Dr. Fred Carter - President - Francis Marion University

This is Coffee with Cool People, and today I am having coffee with Dr. Fred Carter of Franciscan University. Dr. Carter, thanks for spending some time with me today.

Thanks, Chip. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. It's not often you get to have your brother's boss on, so maybe at some point I'll get to—

I'm not sure Jonathan would agree with that relationship, but that's okay.

Well, it's neat to get to spend some time with you. You're a legend around these parts. I mean, there are— you let other people put most of their names on most of the buildings, but there's no doubt as we're sitting here in downtown Florence that your fingerprints are all over it. So I'm excited to get to spend some time with you. I'm curious, who is Fred Carter?

Well, I am, you know, I'm a poor kid who grew up in rural Florida. I grew up in an agriculture area outside Sanford, Florida. Sanford back then was known as the celery capital of the world. And early on, I guess the one thing I discovered in life is I'd probably seen all the celery stalks I'd ever want to see in my life. My mother and father had a great, great love of education, but they never were able to acquire much of an education on their own. My dad, an interesting fellow, he grew up in the Depression years in Kentucky, and he— there simply wasn't enough folks to feed people on that farm, so he walked over and he participated in a Civilian Conservation Camp, you know, one of Mr. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Camps, and ended up working through that Triple-C program and became a part of building the Blue Ridge Parkway when he was a relatively young man. And, you know, that work ethic I think continued to come down to other people inside the family. And there are a number of things I clearly learned from my father. Great love for education, need to get education somehow if you're going to try to get ahead much in life. The other thing I learned was that that Mr. Roosevelt's name was always Mr.— his first name was always Mr. or President Roosevelt, because nothing was ever said the least bit derogatory in my home about Franklin D. Roosevelt. Okay, my father thought he was a true giant and that he saved this country many times over. And the other thing that I learned in that process was anytime that I'm within 75 miles of Blue Ridge Parkway, I get so sucked right over to the Blue Ridge Parkway because my daddy played a role building it, okay? But my father and mother had a great love of education. They were determined that I try to get an education, although, you know, it wasn't abundantly clear when I was growing up how I was going to get that education. As it turned out, it came together the last couple of years in high school, working summers at orange packing plants, my dad working extra. Shift hours and the like. We were able to get a National Defense Loan, so I was actually able to attend the state university and become the first in my family ever to walk into the doors of a state university, let alone subsequently get— I mean, graduate and matriculate out on the other side. That's kind of how it all started. When I was in college, I one day was walking across campus, happened to see this guy dressed in a blue jacket and trousers and a white cap and with a little sign in front of him that said, "See the world." And so I walked up to him and talked to him a little bit. He was something that's called the Marine Selection Officer. He was there recruiting future Marine Corps officers at my college. So I listened to his pitch. I kind of liked the pitch. I thought it was a wonderful story, maybe something I would want to do. And so I agreed to take the test. And about 3 days later, he called me back. He said, you know, Carter, I've got some bad news for you. You know, you're colorblind and your vision is too poor uncorrected for the Marine Corps to take you as a as an officer in the Marine Corps. He said, you know, you might want to look around at some of the other services. You might want— the Navy might take you in their supply corps. You might be able to do something. And I said, okay, well, thanks. And I moved on and just kind of didn't think about that much again until about 6 months later he called me and he said, this is Captain Wickersham Carter. I got some I said, "What's the good news, Captain?" He said, "The Marine Corps is now taking blind people, okay? The Marine Corps is now enlisting blind people. We're losing so many second lieutenants, okay, that the Marine Corps has relaxed their vision standards. Now, the one thing you have to understand, you're still colorblind, so you're probably never going to get to be an infantry officer." Right. But you can attend Quantico. If you want to go in the Marine Corps after graduation, you can. So that's what I did. I took the platoon leaders class. I graduated. I went to Quantico. I went to the basic school and, and, and I graduated high in my class. And lo and behold, much to my surprise, maybe the Marine Corps' surprise, that, that vision obstruction, even with color vision, went away. And I ended up becoming not only a Marine Corps officer, but a but an infantry officer as well. So did that for a number of years. Really, in the Marine Corps, I really, really wanted Chip to go to get graduate degrees. I knew— I ran into a guy one morning. I was the officer of the day, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines. He was the adjutant. We were sitting there on a rainy Sunday morning, and he was just getting out of the the Marine Corps. And I said, where are you going? He said, I'm, I'm going to the University of Michigan and I'm going to pursue my master's and I'm going to pursue my doctorate and I want to be a university professor. I, I want to teach English and be a university professor. And I started thinking about that. I was still probably a year away from getting out of the Marine Corps and I started thinking about, well, that'd be an interesting— that would be an interesting way to live, to get eternal living. I, I enjoyed the Marine Corps, but But you know, if I could find a way to couple some things together, but I'd sure like to get that additional pieces of my education intact. So as it turned out, the Marine Corps at that point in time, they were only sending people to graduate school in electrical engineering and computer science. And so that opportunity didn't open up. So I go and I talk to my battalion commander and he said, well, here's what you can do. If you really want to go to graduate school, Get out of the Marine Corps, stay in the reserves, okay? Stay in the reserves because it gives you the door open to always come back if you want to come back, or you can stay in the reserves and use your GI Bill. If you want to get that master's and doctorate, go get it. That's what I did. Left Camp Lejeune, drove over here to the University of South Carolina. Other than passing on 995, I'd never been to South Carolina before, and I was able to complete my graduate degree. Education over here. Did a number of things inside the state when I was in graduate school. I was a county administrator in Bamberg County for a while. I was the first county administrator there under home rule legislation. I was a house parent at the Commission for the Blind on weekends. That's how I worked my way through graduate school along with the GI Bill. And then when I got my master's and doctorate, I went and taught for a year at the University of— Western Kentucky University. And then I went I went back to my alma mater, the University of South Carolina— University of Central Florida, I'm sorry, before I found ultimately my dream job at the College of Charleston. I taught there for about a decade. Took a leave of absence there in about '87, went to work with Carroll Campbell in the senior administration, worked for Governor Campbell for 5 years. Then I was the director of the State Budget Control Board for about a decade. Then I came to Francis Marion in 1999. Uh, I was here for 3 years and then I took a leave of absence and was Mark Sanford's chief of staff for a year. Then I came back to Francis Marion and that's where I've been ever since. So about half of my life's been on the academic side, about half of my life's really been on the on the applied government side.

