[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome the "Side By Side".

My guest today knows the benefits of education and mentorship firsthand.

Today we'll meet Dr. Aswani Volety, the chancellor of the University of North Carolina in Wilmington.

- [Announcer 1] Funding for "Side By Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by- - [Announcer 2] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally, thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

- [Announcer] 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.

- [Announcer 4] Truist.

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

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[exciting music] - Chancellor Volety, welcome to "Side By Side".

Your story is amazing.

- Thank you.

- You grew up in a one room house in India.

To study, you sat on the floor.

You had no desk.

You started school at age two?

- [Aswani] Yes.

- And graduated high school at age 15?

That makes me feel like a total failure.

It's remarkable to me.

Tell me, how does someone start school at age two?

- Well the way my mom tells me is I was getting in trouble with all my cousins, so I grew up in a large extended family.

I was reading, I was writing.

She said you're better off going to school and learning something than get in trouble at home.

They send me off to school.

No, but kidding aside, I got amazing mentors.

I have a very caring family.

Great opportunities in the school.

- You're the first in your family to go to college?

- Yeah, I'm first in my family to go to college.

- And you came to America in 1990 to do your PhD at William & Mary?

- [Aswani] Yes, I did.

- And what did you do after that?

- After that, I worked at William & Mary for about a couple years, had a postdoctoral fellowship at William & Mary.

I worked on a research project.

- [Nido] You're a scientist?

- I'm a scientist.

Yeah, I'm a marine scientist by training.

I look at how- - You're a marine scientist.

- I'm a marine scientist.

- By training?

- Yeah.

- You're in the perfect job.

- Yeah.

- University of North Carolina in Wilmington.

I mean- - On the coast.

- That's one of your big programs.

- It is, it is.

And that's what attracted me to UNC Wilmington in the first place when I was a dean there.

- You went, first of all you were William & Mary, and then you did something else?

- Yeah, after William & Mary, I had a National Academy of Science fellowship.

It's a fairly prestigious fellowship to work in a federal lab.

I worked at the US EPA in Pensacola.

And after that, I went to Florida Gulf Coast University, which is a brand new university in the state system of Florida.

Again, on the coast.

For the kind of marine work I was doing, that was a great location for me.

I was working on projects like the Everglades restoration, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill work.

After 15 years at Florida Gulf Coast, UNC Wilmington opportunity came up.

Very similar in programs, focus on students.

Very, very large marine science program.

And that's what attracted me to UNC Wilmington as the Dean of Arts and Sciences, and their director, their Center for Marine Science.

- And now you came back to UNCW as the chancellor, and people are glad that you came back.

You're one of them, and I've talked to some of them down there, and they like you very much.

I need to understand how does an immigrant who grew up with a lot of adversity manages to focus so directly, so positively, and with such determination, and now you're leading an institution with how many students?

- Almost 19,000 students.

- 19,000 students.

Where do they come from?

- Well, the students come from all over the world, as well as all over the country.

Nearly 45 to 49 states, in excess of 50 countries.

We get a wide swab of students from all over the place.

- How does it feel to be, you know, the guy didn't have a desk to study on, and graduate from high school at age 15, and now you're in a position of planting seeds of greatness in the minds, hearts, and souls of those students?

- Yeah.

I mean, I wanted to say I am where I am because of my hard work and I'm smart, but that's not true.

A lot of very hardworking, very smart people, smarter than I am, don't have the opportunities that I have.

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

Without mentors and the opportunities that this great country afforded me, I wouldn't be where I am.

And that's what I tell myself everyday.

I want to make sure that every student that comes to UNCW has experiences similar to mine that made a difference in my life, and I want them to be even more successful than I am.

- Why is it that certain cultures, India, China, others, familially insist on a highly focused position on education?

Why is that?

I mean, nobody in your family had gone to college.

- Yeah.

- And you went all the way and got a terminal degree, and became invested in the world of education and research.

What is it that those cultures make them want to emphasize education so much?

- It is true.

I mean, the family unit is very strong.

Education has always been a primary focus in most Asian cultures.

Perhaps in countries like India, that is one way for you to get ahead economically and financially, provide better for your family.

Perhaps that's one reason.

But education has always been very central to cultures in Asia.

- Yes, yes.

And does it frustrate you, Chancellor Volety, when you hear in America today so much discussion, some of it not very respectful, about higher education?

You know, is there value in going to college, does it really pay to do that?

Or all these people who say, well I did it, and built this billion dollar company, and I never went to college.

That must not resonate well with you.

- No.

I mean, I think I hear that rhetoric for sure, right?

