Today’s guest is Kevin Guskiewicz, the twelfth chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Food for Thought speaker at Morehead-Cain. The chancellor emeritus spoke with Catalyze as his final engagement on campus before moving to East Lansing, Michigan, to serve as president of Michigan State University.
Today’s guest is Kevin Guskiewicz, the twelfth chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Food for Thought speaker at Morehead-Cain. The chancellor emeritus spoke with Catalyze as his final engagement on campus before moving to East Lansing, Michigan, to serve as president of Michigan State University.
Guskiewicz shares with scholar host Benny Klein ’24 insights on the current landscape of public higher education in North Carolina, how he uses roadmaps as a leadership tool, and some of the highlights from his tenure at the University.
Guskiewicz received his bachelor’s of science from West Chester University of Pennsylvania, his master’s in exercise physiology and athletic training from the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, and his doctorate in sports medicine from the University of Virginia.
Before recording this episode, the outgoing chancellor spoke at the most well-attended Food for Thought event to date at the Morehead-Cain Foundation on February 2.
Modeled after the City Club of Cleveland, Food for Thought provides a central meeting place for members of diverse beliefs and opinions to participate in free and open discussions. The breakfast and conversation series is an initiative of Team Cleveland members from the 2022 Morehead-Cain Civic Collaboration program.
The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.
On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.
Catalyze is hosted and produced by Sarah O’Carroll for the Morehead-Cain Foundation, home of the first merit scholarship program in the United States and located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on social media @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.
(Benny)
Dr. Guskiewicz, thank you for sitting down with us today, joining our Morehead-Cain community this morning at Food for Thought, the most heavily attended Food for Thought conversation we’ve had yet, andagreeing to do the podcast.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
Benny, thanks for having me. I love being in front of the Morehead-Cain Scholars this morning, and it’s a pleasure to be with you for the podcast.
(Benny)
Well, we know you’re moving, which we’re very sad about, but I’m curious, who is the box packer in the family, and have you started that process quite yet?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
So we are sharing the box-packing duties, and we’re doing it slowly but starting to get some things ready. We’re going to be keeping our home here in Chapel Hill certainly for the next year and a half, two years or so. And so, we’re going to need wardrobes here and a wardrobe there. And so, we’re kind of splitting it up and be shipping things off to Michigan around the first of March.
(Benny)
All right, well, that helps me with this next question, which is tomorrow is, of course, the Carolina vs. Duke game in the Dean Dome. How excited are you for the game, and where will your allegiances lie now that you’re heading off to Michigan State? I heard Tom Izzo say some nice things about you already. So, I’m curious.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
So let me just say that Amy and I love Carolina. We’ve got two graduates of UNC. We’ve been here for twenty-eight years. We will always be Tar Heels, and we will be cheering loudly tomorrow evening, cheering on the Tar Heels, and hopefully rushing Franklin Street afterward. Coach has been great. I’ll just say one of the things that I learned about three or four months ago was how close of a relationship Coach Izzo and Coach Williams have had for many, many years. And Coach Williams called me one morning asking me if he said, “I just got off the phone with Tom Izzo,” and he said, “Is it okay if I give him your cell phone number? He wants it.” And I said, “Well, you tell me, Coach, should I give you the green light to give Coach Izzo my cell phone?” And he said, “Absolutely.” He said he’s one of his closest friends outside of the Carolina basketball community, and I think Tom Izzo is to East Lansing, Michigan, what Roy Williams has always been to our community here in Chapel Hill. And he gives far beyond just the men’s basketball program.