So when you taught, what did you teach?

I'm actually a political scientist. More specifically, I teach public administration. My areas are public finance and administrative law and organization theory.

Interesting. And so how did you— curious with your time both in in and out of government but also the classroom, how did you decide to apply that to now being the president of the university?

Well, of course, I was in an academic track once I grad— when I went to Western Kentucky and then University of Central Florida, but I stayed in the reserves, okay? And because I had a doctorate And I was in Marine Corps Reserves. Marine Corps Reserve, they have about 15 doctorates in the Marine Corps. They have more than that, but they have 15 faculty members in the Marine Corps Reserve that were back then that were appended to the Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the Marine Corps War College. So 3 or 4 times a year, we would go up and give lectures at Marine Corps Command Staff College and Marine Corps War College. So we were able to keep the academic, the civilian academic part intact with regard to publications and teaching and research, but we were also able to keep that military part intact as well. But also, because I was a professor back then, I had summers and more time, so I was able to do some wonderful things as a reserve. I got to command the Charleston Marines, which was a landing support unit. I got to command the reserve unit at Parris Island, South Carolina for, you know, I was down there about 8 years as the CO of that reserve unit. So I got, again, the academic gave me the flexibility to do things on the military side. The military side gave me a wonderful intellectual respite from some of the academic stuff that I did on the collegiate side. So it was really a very positive mix.

Yeah, it's interesting because I do think that's one of the most difficult parts of any kind of more academic work is you know, the need for balance towards fulfillment. Yeah, I know a lot of folks, again, whether they're professionals or professors, who like to go home and wash dishes because you can actually see the dirty dishes become clean versus a lot of what I know you do, which is really long-term vision things, and it takes a lot of time.

I have to tell you, I never, never developed I don't have the affectation for dirty dishes.

