- Hello, I'm David Crabtree.

In just a moment, we'll hear from Dr. Kelli Brown, the Chancellor of Western Carolina University, as we discuss her initiatives at the school and her journey leading the next generation of students.

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

(gentle music) ♪ - Hello, everyone, thank you for joining us.

I'm David Crabtree, along with Chancellor Kelli Brown from Western North-- Western Carolina University.

Thank you for making the effort to be here and for joining us here in Research Triangle Park.

I'm saddened, though, that we're not able to be in Western North Carolina.

- Me too, David, 'cause it's so beautiful there in Cullowhee.

So-- but I'm glad to be here today with you.

- Thank you for that.

Let's talk about your journey initially, how you ended up in higher education, what led you there, and what was your inspiration?

- Yeah, well, thank you.

You know, as a young girl, I never thought I would go to college, let alone my younger self would never envision myself being a leader of a university.

I grew up-- my father went to college, but my mother did not.

And they always told both my sisters and my brother that we were going to college no matter what.

And so, we grew up knowing that we were going to go to college.

And so, that was something that we were told to us all along the way.

And so, when it came time to go to college, I decided to go to a technical college.

I went to a Michael J. Owens Technical College and became a dental hygienist.

And that was wonderful.

I worked as a dental hygienist.

But it became very clear to me that I wanted to do something more.

And so, I decided to start going to school at night.

So, I worked full-time during the day as a hygienist and got my bachelor's degree at night.

And during that period of time, it just became kind of like I liked learning.

And so, I thought, "Well, I want to go on "for a master's degree."

And a professor there said, "You could get a master's degree.

"Come here."

And so, I ended up working part-time as a dental hygienist and going to school and getting my master's degree from the University of Toledo in public health education.

And when I got done with that experience of getting a master's degree, what I really realized was I love teaching.

This is what I want to do.

I wanted to teach.

And so, I said to one of my professors, I said, "I want to teach."

And he said, "Well, you need to get a PhD."

And I went, "Oh, no."

You know, I mean, this is the young girl who never thought she would go to college, and now I have a bachelor's and a master's degree.

And so, I went on and got my PhD, and that was the beginning of a phenomenal career that I've had in higher education.

And I've been so very fortunate to be able to do what I've been able to do.

- I love that story, because you began with something that you had a passion to do, and you realized somewhere along the way, no, I even want to expand this.

- Yes.

- And then you were encouraged-- - Yes, yes.

- By others to do it.

- Yes, and you're exactly right.

I talk about that all the time.

I had people who I talk about being tapped on the shoulder, that I was tapped on the shoulder and said, "You can do this."

And I had people all along the way.

Actually, the dentist that I worked for actually encouraged me to get my master's degree.

And so, I had people along the way encouraging, and I think that is one of the things that I love about what we do in higher education, is we encourage, we tap young people on the shoulder and said, "You can do this.

"This is what you need to do."

And we nudged them along the way.

And so, I've been fortunate.

My career started, I started at a place like Western Carolina University, a regional public university.

Prior to getting to Western, I'd been at six different institutions.

And I knew when I came to Western that this was the place that I wanted to be at.

- Wow, and now you talk about nudging students.

This fall, you will have almost 12,000 to nudge.

- Yes.

- And you began this role as Chancellor 2019.

- Yes.

- You're the 12th Chancellor.

- Yes.

- How encouraged are you to have 12,000 students coming with all that Western North Carolina has been through?

Many of these students are returning.

There are new challenges.

There's a new way to welcome people.

Does it emotionally look different now for this freshman class and the upper class as well?

- Yeah, you know, it is exciting to bring almost 12,000 students back on campus.

And you had mentioned that the 12th Chancellor, I'm the first permanent female Chancellor as well.

So I'm very proud of that also.

But as we bring back students on campus, I think what we're really thinking about is how we can make sure that they feel welcomed on our campus.

Students are coming from all over North Carolina.

They're coming from all different states.

We want them to feel like this is a place that they belong, that there is something here for them.

Whether it be in their academic program, their out of classroom experiences that they have, we want to make sure that they are welcomed and that those experiences, that they have the right support that they need to be successful here.

I just was recently, this past week, I was at what we call student send-offs.

And these are freshmen students who are coming to Western and their parents are with them.

And I always remind the parents as well, we're here to help make sure that your students succeed.

And so we'll provide them the services and the academic resources that they need.

And so it's one of those kinds of places where we think of ourselves as a family and we really like to provide that family sense for them.

Are they going to get homesick when they first get there?

Absolutely they are.

And I always tell parents when they call home and they want to come home that first week and tell them, no, stay there, make friends, get out of your residence hall and do things.

And if they do that, they will fall in love with Cullowhee.

And as this class, this is the class of 2029, I tell them, see you in May of 2029 as you graduate four years from now.

