Latest / The Mike Keith Show / The Mike Keith Show | RANDY BOYD (10.9.26)

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The Mike Keith Show | RANDY BOYD (10.9.26) · The Mike Keith Show

0:00
SPEAKER_18: From the peaks of the Smoky East.
0:26
SPEAKER_18: Inside accident.
0:28
SPEAKER_18: Behind the speed.
0:29
SPEAKER_18: From Rocky Top, direct from the coaches.
0:32
SPEAKER_18: Inside from the players.
0:40
SPEAKER_17: So glad to have you with us for the big interview presented by Clayton Holmes, Oakwood Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee, helping families across the state find their dream hall.
0:52
SPEAKER_17: Our special guest for the big interview is the 26th president of the University of Tennessee, Randy Boyd.
0:59
SPEAKER_17: Randy Boyd, thank you for welcoming us over here to see you.
1:02
SPEAKER_17: Glad to have this opportunity to visit with you.
1:04
SPEAKER_17: Thanks for inviting me.
1:05
SPEAKER_17: There are so many things that I could start with you about.
1:09
SPEAKER_17: Researching Randy Boyd is a long process.
1:12
SPEAKER_17: But I want to start, before any of the things about being president, with Boyd racing and what you guys are doing with that as a family.
1:24
SPEAKER_17: You and your wife Jenny, it's really fascinating because horse racing is some something you've come uh, I guess, to sort of in the last couple years.
1:34
SPEAKER_11: That's exactly right.
1:35
SPEAKER_11: We decided to uh get into horse racing about two years ago, and it was a slippery slope.
1:39
SPEAKER_11: We bought one horse and thought that would be enough, and then you buy two, and they have a funny way of multiplying.
1:44
SPEAKER_11: Now we have 13.
1:45
SPEAKER_11: And we've had some really good success.
1:47
SPEAKER_11: It's kind of like if you go to the casino and you win the first with the first five minutes, you kind of get hooked.
1:51
SPEAKER_11: Uh, we won on our second race, and so we got hooked uh and uh the horses, of course, are beautiful and magnificent, and it's something that Jenny and I get to do together and learn together.
2:01
SPEAKER_11: Every day we learn something new, and I think life's about always living just slightly outside your comfort zone.
2:06
SPEAKER_11: Uh, this is something we know nothing about or knew nothing about.
2:09
SPEAKER_11: I think we learned quite a bit about, and winning helps too.
2:12
SPEAKER_11: So if you were if we were a baseball player, you know, in your first two weeks and you're batting 500, I think that's great, but you know it's not gonna last.
2:20
SPEAKER_11: So we've been at it two years, and our win percentage is 55%, and our in-the-money percentage is 75%.
2:25
SPEAKER_11: That's not gonna last, but it's been fun while it has.
2:28
SPEAKER_11: Why did you decide to do this?
2:30
SPEAKER_11: Well, you know, we uh bumped into somebody that suggested to us that we should do pin hooking.
2:35
SPEAKER_11: That's where you buy a horse at six months and sell it at a year.
2:38
SPEAKER_11: And the theory is you double or triple your money.
2:40
SPEAKER_11: I didn't really believe that would be true, but I thought, what the heck, we'll give it a try.
2:44
SPEAKER_11: Um, it is true.
2:45
SPEAKER_11: We doubled our money on each horse that we that we sold, but when you figure all the costs that you have into it, you're barely breaking even.
2:52
SPEAKER_11: And my wife got really attached to the horses.
2:54
SPEAKER_11: So Jenny would just fall in love with the little horses, and to sell them was not very fun for her.
2:58
SPEAKER_11: We kept one of them to race.
3:00
SPEAKER_11: She came in second on our first race and came in first on the second race.
3:03
SPEAKER_11: And after that, we realized we'd really just rather do the racing.
3:07
SPEAKER_11: And now we've gravitated or graduated, you might say, or evolved to uh uh uh breeding.
3:13
SPEAKER_11: And so we've got a horse now that's in full, and our goal long term is to have uh 10 brood mares each year uh breeding to the top sires in the in the country and have 10 fals a year.
3:24
SPEAKER_11: So each year we'll have our our core.
3:26
SPEAKER_11: If it was a football team, it would be our freshmen, sophomore, juniors, and seniors.
3:30
SPEAKER_11: They race at two, three, four, and five years old.
3:32
SPEAKER_11: So we'll have 10 horses in each cohort uh racing each year, and then later on they'll either be become stallions or or brew mares.
3:40
SPEAKER_11: And I did an interview after one of the last wins, and I shared with uh so the lady asked me uh about our strategy, and I told her, you know, at boy racing, we are very disciplined.
3:51
SPEAKER_11: We have a strategy and we stick to it.
3:53
SPEAKER_11: However, we change our strategy every month, but whatever the strategy is, we're disciplined.
3:58
SPEAKER_11: For that 30 or 31 days, you are totally disciplined.
4:01
SPEAKER_11: Exactly.
4:02
SPEAKER_11: So what I just shared with you, that's the strategy today.
4:04
SPEAKER_11: Maybe a little bit different next month, but right now that's the strategy.
4:07
SPEAKER_17: Through your whole life, though, you have taken on new things at different points.
4:12
SPEAKER_17: Uh buying the Knoxville Smokies, building Covenant Health Park downtown Knoxville.
4:19
SPEAKER_17: Um you're running.
4:22
SPEAKER_17: That was not something you started doing right away.
4:24
SPEAKER_17: And I mean, you weren't a runner from the time you were 15 on.
4:28
SPEAKER_11: Well, yeah, I ran on the cross-country team.
4:30
SPEAKER_11: Okay, in high school.
4:31
SPEAKER_11: In high school.
4:31
SPEAKER_11: And on my 16th birthday, I ran from my home in South Knoxville to uh uh Gatlinburg, which was 31 miles.
4:37
SPEAKER_11: So I I kind of like challenging myself.
4:39
SPEAKER_11: And I always had in my mind that I would do a marathon, but never really scheduled the time.
4:44
SPEAKER_11: And then when I was 43 years old, uh decided I wanted to climb mountains.
4:47
SPEAKER_11: So I climbed Mount Rainier, uh, and that was gonna be a thing.
4:50
SPEAKER_11: And at the end of climbing Mount Rainier, I felt like, you know, I'm in the best shape I've ever been in a really long time.
4:55
SPEAKER_11: If I'm ever gonna run a marathon, this would be the time to do it.
4:58
SPEAKER_11: They say if you run a marathon, you either run one or you run a bunch.
5:02
SPEAKER_11: Nobody runs just two.
5:03
SPEAKER_11: You either really liked it or you hated it, and I liked it.
5:06
SPEAKER_11: And uh so I started um running a marathon every fall and climbing a mountain every winter, and then uh uh mountain climbing became a little dangerous, and my wife encouraged me to stop.
5:16
SPEAKER_11: So I did, and uh, and have been running marathons ever since.
5:19
SPEAKER_11: So I didn't do my first marathon until I was 43, and now I've done 57 fulls, uh, 100 halves.
5:26
SPEAKER_11: I've done uh marathon on every continent, including Antarctica and the seven majors, uh, which is the seven biggest marathons in the world.
5:32
SPEAKER_11: And I've done five of the seven majors twice.
5:34
SPEAKER_11: So my next goal is just to do the seven majors uh two times.
5:37
SPEAKER_11: So it's not that many people that have done that.
5:39
SPEAKER_11: Next year I'm gonna do Tokyo and Australia, and then I'll make the seven majors.