Yeah, me either.

Never, never. But now paper plates.

There you go. I'm a paper plate. My carbon footprint is large. There it is. So I have to do a lot of offsetting to try to get carbon neutral. But so you've been at the university, there's been a ton of change. All positive as far as I'm concerned. But with Tell me a little bit about kind of your philosophy, because we've seen a lot, whether it's kind of the public-private partnership. I mean, I think that that's kind of new and different, and you and some of your partners in that have really, I think, kind of changed how I'm sure other places look at what's possible. But also, just a big growth in the university. So I'm, I'm curious. I sit on the board, as you mentioned earlier, my brother works out in the business college and I sit on the advisory board for that. And I know that there are a lot of— the university takes seriously. You mentioned being the first in your family. You know, like, that's a big deal.

That's a big deal for Francis Marion. 40% of our students are first-generation college students. And you know, Chip, a lot of our faculty are first-generation college students themselves. It's no accident that people who never had that opportunity in their family but were the first to get it end up teaching at a place like Francis Marion. It's the most natural thing in the world. I'm surrounded by kids now that look just like me 50 years ago, you know. And it's— and understand their motivations, understand their fears, their uncertainties, their ambiguities. You know, understand that question of, am I good enough to be here? Am I smart enough to do what some of these other kids who have doctors and attorneys or accountants as parents— are they able to do this more effectively? And the answer to all that is No, you know, every person has the ability to craft their own way, okay? And simply, you know, your background sometimes may even serve as a greater motivation to, as an impetus to try to drive you a little harder. I remember what my dad was, a heavy equipment mechanic, okay? And I remember one day he was changing the the— he was down on a roller under one of our trucks and he was changing the oil and moving the oil pan underneath and the wrench slipped and it cut right across his knuckles. And so he came— and I was standing right— I was right next to the— because I was handing tools while he was on the roller. And he rolled down, he held up his thumb and this blood was coming out and he said, you know, You want the best reason in the world to ever get an education? I said, yes, sir. He said, look at this. I don't want you doing this rest of your life. I don't want you doing this rest of your life. So let me dwell on this issue for a second, okay? One of the tensions that frequently we get into in a state like South Carolina is that we have this great need for work. In a variety of different occupations and a variety of different areas. Many of them are vocational, many of them are technical workers, many of them are unskilled, need to be trained, many of them need to be collegiate educated, many of them need advanced degrees in education. And frequently I hear elected officials going around saying, 'Not everybody needs a college degree,' and that's absolutely true. Not everybody does need a college degree. There are many, many people that would be better off pursuing jobs that were more dear to their heart and what they needed to accomplish. But when you come from a family and that family generation after generation after generation hasn't produced anybody who's ever going to college, There's a different motivation. I can guarantee you my father didn't want to have a conversation with any elected official telling him not everybody needed a college degree because my father would have responded, "No, not everybody needs a college degree, but you see my son over there? See that kid sitting over under the tree? He needs a college degree." I agree, because it's our turn.

It's Carter's turn. Right. Well, it is. It's interesting because I hadn't even— one of the things we talked about before we started was the good news about my doing this is I don't have an agenda. But you touched on something that I think is a fascinating topic, which is that idea of the difference between trade school and the 4-year university. Now, as far as the expectation for me, obviously, for my brother is an overachiever, um, it was never a question as to whether or not we were going to college, but it has become a lot more frequent. Again, to your point, and I'm a big believer, I think what you touched on for one thing was the idea of doing what you love, whether that's in the case of trade school, working with your hands, or again, eventually becoming a college professor or a schoolteacher. But it's, I think that there is a, again, there's a push in the media even, if you will, of, you know, college is expensive. College is, you know, there's a narrative of sorts. One of the things I feel like you've done, and I'm assuming it's intentional, is everything that I've read about the university is that there's one of the things they say in any sales job, which is price is only an issue in the absence of value. And it seems to me like one of the things, I think a better argument, I guess, if I was trying to take it on is, are you getting value for the educator? Wherever it is, are you getting value for the education that, that you're paying for?

