E32: Trailblazing Academia and Empowering Students: Dr. Katherine Rowe on Leading William & Mary into the 21st Century

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And now from the Blue Ridge PBS studios in Roanoke, Virginia.
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It's the Virginians of Interest podcast, with your hosts Brian Campbell and Carthan Currin.
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Hi, this is Brian Campbell.
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Welcome to the Virginians of Interest podcast.
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I'm with Carthan Currin friend , and today we're especially honored to have a really great guest, Dr.
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Catherine Rowe, who's the 28th president of William & Mary.
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Welcome, Dr.
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Rowe.
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Thanks so much, Carthan and Brian.
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I'm really excited to be with you.
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Great.
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Could you tell us a little bit about your background, what you did
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Sure, I started my career as a Shakespeare scholar.
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I've been a lifelong athlete and in mid-career moved into entrepreneurship.
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I'm a transplant to Virginia and loving it.
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Great, terrific.
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Catherine, you came from Smith College correct before you came to William and Mary.
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Tell us what attracted you to coming to William and Mary and, if I'm not mistaken, you're the first female president.
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This is the first public institution that I have worked at, and I spent my career in small and large elite, privates, liberal arts institutions, but I found the public mission here so compelling for the 21st century, the clarity that we're in Virginia.
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We're in the country to produce citizens and professionals for a networked world.
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Our job is to ensure that they learn, that they grow as human beings, that they stick the landing in their next generation, that they have a fantastic career.
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It's a really powerful mission right now.
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Indeed and, I think, Sterling the example of what you just said is your chancellor?
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Oh, yes, indeed, chancellor Gates.
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He's coming to campus actually today.
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I'm going to see him this afternoon doing a talk, hosting a talk and leading the global the Gates Forum, which brings together policy leaders from around the world.
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Well, he has two Virginia, and Brian and myself are huge fans of his tremendous public service to the republic.
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So please give him our best and for our listeners, you're talking about the former head of the CIA.
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That's right.
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The former head of the CIA.
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That's right.
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Robert M Gates served in eight presidents the only secretary of defense to serve under presidents of two different political parties as director of the CIA and as president of Texas A&M University, so he's a triple threat.
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He knows it all.
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Very distinguished fellow I know this is a big deal to Carthen, can you go back?
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Some of our listeners aren't quite aware of William & Mary distinguished position in our nation's history of higher education, so can you take us back to that?
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You said our first woman.
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Can you take us back to William & Mary Sure?
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And the establishment of William & Mary.
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We are the first university and the second college, so the first to have university level programs.
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And if you look at the Latin for our charter, you see that the word being used there place of a new republic.
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That was the core idea.
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It's an extraordinary place to be because I think those founding principles and the ideas that grew here remain unbelievably important, durable, impactful in our world today.
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So we come back to them all the time.
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We, about five years ago, made democracy a cornerstone of our strategic plan and folks said, well, what the heck does that mean?
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That's a big word.
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And I said, look, the core ideas of this democracy were cultivated in our institution and we need to continue to cultivate them.
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So we're going to have a civics curriculum that focuses on those core ideas and teaches people how to disagree in effective and respectful ways and grow out of that disagreement.
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That's one of the principles of open dispute, open conversation in our republic and free expression.
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And we're going to focus on the history of the country and tell that history in new and powerful ways, which we are a better position to do than any other university in the country.
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So that's one of our pillars of the current strategic plan, Vision 2026.
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And it grows directly out of our roots as one of the founding institutions of our republic.
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Well, pardon the historic rabbit hole, and there's not going to be a test on this.
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I love the rabbit hole.
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So it was originally part of the Crown.
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It was part of when we were-.
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We were founded by royal charter.
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So the then president, james Blair, traveled to London and sought the charter of the king and queen.
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In this case, william was the monarch in that pairing who prosecuted wars around the continent, and Mary was the executive monarch who ran the country, and so it was largely.
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And Mary was the executive monarch who ran the country, and so it was largely.
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It was at their court that the royal charter was sought and secured, and we are the only institution in the country founded by royal charter.
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That's terrific.
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Now help me understand.
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So today it's part of the Virginia system of public higher education.
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Yes.
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So how does one transition from being a charter of the crown into what becomes a portfolio of the commonwealth?
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Probably that little battle of Yorktown was the reason.
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Well, I know that.
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I know the historic part.
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There was that thing that happened and we're really proud of it.
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But I don't think it was part of the surrender.
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They said, well, we've been married, now we're going to become part of Shev, for instance.
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So help us understand how that transition took place.
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Yeah, so that happened about 100 years ago.
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You're absolutely right.
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This university was a private university through the Civil War and then unwisely invested in Confederate war bonds.
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Well, there's that.
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Almost went under, was kept afloat by some powerful leadership and, in the beginning of the 20th century, became public, was, I guess we would say now acquired by the Commonwealth, in part in order to prepare teachers.
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There was a huge need for teachers at the time and wonderfully huge need for teachers at the time and wonderfully, just to add to this complex history, William & Mary was one of the earliest to become co-ed of all the universities in the country.
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It's one of the reasons why we have such a dedicated alumni base is roughly oh, suzanne, what is the number?
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Something like eight or nine percent of our alumni met and married here.
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Wow, I'm just going to say it's been a party school for about 100 years.
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I'll have to add on a personal note, my oldest godson met his wife.
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Both, of course, were at William & Mary, and two of his siblings also are proud graduates of William & Mary.
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So I want you to love you, to meet them sometime.
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Oh, I'd love to.
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Hey, I'll tell you, a couple years ago this is one of my most cherished memories of being president here Bruce and I were walking back.
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We were walking back from maybe it was Shabbat services at Hillel.
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We hear music coming from the Red Portico and it's jazz.
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And we walk around the corner and there's a solo saxophonist and there's a couple dancing.