5:43
SPEAKER_11: Then I gotta come up with a new goal.
5:44
SPEAKER_11: I'm not sure what that is yet, but we'll we're working on it.
5:46
SPEAKER_11: So do you go out and run every day?
5:48
SPEAKER_11: Uh about five days a week.
5:50
SPEAKER_11: And every week.
5:50
SPEAKER_11: And I found that it's easier just to stay in shape, always to run a marathon, than to drop down and come back up.
5:56
SPEAKER_11: Back when I used to do a mountain in the winter and a marathon in the fall, I would I have to start back up every summer, and it's just hard getting back up.
6:04
SPEAKER_11: So now every week for the last 20 years, my minimum uh distance in my long run will be like 12 to 13 miles.
6:11
SPEAKER_11: So if you asked me to do a half marathon tomorrow, I'd be I'd be ready.
6:15
SPEAKER_17: How do you keep up with everything going on in your life?
6:18
SPEAKER_11: Well, you know, I so I had knee surgery in 2023.
6:21
SPEAKER_11: Everybody for all those years would ask, Well, how are your knees?
6:23
SPEAKER_11: And I'd say, My knees were fine, and then suddenly they weren't.
6:25
SPEAKER_11: And so I had like everything done on the left knee.
6:27
SPEAKER_11: It's a whole long story, but um but I found that the almost eight months that I wasn't able to run, it was harder on my mental health and my physical health.
6:37
SPEAKER_11: I could find other physical things to do, but for me, running is therapeutic.
6:41
SPEAKER_11: It's my time to be able to think and reflect.
6:43
SPEAKER_11: So I get up every morning at 4:30.
6:45
SPEAKER_11: I'm exercising by 5:30, mostly uh running, and I don't listen to music, I'm running by myself.
6:51
SPEAKER_11: And so for that hour and hour and a half, that's my time to think about my day, plan uh strategies and and uh other things.
6:59
SPEAKER_11: So it's my my therapeutic time.
7:01
SPEAKER_11: So it's actually, I think it helps me get through the day.
7:03
SPEAKER_11: It's not a distraction, but uh something that builds on the day.
7:06
SPEAKER_17: But your business acumen is is well known and understanding what you what you've done throughout your career, and then you become the president of UT.
7:15
SPEAKER_17: So you still have the business things, you still have your interests, you still have your challenges.
7:20
SPEAKER_17: And oh, by the way, you're the president of the University of Tennessee system.
7:26
SPEAKER_17: It's wild to me that you can keep everything in its place, but you you really feel like the running at 430 kind of gets you centered to be able to do that.
7:36
SPEAKER_11: No, that does, it gives me the opportunity to plan.
7:38
SPEAKER_11: And I would flip what you just said, and that my primary job is president of the University of Tennessee.
7:42
SPEAKER_11: That's that's the 60 to 80 hour a week job.
7:45
SPEAKER_11: And the other things uh take care of themselves.
7:47
SPEAKER_11: I get involved on occasion with the property development or with the baseball team, but they really don't need me.
7:52
SPEAKER_11: Every now and then I'll come up with a really fun idea that they will politely tell me it's not a good idea.
7:56
SPEAKER_11: Like I had this idea that you know in center field that we would have a hot air balloon and people could pay and float up and watch the game, and that and they said, Well, that's kind of in the batter's eye, and they manage to talk me out of that.
8:07
SPEAKER_11: So my contribution is usually coming up with some silly ideas that they diplomatically tell me not to not to do.
8:13
SPEAKER_11: But the trick is that with all these things, it's just to hire great people.
8:16
SPEAKER_11: You know, I've got great people and all my chancellors at each one of the campuses, Don D.
8:20
SPEAKER_11: Plowman here at Knoxville, uh Chancellor Fleerman, who I was with all day yesterday out in West Tennessee at UT Martin.
8:25
SPEAKER_11: Um, at the at the baseball team, I did have this great uh leader named Doug Kirchhoffer, who now is replaced by another great leader, Chris Allen.
8:32
SPEAKER_11: But in every place, I've got great leaders, and my job is just to support them.
8:36
SPEAKER_11: If I do a good job supporting them, they can run the business.
8:39
SPEAKER_17: Okay, I I don't mean to sound skeptical, but for people who are in charge and do things well, it is often hard for them to do what you say and hire good people and then leave them alone.
8:50
SPEAKER_17: You clearly can do that.
8:53
SPEAKER_17: Was it hard to learn to do that?
8:55
SPEAKER_17: Or is that something that acquired a long period of time to accept I really do have to turn these people loose?
9:03
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, that's a great question.
9:04
SPEAKER_11: I so first it maybe kind of it ties to another question people always ask do you think leaders are born or developed?
9:09
SPEAKER_11: I believe they're developed.
9:10
SPEAKER_11: I believe uh becoming a leader is light shooting free throws.
9:13
SPEAKER_11: Uh, you can read books, you can watch YouTube videos, but if you really want to be a good free throw shooter, you gotta toe the line and practice.
9:19
SPEAKER_11: The same thing with leadership.
9:21
SPEAKER_11: And so uh as I was developing as a leader, probably one of the hardest things I did when I was uh early mid 30s, I had my company Pet Safe.
9:30
SPEAKER_11: Um started the company in 1991.
9:32
SPEAKER_11: And as we grew, when we first started off, I was doing everything.
9:35
SPEAKER_11: It was easy to not be in charge of uh accounting.
9:39
SPEAKER_11: It was easy to you know, hire a CFO, it was easy to hire somebody that was in charge of the engineering, easy to hire somebody that was in charge of purchasing.
9:45
SPEAKER_11: But I was kind of a good salesman.
9:46
SPEAKER_11: I really liked selling, I liked getting out and and making the calls.
9:49
SPEAKER_11: And um, I thought I was actually pretty good at it.
9:51
SPEAKER_11: But I realized if I didn't hire somebody to take that job from me, I could never really grow the company.
9:56
SPEAKER_11: I could only grow as as big as the number of sales calls I could personally make.
10:00
SPEAKER_11: So I had to hire a vice president of sales to basically fire myself from the one thing I was good at.
10:05
SPEAKER_11: And that was hard.
10:05
SPEAKER_11: But then I realized that if I was ever going to scale, you've got to be able to uh hire other people to do even things that you think you could might maybe do better.
10:14
SPEAKER_11: And so um, that's something I learned fairly early on.
10:17
SPEAKER_11: And um, now I fortunately found out that uh I really have no skills at all left, and I there's always somebody better to do pretty much everything.
10:25
SPEAKER_17: Randy Boyd is the president of the University of Tennessee.
10:27
SPEAKER_17: He joins us for the big interview brought to you by Clayton Holmes, Oakwid Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee.
10:33
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SPEAKER_17: We continue with the big interview on the Mike Keith show presented by Clayton Holmes, Oakwood Holmes, and Love Homes of Tennessee.
14:52
SPEAKER_17: This is Randy Boyd, the president of the University of Tennessee.
14:57
SPEAKER_17: Okay, this is gonna sound like a smart aleck question.
15:00
SPEAKER_17: So let's just say just bear with.
15:08
SPEAKER_17: What does the president of the University of Tennessee do?
15:12
SPEAKER_11: And I get that question a lot.
15:13
SPEAKER_11: So I'm gonna share the aspirational uh uh answer, and then I'll share the like the day to a answer.
15:21
SPEAKER_11: So the aspirational answer, um my goal, my job as the president is to set the mission for the university, to set something that's inspiring and aspiring for us all to go to.