- Oh my gosh, I remember as a freshman walking away from home and thinking I was so ready to do that until I realized how few people I knew, I had imposter syndrome, what am I doing here?

Will I be able to do this?

And it can be intimidating early on.

- It can be, and it can be.

And that's why it's really important that they get outside of their residence halls.

We tell them that very first Saturday, right before classes start, we have something called Valley Ballet, who is amazing.

And what this is, is it's all the student organizations on campus as well as external community members come in and they set up tents and it's for students to get to know the community.

What are the resources that are available to them?

Is there a backgammon club?

Is there a soccer club that they can get involved with?

Is there a fraternity or sorority?

Is there a faith-based organization that they can connect to within the community?

It gives them this sense of we're here for you and there's something for you.

And one of the things I'll always tell the students is, if you come to Valley Ballet, and there's not something there for you and there's something that you think is missing, create it.

We will give you the opportunity to create that something.

- Wow, I love that.

That's the first step of, I think, leading them to maturity of, if you have a problem, bring us a solution along with it.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

- One more thing about that, Chancellor, if you may.

I know front and center for President Hans for the past few years in particular has been the health and well-being of students.

But with a great emphasis and a central focus on mental health.

- Yes.

- Our students now face a lot of challenges that many of us did not.

But it sounds like what you're talking about with this program and how you encourage the parents, you have mental health in mind.

- We do, we do.

And it's even coming more to the forefront, of course, but we've always been thinking about it.

But we really want our students to come there and know that there's something for them and that there's something for everyone.

And so as they come on campus, do we have the resources, the mental health resources, absolutely.

But part of it is getting out and doing different things.

I mentioned the Valley, Valley Who, but last year, again, thinking about things that are different for students, we had a book reading club and students would get together.

And I'd never heard of this before, David, and this was fascinating.

It's a book reading club.

Students get together and they read a book.

They don't read it to one another, but they read a different book.

They gather in the library, they sit and they read their book for an hour.

And when they're done, they get up and they leave.

But that is their community.

And it was something different.

Again, something for everyone.

And that's their mental health of getting out.

And so the idea of having and creating something for every student on campus is where we really want to help them and for them to be able to succeed.

- You have now been a chancellor for six years.

- Yes.

- I'm sure things, even in a six-year period, have changed from the time when you came.

For the better and more challenging.

Higher education, it's fair to say, facing a lot of challenges we haven't thought of before.

And how are you dealing with some of the external pressures of potential funding cuts, research being cut, while keeping your tuition where it is?

How do you balance that?

- Yeah, it's important.

And I think it's important for leaders of the organizations to kind of keep a balance for everyone, to make sure that for our faculty and staff, that they know that we're gonna be continuing to move forward.

We're gonna want to continue to be innovative and creative.

But at the same time that there are these other things.

So we really try to kind of focus on how do we maintain who we are?

We are a regional public university.

And I say that all the time.

Let's keep focused on our mission.

What do we do?

We educate and help young people learn, right?

We want them to get a degree and go off into the community or go off into graduate school.

We really want to keep that focus in mind.

And so how do we do that within these external resources and these external factors that are happening?

And so if we keep that in mind, I think that that's what's really helped us moving forward.

So as we talk with faculty, make sure that, continue to teach your classes, continue to work with your students outside, with undergraduate research, with internships, with study abroad, continue to do those things.

Yes, we may have a decline in resources, but focus on the students, focus on their success and remember who we are.

We are a regional public university that is servicing Western North Carolina and beyond.

- And you're very dedicated and concerned.

You're dedicated to helping students deal with debt.

- Yes.

- Student debt, keeping tuition where it is.

Any new initiatives coming?

- Yes.

- For that's right.

- We're very fortunate.

We are one of the first, we were one of the first three NC Promise schools that were designated.

And we're very, very excited about that.

I'm very grateful to the General Assembly for their thoughtfulness and their insight in creating this first dollar program that we have in North Carolina.

- And if you're a newcomer and don't know what NC Promise is, would you explain that?

- Of course, of course.

NC Promise is for in-state students and it's a $500 tuition per semester.

So over a four year period of time is $4,000.

And there are four institutions.

There's Western Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, UNC Pembroke and Fayetteville State University.

And it is a truly unique program.

When I talk to other presidents and chancellors from across the United States, they always ask me about our NC Promise program.

So again, I think we're in the forefront when we think about affordability for our students that live in the state of North Carolina.

So that's NC Promise.

On top of NC Promise, we have something called Catamount Commitment.

And we started that two years ago.

This is for students who are starting as freshmen, who come to Western with a high school GPA of a certain level.

And they get four years of funding as long as they keep that GPA up.

So you can get as high as $3,000 a year or as low as $1,000 a year for all four years.

