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Welcome to the most widely watched and the longest running dialogue on Carolina business, policy, and public affairs.

We're seen every week on PBS stations across North and South Carolina.

Of course, education plays an important role in things like hiring and jobs and talent and development.

While we won't focus all of our dialogue this week on education, it is a meaningful part of our program.

We will start in a moment, and later speaking of education, he is and has been leading one of the largest, in fact, the largest HBCU in this nation, certainly in the Carolinas, North Carolina A&T Chancellor, Dr. Harold Martin.

And we start right now.

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- [Voiceover 3] On this edition of "Carolina Business Review", Anna Beavon Gravely of Restless Politico, James McQuilla from the Orangeburg Chamber of Commerce, and special guest, Harold L. Martin, Sr., Chancellor of N.C. A&T.

(theatrical music) - Welcome to our program, and welcome back James.

Good to see you.

- Good to be back.

I love it.

- [Chris] Thank you.

- Thank you.

- [Chris] Anna Beavon, AB, good to see you.

- Happy to be here.

- Anna Beavon, we have to start with you.

North Carolina now is, well, has just legalized sports betting.

- Yeah.

- And it's happened coincidentally just in time for March Madness.

That's amazing.

(laughs) - Funny, yeah.

- So is this going to be, you know, and I know this tends to be a moral question, certainly it is in South Carolina, you know, the video poker, et cetera, et cetera, - [James] Right.

- over the years.

But in North Carolina it is now legal, but will education be the beneficiary of it?

Is it gonna flow through the commission, the Lottery Commission?

- Yeah, so what is anticipated from everything that I have read and seen is that it's actually gonna be sports programs, athletic programs in the schools.

Largely in UNC system, with the exception of UNC Chapel Hill, Carolina, the other Carolina that we like - [James] Yes.

- to refer to as the good Carolina, and then NC State.

And those are two schools that are not gonna get any of the money for their athletic programs.

And so, if we're going with indirect benefit on education, when we think of education being the school part and learning, possibly, yeah.

I think we sort of need to see how that works out.

But the money is directly going to athletic programs.

It could help make it possible for people who maybe going to college was just outside of reach financially and being able to get an athletic scholarship will make it possible, which will then enrich enrollment opportunities for the varying schools.

But I think we have to see how that works out.

- Yeah, I'm gonna give you a chance to answer your question, but I wanna give you a chance for rebuttal against the Carolina slight - [James] Yeah.

- that she just said to you.

- Well, growing up, I never knew there was a North Carolina College.

You know, growing up in South Carolina, Carolina, we would see Carolina and USC.

So I'm just learning today that there was another Carolina.

- That is very harsh.

- Okay.

- [Chris] We'll take it offline here.

Verbal eye roll if you wanna do that.

Is that your- - I will verbal eye roll.

- Okay.

James, sorry, I don't know why we went down that road.

But back to the sports betting in North Carolina, James, is there a scenario in South Carolina that you could see that that would happen?

- Not initially, but like everything else, you have folks who see something that happens and then you have the followers.

So we're gonna watch and see what happens in North Carolina.

If it's a very, very successful, I think you can see it going across state lines.

Because you're gonna, we're so close, right?

We're gonna have folks from South Carolina coming into North Carolina, spending money, and probably betting on opportunities here.

So the legislature outta Columbia will probably take it up at some point, but just knowing how the culture of South Carolina is, especially with what happened with video poker in the late '80s and '90s, - [Chris] Right.

- I just can't see it being a priority right now.

- Well, I agree with James in the sense that the conversation started in North Carolina because we were seeing it happen in Virginia.

And so, it's sort of trickling down, and if we follow the same pattern I think it'll come up in Virginia, - It trickle down to south.

- I mean, in South Carolina.

- Let's shift to economic development.

James, this is not news to you, of course, but to a lot of people that drive through Orangeburg, they may not know that Orangeburg County, Newberry, are some of the best places, lowest cost, challenges around education, public education, maybe some crime.

How are you moving those along that you'll be able to leverage off the location of Orangeburg, not just in the center of state but just right in ground zero for development?

- So first off, the leadership in Orangeburg is starting to collaborate more than they ever have, and I can say that with all truthfulness.

Whether it's the universities, we have two HBCUs in Orangeburg.

We have a lot of entertainment as far as if you like fishing and hunting and golf, boating, we have the largest lake east of the Mississippi, a hundred thousand acres in Lake Marion.

And of course, we're the second largest county in the State of South Carolina by landmass.

So, there's a lot of room for expansion.

Right around us, Columbia, Lexington, Berkeley County, Dorchester County, there's been a lot of economic development, but there's just not a lot of places for the folks to live.

Well, we have that available.