15:29
SPEAKER_11: We're gonna make this the greatest decade in the history of the University of Tennessee, and considering we've been around since uh 1794.
15:35
SPEAKER_11: That's that's a lot of decades to compare to guessing maybe another question would be what was the previous best decade, in my opinion.
15:42
SPEAKER_11: But set the set the vision.
15:44
SPEAKER_11: Second thing is create a strategy, have metrics, and make sure that all my folks are uh working toward those those those goals.
15:51
SPEAKER_11: Um and then third is to hire great people and making sure that we've got the people on the on the team to be able to achieve what we do.
15:58
SPEAKER_11: And that's a big, big challenge, by the way, making sure we got great people investing in them.
16:02
SPEAKER_11: And the final thing is to create a set of values that which creates our culture and make sure that we have this culture that's lasting.
16:08
SPEAKER_11: And that's probably what I spend the most time on.
16:11
SPEAKER_11: Um so that's the aspirational goal, what I do on a daily basis.
16:14
SPEAKER_11: So I've got 17 direct reports, so just managing 17 people, even though I say I don't do any work, they do the work, but just making sure that I'm supporting them in their work takes a bit of time.
16:24
SPEAKER_11: Um, we I'm on 18 different boards.
16:27
SPEAKER_11: Uh, fortunately for me, uh only 11 of them expect me to show up.
16:30
SPEAKER_11: But uh uh the other seven they just put me on there for just for for show.
16:34
SPEAKER_11: But but going to 11 board meetings uh is is is a lot if you start thinking each one meets three times or three or four times a year.
16:40
SPEAKER_11: And then um we have five campuses.
16:43
SPEAKER_11: Um I try to make every campus at least once a month, sometimes twice a month.
16:47
SPEAKER_11: So I'm traveling the state all the time.
16:49
SPEAKER_11: I'm responsible for government relations.
16:51
SPEAKER_11: Uh and I spend a lot of time in Nashville, some time in DC, making sure the people that we work for, which is the state, the people of the state of Tennessee, believe in what we're doing and understand what we're doing and support us.
17:02
SPEAKER_11: Um so those are some of the major things.
17:05
SPEAKER_11: And then on occasion, like pretty much every day, you have a surprise event.
17:09
SPEAKER_11: Somebody we got 15,000 employees and 65,000 students, and somebody's gonna do something that might re- involve me uh pretty much every day.
17:18
SPEAKER_11: And then on occasion, uh you have a football game though in which your uh Knoxville volunteer or UT volunteers are playing uh the number one team in the country.
17:28
SPEAKER_11: Uh and ESPN Game Day is also gonna be on your campus, and two days before that you get a call from the White House that the president's gonna make a stop.
17:36
SPEAKER_11: So things like that that are not expected to happen pretty much every day.
17:40
SPEAKER_17: So the Knoxville campus is not people hear University of Tennessee and they think Knoxville immediately.
17:48
SPEAKER_17: Right.
17:49
SPEAKER_17: But you've got UT Southern and Pulaski, which is growing like crazy.
17:53
SPEAKER_17: Yeah, UT Martin, which is flourishing, UT Chattanooga, which is fantastic, the medical school, and then you have the Space Institute as well.
18:02
SPEAKER_17: Yeah.
18:02
SPEAKER_17: That hit them all?
18:03
SPEAKER_11: Uh not quite.
18:04
SPEAKER_11: Okay.
18:04
SPEAKER_11: So the Space Institute reports into the engineering department at uh UT Knoxville.
18:10
SPEAKER_11: Okay.
18:10
SPEAKER_11: So I don't really spend much time on the Space Institute.
18:12
SPEAKER_11: We also have something called the Institute of Public Service, which uh trains every city manager in the in the state, every county manager in the state.
18:20
SPEAKER_11: It also has uh something called the Center for Industrial Services that supports businesses.
18:25
SPEAKER_11: So the Institute of Public Services is uh is a very significant organization under the radar, but does a lot of really important work.
18:32
SPEAKER_11: Um I the share of the responsibility of managing the Institute of Agriculture, which has 95 extension offices all across the state.
18:39
SPEAKER_11: And I'm proud to say that was the first president to make all 95 extension offices, one in every single county.
18:45
SPEAKER_11: And on the side, as part of my job as the president of the University of Tessie, I'm the chairman of Oak Ridge National Labs, a little science laboratory over at Oak Ridge that has 7,500 of the smartest engineers and scientists in the world.
18:56
SPEAKER_17: Okay, so with all of that in mind, do you have to dedicate a certain amount of time specifically to each campus, or is it more as things come up or are as needed?
19:10
SPEAKER_11: Uh a little of both.
19:11
SPEAKER_11: I mean, there's there's things that come up with each campus that I need to be there for a specific thing.
19:15
SPEAKER_11: Like we're opening up a new college of medicine uh building or doing the groundbreaking for a new college of medicine building in Memphis uh two weeks from now.
19:22
SPEAKER_11: And I of course I have to be there for that.
19:24
SPEAKER_11: So there's things like that that you that you want to be at.
19:27
SPEAKER_11: But but I I do strive to make sure that I'm supporting all the campuses.
19:32
SPEAKER_11: I don't want to be considered the even though I I live in Knoxville, I went to UT uh uh Knoxville, I don't want to be considered the UT Knoxville president.
19:40
SPEAKER_11: I want to be the president for all the campuses.
19:41
SPEAKER_11: So I if you had five children, you'd want to show them all equal amount of love and and attention, and I try to try to do that regardless of the size.
19:48
SPEAKER_17: Well, because I mean different people in the state who have the interest to go to school have different needs and they have different uh availability of resources to be able to do it.
19:59
SPEAKER_17: Like uh UT Southern is a is a great example in Pulaski for so many people in that area, it just makes sense to go to school there and understanding that responsibility and what was that opportunity for Tennessee, the entire system.
20:14
SPEAKER_11: Maybe I could talk about UT Southern and why that was so important.
20:17
SPEAKER_11: But one of the things that I'm personally motivated to do, but I think our board is motivated for us to do as well, is to make sure that we can make university experience at U at UT, wherever you go, affordable and accessible to as many students as possible.
20:30
SPEAKER_11: I'm really proud that last year 55% of our graduates or graduates graduated with zero debt.
20:35
SPEAKER_11: So that's an important thing.
20:37
SPEAKER_11: We created something called the UT Promise in my first year on the on the job, which now now makes it possible for anybody that has an income under$75,000 to go to any one of our campuses free of tuition and fees.
20:47
SPEAKER_11: That's two-thirds of all Tennesseans can go to UT free of tuition and fees.
20:51
SPEAKER_11: So that's a big deal.
20:52
SPEAKER_17: When you got the job as UT president, I'm sure you had a uh several expectations of what the job would be, what the responsibilities would be.
21:02
SPEAKER_17: What was the biggest surprise as you got into it that you had no idea that the president of the University of Tennessee would have to handle?
21:10
SPEAKER_11: Oh, that's a really big question.
21:12
SPEAKER_11: Um I remember when I was the before.
21:15
SPEAKER_11: Okay, so maybe tell a story.
21:17
SPEAKER_11: So I ran for governor um and I lost.
21:19
SPEAKER_11: Spectacular in the end.
21:21
SPEAKER_11: I had this uh uh little water tower in downtown Knoxville and had ready boy for governor on it.
21:26
SPEAKER_11: Like the day after I lost, a lady named Tiffany Carpenter calls me up and says, Hey, Sam is how you're not using that water tower anymore.