Because of the success of Catamount Commitment, we're expanding that now to community colleges.

And you can imagine community colleges, with my love having a two-year degree from a community college, I really wanted them to be involved.

So now we're including two-year community colleges.

So if you're graduating from a North Carolina community college, you can get Catamount Commitment for three years.

So it's six semesters.

You come to us if you have a 3.0 GPA, and you can come in, and we're focusing on three areas, STEM, health sciences, and education.

And so what is great about this program also is if you come to Western and you get there and you don't need three years, but you have one year extra of Catamount Commitment, you can actually use that towards your master's degree.

And so we're really excited about Catamount Commitment and how that layers on top of NC Promise to make Western Carolina University affordable and accessible to students in North Carolina.

- Chancellor, as both chancellor and a teacher at heart, always a teacher at heart.

- Absolutely.

- Watching these students, and many of them I presume first generation, go through this program with this financial assistance and to see them graduate and to watch their families see them graduate, talk to me about what that's like.

- There are two of the best days of the year for me is convocation when we bring the students in and then four years later when they graduate.

And so our students, when they graduate, these last two years, and I'm very, very proud of this, the last two years we've had almost 50% of our undergraduate students graduate with zero institutional debt.

That is incredible.

So when you think about that student, when you talk about their families, that student is now able to go into the workforce or into graduate school with zero institutional debt.

That is something that we're very proud of.

This past May, we had 640 first generation students.

And when our students walk across the stage, they have a first generation stole that they wear.

My board of trustee members now who are first generation, they too wear a first generation stole.

And you see a lot of these first generation stoles and the family members that are out there at graduation with their yelling and hollering, and they're so excited.

And their siblings that are there, their younger brothers and their sisters, their aunts and their uncles, seeing these kids walk across the stage.

It really is incredible to think of the transformation for not only that individual, but for their families.

And it's something that, that is what Western is there for.

We are a public university, a regional public university that is transforming lives every single day.

- And that is something to witness, if you never have, that is so moving because you realize that something has been accomplished in a family that never had before.

And maybe people thought they would never have the opportunity.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

And when I talk to some of the parents, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, they say to me, "Thank you, thank you.

We are so happy that my son or my daughter or my niece or my nephew were able to do this because they recognize what it's done for them."

And it is truly gratifying.

And you can't explain that experience unless you actually experience it.

- Talk to me about your graduation rate.

Where was it last year?

What are you hoping for?

- Yes, well, as you know, we're constantly trying to do better.

We're right under 50% of a four-year graduation rate.

I wanna say we're right at 49%.

When I got there, we were right around 47.3%.

So we're moving forward.

We have a goal of 50% and we have a goal of working more than that.

So we really wanna push that.

So four-year graduation rate of right under 50%.

Two-thirds of our students graduate within six years.

And so we're very proud of that.

So we wanna continue to work with our student success.

And so our retention from first year to second year and third year on.

But graduating students is really what we're supposed to be doing as a four-year institution here in North Carolina.

- I talk with chancellors and others in higher education about the value of the four-year education if you're able to complete that.

And if you're able to move on into a master's program.

And I tell parents in this generation at times who talk about this, well, maybe my child would be better off at a community college, gaining a skill, and they might be.

But the intangible that is offered to you, rounding out your education is paramount.

- It is, it is.

I'm currently right now, I sit on the board of directors for the American Association for State Colleges and Universities, ASCU.

And so I'm part of the national conversation right now about the role of universities, the value of universities, the proposition of universities and what that is.

And it is intangible.

Yes, you have a four-year degree, but it also allows you to learn.

It makes you think about things outside that you would have never thought of.

So you might wanna be a nurse, but you're also very maybe interested in another area.

You're in business, but you're also interested in theater.

It rounds that person out.

So when they go into the community, and that part of this is not just the individual, but what they do in their communities and in their workplaces, that is so important.

So we really do, I think the four-year degree, and again, I'm a community college graduate.

I recognize the importance of community colleges, but I also went on.

And so that's part of that transfer program that we have that we work really hard for, because I think a four-year degree is really what is important for communities and for individuals and their families as we move forward.

And that is the value proposition that we are offering in higher education now.

- Western has implemented several major capital projects under your leadership.

One is the Appadocka Science Building, some new residence halls.

What's on the horizon now?

It seems like most campuses, or at least many of them, cranes are there.

- Yes.

- Activity is there.

Roads are closed.

- Yes.

- It's tough to get around, but that's a sign of progress.

- It is a sign of progress.

It is a sign of progress.

So Appadocka Science Building opened in fall of 2021.

Very grateful to the General Assembly, $110 million building, 182,000 square feet.

We're excited about that.

We just opened up three new residence halls, 932 beds.

We have the Rocks, Shining Rock, Black Rock, and Water Rock.

