00:00I think about the university as an enterprise and so yes we exist for a
00:04mission and a purpose at Granlin State University we're grounded in being the
00:08place where everybody is somebody but at the strategic inflection we also have to
00:12think about affordability how we look at the cost of instruction and rate both
00:18well-performing programs and programs that need to exist for purposes outside
00:24of just the margin and so it brings a definite perspective to the business
00:30concept of hire it have you ever met another university president who wears
00:34Ray-Ban meta glasses of cameras on them a few okay but being a millennial
00:40I can just imagine the president of my university not wearing yes glasses with
00:45camera lenses on them I bring a unique perspective okay I do want to ask you
00:51about HBCUs because a lot of them are struggling right now to be solvent how
00:57do you balance HBCUs are so important to the communities that they're in and to
01:02the community as a whole but they also have to be profitable they have to be
01:05functional because otherwise they won't continue to exist how do you balance
01:10those two things I'm happy to lead an institution that has one of the
01:14healthiest balance sheets in the country when we think about Granlin State
01:17University going forward and our mission as an HBCU we want to deliver on our
01:22value proposition which starts with a first-class education and it's grounded
01:27in a perspective that allows students to achieve ultimate social and economic
01:31mobility we serve students who are often Pell eligible but when they leave
01:36Granlin State University they're going into a workforce they're going into
01:39graduate school and they're seeing generational wealth creation and that's a
01:43part of the Granlin promise yeah I just say how are you teaching students
01:47those soft skills because time and time again with young people especially young
01:51people who to no fault of their own grew up during the pandemic where they
01:54didn't get the opportunity to work in an office to intern as much as some of us
01:58did you know things like how to talk to your boss how to show up on time what is
02:02appropriate in the office to wear to say all of those things is that
02:06something you're trying to address as well we think of our students as the art of
02:10the multi-hyphenate and so a student studying chemistry will also have an
02:14opportunity to take public speaking be a part of our university choir our
02:19world-fame Tiger marching band and maybe even play soccer and so you bring all
02:23of those skills to bear and it's an understanding that you will have a
02:27multi-dimensional life and we want you to bring that fullness to Granlin and we
02:31want to help prepare you for the next chapter. Tim did you do band? I did not do
02:34band in college. No music? No I mean I tried to. In high school did you band? No I did
02:40band in
02:40junior high bass clarinet of course that counts yeah I felt like it was in your
02:45background somewhere that's why I was fishing no no I did piano yeah I played
02:47piano but very nice and then tried to play guitar in college but that didn't
02:51really work out everyone I feel like everyone tries to play guitar in college
02:54I think yeah that's yeah especially guys our age but on the uh on the
02:58preparing students for the future right now back to back to the AI side of this and
03:02I was kind of joking about your glasses but not really because it does show
03:06that you're uh in touch with the technology of today and and that is the
03:12big question about college and the value of college right now in a world where
03:16you can literally ask a LLM to write a history paper for you what is the value
03:24proposition for college? We think about it as human with machine and so do you
03:29understand the large language model can you create a prompt that's going to allow
03:34you to have the right starting point but ultimately it's going to be up to you to
03:39defend the thesis to speak in front of the crowd to share your research and so
03:44we're preparing our students to embrace technology but leverage it as an
03:48accelerator not an absolute. So how is it used in the classroom right now I you
03:52know because I went I went to undergrad yes didn't all have laptops in the class
03:56and we're taking notes on like laptops I think were probably too expensive then
03:59maybe people weren't there or maybe maybe maybe they weren't even allowed in
04:03classrooms then I don't remember but then I went to business school like you know
04:05more than 10 years later and everybody had a laptop there it was a completely
04:08different experience how do you use tech in the classroom? So we're embedding AI
04:13credentials students when in our Moorhead College of Business actually had to have
04:18an AI credential to ultimately graduate and so we are embracing it so that
04:23students are prepared to learn the technology but also be leaders with the
04:28technology. Actually Tim you know what now that I think about it I had a PDA that
04:34clipped into a little fold-out keyboard that's what I had it and you're right
04:37grad school I had a laptop yeah we are that old wow thank you sorry thank you for
04:42that I just want to ask you broadly do you think higher education as it's
04:45structured right now is working for most students do you think the ROI a phrase we
04:50use here a lot at Bloomberg is worth what these kids are paying for what
04:53they're getting? Absolutely when we think about the investment in a college
04:58education particularly for Grambling which is the number one institution in the
05:01state of Louisiana for social and economic mobility we know that our
05:05students attend Grambling get an affordable education and then get an
05:10immediate return on that investment and so we're thankful for everyone
05:14continuing to choose us we know that it's a choice and there are many choices
05:17today we're embracing spaces like cybersecurity but we also continue our
05:22pathway in education and so we believe that we can do both and understand the
05:27future but also stay very rooted in what has made higher education great. There
05:31are you know so many concerns about what AI is doing to this economy and we
05:36were talking about a story earlier just in the last 30 seconds that we have
05:40about how you know a lot of the jobs that interns were doing in the past AI are
05:44doing so it's harder and harder job yeah it's harder and harder to get
05:47internships and entry-level jobs just 30 seconds recruiting and what companies
05:50are doing on campus how that works it's shifting yeah and so we're seeing students
05:55as early as their first year starting pre-professional or internship programs
05:59because we know that students enter into the job market they will almost need to
06:03be managerial ready so when they're 18 19 they're doing it absolutely we're
06:07starting them very early we're starting them with Gallup strengths finders to
06:11understand their core and get that experience day one so that they can
06:15manage operations or manage an agent when they start their first job
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