But for us to be able to get the city administration, county administration, the local legislative delegation, and then the hospital superintendent, we're all sitting down and actually we're planning for this growth that we know is coming.

- So growth in North Carolina, economic development, record bumper year in 2023.

Are you seeing the same kind of thing for this year?

- I think very likely, yes.

We'll see a lot of growth in, I don't know , some of the satellite places.

So like right out- - [Chris] Rural?

- Slightly rural.

We're trying to make that conversation or make that happen.

- [Chris] Apex, Garner, beyond Raleigh, those kind of places, you mean?

- Yep, even going down to Rocky Mount, benefiting from Raleigh's growth.

It's just a short drive to Raleigh.

A lot of people are remote, cost of living is lower.

- [Chris] Sure.

- So we're starting to see satellite locations that are more rural be able to have a, "Hey, look at us.

We have lower cost of living, easy travel.

We have these small town benefits."

- But Anna Beavon, you have to have the body.

So when you have Toyota battery saying they're gonna put in an X amount of billions in investment in 2,000 people, where are they gonna get the people from?

And by the way, you're gonna get the question for Scout, too, in South Carolina, but where are they gonna get the people from?

- I think those people are gonna come from outside of the state.

I think we've seen that happen in Porsche before.

I think we're sort of waiting to see some of that happen with Apple and with Google in North Carolina.

But largely, if there's specific jobs and the area doesn't really lend itself to being a strength for those jobs, we're gonna see those jobs come from other places.

And that could have ripple effects for local economies, but I think the jobs themselves that we talk about when we talk about that are reported to JDIG, Job Development Investment Grant, or like several other ones that aren't coming to mind right now.

But those are being reported and they're gonna come from outta state.

- Okay.

James, I know your hope is, but you think Orangeburg and Orangeburg County can shine when it comes to these jobs that have to be filled for Scout and for the other developments?

- Well, again, I'm gonna have to agree 100% with Anna Beavon in that we're gonna see people coming in from other places.

We're already starting to build new subdivisions, preparing for the folks.

We only have 86,000 people in our county.

The county is 1100 square miles.

So we have room for people to come and live in Orangeburg, The infrastructure set up for that, we have two interstates.

So while there will be some shifts in people leaving where they're currently working for a better opportunity, and that's fine, we're gonna see an influx of folks.

But I also have to agree with the fact that the rural areas, we shouldn't sleep on them.

I mean, broadband will allow you to live in an Apex, or a Cordova, a Bowman, and still work in a job that sustains your livelihood, your whole family.

- And you think the end, and I don't wanna put words in your mouth, James, but you think the end game on broadband is here.

It's just a matter of deploying it now.

- [James] Exactly.

- Okay.

- I think broadband is as important to our 21st century economy as the telephone was for connectivity.

- [Chris] Okay.

- Even more than transportation.

Why?

Because it's not absolutely necessary anymore.

You can live at home, work from home, like I said, create the kind of income that you need from home.

And in fact, the transportation that you need now is basically having things shipped to you.

You can have your grocery shipped to you, you can have your clothes shipped to you.

So you don't have to, as during the time that I grew up, you don't have to get in the car and go get it anymore.

But if you have broadband, you can live anywhere, still get anything, and have a great lifestyle.

- We're gonna get it from the horse's mouth.

Secretary Harry Lightsey, the Secretary of Commerce in South Carolina will be on our program again.

He's coming up on the program.

Also coming up on this program, Todd Pendo is the founder and CEO of a company called, well, I'm sorry, Todd Olson is founder and CEO of a company called Pendo.

Todd is coming back on this program for a lot of reasons, not just because it's tech and in the triangle, but because they continue to grow and we'll find out more about what's on their plate and where they go.

North Carolina A&T is not just a marquee HBCU, but it also carries a respective distinction of a high performer in academics on its own.

And it doesn't stop there.

Its long-term chancellor has received many accolades for years during his tenure on his own, both within and without the school.

We welcome now the largest HBCU in this country, North Carolina A&T Chancellor, Dr. Harold Martin.

Dr. Martin, welcome to the Program.

- Thank you very much.

Glad to be here.

- My apologies for not having you on before, sir, because we have watched you from afar with much distinction.

And we wanna congratulate you on a wonderful tenure.

But Dr. Martin, I wanna come back to this fact that A&T is the largest HBCU in the Carolinas and the country for 10 years.

So, congratulations.

What do you do with that?

- Well, I tend to say to our board and our constituency that while we embrace the fact that we're the largest HBCU in the nation, what's important to me is our impact.

Are we graduating graduates getting great jobs?

Is the research we're doing and innovation helping to improve the quality of life through our College of Agriculture and farmers throughout North Carolina?

