The Chapel Hill summer is coming to an end this week, as UNC students return to Chapel Hill ahead of the first day of class Monday, August 17. It’s an exciting time at UNC, which is confronting all the crises and concerns facing higher education today but also taking steps to expand and grow with several new developments on campus – not just main campus, but Carolina North as well.
97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck recently welcomed UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts to the studio for a wide-ranging conversation about a variety of issues ahead of the first day of class.
Click here to listen to their full conversation. The transcript of Roberts’ comments below has been edited for clarity.
What are your thoughts the week before FDOC?
This is one of the best weeks of the entire year, the week before classes start. When all the students are coming back on campus, you can feel the momentum starting to build. Convocation will be on Sunday, first day of classes on Monday. Move in for the first year students is this Friday, and we have over 5,300 students starting their first year at Carolina, which is a record…
You know, I hope I never get jaded about the excitement of the beginning of the semester. It’s just so much fun and there’s so much energy. It’s wonderful seeing the students and their parents just so excited to be at Carolina.
What are you most excited about?
It’s going to be a terrific year. I’m excited for the growth in enrollment that we have, excited for some big capital projects that we have underway. We announced the expansion of the Ackland Art Museum – which is a big deal, not just for Carolina, but for the town of Chapel Hill and the surrounding community. Always excited for the fall sports season: football, women’s soccer, field hockey, volleyball. There’s always so many wonderful things happening on campus.
On that $70 million expansion of the Ackland Art Museum:
Think about the Porthole Alley area: if you go from Porthole Alley into our campus from Franklin Street, you (see) the back of the Ackland, but then you get to the music building, and the art building, and then to Carolina Performing Arts. We really have a little arts district there – we just haven’t talked about it that way, or programmed it that way. With the expansion of the art museum, which will front onto Franklin Street, we’ll have not only a really powerful reason for people to be on Franklin Street – year-round, not just on game days – but (also) a much better entrance into the campus than we have now, and much better programming around all of the wonderful things happening in the arts at Carolina.
The Ackland Art Museum will have a Franklin Street entrance?
As an extension to the current building. The current entrance on Columbia Street is not the most welcoming or receptive: there are no windows, it looks a little bit daunting. We envision a much more welcoming, accessible entrance on Franklin Street. We want more people in the Ackland. We want more people exploring our campus. So we’re excited about that.
On the two new residence halls that are about to go up:
We have one that’s going in where Jackson Hall, the admissions building, currently stands. That’s 730 beds. It’s the first new dorm in that part of campus in a generation. We’re also going to put significantly more density where the Parker and Teague residence halls currently stand, right there in the heart of campus.
And then of course we have Carolina North, 2,200 student beds planned for the first phase, split between graduate and undergraduate students.
On plans for Carolina North:
We’ve made significant progress. We’ve hired the design firm (and) we’re about to put out the RFQ for the master developer. The challenge is that it takes some time to actually build it out. We’ve got so many folks saying, “When can I move there? When can we start to put our employees or our classrooms or our department there?” It obviously doesn’t happen overnight…
I think it’s going to be a great thing, not just for the university and for the town, but really for the broader Triangle region and the state as a whole. Think about the accessibility: it’s just below I-40 (and) close to I-85, the major arteries for the entire state. It’s within striking distance of most of our state’s population. I think it’s going be a really beneficial development…
(And the) trails aren’t going anywhere. I enjoy them. I’ve run the Philosopher’s Way in Carolina North Forest. Those are going to remain. The forest and the trails are going to remain an important resource. It’s really important to protect green space, as this area continues to grow and densify.
Speaking of green space…
I’m really excited for the (UNC football) game in Ireland. The game itself is a terrific opportunity for our program and the university, but (we also) think there’s significant economic development potential. Just as an example: we have the number one pharmacy school in the world, and here in the Triangle, we have one of the world’s great pharma and life sciences clusters – (and) pharmaceuticals are the most important part of the Irish economy, 40 percent of their exports. We think there’s more we can do with Irish companies and with the Irish government to build those relationships, and we’ll be spending a lot of time on that during our time in Dublin…
The governor’s going to be there, and we’re going to be spending a lot of time with Irish universities and Irish corporations – some of which already have operations here in the Triangle, others that we would love to get here to North Carolina.
