Even before he was promoted from Interim Chancellor at UNC, Kevin Guskiewicz had a dream for the new generation of the university he would be leading and serving.
It began as a concept called the “Blueprint for Next” and is being rolled out in 2020 under the name of Carolina NEXT – Innovations for Public Good. The program will be implemented over the next three to five years under eight initiatives:
- Build Our Community Together
- Strengthen Student Success
- Enable Career Development
- Discover
- Promote Democracy
- Serve to Benefit to Society
- Globalize
- Optimize Operations
One of Guskiewicz’s first announcements after becoming the permanent chancellor was to commit $5 million to the first initiative, Build Our Community Together, which will concentrate on diversity at UNC.
“It is really important that we work together toward a campus with a common goal of creating a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community,” Guskiewicz tells 97.9 The Hill WCHL in an exclusive interview. “One in which every member of our campus community feels as if they belong, that they know they belong. We can’t be that leading global public research university if we’re not that type of place … I want a community where everybody knows their voice is important, that they have a seat at the table.”
Guskiewicz said making Building Our Community Together the first initiative was on purpose.
“The other seven initiatives I truly believe will come together beautifully if we get this first one right,” he says. “There are extraordinary challenges in front of most universities around this topic, this issue of diversity and inclusion. I announced back on December 13 a $5 million commitment that will help really launch this first initiative.”
Carolina NEXT began in 2019 with a series of community-building forums among different campus constituencies.
“What programming can we have in place to meet those goals?” Guskiewicz says. “I recently announced the commission on History, Race and a Way Forward being led by professors Jim Leloudis and Patricia Parker, and that work is really going to help us learn from our past.”
Provost Bob Blouin joins the chancellor for the interview and focuses on several of the initiatives, including Strengthen Student Success and Enable Career Development. Blouin says the typical UNC student will have 10 to 12 different careers during his or her work span.
“We want to make sure that our students have an opportunity to reach their full potential while they’re here at Carolina,” Blouin says, “In order for them to reach that full potential, it might include having a research experience or an opportunity for them to experiment and visit a programmatic area of high interest as a part of their lifelong pursuits.”
Regarding the initiative Promote Democracy, Guskiewicz says a UNC education must focus on the skills needed for public engagement “to ensure that our students become good citizens and that they know how to listen.” One of those courses, taught by Professor Christian Lundberg, is called “Think, Speak, Argue.”
A big part of Carolina NEXT – Innovations for Public Good is to balance UNC’s partnerships with local business and global pursuits. That comes under the initiatives Discover and Globalize, and Guskiewicz discusses UNC’s hiring of new Provost for Global Affairs Barbara Stephenson and its commitment to Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger to work more closely on local projects of mutual benefit.
Of Dr. Stephenson, Guskiewicz says, “She has had a distinguished career as a diplomat in the foreign service and she’s bringing a whole new set of ideas and a vision for how we can impact people across the world through our teaching and scholarship.” Guskiewicz added that staying connected to the greater Research Triangle includes having “to view the university and the town as working closely together, and they need to be always be an asset to each other.”
According to Guskiewicz, Serving To Benefit Society is also a very important initiative.
“It’s about turning discoveries and ideas into public uses,” Guskiewicz says, “and speeding the impact of those new discoveries. We have an incredible world-class faculty on our campus that are solving the world’s greatest problems today, and this is going to amplify that in a really significant way. We want to continue to achieve impact for North Carolina through a results-driven research on these critical problems.”
Blouin is spearheading the eighth initiative, Optimize Operations, in which the university strives to become more efficient in all support areas, from hiring to implementation.
“If you think about all the different kinds of work that is needed to support our faculty, our staff, and our students,” Blouin says, “and ask the question, are we operating in a most efficient optimized fashion? Operational excellence via this particular strategic initiative is going to help us accomplish that.”
Listen to the interview here:
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