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And I say to Bruce oh honey, look, there's dancing, let's go, and I'll take a picture and I'll put it on Instagram and we can call all the students to come dance with us.
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So we're walking up and he grabs my arm and he says wait, no, we're about to see a proposal.
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And the music is playing, it turns out.
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I suddenly see there's a videographer secretly hiding in the shadows taking a picture.
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He drops to his knee on the Ren portico and proposes to them to become fiance.
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And it all happened there, at the Ren building in front of us, and I think this happens over and over again.
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We William & Mary people are passionate about this place and we prioritize relationships.
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That's part of the fabric of the institution and, again, something that drew me here so powerfully I love that.
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What a wonderful history.
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I had no idea about the Bourbons and the, nor the co-ed part, and you know we're pretty pro well.
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The school in Charlottesville, the unnamed school, which, by the way, most people don't wear.
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Women were not allowed to attend as undergraduates at that school until 1970.
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That's right, which is not that long ago, 1918, at William & Mary.
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Wow, what a great history.
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Yes, I've always had this idea, Catherine, this T-shirt idea, with Mr Jefferson on the t-shirt with the rotunda and part of it and then this saying yeah, he founded you, but we educated them.
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I just don't really want to yeah we're not going to go there.
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We're not going to go there.
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No, we do our own stuff.
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Alma mater of the nation is a pretty great anchor.
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I think that's wonderful.
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I think so too.
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Let's segue into the strategic plan.
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Yeah, I was interested in the vision 2026.
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I was very attracted to the fact that in that vision, strategic plan 2026, there is part of it is access and affordability for first-gen students and I think that's wonderful to see that an institution of William and Mary's caliber being conscious of that.
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Can you expand a little bit on that?
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Oh yes, this is a passion for me and I should say also for Taylor Reefley, my predecessor, and many of the successes that we've had are things that are building on his brilliance and his commitment to bringing people who are first in their family to college.
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So we this year our incoming class is 20 percent Pell eligible among the Virginia in our incoming class and that's a goal that we had set out early in my presidency.
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We've achieved that this year.
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We've done that in two ways.
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One is that we give really significant financial aid.
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We are the lowest net price of all the four years in Virginia for low income and middle income families and for Pell eligible students.
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We are at minimum free tuition and fees.
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We've also pushed down hidden costs for all students in really significant ways.
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So tutoring, for example, is free at William & Mary Rec sports taking a class, training spinning class, let's say that's going to keep you performing really well academically, because when you work out that's going to keep you performing really well academically, because when you work out that lowers stress and improves your performance.
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Those classes are free.
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So we spend a lot of time with philanthropy and with our donors working to remove those hidden barriers to coming to college and participating fully, and we're really proud of how we're doing that.
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We reach out now to 40 high schools with free and reduced lunch in the Commonwealth.
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We go to their principals and we say nominate high achieving students from your schools.
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We will help them with applications.
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Wherever they apply William, mary or anywhere else We'll help them fill out the FAFSA, which has turned out to be very important, and wherever they go, we're speeding them on their way to college.
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When you educate somebody in college for the first time, there's a generations-long impact.
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Once somebody goes to college, everyone in their family, their children go to college, their children's children go to college.
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So there's a huge talent pool in Virginia and around the country that are not going to college.
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Now, those high achieving students, we want them here.
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We want to make it really easy to be here, because we graduate low income students, pell eligible students, at a really high rate.
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It's an incredible ROI for them.
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So in any given year, 89% 92% of our Pell-eligible students are graduating at the rate equal to or higher than the student population as a whole, as a whole.
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So they come out with lower debt on average and they come out ready to stick that landing in the next destination, whether it's a military commission or a job or graduate school, which are the paths that are most common at William & Mary.
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And that number is pretty extraordinary for persistence right, Particularly among the Pell eligible.
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Extraordinary.
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Nationally, it's at best in the 60s or even lower.
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Correct.
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What do you attribute that to?
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Because a lot of the Pell eligible kids they get in the system and they just don't graduate and they've got the debt, which makes things even worse.
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What are you doing that others aren't doing that allows that persistence rate to be so high?
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We have a very flexible curriculum so that and we've been focusing a lot on transfer students as well, so that it's easy to come in and find your path into a major that you really are excited about we have wonderful wraparound services.
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Like I said, free tutoring means no one's worried about the $15 that they have to pay to get into the tutoring center.
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There they're learning from each other.
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Hey, part of being successful academically is asking for help.
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It's a thing that empowers you to ask for help, and smart people do it.
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We want them to know that for the rest of their career, of course, because when they're in the workplace that they need to go to their boss and say, hey, I'm not getting this goal, help me work through it, and they will perform better, which is something we actually see with William & Mary graduates.
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I can come back to that in a second.
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So those wraparound services are really important.
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We create community so successfully, and human beings are social learners.
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So I think of the library as a gym.
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I told you I'm an athlete.
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When you go into the library, you see other people studying.
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You're pumped up.
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It's like going to the weight room and seeing other people lifting.
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You get pumped up to work.
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It's a social scene here, learning.
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We prioritize relationships and we support them to learn together.
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We opened in August of 2020.
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We reopened in person when most elite institutions around the country were still closed.
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The Ivies, the California schools closed for two years and William & Mary was open in person.
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We never sent students home.
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We never saw major outbreaks.
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In fact, we saw positivity rates in town in Williamsburg go down when our students came back, because they are highly motivated to be in college together.
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They really are committed to this community and that sense of community striving for first-gen and low-income students is really, really important.
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And then we make it affordable.
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That's wonderful.
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Can you give us a little bit more some of the other major objectives in 2026, the new strategic plan that you are currently under?
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Look, that was a short-term plan.
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It was designed to bring us out of pandemic strong, and so we focused on four areas where William & Mary has real strengths and distinctiveness nationally.
