[MUSIC PLAYING] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein, welcome to Side by Side.

My guest today knows how to build institutions that stand the test of time.

As the chancellor of North Carolina A&T University, he knows how to build forward thinking organizations.

And today, we'll speak with Dr.

James Martin, the new chancellor at A&T University.

- Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - Coca-Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose-driven teammates, we are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

- Truist, we're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

[upbeat music] - Dr.

James Martin, welcome to Side by Side.

You have come to A&T, and you are doing an excellent job in taking a wonderful institution and making it even better.

You're an engineer.

You have a PhD in civil engineering.

You went to Virginia Tech.

You went to the Citadel.

You have a great background.

A&T is a very strong engineering school.

What attracted you to the triad and to North Carolina and allowed you to step up in the way that you have to be the leader of A&T University?

- Well, you know, this has always been a special region.

I have a strong sense of place.

I grew up in the Carolinas.

- You were born in South Carolina.

I was born in upstate South Carolina, but still in this Piedmont region.

I was very familiar with the triad.

And I never left.

Most of my career was at Virginia Tech.

I was never too far away.

I had a lot of exchange back and forth with this region, kept up with the economic development, kept up with higher education institutions, lots of friends and relatives.

My parents were elected officials in South Carolina.

So I was always a part of this ecosystem and not too far away.

But I had a great career at tremendous institutions.

But this is a special time for higher education.

It's a special time for this region.

It's growing.

North Carolina A&T, it's at the right time, at the right place to really represent the future.

It's an incredible place of purpose.

It's an incredible place of extraordinary talent.

And it's a place of extraordinary possibility.

And it is a place where you can build for the future.

And I want it to be part of shaping the future in a place that I know is the next best thing right here in the Triad.

- Well, you say that it's a special time for higher education.

Everything we read is tentatively difficult.

It's about, do people want to go to college?

Is it worth it going to college?

Will AI replace college education?

What is it that makes you say this is a great time in higher education?

- Well, it's a time of the opportunity to make a big difference.

I think higher education is at a pivotal inflection point.

There are really three times that we see that I think represent where we are in higher education.

If you look back at the beginning of, say, the Civil War period, right after the post-Civil War period in the 1860s, this country had to pull itself together to meet the challenges of a war-torn country, but also the challenges of the Industrial Age.

And we did that through access to higher education.

We had land-grant institutions that we established in all the states.

A&T is a land-grant institution.

And A&T is a land-grant institution established in 1891.

Land-grant institutions were established in other states.

- What makes an institution a land-grant?

- Well, it's an institution, usually one or two per state, that is based on land allocations to then be a state university that is focused on agricultural and mechanical, usually a big, strong anchor for each state, a flagship university, at least one per state.

And it has a specific mission to really look at economic development across the state, but be an anchor, especially for agricultural and mechanical.

It was look at the anchor institutions to really get all of this country accelerated into the Industrial Age.

- Does access have something?

Do you have a responsibility for access?

- Absolutely.

- As a land-grant?

- Absolutely.

That is a big part of the original idea of land-grant institutions.

When they were established in the 1860s, we were not the greatest economy.

I mean, Great Britain had the largest economy.

But by providing access to hundreds of thousands of people across this country that never had it, we became the world's greatest economy, tied with Great Britain in 1890.

And so that worked.

And we focused on agriculture and mechanical.

Those were the important topic areas of the day.

But then if we fast forward to about 80 years, we look at World War II.

That was a big challenge for the entire world.

We faced lots of threats.

We had to meet the challenges of global conflict.

But what did we do?

We had the GI Bill, which allowed 10 million Americans to experience post-secondary education.

We had 20 million women that entered the workforce between 1950 and 1980.

That's where we had the National Defense Education Act in the 1950s.

- Let me just interrupt you a second.

Why did so many women enter the workforce in 1950 and 1980?

- Well, a lot of it started because they were in the workforce because of the war.

We had to have people in factories.

We had a lot of people in Europe.

We had a lot of people in Asia and Japan.

And so we needed to stock the workforce in the factories here to really accelerate the war effort.

And that accelerated a different change.

We had a lot of innovation and a lot of production that allowed us to be the big dog on the block.

