'm taking a backseat.

I still review manuscripts, I still review grant proposals, et cetera.

I still serve on student committees, but I don't have a lot per se.

I figured if the students have to make an appointment to see me and it takes a little while, I'm not doing right by the students.

So focusing a little more on my day job.

- Do you miss teaching?

- I miss interacting with students on a more regular basis, although I try my best to get out of my office, walk to campus, meet the students.

- Alright.

Talk to me a little bit about walking the campus.

You have a beautiful campus here.

Up until three years ago, I had only been on this campus covering hurricane damage.

I didn't realize how beautiful this campus is.

What's it like to spend time in?

Is that a place where you can just catch your breath then?

- It is a gorgeous campus.

It's a beautiful campus.

I was here in 2018 when Hurricane Florence hit, oversaw the repairs and renovation of many buildings, that happened to be in my college at the time.

But month or two after the hurricane, you never knew that something hit, without the buildings and repairs and renovations.

That took few years, of course, but it is a very thoughtfully created campus.

The campus sticks to the master plan, [clears throat], very pedestrian friendly.

As you can see, all the traffic is more or less to the perimeter of the campus.

It's a very walkable campus.

The best part for me is if I had 30 minutes in my schedule, I would have to make phone calls, or if I can have a walking meeting with somebody, say, just get out.

Let's walk and talk.

Takes me about 12 minutes to 15 minutes from my office in the front of the campus in Alderman Hall to walk to the back of the campus, which is Veterans Hall, between 12 and 15 minutes, depending on how many students I meet and talk.

But really seeing the students, talking to them, looking at the campus with their eyes, the energy and the vibe, the life that they bring to the campus, that's rejuvenating.

I mean, it's a gorgeous campus.

So every chance I get, I try to get out and sometimes if my schedule allows, I even bring my dog, Toby, he's a Labradoodle.

The students want to pet him, play with him.

I mean, it's a great campus.

- What do students tell you, Chancellor, when they get over the fact they're talking with the chancellor to begin with and let their guard down?

What do they talk with you about?

- Typically, what I talk to them about every time I meet with students, I meet with students pretty regularly.

Every month I have breakfast about 20 or 30 students and another lunch with another 20 or 30 students.

What I tell 'em is I don't necessarily have any agenda in mind.

I just want to get to know them and them to get to know me.

And in the process, common themes will emerge and I get a sense as to where I need to focus my efforts or my colleagues efforts.

And the questions I ask them are, how are things going?

What's going well?

And what could we do better?

And sometimes they come up with creative ideas that I pause and think like, wow, I didn't think about it.

That's a great suggestion.

We should do it.

Or sometimes I might come up with some suggestions and I tell 'em, let's think through a little bit.

What if we did this, this is how it could unroll and how would we deal with those?

And then you kind of walk them few steps and then they realize it's a lot more complicated than I thought.

And I said, yes, but no, that's the whole point of learning, right?

And so it cuts both ways.

So I get a chance to see what is in students' mind and how things are going operationally from their perspective and work on things that I can fix.

And some of them are easy fixes and some of them are longer term fixes.

But what I consistently hear from the students, including last week when I hosted a seminar speaker and she was talking to students about what do they like about UNC Wilmington, invariably, almost everybody will say it is a great campus.

People care about each other.

They're always there to support you and how much they appreciate and enjoy getting to know faculty and staff and how much all these things have helped take the concepts and principles to learn in a classroom setting and apply it to solving real world problems or experiential learning and applied learning.

These are five themes that will consistently come up.

And those are very good comments.

I'm very, very pleased - You have a commencement coming up soon.

How many graduates?

- Almost 3,300 this May.

Just to think that we graduated 14 students with an associate degree, when we first started in 1947, like 49 or so.

And that to about 3,300 students just in the May commencement.

I think last year we graduated about 5,100 students.

So the number were a little more than that this year.

- So your graduation rate hovers where?

- Graduation rate is about 66, 66 and change for a four year graduation all the way to about 83%, 83.2, 83.4%, and six years at any state institution.

Even if you look at students graduated from UNCW, it's 74, 75 plus percent.

- You have several programs here that some people watching may not know exist on this campus.

So walk us through some of those programs.

- We have a lot of programs, of course.

Business, health sciences, film studies is a very large program.

Marine science.

Marine biology has been a premier program at UNCW for a very long time.

Cybersecurity is one of the programs that UNCW started.

In fact, UNCW is the first institution in the state to start a cybersecurity program.

Of course other institutions have it now.

Very big program in film studies.

I don't know how many people know, Wilmington is very large in the film industry.

- [David] Yes.

- Right.

So some of those are there.

Creative writing program at the master's level is a very, very strong program for us.

At one point we had the largest undergraduate chemistry program in the state.

Still a very large program.

We now have a master's program and a doctoral program in pharmaceutical chemistry.