We have the second part of your question raised earlier. This is an appropriate point to bring this in. So we know that Francis Marion was created to be a regional university for the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Okay. It was created for that region. And my board and certainly my administration, I think the vast number of my faculty, kind of take that to heart. We look at those kids outside in the Pee Dee, across the Pee Dee, in Marlboro, Bennettsville, Dillon, Darlington, and those are our kids. That's why we're here. Yeah, we'll draw heavily from Charleston, we'll draw heavily from Greenville, we'll draw very heavily from Columbia, But you know, we're teaching primarily those kids across the Pee Dee region. That's why Bob McNair created that institution in 1970. We've kind of got that up on the wall, on one of the walls of Francis Marion, his comments relative to creation of Francis Marion. So, so what we've tried to do then is we've tried to keep the university flat hierarchically, okay. We've tried to keep our tuition low. It's the lowest tuition among public universities in the state of South Carolina. We have not raised our tuition 5 years. Now, that means we have to rely an awful lot on our friends to help us fund scholarships and build buildings and do other things. Things. Performing arts center down the street, $35 million, probably one of the finest performing arts centers in the Southeast. We didn't put a dime into it. Our health science buildings going up the Evans Street, there are 2 now, we're about to add a 3. All that money was either generated from private contributions, contributed from the state, or contributed contributed from some of our other partners, or materials were contributed from some of our other partners. So each one of these efforts, we tried to keep the tuition down so that we could bring in those kids and cost would not be a substantial obstacle coming into our institution. Look, our tuition is— our tuition at our institution is $10,000 a year now, okay? And I won't, I promise I won't take off on any of my other sister schools, but you know, there are public universities in the state, public universities just like us, whose tuition's $17,000, $18,000 a year now. I mean, goodness gracious, you know, we're 50%, 60% less than they are, okay? And again, It's not that we're waving a wand and doing magical things. It's that we've got a whole lot of friends who have come in and helped us over the years. Drs. Bruce and Lee Foundation, Eddie Floyd has supported us, and Ed Porter with so many contributions for our buildings. I still remember, oh, about a year and a half ago, Darla Moore calling me came to me one morning and said, you know, Fred, it's about time I do something for Francis Marion. I've never done anything for Francis Marion. I said, oh man. She said, of course you'd never ask. I said, no, ma'am, I'd never ask. You know, she said, but I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you those first-generation kids of yours, I'm going to give you $1 million. I said, well, thank you. She said, a year for 5 years.. And so the last 2 years we've run the Darla Moore, the Darla Moore Scholarships, and that's 32 kids a year that have full rides at Francis Marion. The vast preponderance of those are first-generation college students, okay? And part of that Darla Moore Scholarship means that they have the opportunity to travel abroad during a part of their time at Francis Marion. So the question came up then about, so their tuition's paid for, room and board, so, and we'll trade them with schools abroad. So they'll go to the University of Trier, they'll pay their tuition, room and board here, they'll go to the University of Trier, kid at Trier will pay their room and board there, we'll trade them during the semester. So how do we pay for the flights over for these kids? 'Jim and Rach—' former governor and Rachel Hodges stepped forward and say, 'We'll help with that. We'll create a fund to pay airfare for these kids that are going abroad, that are first-generation kids going abroad.' So just one series of contributors after another, and I could go, you know, And I promise I won't do this. It's always a danger beginning to name some and not name them all. But man, if you got an hour, I'll tell you all the things that Billy Powers has done for us. Okay? You know, you got another hour, I'll tell you all the things the city of Florence has done for us. That, you know, Mayor Wakila and Mayor Willis and and now Mayor Irvin have all just been strongly supportive. But now, again, our movement downtown wasn't simply a benefit to the university, it was an enormous benefit to the municipality as well because we bridged that 7 miles and, frankly, cemented the relationship between the university and the city all that much more tightly.