- And a higher standard of living for Americans.

- Higher standard of living for Americans and the thing that's really incredible about that time period, that's about 80 years.

1945 is 80 years after the Civil War.

We grew economically.

We grew militarily.

After the war, Europe was torn apart.

Japan, in particular, was struggling.

We were the big dogs on the block.

And so we took off as the world's superpower, both economically and militarily.

Now we're about 80 years again.

Those periods 80 years apart.

Now it's 2000-- Something magical about 80 years.

It's 80 years.

And we're at an inflection point.

And so others are catching up with us a little bit.

We invented education, higher education, the best higher education system in the world is what I mean.

We invented innovation.

We invented how to invest in national research platforms.

We won the space race.

It is important that we understand what's different about this time period is that others are catching up to us.

We're not as far ahead as we used to be in those other time periods, so it's important for higher education to really double down.

- So there's a role, you're saying, for higher education to step up and step out and make a difference to move us onwards and upwards.

- It's about investing.

We really do have to increase access to more people.

We do have to be more relevant.

We know that the populous, if you look at polling-- and we've done some of this Gallup polling-- people want to be closer to their universities.

They want to be a part of-- not only have greater access, they want to be a part of pre-college preparation.

They want to be a part-- they want to use the libraries.

They want to look at post-graduation upward mobility.

And that's part of the mission, I think, for higher education, to continue to evolve, to be relevant, but to also look at lifelong engagement.

We can't just look at 18 to 23-year-olds.

We're going to have to look at evolving and connecting, being platforms for upward mobility for 60, 70 years over a career.

It's a great time.

- So I gather from what you're saying that you're not bothered so much about all the media chatter, about the relevance of higher education.

And furthermore, you are not as bothered, I take it, that AI, artificial intelligence, will play a significant role in replacing much of what is needed to resource companies and industries and certain sectors that otherwise would have depended on students who went to colleges and universities.

- So this is what I feel.

We live in a world of dynamic change.

And none of us know all of the implications of AI.

I am concerned that we're not acting urgently enough to be relevant in higher education to make sure that we maintain affordability, to make sure we maintain relevance.

But as far as artificial intelligence, if we look at all the Promethean moments-- it is a Promethean moment, artificial intelligence-- every time we have introduced a major technology, it has created more opportunities than jobs that were lost.

So I think with artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence is not going to take our jobs.

It's people that can use and leverage artificial intelligence that are going to take jobs.

So I think the bottom line is to be able to have access to the right technology.

But the importance is to have people, have students, have citizenry, have those that are exposed to that technology to be able to use it, to leverage it, to connect together, to innovate using artificial intelligence.

And there is a world of incredible possibility there.

- And you know, A&T is well known for its strength in engineering.

You talk about economic development in this region and across our state.

You talk about companies like Toyota Battery and Jet Zero and Supersonic and all those people coming in, creating tremendous amount of opportunities for families and for employees, and demanding and commanding a greater supply workforce, much of which has to be technologically oriented, engineering-based, perhaps.

So I can see how A&T seizes the moment in a big way.

This is the time to sort of shine even bigger and better than ever before.

What about the other 4,000 institutions in the country, many of whom are struggling, frankly, James?

We've seen something like 400 or 500 colleges shut down, most private, most small, but shut down in the last 10, 15 years.

And even in North Carolina, we've heard about one or two colleges that literally shut down, one or two that are at the cusp of great difficulty.

What is it that higher education has to do to maintain and retain its relevance and to create some degree of distinction as we move into this 80-year period you're talking about?

- Well, I think what you said is we have to create some distinction.

We have to figure out-- I think we've gone through this period, especially over the last 35 or 40 years, where we're talking about rankings and we're talking about comparisons.

I think in some ways, we have gotten away from the individualism and the unique strengths of our regions.

So I think we have to connect and be closer to our universities, as I mentioned.

One example is that we have to stop looking at what higher education has always been-- again, 18 to 23 or 24-year-olds.

I think we have to engage people before they get to college.

I think we have to have different dynamics, different modes of delivery.

Some will be hybrid.

Some will be traditional didactic students.

Some will be online.