(Benny)
Their leadership is inspiring, and so is yours. And I attended the winter commencement ceremony to cheer on my roommate Ben as he graduated this past December 17. And I enjoyed your remarks about the taking life chapter by chapter and what it means to turn a new page. And what stuck out to me most, however, was how many deans during the ceremony took a moment to personally thank you for your service and leadership. And in that same vein, the faculty chair, Beth Moracco, wrote a public letter thanking you on behalf of our Carolina faculty. She wrote, our colleagues recognize and appreciate the exceptional skill, integrity, and thoughtfulness you bring to your role as our chancellor. Moving into your next chapter, how are you feeling? And how meaningful are these words of gratitude from your peers and colleagues?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
Yeah. Thanks, Benny. It meant a lot to me. It was an emotional day knowing that that was going to be the last commencement ceremony that I’d preside over. I’ve done a lot of them because while I was only in the role for five years, if you remember 2020 and 2021, we had multiple commencement ceremonies with a lot of folks spread out across Keenan Stadium. And so, when you add them all up, I had probably presided over more commencement ceremonies than just about any chancellor here, certainly in recent history. But it meant a lot, the gratitude that people expressed, not just on that day, but over these past two, two and a half months. It’s been emotional. This is a place that we love, but we feel a calling to this role at Michigan State. It’s another passionately public university that I’ve gotten to know over the past four or five months, certainly better than I’ve known it previously, and a lot of similarities. But Amy and I will take a lot of what we learned here, experienced here and loved about UNC–Chapel Hill off to Michigan State and try to help make them a better place.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
But they are passionately public, just as we are here at Carolina, and almost an irrational love for the place, as I think many of our alums have for Carolina.
(Benny)
Sure, the magic is felt there, as I’m sure, as I know we all feel here. If I can take a step back, and before we speak about your leadership here at Carolina, I’m curious to hear more about your experience as a student. And you mentioned in your remarks to our community this morning that you were the editor of the school newspaper at Westchester University of Pennsylvania. So what aspects of university leadership interested?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
You know, I was curious, and I think that’s something that I have always emphasized to students, that if you’re always curious, no matter, not just while you’re here at Carolina, but in your first career opportunity, your second career opportunity, and there will be many career opportunities. As I’ve said in my remarks this morning, it’s curiosity that I think, as I think back to why I wanted to be the, I got into journalism. I was a double major in journalism and athletic training, sports medicine, which those two things might not seem to go together, but I then had the opportunity to write for the school newspaper, and then I was asked to become the editor, and it kept me curious and asking questions just as you’re doing right now. And so that’s what you have to keep doing, is always asking why. And that’s what it taught me when I was at Westchester, then University of Pittsburgh for my master’s, UVA for my doctorate. And somebody once asked me, “What’s your favorite word?” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “Well, because I want to know.” I said, “No, no, that’s my word.” [laughs] And I’ve shared that with a lot of students over the years and keep asking why.
(Benny)
You spent twenty-five years as an academic, a researcher and a faculty member at Carolina, known most for your research on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of concussions. I’m most interested today about what you learned leading, what you learned about leadership in your time as a faculty member and how that helped you manage effectively in both your role as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and as chancellor.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
Yeah, great question. And I think that I’ve tried to lead, whether I was a department chair, center director, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, or the chancellor, in the same way, that I conducted my research and talked a little about this with the scholars this morning about using a hypothesis-driven approach and surrounding yourself with people who are going to view issues or a problem we’re trying to solve in the lab through a different or unique lens. And if you surround yourself with people who are going to challenge you because of their different lived experiences, we’re more likely to land on the right solution or the right answer to whether it’s a research problem we’re trying to solve or an issue on campus. That’s, I think, probably the thing I’ve learned the most is I’ve bridged my passion for science and my concussion research with my passion for leading an incredible institution like UNC–Chapel Hill.
(Benny)
I think that comes across in your leadership style, the focus on science and finding the answer to the question you said, which is “why?” With the longest lifespan of any public university, Carolina has faced some of American history’s most defining challenges. Your time as dean of the College of Arts and Science and as chancellor included some of the most defining issues of the past decade. From the pandemic to the denial of tenure of Nicole Hannah Jones to a shooting on campus to confederate statues to international conflicts, you’ve held the position of leadership. From an operational standpoint, which of these was particularly difficult to solve?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
Yeah. So, I’ve always said that easy is boring. And we certainly have had our share of challenges. But I’ll tell you, on the other side of every one of those challenges, we have found opportunities, opportunities to improve Carolina, to get better as a leadership team and to provide more opportunities for our students and our faculty and staff. And so, I’m a better chancellor today, a better soon-to-be president at Michigan State in the next few weeks than I was three years ago, five years ago when I started, because of those challenges and the way in which we responded to them. You mentioned the fact that, yes, we’re the oldest public university in the nation. We’re 230 years old. And I’ve said over and over, and I mentioned this in a campus message back in December, that when you’re 230 years old as an institution, we are all interims. As we think about it, I’ve been fortunate to be the chancellor here for five years, but that’s a sliver of time in those 230 years. And it’s important that we make sure that the impact that we have on this institution for the next 230 years will be felt by generations of Tar Heels.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
I don’t think there’s one of those challenges that I would say was one that I learned more from than another. They were each different in their own way. But I think the common thread between all of them is that we, I think, quickly responded to it, acknowledged that we could have done better if, in fact, we could have, and brought the right people to the table to help get us to the right place. And I think if I regretted anything, it would have been in a couple of occasions, maybe messaging the potential consequences of a bad decision earlier than perhaps I did. And so, because I learned from that, I’ll be better at this in the future.