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I told you a little bit about that commitment to civics, education and to telling the history of our nation in fresh and powerful ways.
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I told you a little bit about one of the things that attracted me to William & Mary is that, unlike most liberal arts and sciences institutions, we have a very high appetite among our faculty and students for hands-on learning, for work-based learning.
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So 84% of our students do mentored research with faculty.
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Something like two-thirds of our students do study abroad highest for any university, public university in the country.
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That 84 percent of in mentored research, that's like mit.
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So we doubled down on that and said we're going to extend that and focus on sticking the landing in the career pathway that you're really excited about when you leave college.
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And the path for us there is internships.
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We formulated and then we met this past year a guarantee that any student seeking a funded internship would be funded.
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That means you can go to a city where you don't have somewhere to live, you can go to an organization that may not pay you, but the internship is great.
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Many internships in DC are like that, at policy centers.
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We're going to enable you to take it and test out a career path.
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Two-thirds of our undergraduate majors have credit-bearing internships on the books already and our goal by 2026 is to get to 100% of them.
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You can see that integration of working and learning and living we do at a really high level.
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That's especially important for low-income students and first-gen students to know they're going to get to explore a workplace, build relationships.
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Brian.
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Well, tell me a little bit about VIMS.
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I'm actually from Gloucester and I think, if I'm not mistaken, when I was growing up in Gloucester you know back in a long time ago VIMS was not part of William & Mary.
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Isn't that in the last 20?
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I mean, isn't that a more recent acquisition, or was it always part of William & Mary?
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So since the middles of the 20th century is my understanding.
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That's good.
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That is one of the water and the fate of coastlines is one of the areas of focus in our strategic plan, and that's because as soon as I got here I recognized what a powerhouse it was.
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Among the great marine science institutes in the world, wims is in the top five.
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It's the only one that specializes in coastlines.
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And what I like to say is the last 50 years in marine science, all the marine science you've heard about has been deep ocean exploration.
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That has been deep ocean exploration alvin, the submersible from Woods Hole, whales, sharks, we do some of that.
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But what VIMS really focuses on is aquaculture, coastal stability, coastal ecosystems, salination.
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In Virginia you know it was VIMS that was responsible for turning around a collapsed oyster ecosystem and rebuilding a really important part of the economy, and that success is one we can replicate in other arenas and do replicate quietly.
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So my interest there in the extraordinary impact of Jane Batten's gift is to double down on that.
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Research for solutions, science for solutions, direct, highly impactful, usable right now in an area that's going to matter the most of any area of science, I think, in the next 50 years in the world.
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So think about these numbers.
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In Virginia, more than 5 million people live on coastlines In the Chesapeake Bay we're ground zero for the combination of land subsidence and sea level rise, and that we are seeing flooding at a level that's immediate.
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It threatens supply chains, it threatens national security.
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It threatens food supply.
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I mean all of it.
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Culture In the United States, 128 million plus live on coastlines and worldwide, 3.2 billion human beings live in the most vulnerable parts of our countries, and VIMS is the scientific institute that has the prowess to give them the research solutions they need.
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Real quickly by the way, vims is Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.
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That's right, thank you.
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I should have said that.
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So I arrived here and, by the way, I grew up in and out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
00:21:08.855 --> 00:21:15.798
My uncle was a neuroscientist who worked there studying the neurons in the eye stalks of hermit crabs.
00:21:15.798 --> 00:21:20.779
So one of the things that attracted me to William & Mary was marine science and Vince.
00:21:21.201 --> 00:21:25.393
Well, tell us also about the gift, this extraordinary gift.
00:21:25.633 --> 00:21:34.715
So Jane Batten is one of the great philanthropists you know this of our country and she is one who thinks about long-term impact.
00:21:34.715 --> 00:21:42.114
She's been passionately dedicated to the Chesapeake Bay and its culture and ecosystems for most of her life.
00:21:42.114 --> 00:21:45.000
So was her husband, wonderfully, frank Batten.
00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:54.217
There's something really sweet that the philanthropy she does comes from the success of the Weather Channel, that the philanthropy she does comes from the success of the Weather Channel.
00:21:54.217 --> 00:21:59.603
And here we are at the Batten School predicting what is going to happen.
00:21:59.603 --> 00:22:04.206
We forecast the environmental change.
00:22:04.206 --> 00:22:05.491
That's what we do.
00:22:05.491 --> 00:22:09.557
We can tell you within six inches where a flood is going to go when a hurricane is headed our way.
00:22:09.557 --> 00:22:29.723
So Mrs Batten and I, we've got to know each other over the last seven years and she just kept pushing me and saying you know, vims is more than everybody recognizes and it could be greater than the sum of its parts.
00:22:29.723 --> 00:22:30.552
Vims and William & Mary.
00:22:39.629 --> 00:22:43.759
We hired a wonderful leader so much of this is about leadership in Dean Derek Aday and he identified some gaps where we could make enormous progress.
00:22:43.759 --> 00:22:50.638
We have a School of Marine Science at William & Mary but it had no, it had a minor, it had a master's degree, had a PhD.
00:22:50.638 --> 00:22:52.983
It had no undergraduate bachelor's degree.
00:22:52.983 --> 00:23:01.334
So we are creating the first in Virginia bachelor's degree bachelor's science in coastal and marine science.
00:23:01.334 --> 00:23:14.805
When we did surveys two years ago, roughly 400 students said yes, I'd be interested in exploring that kind of a pathway, and we had no idea that the demand was that high.
00:23:14.805 --> 00:23:18.624
I think we're going to see that demand in every industry as well.
00:23:18.624 --> 00:23:26.172
There is a blue economy that's going to be focused on resilience and sustainability of coastlines and marine ecosystems.