21:31
SPEAKER_11: What do you think if we painted Everywhere You Look, UT?
21:34
SPEAKER_11: I thought, well, it's my alma mater, sure, you can do whatever you want.
21:36
SPEAKER_11: But I also hung over the phone thinking, what a silly slogan.
21:39
SPEAKER_11: Everywhere you look, UT.
21:40
SPEAKER_11: What does what does that mean?
21:41
SPEAKER_11: I got the job uh two weeks later, and I realized that was also totally unexpected.
21:46
SPEAKER_11: We can come to that.
21:47
SPEAKER_11: But um, I remember uh learning very quickly that literally everywhere you look, the University of Tennessee is there.
21:54
SPEAKER_11: You got extension offices in every one of the 95 counties.
21:57
SPEAKER_11: We now have the five campuses, something that people adopt.
22:00
SPEAKER_11: Think about but the UT Health Sciences, which is based in Memphis, they have over seven hundred and fifty clinics um all across the state in which either our faculty or students are teaching or training.
22:10
SPEAKER_11: So the UT Health Sciences is in every corner of the state.
22:13
SPEAKER_11: So and then the the the reach that we have with Oak Ridge National Labs are literally everywhere you look, the university is there making an impact in some way.
22:21
SPEAKER_11: So that's it.
22:22
SPEAKER_17: And it shocked you that it was as deep and as intertwined in so many different ways, connecting so many people in the state.
22:31
SPEAKER_11: That's a little digression, but when I ran for governor, I had a mission to help help uh support the rural communities of our state, help drive economic uh growth, and help uh the state complete the drive to 55, something I started with uh with Governor Haslum in 2013, which was providing more education for more people in the state.
22:48
SPEAKER_11: And when I lost, uh I thought, well, I'll find another way.
22:51
SPEAKER_11: I'll buy up little newspapers and we'll promote some of the main things and just thinking of other strategies.
22:56
SPEAKER_11: Had no idea about the opportunity to be a UT president.
23:00
SPEAKER_11: Uh so Joe T Pietro, my predecessor in this job, who actually supported me uh for uh for governor, uh called up like the next day and says, Hey, you want to get together for lunch?
23:10
SPEAKER_11: And I said, sure.
23:11
SPEAKER_11: I gave it to my assistant Hannah.
23:13
SPEAKER_11: But I know, so being CEO of my company, um running for governor, commissioner of economic and community development, people would always ask me to go out for lunch, and I'd always very um uh disingenuously say, Oh, that'll be great.
23:26
SPEAKER_11: Well, I'll see you right away.
23:27
SPEAKER_11: And knowing it's gonna be like months because I guess all that stuff.
23:30
SPEAKER_11: I'm busy.
23:31
SPEAKER_11: Uh so I give it to my assistant, and she calls back like an hour later, you got no stuff.
23:35
SPEAKER_11: Nobody wants to see you.
23:36
SPEAKER_11: You can see them tomorrow.
23:37
SPEAKER_11: So uh I see Joe the next day, and uh after lunch, he says, What do you think about being the president of the University of Tennessee on an interim basis until we can find somebody that's actually qualified to do the job?
23:47
SPEAKER_11: So, well, sure, I'll I'll do it for six months.
23:50
SPEAKER_11: And the thing that was um I guess another thing that was surprising was uh one, we set some big transformational goals like creating the UT Promise.
23:57
SPEAKER_11: I need to hire a chancellor for UT Knoxville.
23:59
SPEAKER_11: We merged the Institute of Agriculture back with the main campus.
24:02
SPEAKER_11: We created something called the uh uh UTORI, the Institute of for uh um innovation with Oak Ridge.
24:08
SPEAKER_11: So we created a lot of did a lot of big things in the last in that first six months.
24:12
SPEAKER_11: And the thing that I realized that was so most important and why I'm still here today is that if you want to make an impact on the lives of the people of Tennessee, there is no better place than at the University of Tennessee.
24:24
SPEAKER_11: So that's why I'm here and that's why I love this job.
24:26
SPEAKER_17: Or with President Randy Boyd from the University of Tennessee when we continue on the big interview on the Mike Keith Show, this edition presented by Clayton Holmes, Oakwood Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee.
24:38
SPEAKER_16: It's in your hall for coaches and players.
24:41
SPEAKER_18: One-on-one from Rocky Top.
24:43
SPEAKER_18: It's your ball network.
25:00
SPEAKER_17: We continue on the Mike Keith Show, the big interview edition as we sit down with University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd.
25:06
SPEAKER_17: This edition of the show is brought to you by Clayton Holmes, Oakwood Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee.
25:13
SPEAKER_17: You become the interim president of the University of Tennessee in 2018.
25:18
SPEAKER_17: Was it in some ways freeing that you thought I'm only going to do this for a year?
25:23
SPEAKER_17: So I'll go in and do try to do these things and make these things happen and let it rip in this way and try to put a little mark, make an improvement, and then hand it off to somebody else.
25:34
SPEAKER_11: I yes, and I know I've actually been in this role now, in a similar role since 2013.
25:40
SPEAKER_11: So at some point I realized that in my business career that I had all that I needed to live a comfortable life and to support my children and support a lot of different charities.
25:49
SPEAKER_11: And so then I've had a sequence of uh jobs which um I haven't got paid for.
25:53
SPEAKER_11: So I haven't actually been on a payroll since 2013.
25:57
SPEAKER_11: So 13 years um being special advisor on higher education, commissioner of uh uh economic and community development, now the president of the University of Tennessee.
26:05
SPEAKER_11: I sometimes give students this uh advice.
26:07
SPEAKER_11: It's probably the least valuable advice they'll ever get.
26:10
SPEAKER_11: It's amazing the number of the kind of jobs that you can get if you're willing to work for free.
26:13
SPEAKER_11: Uh so uh sounds like broadcast.
26:16
SPEAKER_11: But the nice part about it is it allows me to be uh come in and be transformational.
26:22
SPEAKER_11: I it if somebody wants to fire me tomorrow, that's fine.
26:24
SPEAKER_11: Um, but I want to make a difference and we want to be innovative and make an impact.
26:28
SPEAKER_11: And um by by be being able to approach the jobs in that way, it does allow you to take some chances.
26:35
SPEAKER_11: And we try to encourage, though, regardless of whether you're getting paid for uh or not getting paid.
26:39
SPEAKER_11: We want all the uh the all of our colleagues in the University of Tennessee to feel the same way.
26:44
SPEAKER_11: They want to be empowered to feel uh to be bold, to be impactful, to take some chances.
26:49
SPEAKER_11: And it's okay to fail.
26:50
SPEAKER_11: And so we talk about creating a culture.
26:53
SPEAKER_11: We want to create a culture in which people realize it's okay to fail.
26:55
SPEAKER_11: Because if you're not failing, that means you're not trying.
26:57
SPEAKER_11: If you're not trying, you're not being innovative.
26:59
SPEAKER_11: If you're not gonna be innovative, you're not gonna be successful.
27:02
SPEAKER_17: When did it become obvious to you that this was something you wanted to continue doing beyond just the annual?
27:09
SPEAKER_11: Uh probably within the first six months by the spring of that year.
27:14
SPEAKER_11: Uh, two things.
27:15
SPEAKER_11: One, we were able to make a lot of big changes, but two, they weren't done yet.
27:19
SPEAKER_11: Like creating the UT Promise.
27:21
SPEAKER_11: We haven't really launched it, we just created it.
27:23
SPEAKER_11: We and we needed to get funding for it.