Sure, well, and it really has been a huge benefit, I feel like, to the city as somebody whose office is downtown. We've been down here for 10 years and the ability, one of the things I do a lot of times at lunchtime is I'll walk down Dargan Street towards National Cemetery and, you know, just the, again, not only the architecture but the things that go on in those places is fantastic. And you mentioned the medical school. It really has changed the vibe even of— it's a big contributor, I think, to all of the different things that have gone on downtown. Of course, you know, my son Christian also graduated from Francis Marion, and you know, one of the things that we found value. You mentioned the tuition being the lowest in the state, but also the faculty involvement and his ability to get to know and to have a relatively intimate involvement with some of his professors was—

Our faculty is extraordinary, okay. Our faculty get it. They understand what they were put on this earth to do, and they do it extraordinarily well. They're some of the most brilliant men and women I've met with regard to their own field. They're prolific scholars, but they're consummate teachers, and they love the relationships with their students. I could go on and on about your brother, who's just a fine economist, a fine, very, very find applied economists who does as much work outside for the community as he does inside for the university simply because he has the kinds of skills that are honed that allows him to go in both ways. But our faculty get it. They're an amazing part of the success of that university. And again, a lot of those faculty members were the first in their family to ever go to college too. Yeah. They get that part of it.

Well, and I think that's a— again, as I sit here and I think on that as being a mission of the university, if you will, maybe not a formal one, but it is a— it's a different calling. Right, and again, I look at a lot, I think the layperson, the average person wants to compare, again, compare super favorably in terms of tuition costs, but wants to compare University of South Carolina or Clemson to Francis Marion, and I think that your point is, really lands on me that It's intentionally different. That it's intentionally— in terms of it's not built to be a competitor. It's built to be something that's completely different that allows for and attracts, you know, somebody who may not even be interested in those other kinds of environments.

But here's the interesting part to it. That, that people understand clearly the first part, okay? They understand that we view our mission as very distinct, serving this area, this region, to serving a lot of kids who might not otherwise have the opportunity to get, uh, uh, quality degrees. But, but I do want you to understand, our degrees are some of the strongest degrees in the state. We produce some— we produce some mechanical engineer, I'll put that mechanical engineer up against anybody from Clemson or Carolina. We produce someone in English literature, I'll put that person up against anybody, College of Charleston, Clemson, you know. The only difference is this: our kids are attending classes in which there are 25 to 30 other students. They're not sitting in an American government class with 415 students. They're not catching a bus from the Horseshoe that will take them to their dorms out on Bluff Road. They're walking 15 minutes across one of the most beautiful campuses in the state to their apartments or their dormitory rooms, okay? The difference may be the big F. We don't have a football football team, right? We don't play in the, in the SEC, we don't play in the ACC, but we do have 14 NCAA intercollegiate sports and we've won 5 national championships, okay? So we, we've got a, we've got a pretty aggressive sports program that's played on a different level and it's played by true student athletes. Student athletes who understand that they're probably not going to play ball when they get out, so they probably ought to have a GPA someplace between about 3.5 and 4.0. Right. So, yeah.

Yeah, no, it's interesting too, as you were talking, I was, again, just kind of jumping around, but I also think that the university, at least for me, has a special place in inspiring younger people, not just people who are getting ready to go to— I was, as you were talking, my mind flashes to one of the first times you, when you said the most beautiful campuses, my mind went to one of the first couple of times that I was at the university. I was probably be in the 7th or 8th grade, coming from Pamplaco for the, the university hosted the science fair winners, regional science fair, whatever it was, and that was my first experience of what it was like to be on a college campus, and again, both of my parents went to college But, and it was an expectation, but as a young person, I didn't have any idea. And here I was, you know, walking into this gym and there were all these, but probably frankly more than that, the wide open spaces and the, I don't know what you guys call it. It's not a courtyard, it's way too big to be a courtyard. But just again, as a student, from a single-A high school, just unbelievable to then go and say, God, this is part of what's possible. The freedom, the flexibility, all those things.

See, and that's a part of the uniqueness of the school too. Our Swamp Fox writing programs for teachers and students during the summer. The, you know, every year, I won't tell you what the school is, but every year every spring, I spend the morning with an elementary school class who comes and sits in my office and we talk about college and we talk about different kinds of things. It's elementary school class. And then they get out and they eat lunch at the university and they go across the university. And again, it's one of my favorite mornings because there are never any trick questions. Okay?

There are never any trick questions. No agenda.