00:23:26.172 --> 00:23:31.916
Everyone in the world is going to have too much water or too little water, and that's what we focus on.
00:23:31.916 --> 00:23:45.417
So Jane Batten saw this and she just kept challenging me to raise its profile and I finally said hey, you know, there's no other person that I would most want as a partner than you, and that's how the conversation got going.
00:23:45.889 --> 00:23:47.277
This is a transformative gift.
00:23:47.277 --> 00:23:59.130
We are being very, very clear for all the legislators who are listening, and Mrs Batten has said this this does not replace state support to a state agency, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
00:23:59.130 --> 00:24:10.241
What it does is double down on the power of the science and the professional paths, the talent pool that we can create for Virginia and for the nation and the world.
00:24:10.241 --> 00:24:14.413
So we've committed to raise another $100 million at least.
00:24:14.413 --> 00:24:18.831
This isn't a matching gift, but we brought that forward and said we know we can do that.
00:24:18.831 --> 00:24:22.119
Watch this space because we're going to be successful.
00:24:22.119 --> 00:24:32.337
And she's wonderfully put the pressure on our legislature to continue to back the advisory services that VIMS is so powerfully committed to.
00:24:32.337 --> 00:24:34.132
This is how you can think about VIMS.
00:24:34.132 --> 00:24:42.734
William & Mary is not a land-grant university by any means, but we have an ocean grant.
00:24:42.734 --> 00:24:45.779
We have ocean advisory services.
00:24:45.779 --> 00:24:46.540
That's what we do.
00:24:47.742 --> 00:24:50.772
I'll say real quickly before I turn back to Carpenter.
00:24:50.772 --> 00:24:57.524
Every time you go across the York River Bridge now the George Coleman Bridge the new building has this giant William & Mary and VIMS symbol.
00:24:57.524 --> 00:24:59.675
So part of my misunderstanding may be.
00:24:59.675 --> 00:25:05.020
It's so obvious now and what terrific advertising the thousands of people that go over that bridge.
00:25:05.020 --> 00:25:10.482
Now it's a giant lit up thing with both William & Mary and VIMS logo on that thing.
00:25:10.769 --> 00:25:11.855
So that's terrific.
00:25:11.855 --> 00:25:30.220
And the power again, undergraduate curriculum at William & Mary that loves applied learning, work-based learning, vims, a state agency and advisory service where all of the science is in the service of the needs of the Commonwealth and our communities.
00:25:30.220 --> 00:25:32.263
It's a beautiful match.
00:25:32.263 --> 00:25:37.140
So this new degree, you should get Derek a day on in one of your next conversations.
00:25:37.161 --> 00:25:37.702
We tried, we tried.
00:25:37.702 --> 00:25:39.454
It's going to happen.
00:25:39.454 --> 00:25:43.735
I'll probably have to do it, this new degree is really going to be powerful.
00:25:44.037 --> 00:25:46.121
Yeah, tell him to be there for the fun.
00:25:46.121 --> 00:25:46.482
I will.
00:25:46.482 --> 00:25:48.175
Yeah, we'd love to have him.
00:25:48.175 --> 00:25:51.375
I knew Dean Wells prior to.
00:25:51.394 --> 00:25:52.817
Oh, what a wonderful man.
00:25:53.779 --> 00:25:54.340
Dear friend.
00:25:55.301 --> 00:25:56.243
Yes, he's terrific.
00:26:01.730 --> 00:26:03.130
Just for our listeners.
00:26:03.130 --> 00:26:22.637
The gift that Mrs Batten provided was $100 million, so I wanted folks to know that, other aspects of the Vision 2026, anything else that you wanted to convey out of what that plan, and when is the next strategic planning process going to begin?
00:26:23.578 --> 00:26:33.242
We're getting going on the next strategic planning process and for me that is organic and it's going to go slower and it's going to have a longer horizon.
00:26:33.242 --> 00:26:36.624
But let me back up and say one more key area.
00:26:36.624 --> 00:26:42.966
The fourth key area at William & Mary in our plan is a focus on data sciences, ai and machine learning.
00:26:42.966 --> 00:26:47.488
We are extraordinarily strong in computational sciences here.
00:26:47.488 --> 00:26:55.455
Overall more than 40% of our majors at William & Mary are STEM majors.
00:26:55.455 --> 00:27:08.533
That might not be something that your listeners are aware of and we're particularly strong in those computational fields, whether it's physics or data sciences, where we're using computer models to understand and to produce new knowledge.
00:27:08.533 --> 00:27:12.200
So three departments came to us.
00:27:12.200 --> 00:27:13.081
Wonderfully.
00:27:13.081 --> 00:27:14.463
We're launching a new.
00:27:14.463 --> 00:27:23.538
We just launched a new school of computing and data science and physics at William & Mary, the fields that use computational modeling most intensively.
00:27:23.538 --> 00:27:30.930
We've just hired a new dean, wonderful guy named Doug Schmidt, who's going to run that and he'll arrive in January.
00:27:30.930 --> 00:27:32.432
Doug Schmidt, who's going to run that and he'll arrive in January.
00:27:32.452 --> 00:27:45.628
The idea for that school came from departments, three departments computer science, data science and applied sciences, which is where we do computer engineering at William & Mary, and they said we can reorg.
00:27:45.628 --> 00:27:57.591
We've got roughly 500 students, 70 faculty we are doing roughly $ 16 million in sponsored research and a dozen plus degrees already.
00:27:57.591 --> 00:28:11.134
We can move faster, we can evolve the curriculum more quickly and we can be eligible for much more significant federal funding research funding if we are a school and not a collection of separate departments.
00:28:11.134 --> 00:28:13.642
They brought that proposal two years ago.
00:28:13.642 --> 00:28:15.115
We took it through our process.
00:28:15.115 --> 00:28:24.136
It was incredibly powerful and persuasive, persuaded the board, myself and the provost, persuaded Chev, and so we've launched that school.