(Benny)
It certainly resonates with me, the idea of being a steward for this university. And I feel that. Is there anything that you would want folks to know about how you approach these problems. And President Hans of the UNC System came to speak with us a few weeks ago, and he talked about leading with curiosity, trying to understand what’s in front of us and finding some sort of truth. And so, I’m wondering if there’s anything that you would like to share about, not a specific challenge, but how you approach and your leadership team approaches these things that you feel get lost in the noise.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
Yeah. So, some of these issues we face intersect with the challenges that our society, in general, faces in a very divided country, around some political issues and some social justice issues. We talked a bit about that earlier this morning. And as a campus leader, it’s important that while we all have opinions, we all want to have values that are so important to us. We have to be careful to allow all those voices to show up if people want to share them. And if a leader, campus leader, a chancellor, a president, is out there condemning a particular point of view, it can shut down the other side when this should be a place that we bring expertise and experiences into these conversations to help society learn from them and to maybe help policymakers find the right path to a new law that might need to be put forward or a way that you would interpret an existing law. So that’s the role that I’ve tried to play, despite the fact that it’s hard to keep your own emotions intact when we all have those feelings and emotions about these issues.
(Benny)
Yeah, I appreciate you answering that and the way you did. You mentioned the interpretation of the law. And in October, the U.S. Supreme Court held that universities across the country can no longer consider race when making admissions decisions. How is the University reassessing and revising its admissions process as to ensure the University continues to bring in students of diverse backgrounds, while, of course, remaining in compliance of the law?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
Yeah. So that was a challenging time for us, but again, an issue of which there were differing opinions on. And so, when that opinion came down in June, June 29 of this past year, we needed to have a roadmap. I talked about the importance this morning of having a game plan, a roadmap to move forward. And I started off by saying that we will comply with the law. It’s a new law, we will comply with it, and that we will also stay true to our values and live out the mission that we set forth with this great institution, knowing that diversity is important for our students and, faculty, and staff, and that there are proven educational benefits of the diversity showing up in classrooms. And I could speak to that as having been a faculty member for twenty-eight years while also leading the institution’s chancellor for five. And so, I know that the institution will continue to place value on diversity. And I know that one of the goals, to be sure that there’s a robust applicant pool every year. I know that our applications are up again, five, six, seven percent, as they have been for the past several years.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
And so that you just hope that that’s going to allow for a robust applicant pool such that the diversity will show up, even though using race as one of the many factors in that selection process will not be permitted.
(Benny)
Admissions are up. Student enrollment is up. State appropriations for UNC students has effectively remained the same from 2011 to 2022. I’m going to throw a few more stats at you. The average salary for full professors at UNC is $167,000, far lower than the average for, say, Virginia, where you did your doctorate, or Maryland University. And to make up for this gap, faculty are incentivized largely by the research they publish and the grants they attain. And you spoke a little bit about that this morning. From my perspective as a student, I’m most interested in how UNC ensures the quality of our educators, not just our researchers. So, how does the University approach that?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
So, there’s a lot of conversation around this topic, and we talk often about affordability and accessibility. The fact that Carolina has remained number one among all publics for twenty consecutive years for best value and with best value, and to earn that ranking, it has to be that we remain affordable, but yet the quality remains very high. And to your point, the faculty is sort of the heart and soul of the campus and of the opportunities provided to our students. And I don’t want to underestimate the importance of our dedicated staff because they’re incredible as well. But the faculty are sort of what we’re preparing the future generation of leaders. And so there is a gap that’s widening in terms of salaries for our faculty here at Carolina, relative to those at many of our peers. And it’s in large part because we’ve kept tuition flat for seven consecutive years, soon to be eight consecutive years. And while that helps on the affordability front, our deans and others have to figure out how are we going to recruit and retain the best faculty when they’re being paid ten, fifteen, twenty percent less than that of our peers. So, a lot of work ahead on that, and it’s why this capital campaign was so important, this five-billion-dollar campaign, where we raised some money to support faculty, it won’t be enough, and something’s going to have to change.