So there are a lot of FinTech, for example, financial technology.

We have very large companies in Wilmington.

Fortunately for us, we work with them and at least a quarter or more other employs the UNAW students.

Same with clinical research.

- It's astonishing to me the opportunities that students have today that were not a part of my generation, a part of your generation.

Which is phenomenal.

- [Volety] Yes.

- To see their exposure to what's happening in the world, they're going to walk into, I won't say the real world because they live in their own real world.

- Yeah.

- But when you can study film studies here and have the industry that's here, or financial or pharmaceutical or marine biology, what an advantage a student would have.

- Absolutely.

One thing we take great pride in is how faculty and staff engage students in the area scholarship that they're engaged in.

Whether it is history, criminology, chemistry, marine biology, psychology, doesn't matter what it is.

Students get the opportunity to refine and implement what they learn in a classroom setting to solve real world problems like I mentioned earlier.

And second thing is, we are very deliberate in working with the business community and the community leaders in seeing where this area is going and what areas are growing and making sure our curriculum and the degree programs are aligned with the needs of this region, because we want to be very proud of graduating a work ready student.

And like I said, whether it is a clinical research with the PPD at that time is Thermo Fisher now, we customized a program for them.

So the students, they have a trained pipeline of storage there.

When I was here as dean, we worked with all the local engineering firms to create first of its kind in the country undergraduate program in coastal engineering.

All the engineering firms helped me to craft the curriculum.

They contributed resources to provide internships for students.

That also helps them because the students are working with them.

And when the student graduates, they're already trained to meet the needs of that particular company.

And same with film studies, same with all the programs that you mentioned.

So we take great pride in making sure we are working with the industry to make sure that the students have the skillset they're looking for.

And once they graduate, they are ready to hit the ground running.

- You mentioned marine biology a couple of times.

- Mm hmm.

- You are a marine biologist.

- I am.

- PhD.

What led you to want to study the ocean?

- Ocean.

I grew up in a coastal town.

I grew up in southern portion of India, southeastern portion of India.

I grew up on the coast.

In fact, I spent almost all my life on the coast with the exception of three years when I was at Elon, which is little.

And but other than that, I always grew up on the coast.

Growing up on the coast, it seemed like a great area to study.

In fact, I wanted to be a doctor growing up just to be like my aunt who was my mentor and role model.

Somehow life takes you in different directions.

I was too young to take the medical entrance exams.

I had to wait for three years and in the meantime I was already in college.

Long story short, life takes you different directions, open new doors.

I had the fortune to come to the United States to pursue my PhD in marine science.

I went to William & Mary which is a fantastic institution in the coastal marine science area.

The more I worked, the more I got interested in some of the applied nature of the research that I was working on.

And, here I am.

- Okay.

For those of us who love the ocean, love the beach.

- Yeah.

- Love the salt, watching the waves, the tides charged, all those things.

We only see the surface.

- [Volety] Yeah.

- There's an entire different world underneath.

- Yeah.

- Is that the world you study as a marine biologist?

- My focus is little more on the near shore and the shallower areas.

Right.

Of course, when you think about the ocean, it is deeper than Mount Everest going down.

My background was to look at what humans do and how it impacts the oceans or the coastal areas of the ocean.

Just like how you're looking at canaries in the coal mine as a indicator of health for individuals working there.

That's what I do.

I look at the health of the organisms that live in the water and looking at the responses, these organisms relative to the stressors they're experiencing, I model them.

I work with resource managers and say, the way you're managing the system, this is how it's going to respond.

So how might you want to change the outcomes?

For example, I work with shellfish, oysters.

They are stuck in one place.

So if they're doing well, you can attribute it to the water quality around them.

If they're not doing well, you can attribute it to the water quality around them, right?

So they're like a canaries in the coal mine.

So I look at the health of these oysters and the oyster reefs and may cause and affect relationships to use a fancy scientific term.

But it is more than just that one organism because these three dimensional structures provide food, shelter, and habitat for over 300 species.

So this is an indicator of the whole ecosystem.

So if the base goes so does the whole ecosystem.

So that's what I do in terms of working, looking at the effects of contaminants that run into the water or red tides or the way we manage the water flow like in our grids.

And I model the system and say, if you're trying to accomplish this, how might you want to change your inputs or how you manage the inputs into the system.

- When you look at the ocean today.

- Yeah.

- And you read and study as you do about climate and all that's happening in the world, are you encouraged by what you see?

Are you concerned, if you are to what level?

- A bit of both, actually.

The population is growing.

There are more and more resources being harvested from the ocean.

There is a lot more pollution going into all the coastal areas resulting from the growth, runoff, so on and so forth.

But I'm also encouraged because there is a lot more awareness of the problem.

There are a lot more people concerned about it.

There are a lot of grassroots organizations to scientific organizations that look at this and say, how do we manage it so that we protect the resource so that we so dearly love.