27:25
SPEAKER_11: We created the Institute of Uh the Oak the UT Oak Ridge Innovation Institute.
27:30
SPEAKER_11: So we created it, but we haven't actually got it off and running.
27:32
SPEAKER_11: Uh, we merged the Institute of Agriculture with UT Noxle.
27:36
SPEAKER_11: That was a thing, by the way.
27:37
SPEAKER_11: A lot of people didn't really like us doing that, like me doing that.
27:40
SPEAKER_11: And so I spent probably the next year uh talking with people that were um unhappy and trying to get them on board.
27:48
SPEAKER_11: And so uh uh part of it was just knowing that I still had some big things left to do.
27:52
SPEAKER_11: And and as I sit here today, there's still big things left to do.
27:54
SPEAKER_11: We want to make this the greatest decade.
27:56
SPEAKER_11: We've got a lot of really big projects still left to accomplish, and I want to make sure I see those through.
28:01
SPEAKER_17: One of the big things you did was hire Dondi Plowman as chancellor.
28:04
SPEAKER_17: Yeah.
28:04
SPEAKER_17: Why was she the right answer at that moment?
28:07
SPEAKER_11: Well, you know, uh and for this moment.
28:09
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, when I first took this job, I said I had five big goals.
28:14
SPEAKER_11: I think those that some of the things I've just talked about were were on those on that list.
28:18
SPEAKER_11: And one was, and I said probably the most important thing was in that six months was to hire a great chancellor for UT Knoxville.
28:26
SPEAKER_11: We had four candidates, and uh it was actually we had some really good uh competition for the role, but in the end, I I think I had this epiphany that you know Don D was the right person, um, and she's lived up to that.
28:36
SPEAKER_11: It actually exceeded all expectations.
28:39
SPEAKER_11: Uh one of the things I was looking for um was hiring.
28:42
SPEAKER_11: I think, you know, if people say, Well, why are we aligned?
28:45
SPEAKER_11: Well, uh, we got to hire each other.
28:47
SPEAKER_11: Uh so uh John Compton hired me to find a person that had business acumen that would be innovative and and take bold initiatives.
28:54
SPEAKER_11: I was looking for the same thing.
28:55
SPEAKER_11: I remember when I got this job, uh of all the I had this this question, I would ask uh my the governor, my former the former president, uh the chancellor at UT Knoxville, uh relative to the other SEC schools, where would you say our growth in enrollment is relative to them?
29:13
SPEAKER_11: And everybody would say, Oh, probably about the middle of the pack.
29:15
SPEAKER_11: We were dead last.
29:16
SPEAKER_11: Of all the 14 SEC schools of the time, we were the only one that had declined in enrollment in the previous 10 years.
29:21
SPEAKER_11: And nobody even knew.
29:23
SPEAKER_11: Um, so we needed somebody to focus on enrollment and focus on growth.
29:26
SPEAKER_11: And so anybody that we would hire needed to be focused on that.
29:29
SPEAKER_11: Donde convinced me that she would be the person that could that could lead that growth and she has and and exceeded expectations.
29:36
SPEAKER_17: Jim Haslam mentions when he talks about his pride in the University of Tennessee at this moment in time, the alignment.
29:44
SPEAKER_17: He talks about it every time he talks about Tennessee, and he talks about Randy Boyd and Dante Ploughman, and you two are certainly well known.
29:53
SPEAKER_17: John Compton, the chairman of the board.
29:56
SPEAKER_17: Um who is he and why is he such a big part of that alignment, even though he doesn't get mentioned as much?
30:04
SPEAKER_11: Oh, it's my fault if he doesn't get mentioned as much because he's my boss and he should get a lot of a lot of attention.
30:09
SPEAKER_11: But no, John's first a very astute business person.
30:13
SPEAKER_11: He was a president of uh PepsiCo, so he understands large organizations, leading organizations.
30:19
SPEAKER_11: Um, he's also work now working for a private equity company that manages uh dozens of companies in their portfolio.
30:25
SPEAKER_11: So he's used to being on boards asking challenging questions.
30:28
SPEAKER_11: Um, he knows uh about hiring good people.
30:31
SPEAKER_11: I'd like to think he did a really good job in this case, but um, so he's got that that uh business acumen that he brings to the table.
30:39
SPEAKER_11: But in addition, he's passionate about UT.
30:41
SPEAKER_11: He grew up in Greenville, Tennessee.
30:42
SPEAKER_11: He graduated from the University of Tennessee.
30:44
SPEAKER_11: He's passionate about uh all things, uh UT across the system, but particularly about UT Knoxville.
30:50
SPEAKER_11: So you have somebody that's got talent and it's got passion, so it's a good combination.
30:54
SPEAKER_17: Danny White is also mentioned in that.
30:56
SPEAKER_17: He's the director of athletics.
30:58
SPEAKER_17: You wouldn't naturally at some institutions think about the chairman of the board and the chancellor and the president, oh, and the AD too.
31:06
SPEAKER_17: But why is Danny more than an athletic director at Tennessee and also part of that alignment of leadership overall?
31:15
SPEAKER_11: Well, I think if Danny wasn't an athletic director, he'd be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
31:19
SPEAKER_11: He's got the business acumen, the innovation, the uh innovation, uh, the boldness that you would need to be a successful person in a in leading any organization or any business.
31:29
SPEAKER_11: And today's athletics are a business.
31:32
SPEAKER_11: Um you've got a over$300 million operation with hundreds of people, and uh it's uh take somebody that understands leadership, that understands business first and foremost.
31:40
SPEAKER_11: Uh there was a time when you could have athletic directors that were good coaches, they and but it's it's so much more than that.
31:47
SPEAKER_11: And Danny is the the uh uh exact profile what you would look for in a athletic director today.
31:54
SPEAKER_17: Athletics at Tennessee is more than just the ball teams, so to speak.
32:00
SPEAKER_17: Why do you think the athletic department at the University of Tennessee is such a big part of the front-facing nature and the connector of this university?
32:12
SPEAKER_11: Well, it's probably the best way to build our brand.
32:14
SPEAKER_11: You know, every Saturday or in basketball season, what's Tuesdays and Saturdays, but we're constantly on TV building the brand.
32:21
SPEAKER_11: Our athletes represent the brand well.
32:23
SPEAKER_11: Joe Johnson, who's a hero of mine, one of my predecessors in this role, used to say this was the front door of the university, and it is.
32:30
SPEAKER_17: Or with Randy Boyd, president of the University of Tennessee, when we continue on the big interview as part of the Mike Keith show, presented by Clayton Holmes, Oakwood Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee.
32:41
SPEAKER_09: You're one-on-one with Mike Keith, sponsored by Food City, the official supermarket of the Tennessee Volunteers.
32:48
SPEAKER_09: By Farm Bureau Insurance, the official insurance of the vault, Tennessee Insurance for Tennessee life.
32:55
SPEAKER_09: By First Horizon, Big Bank Muscle, Small Bank Hustle.
32:59
SPEAKER_09: By Pilot, official travel stop of the vault.
33:02
SPEAKER_09: See you out here.
33:04
SPEAKER_09: By Rackley Roofing, let us fix your lead, the proud official roofer of the big horns.
33:10
SPEAKER_09: And by UT Medical, the official healthcare provider of the vault.
33:18
SPEAKER_05: Hello, and welcome to Ask Coach Eiffel.
33:21
SPEAKER_05: I'm your host, Josh Eiffel.
33:23
SPEAKER_05: Jim as Coach Eiffel.
