Well, thank you so much for allowing us to come and speak with you and to talk with the governor.

And as I speak with you, it's really a pleasure.

Well, it's great to have you here.

So tell us about you, Pike.

For sure.

What kind of institution is it and how it's grown since you've taken over as president?

Well, sure.

The university of Pikeville has been here for a long time.

We were founded in 1889 by Presbyterian missionaries who came out of Michigan, in Ohio, and they settled here because this was the furthest inland port on the Ohio River.

So they thought this was a good place to start an academy school, which was really an advanced high school.

It's interesting, if you look back at that curriculum, it included calculus and Latin, which we don't even we teach calculus, but we don't teach a lot of Latin anymore, even in the college setting.

And the school since then has grown quite a bit.

You know, gradually we evolved into an associate's degree granting institution and then became accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and started granting bachelor's degrees in the 1960s.

And since then, you know, the college has had its ups and downs, like the region has growth and sometimes smaller numbers of students.

But then in the 1990s, we really began to hit our stride with the opening of the Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1997 that graduated first class in 2001.

And really the institution hasn't looked back since we began growing from about 500 to 600 students.

And today we are at about 2400 students.

And where do they come from?

Are they region specific?

Well, most of our undergraduate students, I'd say roughly half come from this region, from predominantly eastern Kentucky.

But we really do attract students from all over Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.

But then the other half of our students come from all over the United States.

Like many schools that are smaller, liberal arts based colleges, we have about 50 to 60% student athletes.

And so those athletes are recruited from everywhere.

I'd say we have a significant number of students from Atlanta and also quite a few from Florida who make their way up here to play football or baseball or basketball.

And then of course, several international students who come to study here as well.

You've got the rings as a collection in your office to prove how good those athletic programs are.

I think I have nine.

I think Governor Patton has 11.

So he's a little bit ahead of me.

But I do have the conference championship ring for football that he really covets.

So we won that in, I think my first or second year here.

Yeah.

Well, talk to us about you have the osteopathic medicine facility.

Mm hmm.

The dental school, which we probably haven't heard a whole lot about.

Yeah, it's brand new.

So osteopathic medicine, of course, 1997.

They've been around for several years now and have graduated around 2000 graduates who serve all over Appalachia.

And then our optometry school was next.

The optometry school opened in 2020 or excuse me, graduated their first class in 2020.

They opened four years before that and they've graduated several classes now and are very strong and doing really well.

We are blessed and in one regard with the optometry college, because Kentucky has one of the broadest scope of practice for optometrists in the nation.

So we have students from all around the United States who come here because they can learn to do things that they can't learn in their home state, but that someday might be legal in their home state as laws begin to change.

So it's a it's a big advantage for us to have that here in the Commonwealth.

And then, of course, the dental school, which you mentioned just a moment ago, that was started just this last year with a major gift, a $25 million gift, which has allowed us to move that project forward much more quickly than the medical school or the optometry school began.

So that's been a really good addition to our portfolio.

Are these students who are graduating from these very distinctive colleges, are they living and working and serving in Appalachia or underserved regions?

So we have been number one or number two in rural serving medicine for the last ten years or so.

And when I say number one or number two, that's not just among osteopathic schools, that's osteopathic and allopathic schools.

So all of medicine were number one or number two in serving rural America.

That is at the core of our mission.

And most of our students go into primary care, which is the largest need for medical students in the United States.

And so we're meeting the need both in terms of rural medicine and also in terms of primary care.

The optometry college is a little new.

We don't have those stats quite as well nailed down, but most of those students do end up going to rural medicine, which is fantastic.

We think that's important for us and they take care of some of Kentucky's neediest people.

Well, we do know that Kentucky as a whole has some severe health challenges, and a lot of that does reside in the Appalachian eastern Kentucky region.

How have you seen you, Pike, try to elevate the health status of not just Appalachian Kentucky, but across the state?

You know, we I could show you cluster maps that would indicate exactly where our graduates practice and our medical school school graduates tend to cluster around Kentucky, specifically Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.

So we have definitely impacted the way medicine is delivered here in the most rural and most needy parts of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

But I could take it one step further, and that's by talking about our nursing program.

When when I arrived here almost eight years ago, the nursing program had around 30 students in each class, and we're now approved for over 80 students in each class.

And we're running three cohorts of classes and not just one.

So it's a program that's grown dramatically that's in part due to a great partnership that we have with the local hospital Pikesville Medical Center.

And and that program has just exploded over the last few years with the needs that are found here in eastern Kentucky and, of course, throughout Kentucky.

And, of course, we know of the provider shortages, particularly in this region, whether it's nursing or specialty care.

Right.

So I want to segway to talking about education in terms of how you pike has helped also maybe elevate the value or the perception of the value of education in this region.

Do you believe that to be the case?

I do.

And it starts, I think, with elementary and secondary education.

For more than 100 years now, we have been the major source for teachers in this region.