But that shouldn't be a conversation, yet it is.

Studies have shown that an individual with a college degree makes over a million dollars more than what a high school graduate does.

- [Nido] And that's undergrad?

- That's the undergrad.

- Yeah.

- And with the graduate programs, it's even more, when it comes to professional programs, it's somewhere in the range of three to five million dollars, right?

Yet somehow we talk about the false narrative.

It doesn't mean there are no exceptions on either side.

There are individuals that didn't have a college degree that are very successful, and individuals that have college degrees that aren't as successful as measured by economic terms.

Right?

I think as an industry, industry of higher education, we haven't done a good job in communicating the value of education, and it is for the long run, right?

As you know, the technologies that are evolving, people are living longer, the skillsets that the employers are looking for are changing very quickly, and unless we're training students to learn how to learn, adapt, and acquire the next set of skills, they probably won't be employed in the long run, and especially these days, with the advent of artificial intelligence, it is mind blowing how quickly things are changing, right?

Yes, you may have a job today as a high school graduate, but the question one should be asking is are they prepared to be in the job, or adapt and evolve and be in the next job with the right skillsets with a high school degree?

I think it's the long run is where the higher education provides the opportunity for individuals to be successful in what's coming next.

- That's an excellent interpretation of the challenge that could lie ahead.

Furthermore, I've heard in the body of what you were saying indirectly that many of those jobs will disappear anyway.

So if you have not developed critical thinking, if you have not developed a sense of transformative and transformational adaptation to what's happening, if you have not developed the right mindset, if you have not worked in the right environments, your job could be replaced by a robot.

- [Aswani] Yeah.

- It already is, in many industrial environments and others.

But AI, none of us know what AI's gonna do, and you're right, that we need to ensure that students who graduate from college are prepared to adapt and be flexible, 'cause more than likely, the major for which they prepared may or may not be directly what they'll end up doing in life.

I mean, you did, because you're a scientist, and so on.

We'll always need scientists.

So that's interesting.

So UNCW therefore promotes that as an important cornerstone.

How many, not how many students, but what percentage of students come from North Carolina?

- By statute, 82% of the students, at least 82% of the students, had to be from North Carolina.

- From North Carolina?

- I would say we are somewhere in that range.

- [Nido] Yeah.

- 80 to 85% of our students come from North Carolina.

- And UNCW is a fine academic institution, so you have standards and prerequisites, if you will, for that.

- Sure.

- And does UNCW have, it has undergrad and grad?

- [Nido] Mm-hmm.

- And doctoral programs as well?

- Yes.

- In what fields?

- We have doctoral programs in marine biology, psychology, doctorate in nursing practice, doctorate in education, doctorate in pharmaceutical chemistry, and our most recent program, doctorate in applied coastal ocean sciences.

- Let's talk about marine science for a moment.

How do you define it?

Study of what's in the ocean?

What is marine science?

- Yeah, marine science is the study of the oceans and the impacts on us, impact in the oceans, and how the oceans impact us.

It involves the biology, it involves the physics, it involves the geology, it involves the chemistry.

But more importantly, it also involves modeling.

In more recent days, it involves resource economics.

What is a value of a certain fishery?

Or what is the value of tourism?

What is the value of all the economics of recreational activities?

All these things broadly are defined as marine science.

It's a very broad area.

- How important is it to UNCW that you are located next to an ocean?

- Well, UNCW is the North Carolina's coastal university.

It is the only university that is on the coast, while others have a marine lab perhaps on the coast, but we are located on the coast.

Very, very large marine science program in all the areas that I talked about.

The UNCW researchers investigate the deepest parts of the ocean and the organisms that live there collecting samples from the deepest oceans.

- They do that in a lab, or they actually dive in?

- They actually send remotely operated vehicles all the way to the deepest parts.

- Tell me what that looks like.

- Imagine it's a robot with the propellors, arms that can collect samples.

They're all geo-referenced, in other words, you know exactly the point relative to earth where you pick up the samples- - You're literally sending a machine?

- Literally sending a machine to the deepest parts of the ocean- - And you're controlling it remotely?

- Yeah, controlling it remotely.

- [Nido] And this machine is, what, picking up?

- Picking up, whether it happens to be sea stars, or sediment samples, or fish samples, or anything else from the deepest oceans and bring it to the surface.

Known for looking at pharmaceuticals from the sea, drugs from the sea, all the way to sending a nano-satellite.

Imagine a satellite that is the size of a loaf of bread when it goes up.

Of course, it goes up into the space and it opens up, but the satellite is taking very high resolution images of the coastal areas.

- From the environment, from the air?

- From the air.

