3 min read January 2024 — In an interview with Invest:, Kevin Guskiewicz, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, talked about the university’s milestones in the past year, including its improved position in several higher education rankings. He also discussed UNC’s new School of Data Science and Society, its partnerships to help students and alumni join the workforce and its commitment to affordability and diversity.
What are some of the most important milestones that UNC-Chapel Hill reached in the past year?
We just welcomed the largest incoming class in the history of UNC-Chapel Hill with around 5,600 new undergraduate students and 2,000 new graduate students. Our world-class faculty has been implementing Ideas in Action, which is our new general education curriculum. It creates the foundation for our first-year students and allows them to explore different majors, internships, study-abroad and directed-research opportunities. We provide a breadth of disciplines as well as depth within students’ chosen majors. Most of our students do a double major or have a major and a minor.
Moreover, we have moved up in the U.S. News & World Report rankings among all national universities, and we moved up to fourth among national public universities. We have also been ranked first among public universities for best value for 19 years thanks to our commitment to accessibility and affordability. We bring students from different experiences and backgrounds and offer them a great return on their investment.
What are some of the major challenges that UNC-Chapel Hill faces?
Higher education has been under the microscope due to the rising cost of student debt. While we provide outstanding education and opportunities at a reasonable cost, there is still debt that students accrue. We are working hard to fundraise to deal with that. In December 2022, we raised over $1 billion for scholarships and aid for students. We are also fortunate to live in North Carolina, which is a state that supports higher education better than most others. Our taxpayers and general assembly are committed to providing opportunities to as many North Carolinians as possible.
One major challenge we face on our campus is the mental health crisis that is also prevalent across the nation. We have individuals who have continued to struggle coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of our students finished high school and began their careers at UNC-Chapel Hill in a remote learning environment. That has created some challenges for students, so we have been putting additional resources in place to support them.
What partnerships does UNC-Chapel Hill have in place to help students get involved in the workforce?
We work closely with our industry partners and our alumni who want to provide networking opportunities for our soon-to-be graduates and graduates. We have also been working hard to reimagine our career development services. We are finding new ways to partner with companies. There are a lot of new platforms out there beyond LinkedIn, such as Handshake, Big Interview, or GoinGlobal, that have become much more popular to link our students to the workforce. Additionally, internship opportunities are important while students attend college. Some of those internships take place here, but many students head to metropolitan areas for internships and gain access to new opportunities.
What academic programs are most in demand?
One of our exciting, new initiatives is our new School of Data Science and Society, which is the first new school that UNC has launched in 40 years. It offers a new online Master of Applied Data Science that provides recent graduates and working professionals with a comprehensive understanding of the data life cycle, technical expertise in areas such as programming and machine learning, and opportunities to connect with industry professionals in North Carolina and beyond. We have been deliberate in ensuring that society is a part of this new school to make sure that it is a hub for problem-solving. Our new school will foster collaboration across disciplines to enable scholars and researchers to address real-life problems facing our communities.
With North Carolina being one of the fastest-growing states and the area of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill becoming a destination for industry, we think that this new school will further enable UNC to serve our students, our state, and society. We are strategically committed to preparing our students for an evolving workforce. As a university, we must respond to the needs of the region and help North Carolina attract and retain competitive employers.
What kind of impact do you see new technologies, such as AI, having on the higher ed sector?
Ever since generative AI showed up, it has changed the way in which we think about the use of technology. Our provost charged two committees to investigate the topic of AI and ChatGPT in various campus settings, including classrooms and offices, so we can train the next generation of leaders to be at the forefront. These committees have created guidelines for faculty and students to follow when they use these tools.
How is the university working toward creating a more diverse and inclusive environment for all students, faculty, and staff?
Diversity is critically important for us to be a leading global public research university. The global dimension of it is important for us to appreciate how common challenges affect others around the world. The different lived experiences that show up on our campus are important to our new general education curriculum. It is the classroom discussions that take place around the curriculum that bring it to life and help prepare our students to become more active participants in a thriving democracy when they graduate.
Additionally, our Institute for Convergent Science focuses on bringing together different faculty members with different perspectives to solve big challenges. These challenges can be anything from climate change to healthcare needs. Those different lived experiences are important there as well. We bring our fine arts and humanities faculty and our social scientists into discussions alongside our applied mathematicians, physicists, and engineers to think about how society interfaces with new technologies and solutions to big problems.
What is your outlook for the university and what are the top priorities for UNC-Chapel Hill for the next two to three years?
We are committed to promoting civil discourse. We are living in a somewhat polarized society, and it is the responsibility of a leading global public research university such as UNC to prepare our students to understand that different viewpoints are important in solving the world’s greatest problems and challenges. We launched a program for public discourse six years ago that has focused on helping our students appreciate different viewpoints and how to have civil discussion and debate around contentious or polarized issues. That program is now evolving into a new School of Civic Life and Leadership that will position us as a national leader among public universities in confronting the challenges that face our democracy.
Additionally, our annual Tar Heel Bus Tour takes approximately 100 of our faculty and staff across the state of North Carolina to touch down in the communities and towns that our students call home. These bus tours help us better understand the communities that our students come from as well as the challenges and issues that they face so that we can help tackle them. We enjoy the opportunity to travel the state and showcase the impact that UNC-Chapel Hill can have and to serve the citizens of North Carolina.
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