So for that reason, I'm also anchored that there is a lot more awareness and we are doing a lot to protect the environment the best we could.

Given all the other constraints.

- You're the chancellor, you have a PhD in marine biology, but when you were here before, you were also the dean of arts and sciences.

- Yes.

- Here we are in this magnificent auditorium.

Small theater.

- Yeah.

- Here on campus.

Is that is different, is it sounds to me or is managing, managing?

- It is exciting to look at various programs and the interconnectivity of all these programs.

Arts and sciences might seem very different, but it's not unique.

There are a lot of institutions that have very large colleges of arts and sciences, including Chapel Hill, right?

It's a matter of what works for that institution.

And sometimes a large college at a large program isn't necessarily bad.

If you have the right resources, the right leadership and the right connections with the communities, for example.

When I was here as the dean of arts and sciences up until 2019, it's a very large college.

It was nearly two thirds the size of UNCW.

And just when I was a dean, I've added six or seven programs including PhD in psychology at that time.

And since I left, they've added even more programs.

The school became even bigger.

So it was very difficult for that one dean, who's overseeing nearly 24 to 27 departments and give them the attention that they deserve, right?

We felt like these units would be better served with two colleges that are a little more focused.

So we created two colleges.

One was the College of Science and Engineering, as the name implies, focusing on the science, technology, engineering, mathematics area.

The other ones is the social sciences, humanities and the arts.

And now we have two deans who understand their disciplines, who have a little more time to spend with the chairs and the faculty members, but more importantly connect with the community in terms of fundraising, working with the community partners in these areas.

So it is helping.

So there's no right or wrong answer.

It depends on what makes sense for that particular institution.

For us, we felt like these units, they have tremendous potential and they needed a little more focus.

So there was a little bit of thanks because it is something new.

But when you talk to all the faculty and staff, they're very, very pleased with where we are.

We've invested a lot more resources.

The deans are doing a fantastic job, connect with the faculty, but more importantly, connected with the community members.

- In the midst of all of this, and all that is good, higher education is under a tremendous amount of pressure today.

It may have always been and it may just feel different, now.

There's also pressure among, for students at times of, what do you do?

Do you choose a four year education?

Do you choose a two year community college route?

Whatever you choose do.

If you have students or their parents watching this, what is your message to those students, those potential students and their families about the value of what this four year education can mean to them?

- Well, I wanted to say first off, as a higher education industry with large, I'm talking about the whole nation, we haven't done a good job articulating the value of education, whether it's a two year degree, whether it's a technical degree, whether it's a four year degree.

There is no question about the value of that education.

This context, I'll use the word higher education, the four year college, when you, almost every study has that is ever done, has shown, there's always some exceptions of course.

But the studies have shown that a college graduate makes more than $1 million over their lifetime compared to a high school graduate, more for a master's degree, almost close to one and a half to $5 million for professional programs.

So should not even be a conversation.

But we have not done a good job in articulating the value of higher education.

I am an example, I am a first generation student from a low income family from a third world country.

And I always said, I wish to think that I am where I am because I'm smart and hardworking.

But that's not true.

That are smarter and harder working individuals that don't have the opportunity that I had.

The three things that made a difference in my life are education, mentors and the opportunities this great country affords.

Right?

My story aside, when when you look at almost every study that has been done, higher ed provides you with the opportunity not just to change your life with the trajectory of your family.

And it is not necessarily getting a job once you graduate, but people are living longer.

The needs of the employers are changing a lot quicker.

There is a need for upskilling and reskilling individuals.

So in addition to getting the first job, in addition to getting the degree, we also had to teach students how to be lifelong learners, improve their skills, 'cause they will be working with five, seven, or more than 10 jobs of various kinds in their career.

Right?

Are we giving them the skill sets and tools to adapt to whatever is coming next?

Because these students are going into jobs that don't exist yet.

- Including social skills, right?

- Including social skills.

Social skills are even more important, right?

Given the artificial intelligence and all the tools that are coming at premiering every aspect of our life, there will not be a profession that AI would not influence a touch, right?

So as a faculty member, before I was a content expert, as a medical doctor, as a lawyer, I might be the content expert, but artificial intelligence can do a far better job in gathering information or knowledge content better than a human can, right?

But the role of a faculty member could be to not just be sage on the stage, but really helping the student with the human side of things, helping with their learning, et cetera, right?

No different than a doctor, no different than a lawyer.

So given rapid technological changes, we are seeing it is even more important for students to go, like I said, whether it's a two year degree, two year college or four year college or beyond, I can't emphasize the value of education enough.

- Dr. Volety, I wish artificial intelligence would give us more time, but we are out of time.

[Volety laughing] We appreciate you and what you're doing here on this campus so much and what you do for each of us every day.

And go Seahawks.

- Thank you very much.

It's always a pleasure.

[bright music] [bright music] [bright music] [bright music] - [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

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