- Hello, I'm David Crabtree.

In a moment, we'll hear from Dr.

Sharon Gaber, the Chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, as we discuss the state's third largest university.

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

(upbeat music) ♪ - We are here on the University of North Carolina, Charlotte with Chancellor Sharon Gaber.

Chancellor, thank you for the hospitality of having us here.

- Absolutely, glad to have you here, thank you.

- At the time we are taping this, it's just past the beginning of the new academic year.

You have a historic enrollment of more than 32,000 students.

What do you attribute that success to?

- Well, I think we're excited, obviously.

32,207, we're thrilled to have that number.

And really, I think we serve the needs of the growing metropolitan area in Charlotte and Mecklenburg and the surrounding counties.

So we think that students are coming from across the state and we have students from 99 counties in North Carolina.

They want to be in the largest city in North Carolina.

They wanna have the sets of programs that we offer and the relationships with the corporate community that we afford them.

So I think we're excited about that.

And obviously, the word is getting out as students are coming from across the state to be here.

- We live in such a vast state when you consider deep Western North Carolina all the way to the Outer Banks.

And this is a university tucked outside of the metropolitan area.

And if you didn't know it was here, you wouldn't know it was here.

- I agree with you.

And I think we have been much more intentional to make sure that we're reaching out to Charlotte because we are, we're North of Charlotte and really a lot of the development of the city of Charlotte has gone South.

And so we have an uptown location, we have a building uptown, we're doing work there, but we're now making sure we engage with the city.

And then we spend a lot of time inviting people to campus.

And part of what we said, if you haven't been on campus in 10 years or 20 years, you need to come see who we are now because the impression of who we might have been no longer exists.

People will say to me, "Oh, it's a commuter school "and you're not doing research."

And it's like, no, we have strong residential programs.

Students come and want to be here and live on campus or in the community around the university and strong research programs, doctoral programs, master's programs, large undergraduate programs.

So we've really changed the narrative of who we are, but we have to be intentional to make sure we're connecting to the city.

- A couple of times you mentioned the word research.

So let's talk about the exciting news that has happened at this university regarding research and the designation of this university.

- Well, thank you.

In February of 2025, we were recategorized as a Research I university.

That's the highest level of research.

Prior to our joining, it was of the publics, UNC Chapel Hill and NC State.

Duke is also a Research I. So there were three.

In February, UNC Charlotte and ECU joined in the Research I ranks also.

And that means that we've hit a critical level of research funding and we have a number, and there are thresholds that designate this, of doctoral students graduating.

So that's the way that they calculate that.

And we're excited to have reached that level.

- Is there a focal point of the research that currently exists or are you expanding that and what's at the core?

- Well, 40% of our students are really STEM students.

We have strong work in engineering, strong work in computer science, strong work in all of the sciences, biological sciences.

But what we talk about a lot is that our faculty are working a lot of times on applications to help solve modern problems.

And I think that's part of the beauty of this institution because we are so connected with the city and the state and the metro area, we work on real world problems a lot of times.

So that's not to say we don't have faculty members who are doing basic fundamental research, but a lot of times it's problem solving for a federal agency or a state agency or a corporate partner.

And then we receive the funding associated with that.

- Your background, you studied ultimately a PhD in urban development, urban planning.

Look at how cities evolve and thrive and survive.

You're basically doing that work as head of this university, right?

I mean, this is a small city, this campus.

- It is a small city, yes.

So I was a planning professor and sort of grew up as going through and getting tenure and all of those sorts of things, became an endowed professor of urban planning and then became an administrator department chair and then worked my way up.

So here I am as chancellor, which is exciting.

But we do think about on this campus, we have housing, we have a police force, we have transportation.

On our campus, we have a light rail connection that our students all have passes for and they're able to ride the light rail into uptown.

I mean, so we have to think about how do we meet all of the needs of this campus community?

32,000 students, another 3000 plus employees.

So it's a small town, which is really nice to think about.

And we continue to think about what are the housing needs?

What are the dining needs?

What, you know, food, how do we ensure that their basic needs are taken care of?

