April 25, 2025 • 30 mins
Under the leadership of President Randy Boyd, The University of Tennessee System has broken records in enrollment and graduation rates, expanded research efforts, and made substantial infrastructure investments. Alongside its dedication to higher education through its campuses across the state, The University of Tennessee System is also focused on addressing the state's most pressing challenges. Through UT's Grand Challenges, the university invests up to $5 million in innovative, community-focused projects aimed at strengthening rural communities, overcoming addiction, and advancing K-12 education. In this episode of TENNESSEE MATTERS, John Clark is joined by University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd and UT System Strategist John Lacey, who helps lead the Grand Challenges initiative.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's Tennessee Matters on the Tennessee Radio Network. Welcome to
Tennessee Matters. I'm John Clark on the Tennessee Radio Network.
University of Tennessee is a state rights system of higher
education with campuses in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Pulaski, Martin, and Memphis.
(00:21):
It enrolls about sixty two thousand students statewide. The Grand
Challenges Initiative was established in twenty twenty three to address complex,
large scale issues that threaten the future of tennesseeans. Today,
we're going to be talking about both of these things
with University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd and John Lacy,
system strategists in the Department of Communications and Marketing. Well,
(00:42):
first of all, I want to thank you both for
being on the show today.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
It's ought it to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
John, Great, It's great to have you guys here. President Board,
you know what's going on at University of Tennessee. First
of all, talk about that. You did the State of Tennessee,
the State of the University address, talking about some of
the highlights of that.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, Well, thank you. Actually that would be thirty minutes,
so I'm gonna have to work to keep this down
to two minutes. I want to say it was an
honor to be able to provide the State of the
University address about five weeks ago, and I was really
happy to be able to say that in the two
hundred and thirty one years of the University of Tennessee's history,
(01:24):
the University of Tennessee has never been stronger. And I
can say that with confidence for just a few easy
to support stats. One, enrollments has never been higher. Every
single one of our campuses has record enrollment. UT noxl
at thirty nine thousand students, up six point six percent
(01:44):
since last year. UT Chattanooga eleven eight hundred and ninety four,
up four percent than the year before. UT Southern I
knew this campus was up seven point six percent. And
then UT Martin another campus in rural West Tennessee in
an area which has demographic challenges, meaning the population is
(02:07):
declining rapidly there, so you would imagine it would be
challenging for them to have enrollment growth. They led the
entire system with an eight percent increase in enrollment. Retention
is up. You know, we always say it's great to
bring kids into our school, but we got to graduate them.
Now they came to us with their hopes and dreams.
We've got to make sure we fulfill those. And at
(02:29):
every one of our campuses, retention was up. Research dollars
is up, and we'll talk a little bit more about
research and for research, dollars were up. Financially, our university
has never been stronger. Since twenty twenty, cash on hands
gone from six hundred million to one point nine billion,
(02:49):
Our endowment's gone from five hundred million to one point
six billion. Across the board, revenues are up forty percent
over the last five years to three point five billion.
Warren Buffett likes to say, when the tide goes out,
you can see who's swimming naked. Now, I told my
team we're in. We're in a full swimsuit. We're good.
(03:13):
And there's some challenging times. No one's to put too
much roast clutter glasses on it, but there's a lot
of chaos in the economy in the country right now.
Going into these difficult times. You want to have a
strong balance sheet and we're in a great position to
do that. So by pretty much every metric, things are
(03:34):
going great. And I'll say one last thing, as the
land Grant University of the State of Tennessee. It's our
responsibility to serve the people at Tennessee and we do
that in three ways. One is around education. We got
to keep providing great education to as many Tennessee ends
as we can. Two is around research, finding solutions and
(03:55):
agriculture and healthcare, things that affect people's lives in the
State of Tennessee. But another's just to be directly involved.
How do we engage with people and help make lives
better for them today through our actions? And John Lacey,
who's with us today, helped lead something called the Grand Challenges,
(04:17):
which he can talk a little bit more about, but
a way in which our experts across a range of
areas pulled to get their talents together to have an
impact now on the lives of tennesseeans.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That's fantastic. Well, John, let's let's go ahead and talk
about that. Talk about your Grand Challenges and what are
some of the things you're doing with that and you're
going to be doing with that.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah, absolutely, And John, thanks so much for having us on.