There's a couple of things that we've got coming forward.

The Moore Building.

Moore Building was built in 1924.

It's one of our oldest buildings still left on campus.

I'm so excited to be able to renovate that building and bring some academic programs into that building, as well as some student-facing academic units on campus into that building.

It's in the older part of campus.

So I'm excited about the Moore Building.

We have recently funding from the general legislature for expansion and a new building for engineering on campus.

And I'm very excited about that.

We're working with an architect.

We've got the plans ready.

I hope to break ground for that here in the near future for engineering.

And we're hiring new faculty and staff for the expansion of our engineering program to meet the workforce development needs we have in Western North Carolina.

We also have our Biltmore Park expansion a little bit.

And a lot of people don't know that we're in Asheville.

So we've been in Asheville since 1937.

We're adding 12,000 more square feet to our Biltmore Park site for our graduate programs in nursing, physical therapy, education, public administration, and undergraduate in engineering.

So we're excited about that.

And the most recent one that's been really fun is we actually had groundbreaking for our E.J.

Whitmire Stadium.

Hasn't had any renovations since it was opened in 1974.

So we have a groundbreaking for the new E.J.

Whitmire Stadium renovations for new offices for our football staff, new student learning spaces, a new press box, and a hospitality area that we're calling the Western Skybox at this point in time.

So we're excited about those new things that are coming forward.

- Are you always this energetic?

- Yes, I love what I do.

What can I say?

- But okay, I'm thinking about Cullowhee being so laid back in the mountains.

- It is.

- But you do bring an energy to the table that is quite refreshing.

For people who've not been on the campus, when they get to Cullowhee, of course, you're embraced by the mountains.

You're immersed with the mountains.

What is there that would surprise people?

- Well, you talk about, you know, when you come in and you're embraced by the mountains.

When you come in and you're coming in on 107, you're gonna come around an area called Catamount Gap.

And when you make that turn around Catamount Gap, off to your left, you're gonna see Western Carolina University in this valley, the Cullowhee Valley.

And it's magical.

I don't know what else to tell you about it.

When my husband and I first made the trip there to Western, we were just, we fell in love with the place immediately.

What you're gonna find is a university that really truly embraces our students and values the students that we have there.

We are connected with our community in many ways.

We've got the Silva community, Western North Carolina community.

But what you're gonna find there is a place that really takes in the nature around it.

A lot of what we do and what we do with our students, and we talk about, you talked about mental health earlier, going out backpacking, taking walks along our six mile trail that we have, tubing down the Tuskegee River.

I mean, all those things that you can do right there in Cullowhee is just amazing.

And you start to feel it around you and you do kind of slow down a little bit and you take it all in.

And when you wake up in the morning and the clouds are over the mountains, you just say, "I get to walk to class to this."

Or, "I get to watch a football game with these mountains around me."

- Before we began taping this program, you and I were talking about when we have to face challenges that clouds ultimately will lift.

- Yes.

- Then it's up to us to decide what we're going to do with the sun when that happens.

- Clouds have lifted in Western North Carolina, but there's a lot remains from what happened nine months ago.

- Yes, yes.

- Are you and the university grounded in what, obviously what you've had to do, but as you continue to deal with this on a daily basis?

- Absolutely, we are.

And it was tragic what Helene did to Western North Carolina.

We were very fortunate on our campus in Cullowhee had very little physical impact, but about 40% of our faculty and staff live in affected areas, lost their homes, lost different things.

So we're very much impacted by that.

During Hurricane Helene, Western Carolina University rose.

We're part of the fabric of Western North Carolina.

So one of the things, we just started doing things.

Our students, faculty, and staff joined community members at the Jacksonville Airport when 100 plus airplanes were flying in from all over with supplies.

Unloading them so that they could come back.

Our archeology students worked with the Asheville Riverside Cemetery in mapping graves following Hurricane Helene to see if any of them were disturbed.

Fascinating.

And then many of the search and rescue dogs that were used during Hurricane Helene, unfortunately, were actually trained by our criminal justice program.

So we are embedded in the fabric of Western North Carolina and people rely on us for those resources.

- Dr. Kelli Brown, we could talk for another half hour, but I really appreciate you taking the time to share what's happening at Western Carolina.

And I did my research to find out that a catamount is a form of a mountain lion.

Now that is correct, right?

- It is correct.

- And as a dental hygienist, just one last question.

- Yes.

- How do you talk to people when they can't answer you when you're working on them?

(laughing) - Well, you know, I guess that's maybe has prepared me for the job that I'm in today.

I'm not really quite sure.

I'm not really quite sure.

- Well, again, welcome and all the best to you and to the incoming class this fall and come back to see us anytime.

- Thank you, David.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

- And thank all of you for joining us.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) ♪ - Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.