Faculty discussed ways to diversify and globalize UNC with interim Chancellor Guskiewicz

Members of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee met on Wednesday afternoon to discuss how to diversify and globalize UNC's campus. 

The first topic discussed was UNC’s incoming strategic plan, Carolina Next: Innovations for Public Good. While the full plan is set to be presented to the Board of Trustees in November and is subject to some minor changes, interim Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said they have already begun work to put the first initiative into action: building community together. 

Guskiewicz said UNC has hosted four community building forums within the last six weeks, which have helped to define diversity goals and plans for properly creating an infrastructure support program to meet these goals. 

“We also need to think about how we actually capture experiences because all the numbers don’t tell stories,” said Rohit Ramaswamy, a professor in the Public Health Leadership Program. 

Guskiewicz said his focus is on figuring out how to make diversity real and how to know that the University is on the right track toward diversity. Programming within the first initiative has worked closely with the University Office for Diversity and Inclusion, but Guskiewicz said he hopes the office can establish a more direct line with senior leadership.

Guskiewicz also spoke extensively about an additional upcoming initiative: globalizing. 

He said more than a third of undergraduate students were able to study abroad this past year, but just a decade ago, this percentage was significantly lower.

“The global guarantee will ensure each student will get a global experience,” Guskiewicz said. 

However, he said that the idea of globalizing initiative is not just about studying abroad. 

“It’s about setting up global partnerships around research and scholarship, bringing global to Chapel Hill in a way to internationalize our campus,” Guskiewicz said. “The global guarantee will ensure each student will get a global experience.”

Guskiewicz said UNC admitted more international students this year than the University has in about a decade and that there is a greater number of international faculty.

Keisha Gibson, chief of the pediatric nephrology division of the UNC School of Medicine, said she would like to see more streamlined institutional support to help prospective international students receive visas. 

Lloyd Kramer, UNC’s interim chairperson of the faculty, said he hopes UNC could work with the North Carolina legislature to provide in-state tuition rates for faculty pursuing doctoral degrees.

“They add value to the life of the University; we think of them as our star athletes,” Kramer said, referring to the recent approval by North Carolina House of a bill that would provide in-state tuition rates for athletes. 

Laurie McNeil, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy, shared Kramer’s sentiment of wishing for more support in the form of funding for graduate programs. 

“If we had the same fraction of international students as a typical peer institution in the physics department, we would have two, three or four times as many,” McNeil said. “We just can’t afford them. Even though, if we simply looked at the excellence of people applying, we would take many more in.”

Guskiewicz said that the other initiatives include promoting career development, discovering, renewing democracy, serving to benefit society and optimizing operations. He said that each will have specifically outlined objectives and there will be opportunities for students and faculty to pitch ideas moving forward. 

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