I appreciate that. And just to ego a lot of
what present boys already shared, we US University really embrace
the idea that university should devote some of their time, resources,
and creative energy to research the addresses the real needs
(05:01):
of our local communities. And so community based research is
central to our mission as a public university that exists
to serve the people of Tennessee. So with that value
in mind, President Boyd and our UT leadership made a
deliberate decision to focus attention and resources on issues that
(05:23):
matter most to Tennesseans, so real concerns that impact daily
life and shape the future of our state. To really
get a good understanding of what those are, we had
one of our consumer researchers, doctor Shelley Rampold, with the
Institute of Agriculture, lead a statewide study back in twenty
(05:44):
two to twenty three with the goal of trying to
figure out what was top of mind for Tennesseeans, what
was what were some of their highest concerns at that time.
And so some of the responses that we got back
we're outside of our direct scope, things like rising housing costs.
You know, there's not too much we can do there.
(06:07):
But many of the issues that came out were aligned
closely with areas where UT is already active and areas,
like President Boyd mentioned, where we can make a real difference.
And so the President Boyd and UT leadership identified three
priority areas for us to focus resources and attention on,
(06:29):
and those being advancing K through twelve education, so enhancing
the quality and experience of education not only for students,
but for educators across Tennessee as well kindergarten through twelfth grade.
And then strengthening real communities was the other one that
we they picked, and that's implementing projects in rural Tennessee
(06:53):
so our residents have better access to things like healthcare,
educational materials, and other resource versus that are difficult to
get in those areas. And then overcoming addiction as the
third Grand Challenge area, so tackling things like substance misuse
and all the related variables that help individuals and communities
(07:17):
hill and thrive as areas where we are focused. So yeah,
we call these three areas the Grand Challenges and really
reflect what was top of mind for those for Tennessee
and when we got back that research, and so what
we've done with that is to make meaningful progress in
(07:38):
those areas. We launched the Grand Challenge Grants program and
President Boyd committed five million dollars to support projects aimed
at real lasting impact in those areas. So the projects
from all across our campuses and institutes across the system.
(07:58):
So we ended up awarding forty one projects across all
those campuses, in all our campuses institutes. And I think
what President Boyd probably echo this. What makes these projects
especially powerful is their collaborative nature. So these projects are
connected with a community partners, They're collaborating across their campuses
(08:25):
and even across the system. So we have a lot
of cross sector teams and even collaborating with external experts,
you know, outside of the university there and all this
design to boost long term impact and sustainability.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
President Boyd, you knew add to that. So he was saying,
you've committed to a certain amount of dollars to add
to that a little bit. Talk about that more detailed.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Well, well, it's good to say a word about the
grand challenges. John did a great job. John, Alisa did
a great job of helping us identify regrain challenges. I
started talking about that when I became president. I guess
maybe an example, when I first became president, I was thinking,
you know, some of your listeners might know. I had
(09:13):
applied for a different job and I didn't get it.
I ended up with a better job, by the way.
But one of the things I thought, you know, the
downside with being the president of the University of Tennessee,
there's a lot of things that I really cared about
that I'm not going to be able to make a
difference in, one of which was drug abuse, substance abuse
and misuse across our state because but formerly as Commissioner
(09:34):
of Economic and Community Development, I saw that no matter
how many companies we could bring to a particular area,
if the people couldn't pass drug tests, where the companies
aren't going to be successful and the community is not
going to be successful. So it was a real foundational
problem we had to address. But it turned out all
across the University of Tennessee people were working on it.
(09:55):
The health science that was working on addressing what are
the adictors of people becoming addicted to drugs? What things
that could we predetermined or maybe somebody more susceptible. The
College of Social Work was doing work in Knoxville to
help provide aid to student or people that had had
(10:17):
addiction issues. The ut or the Oakage National Labs with
the supercomputer was using data from the Veterans Administration to
mine the records of over a million veterans to also
do predictive analysis, and all across the system people were
doing things. So I decided to pull together a conference.