And that is used to looking at how much food is present in the sea surface, or how much sediment is being pushed out into the open ocean or the coastal areas that impacts how much sea grasses will grow or not.

So UNCW researchers cover anywhere from the space all the way to the deepest parts of the ocean, and anywhere in between.

- And the purpose of doing such studies impacts my life how?

- Well, when you think about humans all over the world, more than 70% of the world's population lives less than 100 miles from the coast.

- [Nido] Say that one more time.

- More than 70% of world's population lives less than 100 miles from the coast.

- Less than 100 miles from the coast?

- From the coast.

Right, so whether we are relying on the coastal areas and the oceans for food, recreation, pharmaceutical applications, et cetera.

Traditionally, humans have a very close relation with water.

All the civilizations revolve around water.

It works in that way.

It works in- - For fun, for transport, for- - Growing food.

- Fishing, yeah.

- Growing food, for that matter.

And of course, when you think about oceans, a good amount of sea food for human consumption comes from an ocean.

In addition to wild fisheries, you're also farming the ocean.

You have big pens, you're growing fish, providing food for all the humans that you have on this planet.

But also, recreation aspects are very, very important.

What is happening in the coastal areas is a precursor of what is likely to happen to us.

With the pollution or something else, going into coastal areas, whether it is rivers, estuaries, oceans, if the animals are not doing well, and we are closely interacting with that environment, or consuming those organisms, sooner or later, it's also going to impact our health.

- [Nido] I see.

- So looking at the health of these coastal areas is also a preview of what is likely to come, and how it's going to affect us as humans interacting with this environment very closely.

- Do we know how many species live in the ocean?

- Oh gosh, no.

I don't, I can't- - We don't know?

- No, we don't know.

Because you only have tapped into the very surface, or the fraction of what you can see.

What you don't see is, imagine 10,000 meters, or 6,000 meters deep into the ocean.

We haven't developed those capabilities of peering into the darkness of the ocean and see what is all there.

Therefore, everyday you're discovering new species.

You're figuring out how do these animals live under very stressful conditions, no light, not a lot of food, very cold temperatures, very, very high pressure, right?

How are they managing those things, and we're also looking at how they're adapting and seeing can we use some of those molecular tubes to better survive, or modify the organisms?

Agriculture is a good example of that.

- I can remember when I would swim in the ocean with my children with zero worry about danger, like sharks.

All of a sudden, we have concerns about that.

What happened environmentally to cause that?

- Well I mean, A, I think you're more aware of those things.

I don't think there is a huge danger from sharks attacking humans, although it does happen, right?

But when you look at the number of incidents relative to the number of people going to any coastal area, any beach, you have a higher likelihood of something happening when you're driving on the road than something happening in the water.

- [Nido] Yeah.

- Right, whether it is drowning, whether it is shark bites.

That is a minuscule percentage.

But it attracts news.

You gotta be careful.

- So is it just media that made us more aware then?

Or are the sharks coming closer to the ocean, or what is it that created this familiarity with the notion that we have more danger on the ocean?

- Sure.

Well, A, you're building more bridges and jetties and more structures, and the structures attract other fish, and that attracts more sharks closer to the shore, and also as part of recreational fishing and stuff, you're fishing more, you're putting more food in the water, and the fish are splashing, and that attracts the sharks.

- I see.

- And so that attracts the sharks, but sharks don't come to humans and try to eat them.

It's a case of mistaken identity.

- So the movie "Jaws" was just fiction?

- It is complete fiction.

- Total fiction?

- Yes, yes.

It doesn't mean that there aren't any isolated incidences, but, yeah.

- Yes, I understand.

Yeah.

I'm always fascinated, and I wanna understand the relationship, I'm always fascinated when I'm at the beach to watch these birds, many different species of birds, some with very long beaks that would come in, and what seems like hours of attempting to catch a fish so they can have food.

Does a marine scientist study that relationship of birds coming into the ocean to eat the fish, and is that, you think, part of the right evolution of nature, or is that more damaging to other species that lives in the ocean that needs to eat that fish too?

- No, it is part of the evolution.

I mean, when you think about the bottom or the base of the food chain, these are microscopic plants that are present in billions and billions in a liter of water, right?

But that is the food for microscopic insects, or the zooplankton, to give it a technical term, that farms the food for tiny fish or the fish slurry, and the fish slurry becomes food for bigger fish, and the food chain goes on.

But in the process of evolution, the fishes, or any other organism, the chances of surviving is minuscule, so they produce a lot of babies and offspring.

And no different than what happens in the wild, right?

The amount of food that- - So they're born to die, basically?