(Benny)
I’m going to stay on this theme of UNC higher education and the context of higher education. In an interview with the Daily Tar Heel, you described having healthy tension with the board of trustees. But you also said we’re in illogical times in higher education. You described dealing with trustee infighting and, quote, “concerns about some board members wanting more oversight.” Could you help me understand what this conflict looks like and, in practice, what influence it has over our university experience?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
So what I said in that interview, and I stand behind it, and that is that I think all great public institutions must have a healthy tension within it. In fact, I often cite Clark Kerr, who led Berkeley and then the University of California system for a number of years back in his quote is something to the effect of “it’s almost as if that healthy tension has to exist almost to the point at which the university is at war with itself.” And that’s what helps to move a university forward. It’s never going to be status quo if there’s a healthy tension. And so, I believe that the board of trustees members, that they each independently love this university in the same way that we all do. But there are different opinions at times on certain issues about the direction in which the University should go and whether certain things need reforming. I think that, as I said earlier, all voices are important. I just think there needs to be a closer analysis around some of what is being asked to be reformed and the reality of this being a now top four public university that’s moving up in every metric possible.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
And so it begs the question, what is actually needing reformed? And so, to your question about how it affects students, I think students’ voices are as important as those in power. And if there are things that the students collectively or independently think need to be fixed or reformed, then we need to hear about it. But the vast majority of students and recent alums that I talked to can’t speak more highly of their experience and positively about their experience here at Carolina.
(Benny)
You mentioned reforming things and when we should or shouldn’t. One thing that was reformed recently was the selection committee for the next chancellor, and it was reduced the amount of people that sat on that committee, who was on that committee. Folks from the board of governors previously were not allowed to sit on that and correct me if I’m wrong, but now they’re required to do so. Does that concern you in any way?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
I haven’t honestly taken enough time to look at the exact composition. I know it’s a smaller overall committee, maybe 13 to 14 committee members. If I’m recalling, and as I said, I think all voices are important in this process. I guess given that, ultimately, the board of governors has to approve the president’s appointment of a new chancellor, I guess I would argue that their voice is already there and in the process. And so, with a smaller committee, thirteen or fourteen, will there be sufficient voices among alumni, student input, faculty input, et cetera, if some of those spots are being taken up by board of governors members? And I think there are other system-wide leaders that I think have expressed some of the concerns about that.
(Benny)
Well, thank you for going with me through some of those questions about maybe the less good, but not necessarily just some of the context. Let’s talk about the wins. And there are many of them. I’m going to ask selfishly about the Innovation Junction because I have a chance to work there sometimes through one of my internships. What’s the Innovation Junction, and why should folks learn more about it and be excited for it?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
The Innovation Junction is sort of going to be one of the most important things that we do. We’ve been talking about this innovation corridor that we’re building out here, and that started fifteen years ago with the emphasis that was being placed on entrepreneurship. And a lot of this started under Holden Thorp’s leadership and Chancellor Folt placed emphasis on this. And I tried to carry that into my chancellorship. And so, it’s not just about the Shuford program. And entrepreneurship is something I’m really proud of. I was able to get to know the Shuford family when I became dean of Arts and Sciences and able to secure a significant game-changing gift from the Shuford family to endow that program for our undergrad students. And entrepreneurship and innovation need to take place in so many different ways on our campus. It’s creating an entrepreneurial mindset for our students, but also helping our faculty to better understand the need to find ways to spin out their research, to commercialize it, to find opportunities for the impact of their research to hit the marketplace faster. The Innovation Junction over at 137 East Franklin will be that hub where that can begin to take shape and take form.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
And then as we build out up through Porthole Alley behind the Carolina Coffee Shop and we’re building that out, it’s going to create more opportunities for innovation space. An incubator where industry partners can come in and rub elbows with our world-class faculty to make sure that UNC–Chapel Hill is helping to drive the economy of North Carolina. It’s a magnet for companies to want to move here, so that’s what the junction is going to do for us. And I don’t think we’ll even realize for several years the impact that it will have had.