33:25
SPEAKER_05: Got a tailgating tip.
33:30
SPEAKER_05: Jim, did you know Food Studies gourmet burgers are handmade in store by a certified butcher?
33:35
SPEAKER_05: Saturday is almost here.
33:37
SPEAKER_05: Are you game day ready?
33:40
SPEAKER_05: This has been at Coach Eiffel with me, Coach Eiffel.
33:45
SPEAKER_04: Different seasons, different sports, same volunteer spirit.
33:49
SPEAKER_05: For over 30 years, Fall Nation has shown up.
33:53
SPEAKER_05: Now it's time to finish strong.
33:55
SPEAKER_05: Sort aluminum, sort plastic, keep landfills clean.
33:59
SPEAKER_05: And when you see green compost bins on campus, use them because the future is zero.
34:05
SPEAKER_04: And we're just getting started.
34:07
SPEAKER_04: Sponsored by Eastman, Waste Connections, UT Sustainability, and Food City.
34:14
SPEAKER_17: Saturdays are all about the big art.
34:17
SPEAKER_17: From the roar of Neeland Stadium to the energy of the tailgate, one thing belongs on every input menu for Calhoun.
34:25
SPEAKER_17: Whether you're dining in one of Calhoun's nine area restaurant locations, taking the beast of your tailgate, or grabbing a bike from one of Calhoun's locations inside Meeland Stadium.
35:14
SPEAKER_12: In the heart of every community, carrying comes naturally.
35:19
SPEAKER_12: At part of your own health plan, we are your neighbors, your friends, and partners in health.
35:25
SPEAKER_12: We believe everyone deserves the very best care tailored to your unique needs.
35:30
SPEAKER_12: Become a valued member of our family, and we'll take care of you and yours.
35:34
SPEAKER_12: Together we care.
35:36
SPEAKER_12: Together we grow.
35:38
SPEAKER_12: Together we thrive.
35:40
SPEAKER_12: Farm Bureau Health Plans.
35:42
SPEAKER_12: Plan on us.
35:44
SPEAKER_07: On the court, our team plays with both passion and discipline.
35:48
SPEAKER_07: Here, we rely on power and precision to win games.
35:52
SPEAKER_05: For our football team, we bring hardworking hustle and muscle to every matchup.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: Because being the best means bringing the best of big play energy and next play focus, like the folks at First Horizon, bringing you big bank solutions and small bank spirit.
36:08
SPEAKER_07: Big bank products, small bank passion.
36:10
SPEAKER_07: You get it all with First Horizon, the official bank of Tennessee Athletics.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: Being at the Valls game saved my life.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: It was a normal day going to the game with my son, but this time it felt like a sledgehammer hit my chest.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: The UT medical team knew exactly what they needed to do and just kept me calm throughout the process.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: It was probably the most serious heart attack that you could have.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: The team took care of me, worked quickly, efficiently, and I did catch the end of the game.
36:41
SPEAKER_10: These are the stories of the region's academic health system.
36:47
SPEAKER_17: Welcome back to the big interview on the Mike Heath Show, presented by Clayton Homes, Oakwood Homes and Love Homes of Tennessee, helping families across the state find their dream home.
36:57
SPEAKER_17: Randy Boyd, the 26th president of the University of Tennessee, is our guest.
37:01
SPEAKER_17: You grew up roughly five miles from here.
37:04
SPEAKER_17: Went to Doyle High School.
37:05
SPEAKER_17: That's right.
37:06
SPEAKER_11: Graduated when you were 16?
37:08
SPEAKER_11: From high school at 16.
37:09
SPEAKER_11: Started UT at 16.
37:10
SPEAKER_11: Graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville at age 19.
37:13
SPEAKER_11: As I always tell people, it wasn't because I was smart, but it was I was cheap.
37:17
SPEAKER_11: It just turns out that it's a lot cheaper to graduate early than it is to hang around.
37:20
SPEAKER_11: So you didn't exactly have all the AP credits and get through that way per se.
37:25
SPEAKER_11: Back in 1976, they didn't have AP credits.
37:27
SPEAKER_11: And you could oh the best you could do is a 4.0.
37:30
SPEAKER_11: None of this 4.3 or 5.0 or whatever that students can make today.
37:33
SPEAKER_11: But your dad didn't think you needed to go to college.
37:37
SPEAKER_11: Oh, that's right.
37:38
SPEAKER_11: Uh I'm the first one in my family's history to go to college.
37:40
SPEAKER_11: And I remember my last year of high school, um, my dad taking me aside saying, son, there's no need for you to go to college.
37:47
SPEAKER_11: College is a waste of time.
37:48
SPEAKER_11: You need a job, I can give you a job in the factory right now.
37:50
SPEAKER_11: That's the only reason why you go to college.
37:52
SPEAKER_11: But for me, um, I obviously I decided to go to UT.
37:55
SPEAKER_11: It was for multiple reasons.
37:57
SPEAKER_11: One, I actually enjoyed learning.
37:58
SPEAKER_11: I enjoyed the idea of learning new things.
38:01
SPEAKER_11: Um, I also uh just wanted the the accomplishment of having a degree.
38:05
SPEAKER_11: I thought it would just it would be something that I could carry on with me for the rest of my life to have a degree that I could uh look look on with pride.
38:12
SPEAKER_11: And then finally I had this vague idea that if I had a better uh education, I would probably be more successful.
38:17
SPEAKER_17: How does that background, that run from Doyle High School to come to UT, to say to your dad, I'm gonna go ahead and do this, then to work your way through college and to graduate three years, how is that experience most impactful today in what you do as Tennessee's president?
38:36
SPEAKER_11: Well, it makes me appreciate how hard it can be to get an education and how important it can be uh to someone's life and how transform transformational it can be.
38:45
SPEAKER_11: So my mission in life, prior to the University of Tennessee, I created something called Tennessee Achieves.
38:50
SPEAKER_11: We've now sent 133,000 young people to community or technical college free of charge.
38:55
SPEAKER_11: Um and uh so it's been a mission of mine for a long time.
38:58
SPEAKER_11: I would want to provide more people, like myself in particular, that first one in their family's history to go to college, that opportunity to go, making it affordable and accessible and transformational.
39:10
SPEAKER_17: So you're trying to give it back in as many different ways as you can.
39:15
SPEAKER_11: Well, uh may know, but I'm a Boy Scout.
39:17
SPEAKER_11: I was a Boy Scout growing up, I was a Boy Scout master for 17 years, and we teach a lot of things about the motto, be prepared, etc.
39:23
SPEAKER_11: You know, all those.
39:24
SPEAKER_11: But the thing that I always put a lot of emphasis on is the code of the outdoors, which was uh leave every trail better than you found it.
39:31
SPEAKER_11: And we literally did that.
39:32
SPEAKER_11: You know, if you were on a hike, if you saw a gum wrapper, it didn't matter if it was yours, you pick it up, you leave it better than you found it.
39:37
SPEAKER_11: But I always explain to the boys this is actually a metaphor for life.
39:41
SPEAKER_11: Wherever you go, whatever you do in life, make sure you leave it better than you found it.
39:45
SPEAKER_11: And so that's kind of my very simple goal in life is just to make the world a little better place for having been here.
39:50
SPEAKER_17: The steps in your life, it's it's been interesting in doing the research because some of them have made sense.
39:56
SPEAKER_17: And then some of them, like boyd racing and climbing mountains and running marathons and the different being a university president, being a university president, have been a little like, oh, okay.