00:28:24.136 --> 00:28:30.142
That is the fourth area of real strength at William & Mary that we're doubling down on and I'm proud of that.
00:28:30.142 --> 00:28:36.169
Higher ed is not known as nimble and entrepreneurial and innovative.
00:28:36.169 --> 00:28:41.182
As you know, organizationally we're not known for doing reorgs.
00:28:41.182 --> 00:28:47.690
This is a straight up classic, innovative reorg and it was brought by the leaders of those departments.
00:28:47.690 --> 00:28:51.558
So I feel a lot of excitement about what they can achieve together.
00:28:52.902 --> 00:28:55.957
Brian, my question relates to the size.
00:28:55.957 --> 00:29:00.393
What's your current student population all in, including graduate schools?
00:29:00.552 --> 00:29:03.701
All in a little bit less than 10,000, which is such a perfect size.
00:29:04.049 --> 00:29:04.672
That's what I thought.
00:29:04.672 --> 00:29:17.702
So, in other words, part of my question a couple I've got related to athletics and also research is that you do remind me of what a classic New England elite school looks like, because you're not trying to keep up with everybody else.
00:29:17.702 --> 00:29:24.638
In Virginia that's bursting at the seams, with temporary housing, with more and more students, but doesn't that also mean you've got to be nichier too?
00:29:24.638 --> 00:29:28.198
Right Meaning you're not an aircraft carrier, you're more of a fast speedboat.
00:29:28.619 --> 00:29:29.741
I love that.
00:29:29.741 --> 00:29:31.996
That's exactly right.
00:29:33.009 --> 00:29:35.211
How does that impact research, for instance?
00:29:35.211 --> 00:29:40.096
Because I know you guys have got some of the brightest minds in the Commonwealth but you don't always.
00:29:40.096 --> 00:29:44.960
People don't always think of William & Mary when they think of our big classics.
00:29:44.960 --> 00:29:47.301
State university research organizations.
00:29:47.903 --> 00:29:50.944
So we are going to be so many questions on what you just said.
00:29:50.944 --> 00:29:52.746
Let me sort of tease them apart, may I?
00:29:52.746 --> 00:30:00.180
Yes, please, let's talk a little bit about how we fit into the larger landscape of Virginia and national universities.
00:30:00.180 --> 00:30:03.784
Then let me talk about research at William & Mary.
00:30:03.784 --> 00:30:05.154
How about those two things separately?
00:30:05.315 --> 00:30:05.556
Perfect.
00:30:05.556 --> 00:30:06.338
Thank you Great.
00:30:06.579 --> 00:30:12.959
So I do think this is a size that almost doesn't exist anymore in public higher ed.
00:30:12.959 --> 00:30:25.913
There are some privates that are a size, but you're right, scale is the way that public universities in general have managed to keep costs down and there's been a few publics in Virginia have grown a lot.
00:30:25.913 --> 00:30:27.716
William & Mary is not one of those.
00:30:27.716 --> 00:30:33.649
We are committed to selectivity.
00:30:33.649 --> 00:30:43.662
On the one hand, although talent can come from anywhere, from our perspective we are absolutely agnostic as to who you are and what your training and background is.
00:30:43.662 --> 00:30:58.565
We just want to know that you're hungry and smart and passionate, and we do a very holistic assessment when we in our admissions process which I love it's still done by hand Three individuals separately read every application.
00:30:58.565 --> 00:31:00.336
We get about 18,000 a year.
00:31:02.890 --> 00:31:13.421
We offer a really powerful, incredibly high-quality learning experience that's focused on learning in community with others.
00:31:13.421 --> 00:31:23.322
That's focused on lots of one-on-one contact with teachers and on working at the edge of knowledge, getting there really, really fast.
00:31:23.322 --> 00:31:28.387
So you're not doing at William & Mary, you're not doing endless prep courses.
00:31:28.387 --> 00:31:29.652
You're going through the prep courses.
00:31:29.652 --> 00:31:39.942
You need to be able to get right into the leading edge of knowledge in your field and stay there, because what's interesting there is the questions are still being formulated.
00:31:39.942 --> 00:32:02.818
You're going to use the tools, you're going to learn the tools to answer a question, but in the service of getting really good questions formulated for a field that allows us to track, even in the context of a liberal arts curriculum, to track emerging questions in any industry or discipline in the classroom very closely.
00:32:02.818 --> 00:32:13.219
So that's an evolution of the curriculum driver that imperative to bring students with us into areas that are still not fully understood.
00:32:13.219 --> 00:32:14.981
Ai is a great example.
00:32:14.981 --> 00:32:25.936
How can you apply essentially software robots to the work that you do in a way that's ethical and transparent, so you know what they're doing?
00:32:25.936 --> 00:32:29.739
Those are the kinds of questions that every industry wants to be able to answer.
00:32:29.739 --> 00:32:33.959
We forge multi-generational bots.
00:32:33.959 --> 00:32:54.748
So, yeah, you know a lot of alumni who are going to bring their cousins and their nephews and nieces back to look at William & Mary and we love that sense of deep networked alumni population who are our students of the past and into whose community we're welcoming present and future students.
00:32:54.748 --> 00:33:02.762
We have the most dedicated and engaged alumni population of any public university in the country, so it's about 110,000.
00:33:02.762 --> 00:33:05.193
And they're such William & Mary people.
00:33:05.193 --> 00:33:20.721
They're smart, they have a sense of duty to their community, they are really intentional in thinking through the impact of what they do, they have very high standards and they care about each other.
00:33:20.721 --> 00:33:34.990
So it's an incredibly exciting group to work with and the size 67 or so hundred undergraduates and 2600 graduate students and professional students.
00:33:34.990 --> 00:33:38.300
That is part of the alchemy.