- You arrived here almost six years ago and it's hard to comprehend sometimes that almost six years ago, you're here, COVID hits.

What was that like for you?

Brand new job, new city, new campus, your leadership, bringing your energy, your ideas.

And we are learning something new and frightening every day affecting everyone on this campus.

- Well, so it's the start of my sixth year on campus.

I came actually in July, 2020.

So height of the pandemic, got here and, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about what are we going to do?

How are we prepared?

There had been, and my predecessor, Phil Dubois was here and then he retired.

They had started the preparations, but as you know, everybody went home.

And for us, the question was, okay, what are we going to do and how might we be able to begin to have people come back to campus?

I feel really fortunate in 2021, we had a group of faculty members in our bioinformatics department who said, we can actually go into the wastewater that's in the residence halls.

So if people use the bathrooms, we can go down to the basement and check the wastewater and determine if there are elements of the COVID virus in the waste that's coming out.

And then we can test individuals in whatever residence hall.

And they started doing that in our residence halls.

So if you remember in 2021, every campus started to bring students back to campus and then Chapel Hill and then State.

And then I think ECU had to send students home again because there were outbreaks.

We actually mitigated the issue of outbreaks by doing the wastewater testing.

And so we were able to find out before anybody had symptoms or signs, if you actually tested positive and we isolated those students so that we didn't have to send people home again.

I mean, that was incredible.

In fact, our faculty member made it on the front page of the New York Times because we were a leader in the wastewater testing.

So it was exciting at that time.

It was also just very difficult.

The other thing when I got here and I recall, you learn from your peers.

I recall there was an issue in Chapel Hill with the County Health Department.

One of the things I showed up and said, okay, have we contacted the County Health Department to say we're partners in this.

We recognize we have a large group of students who live on campus.

We don't wanna be the source of an outbreak in the community.

So we began working in partnership with the County and being able to say, let's have regular conversations about what's going on so that we're working together and not at odds with each other.

- What a great example of adversity leading to innovation.

- Thank you.

- And being a leader in that.

- Well, the faculty were wonderful and thinking about here's something they were talented at and being able to demonstrate that.

- So here we are today, robust campus, robust enrollment, people excited to be here.

Talk to viewers across the state about the uniqueness of some of the programs that are offered here that people, number one, might not realize or number two, might not necessarily find at other universities in the system.

- Yeah, well, thank you.

I mean, I mentioned bioinformatics, which is interesting and that is in our College of Computing and Informatics.

One of the things, and again, it's two chancellors prior to me, we took computer science out of the College of Engineering and we're a separate College of Computing and Informatics.

So we have within the College of Computing, computer science, software engineering, we have programs working on cybersecurity, we've just gotten approved bachelor's and master's degrees in AI and we're excited about that.

And my predecessors saw the importance of computers and computer science as standing separate and wanting to have a separate college that really focused on that.

And it has thrived because of that focus and having that be really the location of a separate institution, not buried within a College of Engineering.

We have a very large College of Engineering.

We just got a new degree in construction engineering and we'll be expanding to have a school of construction management and engineering.

So we're excited about that in this growing metropolitan area where construction is critically important.

We have programs that are, I mean, across the board, obviously, strong College of Education.

We have the Mebane Early Literacy Center and we were one of the schools within the system that did some early work on the science of reading and childhood literacy.

And that's been a hallmark of our College of Education.

But we have a strong College of Arts and Architecture and one of two architecture programs in the state.

And again, in a large metropolitan area like this, it is critically important to think about what are the things that serve the needs?

We have data science and I've had conversations with CEOs and they said, "We want every single one "of your data scientists because that is critically important "to our industry."

- I've got to think that out of 32,000 students, you have some first-generation students.

- Absolutely.

- Very exciting to see those students, is it not?

- It is very much so.

And yes, just under 40% of our students are first generation.

- 40%.

- We continue, it's 38%, but Chancellor Roundup is always something.

(laughing) - Do it when you can.

- Okay.

- When it's positive, right?

- Right.