If you were to go in the public schools throughout eastern Kentucky, what you would find is that a significant number of students and in many schools, the majority of teachers and administrators have been trained by the university of people.

And we think that's important.

It's critical for what happens here in our community because education, you know, elevates everyone and helps everyone to do better at what they do.

I think it's important for us as a university to be here and be part of being here.

You know, it's one thing for us for someone to attend college at a place where they're taking online classes that are being offered from California.

I'm sure it's a worthwhile degree, but it's still not an education by for and about people who reside in eastern Kentucky.

And so I do think that's a critical component of what we do and what we have to offer.

Yeah.

Governor Payton and his role here at the University of Pikeville, he's spoken glowingly of you and how the college has ascended in so many ways because of your work and dedication.

Where next do you want to take you, Pike?

Ooh, good question.

So, you know, we're always looking at program development, trying to figure out what the next need will be in the region.

And then, of course, trying to figure out how to meet that need to the very best of our ability.

So there are a variety of educational programs that we're looking at, most of them in the health care space, some of them in agriculture and and some areas like that as well.

So we're taking a look at all of those things and trying to identify specifically what do we need to do next so that we position the people of eastern Kentucky in a way that they will be ready for the next boom in the economy.

Right.

So you're doing kind of a needs assessment.

All right.

It's a constant ongoing process.

Right.

And we do know for many decades years, this has been a mono economy driven by the coal industry that has been in decline over the last several years.

Is there something that you can do maybe that's retooling those who either were formerly in the mines or had aspirations to continue that family legacy?

Right.

Where do you stand there?

So I have a special insight into this, because I grew up in Flint, Michigan, and Flint was a mono economy.

Buick City ran everything and they had 120,000 jobs.

When we talk here, about 20 or 30,000 miners who are out of work.

I understand that because I came from an economy where within five years, 120,000 jobs disappear and it decimated that city.

So I understand that.

So what I've been talking about since I arrived and what many of the business leaders in the city talks about when we get together is how do we diversify this economy?

How do we ensure that what happened in the past doesn't happen again?

And it's not that the coal economy is a bad thing.

You know, we need energy.

There's no question about that.

But we also need other things in addition to energy.

So we've talked about tourism and hospitality.

Those things are certainly on the table.

But entrepreneurism is something that I think we can do really well here as well.

We've partnered with businesses like Appharvest and 80 Acres who are in the agriculture space.

We have innovative programs in business to help with internships and residencies so that our students can continue to grow and develop and begin their own businesses here.

We're in the process now of creating a business incubator so that students can start businesses that then spin off into the economy and become standalone businesses that generate revenue and provide jobs for the region.

So we're very much involved in the economic development of the region and want to continue that.

Yeah.

Tuition.

Let's talk dollars and cents.

Sure.

How much does it cost?

A typical student and I'm sure there's financial aid and other supports they can get, but on average.

So our tuition has been just under $30,000 a year for a very long time.

But like most colleges, we have a discount rate.

It's the scholarship that people get when they come.

If they've graduated from high school, and that's about 50%.

So that takes it down to $15,000, much more manageable for most people.

And then if students are from Kentucky, if they qualify for the key cap category of that group of scholarships, and if they're eligible for the top two Pell Awards, we waive the rest of tuition.

And we've done that for 12 years.

So most of our students, I think last year we had three or 400 students who came here tuition free.

Let me say that again, tuition free.

We've been cheaper than the University of Kentucky for a very long time.

And that gets lost a lot because institutions like the University of Pikeville, who have found a way to provide a high quality education at a lower price point, sometimes get lost in the mix because they say, well, you're private, you must be expensive.

We're not.

Look, talk to our people because we can find a way.

Yeah.

In the conversations.

Last question, because I think the rain is going to come in the conversation that we're having across the nation in certain states about the value of higher education or what higher education should be doing or accreditation or whatever the issue is.

Yeah.

What would you say to decision makers, policy makers, those who want to lead the state in the nation about what they should understand about the value of higher education?

I think a lot of policymakers get bogged down in the idea of higher education should lead to a job.

And I want to be very emphatic a job.

And what I would challenge everybody to consider is this higher education might enable you to get that first job.

But it's also what gets you the second, third, fourth and fifth jobs, which may or may not be related to that major you started out with.

This is why humanities majors catch up to the engineers in four or five years, because if someone chooses engineering chances are they're going to stay in engineer for most of their career.

But if someone chooses communication or literature, that might help them with that first job as an editor or a copywriter or something.

But then they might move into management or something else and they quickly pass.

So it's all about learning critical thinking, communication skills, writing skills.

Those are the things that education does and does really well, regardless of your major, that provides you with lifelong opportunities resulting in that salary that is well over $1,000,000 over the course of your life span.

And it's more than what you would get with just a high school degree.

And I know there are exceptions.

Everybody will say, why my cousin, you know, he did this.

Yes.

Everybody's got a cousin that did this.

But that's not the majority of people.

Excellent.

Thank you.

We appreciate your time.

Thanks.