00:33:41.171 --> 00:33:50.840
Research is something that happens in a lot of different ways, as you would imagine, because the institution is so broad in the kinds of fields that it focuses on.
00:33:50.840 --> 00:33:58.202
But the way we've been successful with research is to stay laser focused on areas where we can be best in the world.
00:33:58.202 --> 00:34:02.861
So we have the number one colonial history program in the country.
00:34:02.861 --> 00:34:08.575
We've got graduate programs there, we've got undergrads that makes sense.
00:34:08.575 --> 00:34:19.670
But we don't have a lot of graduate programs across the humanities and social sciences just in areas where we're really best in the world humanities and social sciences just in areas where we're really best in the world.
00:34:19.670 --> 00:34:34.352
Vims is a terrific example where a graduate and research, graduate education, research had been prioritized for a really long time and there's an opportunity now because so many workplaces are interested in professionals who have a sophisticated understanding of the science of flooding.
00:34:34.352 --> 00:34:45.754
Let's say there's a real opportunity to meet a need and many, many students who want to go into fields that are going to depend on that sophistication.
00:34:45.754 --> 00:34:55.017
So there we will be, graduating scientifically sophisticated policymakers and policy savvy scientists.
00:34:56.460 --> 00:34:59.126
We cross fields, we cross-train.
00:34:59.126 --> 00:35:03.100
When I introduced myself, I said what did I say?
00:35:03.100 --> 00:35:07.634
I said I'm a Shakespeare scholar and an athlete and an entrepreneur.
00:35:07.634 --> 00:35:09.117
I should have said I'm a mom.
00:35:09.117 --> 00:35:16.115
These are parts of my identity that I think of as cross-training and that's what William & Mary does very, very well.
00:35:16.115 --> 00:35:30.916
So the last thing I'll say in this area, whether it's research or preparation for a job, what we see is that William & Mary people advance in their careers faster than any others of their peers in Virginia.
00:35:30.916 --> 00:35:41.556
So by year five and year 10, William & Mary graduates are outperforming, in terms of promotion and salary, their peers at the other four-year institutions.
00:35:41.556 --> 00:35:47.432
So that's the power of somebody who's a cross trainer, who's got range.
00:35:48.335 --> 00:35:48.556
Thank you.
00:35:48.556 --> 00:35:53.897
It's a terrific answer, but it gets to the point of what you said too, and that is not many places in the country.
00:35:53.897 --> 00:36:00.323
Everybody's either getting bigger or smaller and you're sort of in this mid-range, which I think has great advantage for students and faculty.
00:36:00.970 --> 00:36:01.894
It really does.
00:36:01.894 --> 00:36:07.583
Our student-faculty ratio is 12 to 1, which is an Ivy League model.
00:36:07.583 --> 00:36:45.204
The way we resource that, it's pretty lean, because we want to do our best to keep ourselves accessible to students who are low income as you can, which is the public university mission.
00:36:45.204 --> 00:36:50.240
But ultimately, holding those two things together is what we're all about here and we feel really proud of it.
00:36:51.431 --> 00:36:53.755
Yeah, I was also going to pick up two things.
00:36:53.755 --> 00:37:00.065
One you also have, of course, a very highly regarded, respected law school at William.
00:37:00.085 --> 00:37:00.485
Mary.
00:37:01.152 --> 00:37:02.156
And maybe speak to that.
00:37:02.156 --> 00:37:06.760
Then I wanted to follow up Of the many wonderful traditions that William & Mary has.
00:37:06.760 --> 00:37:19.481
You have that great position of chancellor and you've had some extraordinary ladies and gentlemen that have held that role, and I want maybe to speak a little bit about the current chancellor, that is, now serving.
00:37:19.481 --> 00:37:26.038
But if you want to pick on, the law school, because when you mentioned President Wreebley, of course he's a former dean of that law school.
00:37:26.258 --> 00:37:32.560
He is, and let me speak to that too, and may I just say those are such huge shoes to fill.
00:37:32.560 --> 00:37:35.760
I really adore him.
00:37:35.760 --> 00:37:40.192
I've learned a lot from him.
00:37:40.192 --> 00:37:40.513
He's formidable.
00:37:40.513 --> 00:37:50.298
Look what I got here the students had his picture on t-shirts and he's got a bigger vocabulary than I do, which is very hard to beat as a literary scholar.
00:37:51.542 --> 00:38:01.554
Uh, you know he's got a man's presence and gravitas and he's funny and so a lot, a lot to admire and emulate, and I hope that I have.
00:38:01.554 --> 00:38:19.393
I think, as someone's successor, the best praise that you can give the person who came before you is that you've done everything you could to advance his work and then some, and made the institution even better than when you got here, because that's what he was doing.
00:38:19.393 --> 00:38:24.984
So I guess you could say I inherited the chancellor from Taylor.
00:38:24.984 --> 00:38:37.903
Taylor was the one who popped the question and lured him in and as soon as I met Robert Gates I knew I could learn equally from him and that I very much wanted his partnership.
00:38:37.903 --> 00:38:49.104
The role of chancellor at William & Mary is a ceremonial role and it's in his hands, this powerful advisory, consultative role.
00:38:49.104 --> 00:39:11.945
I can call him up and I do, probably once a month to say to ask a human being who's led a university, who's led the CIA, who's led the country for so many decades, advice about really hard stuff, and he's so astute and wise and supportive.
00:39:11.945 --> 00:39:13.729
It just is an extraordinary thing.
00:39:13.729 --> 00:39:14.871
So I'm answering your second question.
00:39:14.911 --> 00:39:21.144
First, which was really Robert M Gates, he came to William & Mary from Kansas.
00:39:21.144 --> 00:39:23.514
Parents didn't want him to come here.