40:07
SPEAKER_17: But everything does tie together in a way to where you are now.
40:11
SPEAKER_17: And so I wondered about this.
40:13
SPEAKER_17: You made the commitment after working for Governor Haslum's administration to run for governor.
40:19
SPEAKER_17: What did you take from that?
40:22
SPEAKER_17: Just like your experience going to UT, what did you take from that that adds to your success today as the University of Tennessee's president?
40:30
SPEAKER_11: You asked one question.
40:31
SPEAKER_11: I'm going to answer two questions.
40:32
SPEAKER_11: Okay.
40:32
SPEAKER_11: So I think the first question is just about you know um how all these things happened.
40:37
SPEAKER_11: I talk about it.
40:38
SPEAKER_11: Sometimes I get to do a commencement speech, and I talk about believing in serendipity.
40:42
SPEAKER_11: So ever since I've been 19 years old, I've been I've kept a schedule of my goals.
40:46
SPEAKER_11: I used to keep it on a on a uh just a piece of paper in the back of a legal pad.
40:50
SPEAKER_11: Now it's on a more sophisticated on a spreadsheet.
40:52
SPEAKER_11: But I have my my uh business goals, my uh or career goals, my educational goals, my adventure goals, my health goals, family goals, then I have it for one year, for five years, for life.
41:05
SPEAKER_11: And so I've been keeping this up every year and highlighting which ones I accomplished and what um what I didn't accomplish and updating it every every year.
41:12
SPEAKER_11: Um so and I think it's important, and I share that with with students and graduates, that it's important to always have goals, always have a plan.
41:19
SPEAKER_11: However, I look back on my life, the absolute best things in my life were not planned for.
41:23
SPEAKER_11: Serendipity is uh something unexpected that's better than you plan for.
41:27
SPEAKER_11: I never planned on meeting Jenny, uh, best thing that ever happened in my life.
41:31
SPEAKER_11: Um then and actually originally planned on working for my dad, but that didn't work out.
41:35
SPEAKER_11: Started my own company that failed, um, started a second company that was successful, started a third company that was even more successful.
41:41
SPEAKER_11: Governor Haslam asked me to be special advisor for higher education.
41:44
SPEAKER_11: Actually, he asked me to come work for him at higher education.
41:46
SPEAKER_11: I just made up that title, by the way.
41:48
SPEAKER_11: But uh that turned out to be transformational, realizing that if you really want to make an impact, being in public service is the best place.
41:54
SPEAKER_11: I hadn't planned on running for governor, but I believed in the work that we were doing and I wanted to make sure that we could continue it, ran, failed.
42:01
SPEAKER_11: Um, and then as we already talked about, Joe DPH who asked me if I wanted to do this job for six months.
42:06
SPEAKER_11: So some of the best things in life are those things that are unexpected.
42:10
SPEAKER_11: Uh but look for, and I always share with folks, um, if you expect serendipity, it will happen.
42:15
SPEAKER_11: If you wake up every day thinking, you know, I wonder what I haven't planned that's going to come my way, that's gonna be even better than I expected.
42:22
SPEAKER_11: And if you look for serendipity, if you expect serendipity, you'll find it.
42:26
SPEAKER_11: So a message on serendipity as far as this is me rationalizing being qualified for the job.
42:31
SPEAKER_11: So just keep that in mind.
42:33
SPEAKER_11: But so being a business person is important, under understanding about how to lead people, how to create goals, how to create metrics, how to organize.
42:41
SPEAKER_11: So that's and being innovative and bold.
42:44
SPEAKER_11: Um, however, that's not enough.
42:45
SPEAKER_11: A lot of times I'll hear people say, Well, it's great that you're a business person that's now running a university.
42:50
SPEAKER_11: We need more business people, but there's more to that because especially if you're a public university, you're working for the people of the state of Tennessee, you're working with the state government, you need to understand how state government works.
43:00
SPEAKER_11: And so those two years being a commissioner of economic and community development, understanding how laws are passed, understanding um how the state government works, and building the relationships has been really, really important.
43:13
SPEAKER_11: And running for governor, as a commissioner of ECD, I went to every county.
43:17
SPEAKER_11: So I got to know the state pretty well, but really in a fairly narrow band, uh just focusing on economic development and bit the business side.
43:24
SPEAKER_11: When you run for governor, you get to know everybody in every walk of life.
43:28
SPEAKER_11: And through it, I went to every single county uh at least five times.
43:32
SPEAKER_11: I went to Shelby County, for example, 52 times.
43:35
SPEAKER_11: You get to know everybody on a very intimate level.
43:38
SPEAKER_11: As the president of the University of Tennessee, a university, the land grant university that's here to serve the people of Tennessee.
43:43
SPEAKER_11: I always wonder how you can do this job well?
43:46
SPEAKER_11: How can you serve the people of Tennessee if you don't know who they are?
43:49
SPEAKER_11: You know, so many universities just bring a hired gun in from another state and they come in and sometimes they do okay, sometimes they don't.
43:57
SPEAKER_11: Oftentimes they don't understand how government works.
43:59
SPEAKER_11: A lot of times.
44:00
SPEAKER_11: It's not very successful.
44:01
SPEAKER_11: I think having that those experiences actually helped me prepare for this job in a very good way.
44:08
SPEAKER_11: Now I'm not an academic, so um that's that was the the the criticism uh when I was picked.
44:13
SPEAKER_11: But turns out my role, as we talked about, is more about government relations, about leading uh leaders that lead the campuses.
44:21
SPEAKER_11: They in turn will have a propose who should be steeped in in the academic side of the house.
44:26
SPEAKER_11: But um, so I've got people that help us do help me do the things that I have uh uh less experience in.
44:32
SPEAKER_17: One of the things that you did well very quickly was you convinced the faculty that you had their back and that you were for them because you were not an academic coming in.
44:42
SPEAKER_17: And so the faculty initially said, Well, what's this gonna mean or what's this gonna look like?
44:47
SPEAKER_17: And instead you you did something they didn't expect, basically saying, Hey, I went to this university.
44:52
SPEAKER_17: It's a great place.
44:54
SPEAKER_17: Go do what you do and let these young people have their experience, teach.
44:58
SPEAKER_17: Let's go.
44:59
SPEAKER_11: I think I think that the faculty and uh the rest of the administration or the rest of our team know that I'm doing this because I love this place.
45:07
SPEAKER_11: And and so I think they give me some credit or some grace because of that.
45:11
SPEAKER_11: So he's whether he's competent or not, we're not sure, but we know he's doing it for it with good intentions.
45:15
SPEAKER_11: Um, but um also I think the experience I had working in state government um has helped us as a university uh overcome some of the challenges that we had.
45:26
SPEAKER_11: Uh, I think the faculty would give me the grace for not being an academic, but protecting them and supporting them and advocating for them uh with the state.
45:35
SPEAKER_11: And you might recall, but the six months before I got this job, the state legislature fired every one of our board members.
45:42
SPEAKER_11: Kind of a bad day.
45:42
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, obviously they're not very we're not in a good position.
45:45
SPEAKER_11: Uh two years later, they actually gave a comment commendation for our board uh and recognizing them.
45:50
SPEAKER_11: So I think that's a lot to do with John Compton and the and the change in the board, but it's also think just taking the time to build that relationship.
45:57
SPEAKER_11: We were constantly we had a uh a sunset audit uh my first year that I inherited 230 pages with 13 different findings.
46:05
SPEAKER_11: Uh the last two times they they we got zero findings and um didn't have an audit at all.