- And we also know that not every student that begins a college education is going to finish, but your graduation rate is something you've been proud of.

- It is, and we continue to work on that.

We recognize that when students come to college, they expect, we expect, their families expect them to be able to graduate.

So we've worked on our four-year graduation rate, and you know, federally, IPEDS looks at what is a six-year graduation rate, and I have to say I appreciate the president of the system saying parents want to really understand four-year graduation rates, so that's something that we have increased over the past decade.

We went from 50%, we're now at 55%.

We're slightly over the national average.

That's something we will continue to push forward.

- Do you attribute that to your faculty, to you, your leadership, all of the above?

- Well, I think it's a collective momentum of our faculty, we have added academic advisors.

We know that students need individuals guiding them and telling them, "Here are the classes "that you need to take to make progress."

We also know a couple years ago that every campus, and ours was one of those, that you started to say you need to take 15 credit hours per semester to complete your degree on time.

So we talk about 15 to finish.

So I want to give the credit to our faculty and staff who are working hard every day advising individual students and saying, "Make sure you're taking the right classes."

We love when a student wants to take an extra certificate or minor or second degree, but we want them first and foremost to think about completing their degree in the four years so that they can graduate.

- Well, looking at your graduation rate, I'm just thinking generationally how far we've come.

A very quick anecdotal story, but I know when I was a freshman, it was the height of the Vietnam War and campuses were just packed.

And I remember in a core class, a professor saying, "Look to your left "and look to your right, because only one of every three "of you are going to graduate."

And I remember saying, "I don't know about you guys, "but I'm going to do this and see it through."

And to see the growth that's happened now, I think speaks to also a greater understanding of the value of higher education, that it's so much beyond getting the degree.

It is getting the life experience of preparing for adulthood.

- I agree, and you're making sets of relationships with individuals that will stick with you for the rest of your life.

We had a nice event on campus a week ago.

It was our Athletics Hall of Fame.

We had a sitting US Congressman come to come cheer on one of the recipients of the Hall of Fame and his classmate here.

And we were excited about that.

That's Congressman Richard Hudson.

He came to be able to cheer on his fraternity brother from when he was in college, and they are still keeping in contact and still rooting each other on.

So universities provide the opportunity to create a set of friends and colleagues.

And I think about the number of people who talk about meeting their wife or partner while they're here.

It's fantastic.

And then it helps individuals.

We have just started a program where what we've said this year is any student who wants an internship while they are here, we're going to help make sure they have that.

Because we want to ensure that they have the opportunity to get some work experience in their chosen area.

They'll figure out that their chosen area is the right one for them or the wrong one for them, but it's a new program that we've started to be able to say, this is another opportunity that we're affording you to help your life and your career get off to the right start.

- You're obviously hopeful and optimistic in your leadership.

You are also known as a realist.

And part of the realization of today is with any successful organization, there are challenges.

For the challenges of higher education, whether it's research dollars, inflation, safety, whatever it may be, talk to us about the challenges specifically here at UNC Charlotte.

- Well, it's interesting because I spend a lot of time talking to our campus, both our faculty, staff, students.

There are challenges, but I like people to continue to think about the positive aspects of what's going on.

And we talked about the importance and the value of higher education.

We all pay attention.

I think safety and security remains my number one focus.

I want to make sure that our students are safe.

Before I came here, we all know that in 2019, there was a shooting on campus.

What we have done since that time to ensure that the campus remains safe is critically important.

I think we've got an outstanding police force.

We've got an associate vice chancellor for safety and security.

We've got a team in emergency management that pays attention.

And we have beefed up security immensely and they do a great job.

We have a demonstration response team that when there's potential conflict so that we are able to make sure that individuals can express themselves freely on campus and that it remains safe for all sides.

So we continue to make sure that safety and security in an urban campus exists.

And that becomes, as a public institution, we don't have a fence around campus.

We know that people wander through campus and we make sure that we're keeping eyes to keep our students safe.

I think questions about what's going on with federal funding for research, we're just trying to continue the momentum that we've made with research.