But I think the biggest opportunity is to serve as platforms for learning over a lifetime.

So I think part of the answer is we have to stop looking at learning-- I mean, at education as an event.

Instead, we have to look at learning as a lifestyle.

So there is a big difference.

I think we're still looking at the paradigm of you come, you have some sort of educational experience over four or five years at a formative time in your life, and then you go through life with that as a base, and you get into the economic engine some sort of way, whether it's government, industry, academics, starting a business.

I think the really important thing is to set up a platform to learn, unlearn, and relearn.

As Eric Hoffer says, the future belongs to the learners, while the learned are perfectly adapted to a world that no longer exists.

Our world has changed.

We've got to be more dynamic, more adaptable, more responsive to people in general over a lifetime.

- And that's part of the big challenge, right, is that we have faculty in universities, stellar, learned individuals, many of whom have done it for a decade or two or three, and the adjustment period to both what's happening in the world in terms of change and what's happening to this younger generation that's coming in college.

Absolutely.

And their access to social media and technology and their expected anticipation of the future.

You know, James, I hear you say all that, and I agree with everything you said.

And yet, I observe somewhat of an exception to what's going on in higher education.

I observe large institutions, including A&T, by the way, but large public institutions, attracting more and more students.

And research suggests that a lot of that-- not all of that, but a lot of that-- is because young people are looking for the excitement.

Football, tailgating, the social life.

And they want to go to that big place that has access to all of that.

Where am I wrong?

- Well, I think there's a lot of what you said.

If you think about our world, just in the last four or five years, we've had this just exponential increase in technology.

We have social media.

We have artificial intelligence.

I think what people are really looking for is connection with each other, the humanness, and connection and meaning.

And so part of that, I feel, is that people are looking to connect with other people.

So as much as we live in a world of technological change, I think we also live in a world where people are looking for purpose and meaning.

And I think people are going to those institutions where they can find purpose and meaning.

And one of the things that's important as we're talking about the future, we have gone through the agrarian economy.

That's how we got started, based on agriculture.

And the next was the industrial age, the industrial economy.

And then we had this service economy.

Right now-- Information age.

Information age, right?

And so now we're in information and knowledge age.

I'm firmly convinced that the next economy will be the relationship economy.

- Really?

- Yeah, I do.

I believe that we're going to have enough artificial intelligence and enough data-driven science that now it's going to be the opportunity to really relate to people.

We're going to have to innovate.

We're going to have to connect.

And at A&T and some of these other places that are growing, I think they're highly relational, where people have access, but they can connect to each other.

And a lot of our people, they have resilience.

They have grit.

They're innovative.

They connect with each other.

They have confidence.

They have the skills for leadership, great emotional intelligence.

I think that's what we see that's emerging.

- Well, let's talk about James Martin for a second.

You speak eloquently and with clarity.

One can quickly see your capacity to be a leader of a large organization.

How many employees do you have at A&T?

- We have 2,000 professional faculty.

2,000 faculty and staff.

And staff.

And our students are about 15,300.

- 15,000.

How many of those are residential, living actually on campus?

- About 45% of those.

And the other 55% are-- Are in the region off campus.

They come from the counties around us and they go home, or do they live on their own?

- Yes, they come from the counties around us.

- I see, I see.

And when you came to A&T, you inherited a pretty strong organization.

Your predecessor was a skilled and talented gentleman.

- Incredible leader.

- And now you've been there for a year and a half, two years?

- 16 months.

- 16 months.

16 months, four days, and three hours.

So what is it that you see is the springboard now for that next chapter?

Do you intend to continue what you've done?

Clearly, you will continue to do what's been happening and what's been successful.

But what is that new deal that A&T is going to do, that James Martin II is going to make happen?

- Well, I think three things.

We always have to focus on student success.

I mean, that's number one.

Our students are just incredible.

I mean, they're the most innovative, most competitive students with adaptability that I've ever seen.

So we want to increase student support.

We want to increase the amount of experiential learning.

We want more of our students to have research experiences.

We want more of our students to have international experiences.

So that's always critical.

And then the placement.

We want to make sure that-- and our students, fortunately, are number two in the state in terms of starting salary.