No agendas, but the university is very, very good, I think, very, very accomplished at doing those things, and the faculty is very, very accomplished at doing those things, reaching out to different people and cultivating in those folks maybe a greater love for the university and the like. I'll tell you a story that kind of helped me I told the story a few years ago and I haven't told it in a while, but I'd been here maybe 2 or 3 years and I was— and 2 things happened to me, I guess my second or third year here. One thing that happened is that we were going after a young lady who lived up towards between Sellers and Latta and for a scholarship. And she wanted to take the scholarship, but her dad really didn't want her to take the scholarship. So my admissions director calls and over much protest from the family arranges for me to go up to meet with the family and talk to them at their house. And I go up there and they lived in a house you know, Chip Munn, I would know it as a shotgun house, okay, on a maybe about an 80-acre farm. And so I go into the house and I'm talking to the father, and the first thing the father does when I go in, the daughter and his wife is in there, and he excuses them, okay. He essentially says, well, You know, my discussion now is with this man, okay? It's not with the four of us, it's with this man. And he proceeds to tell me is how that, you know, that university was put down the road, you know, 30 years ago, okay? And never done anything for him. He'd never had any use for it, never had any dealings with it. Now all of a sudden, You know, the university wants to come and take his daughter away, okay? And he just didn't see the benefit of that, that she would— she in that community would meet a very, very nice man at some point, and they would have a family, and they would have children, and he would settle in. And, and, you know, either he'd get his father's farm one day, or he might even get this farm one day. And so then, you know, it was up to me to kind of build, and I tried, and I made a compelling argument, and subsequently she did come to us. She did not come the next year. She came the year after, okay? So, and I don't know all the dynamics associated with this. I do know this, I know that The gentleman that was sitting across from me was much smarter than I was. He clearly understood in his life what worked well and what didn't, and he was deeply suspect of that college. So maybe he decided that day that his daughter was going to attend that college, but maybe he also decided that she wasn't going to attend that day. That year, so that neither of us won that conversation, okay? But she came, she did well, she graduated, she became a schoolteacher, and she teaches up in that area now today, and she was an extraordinarily fine student. But you know what stuck most with me from that conversation? The part of the conversation which he said, that college had been over there 30 years, and we've never had any dealings with it at all. It's never done a thing for us. It's never benefited us in any way. Now that, you know, for a brand new university president, that's pretty much of a challenge to say, look, whatever else you're doing, whatever else you're doing, Jack, okay, you better get off your tush and reach out here to some of these people who are pretty skeptical about the value that you bring to this region. Okay? And I think, I think I hear that a fair amount. I think my faculty hear that from time to time, particularly across the rural areas around the Pee Dee. Sure. You know?

Yeah. It's interesting because when, what I heard, and it may not have been the way that he meant it, When you said she's gonna meet a nice young man and settle in, where my mind went was if she leaves here and she goes to Florence and she attends— she's gonna meet a nice young man there because they're probably gonna— and they're gonna settle in there. And where my mind went, again as a parent, was I'm going to lose my baby. But where it went as somebody thinking about it from a benefit to the region standpoint is my guess is a lot of people who come to Francis Marion stay here. Dad was probably not completely wrong. About 45%. Who come from out of the area stay here. About 45% of those who come from the PD, stay in the PD. Gotcha. Okay, I mean, what a great—

remember now, this house, this house is probably sitting from the university, it's between halfway between Sellers and Latham. So that house is probably, can't be further than 15, 17 miles away, right?

Okay, yeah, yeah. And, you know, but what a great—

but it's a mindset. Yes, it's a mindset.

Might as well be 1,000 miles.

Might as well be 1,000, and probably was.

You know, it's one of the— and I won't ask you who your favorite graduate is, but I think, uh, Shaquille O'Neal is a fantastic story of the university. And because I didn't know that he was a graduate, had a conversation with him just like this and talked about his experience of working in fast food and, and yeah, and being able to work his way through university and now of course, you know, part of city council. And, and I'm sure there are just tons and tons of stories exactly like that. And again, it is a— I think not only is a great maybe unintentional recruitment, uh, vehicle for the region, but also a retention of of young people who stay here and who get their education here and who meet other people and stay. So I have to ask, kind of as we wrap up, you've done a lot of things. You've been here since 1999, almost 25 years, kind of with some other things. And we can do a whole other conversation about your time in government, and that'd be fascinating, but that's— Neither here nor there for today. I'm curious, since 1999 you've done a lot of things. What are you most proud of?