They're born to be eaten by somebody, some other species?

- They're living, and they get eaten, and this one gets eaten by something else.

But I mean, that is nature, right?

Whether it happens to be in a forest, whether it happens to be in an ocean.

That's the way it is.

But I don't think, it is a natural process, right?

Like for example, if you didn't have a predator in a jungle, you might have a lot of deer eating everything, right?

That might decimate the plants and stuff that you wanna have.

And there is a top-down pressure, and the bottom-up pressures of food.

And so nature's evolved so that there's a balance between these two.

And same with the birds, whether it happens to be pelicans, whether it happens to be ospreys, or whether it happens to be eagles, there is a natural balance.

But I don't think food is a limiting factor.

It's not that, the birds are not growing because there isn't enough food.

But there is a perfect balance, but when you insert humans, and the amount of food we are withdrawing from the ocean in terms of fishing.

When you think about some of the large fishing vessels, the nets could be miles and miles wide collecting a lot of things, but you're also trying to feed the growing population in the world.

- Yes.

- Right?

But that's why whether it is agriculture, whether it is aquaculture, or farming the sea, you're trying to augment those things.

- Is your view that given the evolution of food prep in America, is it your view that it's safe to eat seafood?

What should we look for when we eat seafood?

Given your expertise and research in marine science and sustainability.

You know, we read all kinds of stuff, and sometimes you get more confused about what we eat.

What is your view about the food that is based in ocean species, like salmon and flounder and shrimp and lobster, et cetera?

- Yeah.

Any food that is commercially available is safe to eat, because the waters they came from are being tested.

The animals are being tested before they go into the food chain, or the supplies in the grocery stores and stuff where we get.

When it comes to catching animals in the wild and eating, if they're not coming from a water that is classified as safe for humans, then you're taking your own risk, right?

For example, take a- - Is it safer to eat seafood than to eat beef?

Are you making that case?

- No, no.

No, no, not beef.

But I'm saying if you're catching things from the wild and eating it- - By yourself?

- Yeah, by yourself.

- I see.

- Right?

There is no testing.

It doesn't mean that you're going to get sick, but what if it is an area of water that has sewage flowing into it?

Right, then you might get- - I understand.

- Sick.

- It's not regulated, it's not expected- - They're not regulated, but anything you're getting from a commercially sourced location, it's very safe to eat.

- But let me expand that question a little bit.

- Sure.

- So we know it's safe.

Is it healthy?

- Seafood is one of the healthiest things you can eat.

- [Nido] Really?

- Yeah, you- - You can eat 20 shrimps and this is good?

- Well, I wouldn't say eat 20 shrimp every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

But you know, anything in moderation, right?

Like anything else.

- Yes.

- That you want to eat a balanced diet.

- Is there some seafood that is healthier than others?

- Any fish is very, very healthy for you.

- Are you serious?

Is lobster tail healthy for me?

- Well, lobster tail is healthy, as long as you're not eating lobster tail every single day, right?

- And putting a ton of butter on it?

- Ton of butter on it.

- Yeah.

- It tastes great, but no, when you think about seafood in general, like I'm talking fish.

Omega 3 fatty acids, omega 3 6's, 3's, no, they're very healthy for you, right?

But like anything else, you want to eat a balanced diet.

You want to have your vegetables, you wanna have your whole grains, you wanna have your protein, you want to have some carbohydrates.

So any day when you have a balanced diet, it's good for you.

- I read somewhere that UNCW has a plan called Soar Higher.

Briefly, what is that?

- Soar Higher is our strategic plan or a roadmap for the next 10 years.

What kind of things will UNCW be doing to position itself as a leader in higher education?

That is the title of our strategic plan.

As you know, the mascot for UNCW is a sea hawk.

The reason why we say Soar Higher, it's not just a tagline, but that is how we think in terms of doing better everyday, make sure our students are soaring higher, accomplishing greater things.

So that is a strategic plan or a roadmap for the next 10 years.

- And you hope to be there to execute on it?

- I hope so.

I hope to see through it and do many more, just like my predecessors have done.

They've left me with an amazing institution, very strong foundations.

But hopefully sometime in the very far future when I leave, I hope to leave the institution a much better place than I found it.

- Thank you very much for being with me on "Side By Side", and best wishes in all your work.

- Thank you, Nido.

Always a pleasure.

[bright music] [bright music continues] [bright music continues] - [Announcer 1] Funding for "Side By Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by- - [Announcer 2] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

Your local bottler.

- [Announcer] 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.

- [Announcer 4] Truist.

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

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference everyday.

Truist.

Leaders in banking, unwavering in care.