(10:41):
It was just bring the people that were working on
things together and have a talk. We scheduled this like
three months in advance. I was hoping maybe we might
find about one hundred people that will show up by
the time. By the time we ended up with the conference,
we had seven hundred people all across the system gathering
and it just showed me that there is so much
(11:01):
expertise across the system in so many different areas. And
started talking about the thought of what is a grand challenge.
A grand challenge is those problems that probably will take years,
maybe decades to solve. They're not easy problems to solve.
There's state ride problems. It's not a local issue, it's
(11:22):
a state wide problem, and it's going to take lots
of talent to solve. For its interdiscipline areas, Like with drugs,
for example, it's medical, and it's social, and it's economic.
There's a lot and educational. There's a lot of different
facets that need to come together to solve these and
I realized that the University of Tennessee could do all that.
(11:45):
We are statewide, we are sustainable, we've been here for
two hundred and thirty one years, will be here for
another one hundred years, and we've got experts across the
field of so many fields that could work together. I
feel like, you know, if if somebody is going to
solve these problems, it needs to be us. And if
(12:05):
not us, who uh So I talked about that enough.
John decided, Okay, enough talking, let's pick. Let's pick three
areas in which we could weigh in which and that's
how this came about. And then and the idea behind
the Grand Challenges grants was that it was it was
as John's already mentioned, the key part it was collaboration.
(12:29):
It wasn't good enough for having one person with one
idea that wanted to go off into a lab and
do research. I find there's power in working together. And
so a key part of winning a grant was to
make sure that you reached out not only to other campuses,
but to people in the community, nonprofits and other people
that are passionate about the same things we are. So
(12:51):
we're all working together with UH to help solve these problems,
and some of the ideas that they've come up with
a really impactful and exciting and we're looking forward to
seeing the future of these these projects and how they
(13:11):
impact people across the state.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Well so far, let's let's talk about talk about them
one by one. Are they all together? Are they you
look at them one by one each one? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, yeah, there's three grand Now there's some intersection obviously,
but there's as John mentioned, three one around K through
twelve education. We've it's not a secret we are failing
as a state K through twelve education in particular early
reading and early math, and so how can we help
address some of those issues We've already mentioned the issue
(13:46):
around substitute abuse and misuse, how do we solve the
opioid and broader drug issues across their state, in particular
in our rural communities. And then finally helping our rural communities.
And as you as you imagine, all three of these
things intersect in our rural communities that are struggling. If
you want to make them more successful, you had to
(14:07):
fix K through twelve education and mitigate the drug use
and misuse. So if you can do those things in tandem,
you're going to be more effective.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
John, how are you starting, How are you undertaking this
and going forward with it to solve these problems? Taking
each one of them, each one of them.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Well, so there's forty one total projects. Okay, projects all
across you know, in this program right now. They're spread
across the system. So when we launched the grants back
in the summertime and people are getting their funding and
they're just now kind of beginning their projects and sort
(14:49):
of getting the ball rolling across those different areas. And
then we've we're going to have actually coming up this month,
we're going to have a consortium meeting where we bring
together people that are working on these projects and just
talk about what are some of the challenges that you're facing,
how can the system help you overcome some of those challenges,
(15:10):
and kind of get an update on where they are. So, yeah,
they're really kind of just now, i'd say, in the
early phases of getting launched. But there's some really neat
stuff that's going on out there. One, for example, I
just want to highlight it's called reach and it's basically
(15:31):
a group of researchers is going to use AI artificial
intelligence for rural genetic counseling. So a lot of people
in rural areas don't have access to genetic counseling that
you know we do in our more urban areas. There's
transportation barriers, there's lack of access to healthcare facilities, lack
(15:53):
of access to experts. So we've got researchers that are
building an AI and that can help, you know, overcome
those barriers and give those same folks, our real residents
access to genetic counseling that they otherwise might not get.