I mean, we're doing really, really well as far as adding value.

So that's really critical.

But for us, we are the most affordable doctoral research university in the country.

- And the largest HBCU.

- And the largest HBCU.

We've had incredible growth.

And so it's important for us.

We're right at the threshold for research one, the top designation.

Only 2.4% of those 4,000 universities we talked about achieve research one status.

And so- - That's an achievement.

It's a big achievement.

It demands a large infusion of investment in research.

- A lot of investment.

Exponential investment.

Investment in people, in infrastructure, investment also in support.

It takes a lot to run a top level research university.

So that's absolutely critical, is to make sure we get that right.

Keys for that are not only to right size the support systems that we have, and to continue to invest in high ROI activities.

Strategic partnership is also really critical.

And when I say strategic partnerships with academic institutions, with government agencies, and with the industry, especially those in the triad, we're talking about real strategic partnerships, not transactional partnerships.

It takes a little longer to do that.

But you really have to plan together.

You don't just come in the room and say, here is my strategic plan.

And you compare yours to theirs.

You have to plan together.

So we're taking our time to do that.

But the other part that's important for that is to really learn how to build the top level resources, large, very large resources, very significant resources, to have sustainability in that particular area.

A big part of that is if you're going to run a program, you can't live on federal funding.

You've got to have a large endowment.

You've got to have other sources of funding to support what you're doing at a very high level, especially to run a top level PhD program.

That's critically important.

So large resource development is absolutely a big part of it.

So I'm going to conclude that you're bullish about the future.

I couldn't be more bullish.

I think if you look at the region, if you look at this time in history, if you look at where our university is-- and let me also say the University of North Carolina system has been a blessing.

This state has been very generous.

Again, I was never too far away.

I was in Virginia.

I was in South Carolina.

I kept up with what's happening in North Carolina.

We've had a heck of amount of investment in public institutions.

- You taught at Virginia Tech, Clemson, University of Pittsburgh.

- That's right.

- You made the rounds there.

- I made the rounds.

- You've earned your feathers of excellence, yes.

I've been at different institutions, which has given me just a tremendous ability to have a fresh perspective.

But the University of North Carolina system, but the state, has been very generous and very wise to realize there's a difference between spending and investing.

And they really have invested in our institutions in an incredible way, more than just about any other system that I know in the country.

And that provides a solid foundation.

There's a reason why North Carolina has been, for the last, what, four years, the number one state-- three of those-- the number one state to do business.

And we are in the business as well.

And so a big part of that is having a talent here.

- Workforce, business friendly, tax advantages, all of these things that have happened in North Carolina that have propelled us forward.

What defines an extraordinary leader for you?

- I think the first thing is the quality of intervention of a leader is directly proportionate to the level of self-development.

So I think it's important to always work on leadership, to learn from as many people as you can.

But I also feel that it is important to have space inside yourself.

Because leading people is a great privilege.

It's a tremendous responsibility.

But it's also-- it's inspiration, it's direction, it's guidance.

You really do have to put the time into developing yourself to be able to have space inside yourself to lead other people.

And leadership really is not too complicated.

It's about seeing things as they are, seeing them in a way that they can be better, and making it that way, right?

And convincing other people to go with you.

- Yes, and convincing them that they have in them what it takes to get there.

- Look, I think all of us are living a fraction of potential of our overall life capabilities.

And it's the ability to get people to see what can be.

Oftentimes, it's not a lack of resources.

It's a lack of imagination.

And you can see that spark that goes off in people when you believe in them.

And if they work hard, they do the right thing, give them that ability to create something, and get them to do some things that they didn't see themselves doing.

- Absolutely.

Initiative, first and foremost, leads to momentum, then leads to potential success, and hopefully significance and impact in life.

Speaking of which, you're making great significance at A&T, and great impact in the region and across the state.

And I, for one, thank you for your leadership, Dr.

James Martin, Chancellor of A&T.

And thank you for being with me on Side by Side.

- It's a great pleasure, and as always, I look forward to spending time with you.

Thank you.

♪ - Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - Coca-Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose-driven teammates, we are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years, specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

Truist-- we're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.