Oh, that's easy. That's easy. So Robert Lee, the bore of my chair, came on the joined the Board of Trustees about the same time I did, as I became president. And Robert Lee was our commencement speaker this past commencement. One of the things that Robert asked was, he said, "I'd like to know how many degrees we've actually awarded since that time, since Carter came and since I came on the Board of Trustees." And the number is right around— it's close to 15,000. We've awarded about 15,000 degrees. So the thing I take the greatest pride in is that I've handed out 15,000 degrees to men and women who have earned that education from a fine state university over the last 25 4 years. years. Nothing in my life will ever take greater achievement than that, outside of the accomplishments of my children.

No doubt.

Though that becomes a very, very important part of kind of— so, you know, when you get, you know, when you struggle with sleeping at night because you've eaten too much or because there's too much on your mind. Some people count sheep. I don't. I count degrees. That puts me to sleep quick.

Yeah, well, it's a lot to be— it's a lot to be proud of. It really is. So next to last question. What's next? Because my hope is you're going to be here another 25 years, or at least every time you think you might get close to retirement, they're going to find a way to, you know, it's almost like trying to retire from McLeod. They don't let anybody retire from McLeod.

The funny thing about this, Chip, and you know this as well as I do, my friend, that the further you get into this business, the less you focus on what's been accomplished and the more you become obsessed with what you know has not been done with the limited time you have left. Okay? I mean, I, you know, 15 years ago I didn't feel this urgency of time. Okay, you know, I, last week, earlier this week, I became 73 years old. Happy birthday. Thank you very much. But now I feel the urgency of time. I know there are 3 buildings that, there's one going up now, the School of Business Education. We will build and renovate the Circle Park building down here as another medical facility during this upcoming year, and we, we're, we've got a fully funded forestry building and environmental science building we're going to add to campus as the third building. So I know there are three buildings, okay? And I know that we can only get a building up so quickly, okay? Clearly I want to get those buildings up, and I want to get the programs that essentially will grow from each of those building started. I'd love to get that before I, you know, before I left. But I also know one other thing. As much as I love the job, as much as I love the people, as much as I love the faculty, I'd just as soon not die sitting in that chair. There are some things I'd like to do with my life before I, you know, before I pass. Sure. So, uh, I, I I don't know, maybe just a few more years to get the buildings up and then on to other things.

Yeah, well, that's awesome and it's quite a legacy. So I have to ask, last question, because I find it tells you a lot about a person, how they think about themselves. In reality, you know my wife, my wife gave me the question. So being a former reporter, she said this will be interesting. So if you could pick a fictional character that you feel like represents Fred Carter, who would it be and why?

Okay, I'm gonna cheat a little bit on it, okay? I'm gonna pick a character that's a real character. Okay. Okay, but he was a fictional writer, okay? All right. But the book that he wrote that I enjoyed the most was a non-fictional book. The book was by John Steinbeck. And the book was Travels with Charley. So towards the end of his life, John Steinbeck had a cat that he dearly loved and he had a little travel trailer. So he and the cat got in the travel trailer and set off for a summer visiting places and that book really chronicles not just Steinbeck's ability ability to go out and, you know, arguably one of our greatest writers, go out and revisit the country that he lived in the later years of his life, but he was doing it with his little furry friend, okay, who was so close to him. It is, at one and the same time, one of the most endearing books I've ever read, I've ever read, and it's also a very meaningful book about a man who's beginning to see the end of his life and put what he's accomplished earlier in his life in perspective and share it with a non-communicative friend with whom he could communicate in a great many ways. That's awesome. Yeah.

Well, Travels with Charles. Travels with Cher. I've now officially added it to my summer reading list. You'll enjoy it. Great.

Chuck, thanks for the— thanks for the opportunity.

Thank you, my pleasure.