Are we enhancing corporate entities with their technology with our innovation?

So the impact of our university is significant.

The corporate partners we have, the government agencies that support our university and our research allows us to continue to promote our university as a strong economic impact player in the State of North Carolina and beyond.

And so, that's critically important.

That's driving growth for us.

- But there's gotta be a sense of pride internally on campus and of the staff and the faculty.

What's that like?

- Oh, there's a phrase we use across our university on a regular basis.

You greet an Aggie anywhere in the world and the first thing that comes outta their mouth is, "Aggie pride".

You say "Aggie pride" and you get a resounding response, "Aggie pride".

And that's very well baked into our culture, into our students, and in our alumni all over the world.

- [Chris] Anna Beavon, question?

- Yeah.

Early on the show we talked a little bit about sports betting and its rollout and anticipation in North Carolina.

How are you guys bracing for it?

- We're expecting based on the commitments of some of the revenue supporting education.

The UNC system has worked very tirelessly to frame its strategy, while some of those funds are gonna have direct impact on 10 of the 16 universities with athletics.

The Power Five conferences in the universe generally are heavily funded with revenues from TV royalties and the like.

The smaller conferences, Division I and Division II conferences, and we have a number of those in the UNC system, we're Division I, will benefit.

A certain portion of those dollars will impact 10 of our institutions.

We'll receive a portion of those dollars, they'll go directly to athletics and they'll support athletics operations, staff, scholarships for student athletes, support services to student athletes, travel operations and the like.

And so, we're excited about what that means to athletics and support for our university, but all of the universities that it would beneficiaries quite honestly.

And so, while we are not condoning the notion of betting by any measure on athletics, it is here and the opportunity to benefit is significant.

And so we appreciate the opportunities.

- Do you see some of that having a trickle effect into students who couldn't afford to go to school, or it was gonna be a really complicated difficulty for their family to be able to afford to go to school, and then having greater enrollment in your classes.

Do you see that any of that happening?

Have you had any anecdotal conversations to that effect?

- At this moment, the strategy is focused directly on impact in athletics.

- [Anna] Okay, yeah.

- Athletic success.

Now, it don't have direct impact on student athletes and their academic success, - Sure.

- But we'll find other ways in which, if we consistently identify dollars to support students, we support a high percentage of first generation, low income students on our campus.

They are incredibly bright, talented.

They need our academic support to ensure that we're preparing them to see their space in the world as they matriculate to our university.

But the financial piece, we are able to find resources to invest with our corporate partners and foundations.

So in my mind, from my university's perspective, the investments in our athletics space, it's critically important.

We love winning at North Carolina, too.

- [Anna] Yeah.

- Athletics is a big part of what we do.

- Can I piggyback off of that just a little bit?

For me, we talked a little bit about the cultural aspect of betting, okay?

Do you think we should look at betting as a way to finance education when I think there're probably a lot of other ways to do that?

I mean, North Carolina has so much industry.

It's literally boiling over into other areas.

Should we make betting a component to providing for education as much as we do right now, or with this potential new betting bill?

- If the case for betting in North Carolina was to fund higher education, I would vote no.

However, the demands for betting in North Carolina, as seen in neighboring states such as Virginia, many of our residents go across the border, go to Virginia.

And if they're gonna do so, creating the opportunity for betting to occur in North Carolina and have the opportunity to use that revenue for meaningful, impactful purposes, that I can support.

But that should not be the predominant reason to find ways to create betting in North Carolina just to capture revenues to support education- - Dr. Martin, let me come back to, as you talked about the kids that are coming into school, some of the low income or not low income, but just the first year students.

And we're coming off post-COVID and we see educational attainment has been a challenge.

Do you see the difference in the educational rigor of those kids that are SAT, or school ready for you in your mind as a freshman?

- I think what we've seen across the UNC system very recently in our discussions with the Board of Governors and the president of the university system, we've realized that many students coming into our universities who were impacted profoundly through online education as opposed to face-to-face engagement in K-12 do not have all of the skills they need to be as successful as they were before COVID, pre-COVID.

And as a matter of fact, we waived the requirements for the SAT and ACT for admission to our institutions across the system, as many universities around the nation did.

We've just recently began to have conversations about restoring the importance of the SAT and ACT as part of the admissions decision as a part of our assessment that we need to have other tools to evaluate the readiness of young people coming into our universities.

That's across all ethnic groups and all of our universities in the UNC system, and quite frankly across the nation as a whole.

And so that's important.

COVID did have big impact, and we're hopeful that we'll see rebounding performance of children in K-12 so that we'll begin to get back to pre-COVID performance of our children.

- Are you confident as well as hopeful?

- Absolutely, we are confident that will happen.