00:39:23.514 --> 00:39:30.399
He had to work to put himself through college and he drove a school bus in Williamsburg.
00:39:30.399 --> 00:39:40.523
So his stories about that are marvelous and that Kansas, that young man from Kansas, is so present in everything he does.
00:39:40.523 --> 00:40:02.632
He won a scholarship that in one way or another harks back to a prior member of the then administration, the president's cabinet, and he thinks a lot about what it means to close that full circle and he hopes for those same kinds of full circles to close, professionally and personally, for our students.
00:40:02.632 --> 00:40:12.259
So he's the best spokesman for William & Mary and the best advisor for me and I'm proud to say that I have told him that I expect him to continue.
00:40:12.259 --> 00:40:24.497
It's a seven-year term and he's already surpassed George Washington, who is the first American chancellor, in terms of his tenure.
00:40:24.497 --> 00:40:26.202
But I really want him to get as far as he can.
00:40:26.222 --> 00:40:28.670
I'm looking at 21 years at least, and I don't know that we ever discussed this.
00:40:28.670 --> 00:40:31.316
The chancellor is sort of is that sort of honorary?
00:40:31.737 --> 00:40:33.140
It's honorary Correct.
00:40:33.160 --> 00:40:39.059
So it's not part of your governing board, but haven't you also had some other famous chancellors in your history too?
00:40:39.079 --> 00:40:40.260
Sure Sandra Day O'Connor.
00:40:40.682 --> 00:40:40.961
That's right.
00:40:41.123 --> 00:40:42.004
And Margaret Thatcher.
00:40:42.769 --> 00:40:43.894
Those are pretty impressive.
00:40:43.914 --> 00:40:48.518
Yeah, just a few recently famous people.
00:40:48.900 --> 00:40:49.481
Yeah, yeah.
00:40:49.481 --> 00:40:53.215
Well, look, I'm going to ask one last question to wrap up, but it's a big question.
00:40:53.215 --> 00:40:56.019
We haven't really talked that much about athletics.
00:40:56.019 --> 00:40:58.163
First of all, you said you are a former athlete.
00:40:58.163 --> 00:40:58.844
What was your sport?
00:41:08.132 --> 00:41:10.037
I played and coached a sport called Ultimate Frisbee.
00:41:10.037 --> 00:41:11.320
I held four state championships.
00:41:11.320 --> 00:41:16.371
I was personally a world finalist, but I think I'm most proud of coaching high school girls teams to state championships.
00:41:16.371 --> 00:41:16.472
My team ended up winning seven over a 10-year period.
00:41:16.472 --> 00:41:20.661
I think I'm most proud of coaching high school girls teams to state championships and my team ended up winning seven over a 10-year period.
00:41:20.730 --> 00:41:34.638
I think I can claim those last three as well, because I brought many of the freshmen in Well, this is a good follow-up question because in the old days, you know, intercollegiate athletics was an important part of university life and people were generally student-athletes.
00:41:34.638 --> 00:41:37.276
And I'll tell a quick story which will lead into the question.
00:41:37.276 --> 00:41:42.375
Coach Tomlin, the coach of the famous William & Mary graduate, who's the coach of the Steelers.
00:41:42.455 --> 00:41:53.361
Yeah, there was an article once on TV, which I don't watch, a lot of pro sports but it was about the number of William & Mary people who were involved in professional football, but they're almost were all in cerebral roles.
00:41:53.361 --> 00:41:54.504
So in other words, they weren't you know.
00:41:54.504 --> 00:41:59.519
They were all really smart people who were known as great thinkers and great strategists, consistent with your brand.
00:41:59.519 --> 00:42:03.340
I also think of William & Mary as a school that still has student athletes.
00:42:03.340 --> 00:42:09.239
You know, unlike what is going on, I feel like you're still doing it.
00:42:09.239 --> 00:42:09.519
Right.
00:42:09.519 --> 00:42:13.961
You're holding on by your fingernails, I guess, to what was the original model.
00:42:13.961 --> 00:42:25.451
Where do you think it's going to go, just with your president's hat, with the other universities, and what are you doing to ensure that William & Mary continues to do what it has always done, which is really promote student athletes?
00:42:25.752 --> 00:42:37.825
You've described us so well and you've described part of what attracted me and is such a delight to be here at a Division I school where we are the number one in federal graduation rate of all the Division I schools in the country.
00:42:37.825 --> 00:42:56.138
It's we're just, we're killing it and we excel with really smart athletes and, as you said, I personally and at this institution recognizes in student athletes human beings who want to strive and compete at the highest level in their lives.
00:42:56.138 --> 00:43:13.238
When you meet a Division I student athletes human beings who want to strive and compete at the highest level in their lives when you meet a Division I student athlete, you find out this is somebody who is developing their executive function so powerfully Because to do the training and the competing and excel in your classes, that's hard work.
00:43:13.238 --> 00:43:20.359
So anyone who wants to hire a really high performer, they should be looking for a student athlete from a school like William & Mary.
00:43:20.359 --> 00:43:22.907
I'm passionate about it.
00:43:22.907 --> 00:43:24.952
It's a delight to be on the sidelines.
00:43:25.013 --> 00:43:37.620
Bruce, my husband, our first gentleman and I have a commitment that we're going to be on the sidelines for every one of our 23 Division I sports, one or both of us in any given year, and we've succeeded year seven.
00:43:37.620 --> 00:43:39.954
We're still on a batting.
00:43:39.954 --> 00:43:47.856
A thousand, I guess, is what I should say, though this year still has to play out, we have a few more we need to meet this year.
00:43:47.856 --> 00:43:55.821
We are seeing in higher ed a fundamental resettlement of where athletics sits in our institutions.
00:43:55.821 --> 00:44:04.204
At William & Mary, we're going to do everything we can to advance that idea of the whole person, the scholar, athlete.