46:10
SPEAKER_11: But um I think that's a result of putting a lot of time into building those relationships with that with the legislature and the governor and this and the administration.
46:19
SPEAKER_11: And also, I think in a lot of states you find the boards are fighting with the with the leadership, the the university is fighting with state government, and they're at war, not in the state of Tennessee.
46:30
SPEAKER_11: I think I take Jim Haslem's alignment and say we're not only aligned with John John Compton, but with the entire board, and the entire university is aligned with the Farm Bureau.
46:39
SPEAKER_11: We're aligned with the Oak Ridge National Lab, and we're aligned with the state government.
46:43
SPEAKER_11: We're on the same team.
46:44
SPEAKER_11: And I think that's something that uh we worked hard to accomplish and uh something I'm proud of that alignment all across the state.
46:51
SPEAKER_17: Final segment with the University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd coming up, the Mike Keith Show, the big interview presented by Clayton Holmes, Oakwood Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee.
47:01
SPEAKER_18: Getting you ready for the game, the Mike Keith Show, delivered by great fit in your ball network.
47:19
SPEAKER_17: Final segment with the University of Tennessee's president Randy Boyd.
47:23
SPEAKER_17: Everybody has gifts.
47:26
SPEAKER_17: What do you think is the biggest gift that you have that you've used to be successful in your life and also used to be successful on behalf of the University of Tennessee in the role as president?
47:39
SPEAKER_11: That's a great question.
47:40
SPEAKER_11: I'm not sure if I would say gifts, but things that I've developed over time out of necessity.
47:45
SPEAKER_11: Um to be a leader, I think you need to be a good listener.
47:48
SPEAKER_11: And one of the things I've I've pride myself on is trying to be a really good listener.
47:52
SPEAKER_11: And that's listening to uh the people that support us at the state legislature, listening to our faculty, listening to all of our employees, going around to all the extension offices.
48:01
SPEAKER_11: I mentioned that I went to all 95 extension offices.
48:03
SPEAKER_11: I didn't go to preach or to uh uh give them direction.
48:07
SPEAKER_11: I went to listen.
48:08
SPEAKER_11: And I would go and just tell me about what's happening and tell me how I can help you.
48:11
SPEAKER_11: And I think if you do that well, um the people will tell you what you need to know to be successful.
48:17
SPEAKER_11: I I would like to say, you know, my business career, I had 19 patents, if I wanted to brag.
48:22
SPEAKER_11: Unfortunately, 18 and 19 were total abject failures.
48:25
SPEAKER_11: What I found through that is every time I thought I had a brilliant idea, asked the engineers to make it for me, and then I announced it to the world, it inevitably failed.
48:32
SPEAKER_11: When I listened to the customers and did exactly what they said, I was successful.
48:36
SPEAKER_11: And I think that same thing is true leading the University of Tennessee.
48:40
SPEAKER_11: If you listen to the students and the families and the people of the state and the faculty, um, and then work to serve them in the way they they want to be served, um, you can be successful.
48:49
SPEAKER_17: Randy Boyd, president of the University of Tennessee, gets a chance to give Randy Boyd, 19-year-old graduate of the University of Tennessee, advice.
48:59
SPEAKER_17: What does he tell him?
49:01
SPEAKER_11: I think back to that believe in serendipity.
49:03
SPEAKER_11: Don't be frustrated when things don't go exactly as planned, because things will probably work out better than you expected.
49:08
SPEAKER_11: I planned on being governor, um, but I've shared this with uh Governor Lee uh multiple times.
49:13
SPEAKER_11: But I think God has a better plan than you do for yourself.
49:15
SPEAKER_11: And I ended up exactly where I needed to be.
49:18
SPEAKER_11: I couldn't be happier.
49:20
SPEAKER_17: Goals for the University of Tennessee in the way that you use goals in your own life.
49:26
SPEAKER_17: What do those look like if you don't mind sharing?
49:28
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, well, it's it's we it's documented.
49:29
SPEAKER_11: We created a strategic plan to help us make this the greatest decade.
49:33
SPEAKER_11: Some of the big things we've got left left to accomplish is continue to make our university more affordable.
49:37
SPEAKER_11: Right now, 55% of our students graduate with no debt.
49:40
SPEAKER_11: Our goal is 65% by the year 2030.
49:43
SPEAKER_11: We want to make sure that more students have the opportunity to come.
49:45
SPEAKER_11: We have 65,000 students now.
49:47
SPEAKER_11: We want to have 85,000 students by the end of the decade.
49:50
SPEAKER_11: And then we've had some techniques that help us accomplish some of those things like creating a 90 credit hour degree.
49:56
SPEAKER_11: Um, it was a very arbitrary uh decision back in the 1890s to come up with 120 credit hours.
50:03
SPEAKER_11: We don't know what the future jobs are gonna be.
50:06
SPEAKER_11: We don't know what you're gonna need to learn to do those jobs.
50:10
SPEAKER_11: The only thing we could guarantee you today is that you're gonna need 120 credit hours to accomplish them.
50:14
SPEAKER_11: Whoop, that's arbitrary.
50:16
SPEAKER_11: Let's think uh from a uh start with a clean slate and come up with what it takes for people to be successful in the future, whatever the the skills are, and then be more flexible in how many hours it takes to actually accomplish that or to get the degree to be masterful in that.
50:31
SPEAKER_11: So trying to come up with new innovative ways to help students be uh successful and be able to accomplish their goals in a more affordable and efficient way.
50:39
SPEAKER_17: How much time do you and people at the university spend in thoughts on how AI is going to affect education and the applications that people are gonna need into jobs going forward?
50:50
SPEAKER_11: We're spending a lot of time on AI actually thinking about how we use this new tool in a productive and responsible way.
50:57
SPEAKER_11: Uh and it it affects us from an operational point of view.
51:01
SPEAKER_11: We're using AI or SI within how we um actually uh run the university, also making sure that our students get grounded in all that they need to be able to use this tool going forward.
51:12
SPEAKER_11: We're also reaching out to industry, like we had Denzo reach out to us and have a hundred of their managers get reskilled so they can use this tool.
51:21
SPEAKER_11: So we're thinking about it in a lot of different ways.
51:23
SPEAKER_11: In addition, uh working with uh Oak Ridge National Labs with a supercomputer to be able to do research to help develop the tool to in new ways.
51:31
SPEAKER_11: Still enjoy it as much as you did?
51:34
SPEAKER_11: I do.
51:34
SPEAKER_11: It's you know, running a university though is kind of like running a marathon.
51:38
SPEAKER_11: You know, when somebody you finish the marathon, the somebody comes up to you and they say, Well, is that fun?
51:44
SPEAKER_11: Well, that's not the first word that comes to mind, but you're proud of the accomplishment.
51:48
SPEAKER_11: And I think in if you're if your goal in life is to make the world a better place, to make an impact, to make a difference, there's no better place than the University of Tennessee.
51:55
SPEAKER_11: I still believe that, and so that's why I love it.
51:58
SPEAKER_11: Thank you so much for taking time.
51:59
SPEAKER_11: Thank you.
51:59
SPEAKER_17: Randy Boyd, the president of the University of Tennessee, with us on the big interview, presented by Clayton Homes, Oakwood Homes, and Love Homes of Tennessee, helping families find their dream homes across the state.
52:11
SPEAKER_17: Thanks for being with us, and we'll see you next time.
52:16
SPEAKER_18: All week long to the latest from the Tennessee campus, the Mike Each Go online, delivered by Uber EastSports.com for we are the fall network.