There's an intentionality partnerships with our universities and our school districts.

We work very intentionally, very positive and healthily with the several school districts in our region.

The quality of the teachers we're producing, the skill sets that they need to enhance students in their readiness and preparation quite honestly.

Support services that ensure that our children are doing better.

Programs for parents.

Engage them in a more thoughtful way in the importance and preparation of their children in readiness for college as well.

- [Chris] Anna Beavon?

- Are there any programs that you feel when you look back at your tenure that are just like make you smile because you are, you think about them so fondly and maybe they were a risk to start or went against the grain.

But are there any of those programs that really come to mind when I ask that question?

- Well, there are initiatives that we've created for our university that has stimulated growth for the last 10 years.

First and foremost, we have always had a history of strong academic programs.

We lead the nation in producing African American engineers in any university in the nation.

That's critically important.

When you look at the growing demand for new jobs that are being created through innovation globally, they are mostly in STEM disciplines.

We're a big land grant institution.

Land grant institutions are big STEM-based institutions, large agriculture.

That needs significantly larger numbers of STEM students, STEM graduates.

And that's forcing our state as a nation, as a state to focus increasingly more on readying children coming through K-12 with enhanced skills in math and science.

Our universities are partner with our community colleges.

When you look at North Carolina, James made reference to North Carolina having lots of jobs.

Past two years, North Carolina's been the state in the nation with the largest job growth of any other state in the nation.

That creates opportunities for our universities.

We have a profound university system and we're working together in very collaborative ways to ensure that we're meeting those needs, those many industries coming to North Carolina in significant ways.

The thing that's exciting to me personally is the fact that they are no longer just simply going to Raleigh-Durham, or to the Charlotte community, but they are looking more at the central part of the state to Piedmont Triad where we're located, which makes our university even more important to helping to address those growing professional needs.

Companies like Wolfspeed expanding substantially.

Toyota battery coming to the Piedmont Triad area.

boom Supersonic, Marshall, HondaJet expanding.

All of those industries need engineers.

They need STEM graduates, they need business graduates, social scientist graduates.

Our size and impact make us critically important to those industries and their needs.

We have a great community college system in North Carolina.

They do a great job of workforce preparedness.

You are seeing an increased level of importance, of collaborations and partnerships between the University of North Carolina System and our community college system.

That bodes very well for the future of North Carolina.

- [Chris] We have about two minutes.

- Okay.

I just wanted to say, I told some friends of mine that I was gonna be on today with you.

They're graduates of North Carolina A&T.

They're very excited about that, and I'm very much aware of the Aggie pride.

In fact, there have been several folks from South Carolina who've gone that are pretty famous.

Ron McNair - [Dr. Martin] That's correct.

- is a graduate of A&T, of course.

I think the Physics Program up there.

After you bow out gracefully, how do you help it be sustained going forward?

- Well, clearly it's important for us to research process and working very closely with the president and Board of Governors.

- [Chris] Right.

- Identify a highly experienced pool of candidates and from whom we will select the best choice who will help sustain the university's continued progress and growth.

We're very strategic in planning and engagement with our board and our campus community, with our alums.

So we have a blueprint that we continue to refresh and expand.

And if we find the right talent to lead the institution into the future, we will continue to see growth and projection and expansion of our institution in very significant ways.

But equally as importantly as in terms of the growth, the impact, the dependence of our university by business leaders in our region, their investments and support in institution, we expect to see a sustained university well into the future.

- We've got about a minute left, about a minute and a half left, Dr. Martin.

And you talk about the output of the kids at the school of the student, young people at the school.

Black women make up less than 10% of the population or so, but yet they are emerging as the fastest growing entrepreneurial force.

- [Dr. Martin] Yes.

- Where's that coming from?

- Well, young women across all ethnic groups are more disciplined and focused academically today.

And so you're seeing young women engaged in education in K-12 and preparation for college, taking the right courses, being clearer about their plans for the future.

- And we have about 30 seconds.

- They come ready for academic support and engagement.

What many of our universities, including ours have to do more intentionally is working with our K-12 institutions and parents and families to ensure that we are focus in improving young men's readiness for college as well.

- Thank you, and that didn't give you enough time.

Not foxes you for that answer, but Dr. Martin, thank you.

And again, for all of us, congratulations on a wonderful tenure.

And I didn't go, but you can feel the Aggie pride just standing around you, so thank you.

- Thank you very much.

- Thank you, sir.

- Thank you.

- It's nice to see you.

Best of luck going forward.

James, good to have you back.

- Thank you, I appreciate that.

- Anna Beavon, always nice to see you.

- Love it.

- Thank you.

Till next week, I'm Chris William.

Goodnight.

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Thank you.

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