About that football team…
I’m excited for the season. I was at practice on Sunday: Coach Belichick is excited for the year ahead, I had the chance to talk to about a dozen players, and it’s fun to see their enthusiasm.
After a 4-8 season, any regrets about – you know, hiring decisions?
I know that’s not where Coach Belichick and the rest of the staff and the players want to be, and they’re striving to improve on that. It’s a tough schedule, but I also think we’ve done some great work in the offseason, and it should be a lot of fun.
On the recent state budget:
We are really grateful to see enrollment funding in the budget. That’s crucial, particularly as we’re growing enrollment…
There were (also) some specific line items that are very helpful to us: for the North Carolina Collaboratory, which undertakes a bunch of different research projects on our campus; for the School of Civic Life and Leadership; (and) for the Economic Forecasting Institute within our business school, which is doing really interesting work to try to map out what the job market of the future is going to be. That’s useful information not just for policymakers, but for our current students as they try to figure out what to study.
On the recently announced Senior Service College Fellowship, a new collaboration with the U.S. military:
We’re really proud of that. It’s a graduate program for mid-career officers, and this is a bespoke program that we’re designing in conjunction with the Pentagon. The program itself has existed for decades, but this is the first time it’s been here at Carolina.
As you know, we have a long and deep relationship (with) the US military, going back to the very beginning: William Richardson Davie was a commander in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, (and) George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford both went to our Naval Pre-Flight training school. And so we’re delighted to continue that important partnership…
I think we were chosen for two factors. We’re a growing public flagship in an important state. And (we have) good relationships (with) the administration – which we’re always trying to build and deepen, no matter who is in the White House. Strong relationships in Washington are crucial to a public flagship like ours.
The Pentagon turned to UNC (and Virginia Tech) only after canceling existing relationships with Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and other schools – after Pete Hegseth referred to them as “woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination.” Thoughts on that?
I’m (just) glad we have the program at Carolina. I think we’ll do a good job for this next generation of officers who are going to train on our campus, and we’re excited to have them here.
Finally, on a recent bus trip to eastern North Carolina:
I went to about a dozen towns. The point was not to talk about how great Carolina is; the point was to listen and try to make sure that in the context of our mission of service to the people of this state, we’re doing the best job that we can. How can the university be more relevant to folks on the ground where they live? How can we do a better job serving this state and its people?
…I think we need to do a better job, particularly with our graduate schools, of making sure that all the expertise that we have so much of here in Chapel Hill is getting out around the state. There’s some wonderful examples out there now. For example, our School of Public Health tests all the well water in the state. Crucial for fetal and maternal health. Our School of Government trains every register of deeds, every county council member, every court clerk in the state. Judges across the state call our School of Law for real-time information on state law, precedents, and background. But there’s a lot more we can do. Can we do a better job creating more social workers? We just got approval from the Board of Governors to add an undergraduate social work degree. We’ve got this leading school of social work, but we didn’t have an undergraduate degree – at a time when there’s a huge shortage of social workers. We did the same thing last year with our school of education: leading school of education, shortage of teachers in the state, but you (still) couldn’t come to Carolina as an undergraduate, major in education and go straight into the classroom. We’ve changed that now. It’s one of those things that it’s remarkable we hadn’t done already…
The state is growing, and that’s obviously what’s behind our push around enrollment growth – to make sure that we’re not continuing to slip in the percentage of graduating high school seniors that we serve. (And) when you look at specific fields – education, social work, nursing – the demand’s only going to increase. And I would argue that we have not only the opportunity, but the responsibility, to create the teachers and the social workers and the nurses and the librarians that are going to go out and help move our state forward. So let’s fulfill that obligation.
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‘Let’s Fulfill That Obligation’: UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts, Preparing for Another Year Chapelboro.com.
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