And that's something that helps you know, identify diseases like
(16:15):
cancer and you know, all sorts of all sorts of
neat stuff. So that's just one example of the neat
things that our university researchers are working.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
One effective weigh in on. Another example that's one of
my favorite just because I'm aware of it, but there's
a Audiology is Speech Clinic in Knoxville as part of
the Department of Audiology is Speech with the ut Health
Science that are I've gotten to visit them multiple times
each time I want to feel inspired I go and
(16:45):
take a tour because they're just doing really cool things.
And you know a lot of the work that they
do is for or for children. You know, if they're
born with a hearing impairment, it also affects our speech.
And the things that they can do to help two
three year olds learn to be able to communicate better
(17:05):
and compensate for that disability is just amazing. How they
bring life and opportunity and hope back to those kids.
It's great to see. Here's the downside. The people to
get the service have to drive and see them in Knoxville.
If you're in rural Cott County or Finerst County or
(17:27):
Scott County, it's maybe hard to get to these services.
So one of the grants was to create a mobile
unit where they can actually take these experts in these
services and these devices out to rural communities so they
can service or serve children and families these and more
rural parts of our state. Just one of the mission
(17:49):
John mentioned forty one different projects. This is an example
of one of the projects that this Grand Challenge is
initiative is helping to provide support for.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Do you have things with students are involved with with
the students involved with this too.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I think the one, well, I don't know about all
of them, I can say with that specific one, students
and students are part of that experience. They're going out
into the field and learning and getting practical experience as
we're serving, as we're serving the the families.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, I know you've got researchers involved in what to
do and all that, but I was just wanting whose
students were involved. You're advancing your K through twelve education.
What are some of the things you're doing in terms
of that.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
John, You want to take that sure?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you. And this is a great
example of students doing some work here as well.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
John.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So there is one project that I'll mention that's trying
to help develop like STEM literacy in students where English
is not their native language in the home. So they
want to bring in those students to UT campus or
it may work out where they go out to the
community and give them lessons and STEM literacy to you know, science, technology, engineering, mathematics,
(19:18):
things that they may not be exposed to in their
schools and help them like gain an understanding of what
what is STEM? How do we apply it? And students
are working with those are going to be working with
those young folks in the in those different areas, and
that's something that if successful here, you know, they want
to pilot it here, but then maybe it can have
(19:40):
the opportunity to be utilized all across the state. So
there's actually several STEM projects that our researchers are working
on to not only help students learn STEM literacy, but
also educators that may not have had that same training
when they were going through their pre service education at
(20:01):
the university. So we've we've got several projects that again
are focused around STEM and getting our students across the
state up to speed on STEM literacy and our educators
as well.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I know it too. Your you're strengthening your rural communities.
That has to be that's that's probably met with great anticipation.
I'm from a real community, so I value what you
do in reural communities. So I'm sure the real communities
are really excited about things like that.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, And like President Boyd mentioned, a lot of these
different challenges overlap and you so you can focus in
one air like education for example, and that's going to
have an impact, you know, all the way down the
line to workforce pipeline in the future. If you can
help community overcome addiction or help them deal better with
(20:57):
addiction challenges, that's going to help FAMI, which helps students
in the schools, and that experience, which impacts future workforce opportunities.
So all these things overlap and are interconnected. And yes, absolutely,
real computies are very excited to get services like present.
Boyd mentioned the mobility units that are going into these
(21:20):
places that again have some barriers as far as transportation
and access to healthcare. We actually have a couple of
mobile other mobile health units as nursing mobile health units
that are going into the community as well to offer
services to folks. So yes, a lot of our real
(21:42):
communities are very excited about what's going on with UT
and our partnerships with their communities.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Now, you mentioned that there are forty forty something other
opportunities to do our projects you're working with. Can you
go on a website and look at those somewhere?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Absolutely, If you go to Grand Challenges dot Tennessee dot edu,
if you'll look under partnerships and grants, there's you'll have
to jump through a few links, but without you know,
sparing you the long ur L just got a Grand
Challenges Dot tennesseeeed you and you'll uh, you'll find where
it says grants and you can see the awarded projects
(22:24):
and there's a description of each project. There's also uh
the researchers who are working on those projects. And I'll
go ahead and put a plug in for a lot
of our university researchers are looking for partners to do,
you know, different projects with So if somebody listening has
(22:47):
a need for I don't know, whatever it may be,
then definitely look and see who at University Tennessee is
doing that work and there might be potential for some
research and a partnership there as well.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Great, great, Well, I know this sounds like a great
opportunity and great project for you to work on a
Grand Champions Grand Challenges. I'm sorry, Grand Challenge.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I headed it.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Out Grand Challenges, and I really appreciate y'all doing it.