00:44:04.204 --> 00:44:12.204
Hold on to it, drive it, because it is constitutive of who we are and we are.
00:44:12.204 --> 00:44:18.225
Yeah, executive function, mike Tomlin, sean McDermott, to pick a different school.
00:44:18.245 --> 00:44:18.726
That was the other guy.
00:44:18.746 --> 00:44:30.942
That's right, I forgot Sean McDermott and many, many of the coaches that are in their systems and across the NFL, but also Jill Ellis, two-time World Cup winning coach in women's soccer.
00:44:30.942 --> 00:44:35.922
Really, there are not very many coaches that have won the World Cup twice.
00:44:35.922 --> 00:44:37.936
That is the peak of the career.
00:44:37.936 --> 00:44:39.391
She, just she.
00:44:39.391 --> 00:44:48.005
She was the president of San Diego Wave and they just recruited her way to be head of football at FIFA, which is going to be so good for FIFA.
00:44:48.690 --> 00:44:54.935
So I like to say we're the cradle of coaches and comedians, because you shouldn't forget Jon Stewart, you shouldn't forget Matt Noswald, many others.
00:44:54.935 --> 00:44:59.369
Because you shouldn't forget Jon Stewart, you shouldn't forget Matt Noswald, many others.
00:44:59.369 --> 00:45:12.280
We graduate really, really smart human beings who are outwardly turned in the way that a great coach is to convene human beings around the core commitments and values of their organization and excel.
00:45:12.280 --> 00:45:16.240
So the coaching, the athletics, that's part of that vision.
00:45:16.240 --> 00:45:31.921
Mike Tomlin says in his locker room the standard is the standard, and what he means by that, as I understand it, is we are here to achieve at a level that we're going to be very intentional about.
00:45:31.921 --> 00:45:34.593
We know it, we're committed to it.
00:45:34.593 --> 00:45:38.192
When we don't meet it, we're going to do everything we can to get to it.
00:45:38.192 --> 00:45:47.855
The standard is the standard, and that clarity of what it means to be excellent is a deep, volumetric thing.
00:45:49.237 --> 00:45:58.595
Well, my personal privilege is the Gloucester folklore that John Stewart coached men's soccer at Gloucester as part of his student teaching, so he was also a big student.
00:45:58.595 --> 00:45:59.678
I don't know if you knew that or not.
00:46:00.059 --> 00:46:01.122
I did not know that.
00:46:01.122 --> 00:46:03.440
I'm going to run that down when I see him.
00:46:03.821 --> 00:46:12.018
Please confirm and let me know whether it's true or not it's always been that he was, I think, interested in both soccer and teaching, and he did some internship and worked on the soccer team.
00:46:12.018 --> 00:46:16.051
So anyway, well, look, we've got soccer team.
00:46:16.051 --> 00:46:16.653
So anyway, well, look, we've got.
00:46:16.653 --> 00:46:17.358
We've almost run out of time.
00:46:17.358 --> 00:46:21.115
I want to afford you a few minutes as we wrap up here to say anything else you'd like to say about how great you've done a terrific job.
00:46:21.115 --> 00:46:22.381
Thank you for being with us.
00:46:22.381 --> 00:46:24.791
Anything else you'd like to tell everybody about?
00:46:24.791 --> 00:46:25.332
William & Mary?
00:46:26.634 --> 00:46:36.099
I would just express gratitude to all our alums and our neighbors for welcoming a transplant as one of our own.
00:46:36.099 --> 00:46:41.199
That is a thing William & Mary does really well is create a sense of belonging for those.
00:46:41.199 --> 00:46:52.830
There's a phrase from the student handbook in the 1940s who comes here belongs here, and that is deep in our DNA as an institution.
00:46:52.830 --> 00:46:57.115
As deep as that idea of the alma mater of the nation, and I have felt it.
00:46:57.115 --> 00:47:10.979
I'm so honored and proud to be able to lead this extraordinary institution and we're here to make sure everyone in the nation knows how great we are.
00:47:11.300 --> 00:47:16.413
So thank you for giving me a chance to talk about it Well, one last question, because isn't your home close to the Wren building?
00:47:16.413 --> 00:47:18.634
Yes, so that's.
00:47:18.634 --> 00:47:25.519
The other problem, though, is we've got this hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of visitors a year that are constantly walking outside your home, right?
00:47:26.500 --> 00:47:29.622
Yeah, but that's one of the delights of this role.
00:47:30.102 --> 00:47:30.363
Yeah.
00:47:30.623 --> 00:47:47.747
Honestly, and we're doing a major renovation project on the Wren and on the President's House right now, so I'm looking at it, but they moved us out so that they can replace the roof which is get this 95 years old.
00:47:47.747 --> 00:47:49.834
That's how we think about ROI at William & Mary In terms of centuries.
00:47:49.834 --> 00:47:52.160
The last major structural renovation in the Wren building and the President's House was the Rockefellers.
00:47:52.160 --> 00:47:55.469
Wow, structural renovation in the Wren Building and the President's House was the Rockefellers.
00:47:56.150 --> 00:47:56.269
Wow.
00:47:56.289 --> 00:48:02.816
So we're in the midst of that, but the goal is to get the scaffolding down before 2026, when we do get millions of visitors here.
00:48:03.278 --> 00:48:05.336
Great, terrific Well, thank you for your time today.
00:48:05.336 --> 00:48:06.454
I really appreciate it.
00:48:06.776 --> 00:48:07.017
Thanks.
00:48:07.017 --> 00:48:09.016
What a delight, brian Kartham.
00:48:09.016 --> 00:48:10.561
Thank you for having me Take care.
00:48:16.571 --> 00:48:18.218
Thank you for listening to the Virginia of Interest podcast.
00:48:18.218 --> 00:48:20.530
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00:48:20.530 --> 00:48:22.552
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