And we know that some faculty are impacted by that.

We're trying to assist them in thinking about how is the line of inquiry that you previously were able to get funding on, what might you do or think about that gives you an opportunity to change that slightly and continue your funding?

Or are there foundations or other entities that might fund your line of inquiry?

So we're pivoting a little bit there to see if we can continue to help our faculty be able to get their funding.

And what we say is, let's just keep moving forward because we're not going to change what's happening on the political sphere or preferences in terms of funding, but we can continue to help move things forward.

- Being able to pivot is critical, isn't it?

- It is, I think.

And I think that our faculty, there have been some who have said, that's really hard.

I absolutely understand that.

And there are others who have said, well, help me.

Let's talk through and think about how we might do that.

What does that look like?

Our division of research has worked with individual faculty members to say, this is what it might look like.

This is where you might be able to go.

And if you were doing this, this is what it might look like today.

- How large is the faculty?

What's the number?

- We've got about 1,200, maybe 1,100 full-time tenure tenure track faculty, and then an additional 500 or plus non-tenure track or lecturers.

- So I asked this question, I ask of all chancellors, how do you keep them all happy?

- I'm sure I don't.

(laughing) You know, I mean, the beauty of our country is everybody has an opinion.

And I think what you do is try to do the right thing for the institution and try to remember that people are here, they chose to be here.

We chose them, they chose to be here.

They want to be here, they wanna contribute, and they wanna have a meaningful impact.

And we try to help them be able to do that.

- If I were back here 10 years from now, what would be different?

What's your strategic plan for the next decade?

- Well, I think we will continue to grow and you might know or have heard the stat.

Charlotte announced recently 157 people move to the Charlotte metro area every single day.

So as the only public institution, the only, there's a community college, Central Piedmont Community College, we partner with them, but as the only public four-year institution here, we feel like we have to continue to meet the need for higher education in this region.

We know that there are other private institutions moving here, but for an affordable higher education experience, we meet a great need.

So if that means that we grow to 35,000, if that means we grow beyond that, whatever is appropriate to keep up the excellent quality of students that we're bringing in, we'll continue to grow to meet that need.

We know that the Charlotte region is important to the state of North Carolina.

So we will do that.

So I think we'll continue to grow.

We will continue our research and we'll continue the partnerships that we have with the corporate community because really our graduates are the talent that's fueling the corporate community.

We looked at, we've got 187,000 alums and more than 100,000 of them have stayed in the metro area.

That's, you know, businesses love that statistic because they can come and recruit our students and they know our students wanna be here.

So that's fantastic.

The other interesting stat, 'cause people say, well, that means you're sort of a regional university.

No, the number one feeder county for our first time in college students, any guesses?

It's Wake County.

The number one feeder county.

- Okay, it was not even on my radar to say Wake County.

I'm thinking of surrounding county of Mecklenburg.

- So for first time in college students, number one county where we get those students from is Wake County.

So students want to go away to school if they can and they want to be in this thriving metropolitan area, which is fantastic.

Now we get a large number of students that are transfer students from Central Piedmont Community College from Mecklenburg, but it is interesting to think about where first time in college students are coming from.

- We've only got about a minute left, Chancellor.

Tell me what's the best thing about your job.

- I'd say the people.

I get to, you know, I do lunches with students every month.

I do breakfasts with faculty and staff every month.

And I sit down with the group and say, tell me what's on your mind or tell me what's great or tell me what I need to work on.

People, you know, I said this earlier, everybody's got an opinion, but my goal is to do the right thing for this campus and continue to help it excel and continue to help us tell the story of what a great university this is.

- Isn't it amazing to have the experience to be around the fertility of those young minds that can challenge, inspire, and maybe come up with a new idea you haven't thought of.

- Absolutely, that's what we're here for.

So yes, that's what we all love.

- We appreciate your time.

Dr.

Gaber, thank you for hosting us here on your beautiful campus and all the best to you and everyone here at UNC Charlotte.

- Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

- Oh my gosh, indeed.

- Appreciate it.

- Thanks for joining us, everyone.

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