(Benny)
It’s very exciting stuff. What else? When you think about your legacy at Carolina makes you feel proud. And I’m sure there are many, but are there a few others that you would share?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
One of the things we were able to complete, it started when I was dean, and then we were able to get it approved and then ultimately introduced three semesters ago. And that is our new general education curriculum, Ideas in Action. Most universities try to revamp their general education curriculum about every twelve to fifteen years, and many of them don’t succeed. They start the process, and they give up because faculty sometimes can’t agree on what should be in the general education curriculum. But I’m proud of the fact that we started that back in 2016, 2017, and went through a lengthy process, and then finally, we were able to introduce it and launch it in 2021. We would have done it sooner, but it was delayed because of COVID-19, so I think that’s going to be a game changer for our students and their careers because of the way in which we built some civic leadership into it. We built more emphasis on experiential learning into the curriculum. We have placed more emphasis on the liberal arts nature of the general education curriculum and linking it more with sort of a vertical learning approach to their selected major and minor.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
So again, I’m proud of the new curriculum. And then I think I mentioned this morning with students a little bit about the Program for Public Discourse. I think this is how we’re placing a lot of emphasis on teaching our students how to think, not what to think. There’s a lot of programming around these contentious issues that society is facing and bringing people in with different viewpoints to model good, civil discourse so our students can go out and be active participants in a thriving democracy that this world needs. And it’s in some ways under attack right now. So those are a few things that I’m proud of.
(Benny)
You mentioned student and faculty, and staff initiatives and those being some of your favorites that you’ve described. The Carolina Next initiative has many student-focused goals and, faculty-focused goals, and people-focused goals. And that was our roadmap. And that was your roadmap during your time as chancellor. How do you go about forming a roadmap at Michigan State and how you build out what the future looks like there?
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
Yeah. So, I’m really proud of the roadmap we built out here. Carolina Next: Innovations for Public Good. And we stayed true to that roadmap, even during COVID. We’ve reached a point, a couple of points, where we said we got to “covid-ize” it, and we did make a few adjustments to it, but we have made a lot of progress. And, for instance, globalize was one of those eight strategic initiatives. And I’ve said over and over and over many times that we need to aspire to be the leading global public research university. And I’ve said over and over, I’m like, you know what? We’ve got the public down, the public part of that down. We’re not only the first of the publics, we’re the most public of the publics. We’re passionately public. I said that a few times. And as you can tell, we’ve got the research part down. We’re over a billion dollars in research expenditures a year now. But we need to think about the global part of this. And I’m proud of the fact that when we hired Barbara Stephenson about three and a half, four years ago as our vice provost for global affairs, we really were able to stay true to that commitment, to be sure that all of our students, graduate students and undergraduate students get a global guarantee of some type while here.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
So, that’s an example. And so, as I move to another passionately public institution out in Michigan, they do have a plan, a roadmap called MSU 2030. But I’m coming in at right at the midpoint of it, where they have asked me, the trustees have said, listen, here are the keys to the place. Here is the plan that was built out, but you have the opportunity to adjust it as you see fit, you and your leadership team that you’re going to build. And so, I’m excited about that because I think it’s a good plan. What I’ve seen, they have metrics that are measuring their progress. One of the areas to mention the global part; they are probably a little further down that path than we are here at UNC, but they’re behind in some other areas that I’m looking forward to, looking at the plan and moving forward, and we’re going to build out a Spartan bus tour similar to the Tar Heel bus tour that we had here. We get out across the state of Michigan, and that’s another thing I’m really proud of that we did here, is to get out and showcase the incredible work of UNC, of our faculty and staff, to touch down in the towns and communities that our students call home.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
So the faculty can learn more about it. So, I’ve already begun that process there. We’re going to do the same at Michigan.
(Benny)
Well, and I know you as an exceptional listener, and I know you’ll lead with listening, as you’ve done here, at Michigan State. So, I’m jealous of the folks there. But I had four years of you as my chancellor, just like I’ve had four with R. J. Davis and Armando. So, I’ll say thank you for sitting down with me. But thank you for your service and for your leadership.
(Chancellor Emeritus Kevin Guskiewicz)
Thank you, Benny. And I’ve enjoyed getting to know you. We’ve worked through some of those challenges together, and I have admired the approach you’ve taken to help us not fully solve some issues but get down to a better place on some of the issues. So, thank you. And as we enter into a fun weekend here on campus. Go Heels.
(Benny)
Go Heels.