In President Boyd, I'll give you the final word. We
have a few minutes left, So anything else you wanted
to say about University of Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Well, I just want to make sure that all of
your listeners know that we are your AAN Grant University.
We are here to serve the people at Tennessee, and
we're much more affordable than you might think. The University
of Tennessee on average, has only increased in tuition by
about ero point eight percent over the last five years,
where inflation has been five point two percent. Sometimes you
(23:46):
hear radio or new and politicians talk about how our
intuition is skywrocketing. We're better by now than we were
five years ago and two five years ago. We also
created a new program called thet UT Promise, and the
UT Promise says that if your family income is under
seventy five thousand dollars, you can come to any one
(24:08):
of our campuses free of tuition and fees. That's two
thirds of all Tennesseeans can now come to any of
our UT campuses free of tuition and fees. So the
big key message, I want folks to know everything that
John said. We're reaching out, we're making an impact, and
if you have children that are looking for a great education,
(24:29):
they can. We would want them to come to UT
and they can afford to come to UT. We're working
hard to make us more accessible.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Right, stay at home and go to University of Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Right, that's exactly right. Thank you well.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Thank you both for being on the show today. I
really appreciate it, and thank you so much for taking
time to be here.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Bet, thank you for having us.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That's University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd and John Lacy,
system strategists in the Department of Communications and Marketing. You
can find out more about their Grand Challenges at Grand
Challenges dot Tennessee dot edu. Diabetes is on the rise
among young people in the United States. We significant increases
in type run and type two diabetes. Doctor Primila and
(25:12):
Wait is vice president of Clinical Programs for United Healthcare.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
So, diabetes is a disease that is actually fairly prevalent
now in the United States. From what we're seeing today,
about thirty eight million adults in the US now have diabetes.
And the concern is that younger and your individuals are
also getting diabetes. And when we say younger, we mean childhood.
(25:42):
Diabetes is also on the rise. But diabetes is one
blood trigger levels in the blood increase and it can
be due to various different things depending on what kind
of diabetes you have. So there's type one diabetes and
that's when the pancreas organ in the body starts to
(26:07):
shut down, and then the body can't process the sugar,
and then there's two which is more acquired. And that's
something that's due to unhealthy lifestyle, not eating you know,
healthy foods, processed foods, not having an active lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
What is meant by juvenile diabetes and problems it can
have with your vision and also your eye health.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, so what happens to diabetes is because all the
damage that happens to the blood vessels from the high sugar,
it starts to really impede the ability for the blood
to get to certain parts of the eye. And one
of those parts of the body is the eye, and
the eye has a lot of tiny blood vessels in
(26:56):
the back of the eye, and so when the blood
doesn't get there when there's damage, you can imagine it
starts to really hurt the back of the eye and
then cause vision loss if there's bleeding or leaking a fluid.
So that's something that actually happens in diabetes after you've
been die for a good number of years. But in
(27:17):
a lot of cases, many people don't even realize how
long they've had diabetes for before they actually get diagnosed.
So it's so important to go in to get an
eye exam to detect if there's any issues happening with
the back of the eye.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
What about doing pregnancy, can they pass those problems along
as envision problem?
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Not really passing it along. But what happens is when
a woman is in a pregnant state, their body is
more susceptible to the high sugar levels and they fire
diabetes during pregnancy. And so it's just something that pregnant
women have to be aware of and their primary die
doctor typically is checking out for that as well through
(28:03):
the tests that they do when they're pregnant.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Now, what is a diabetes eye exam and should should
regular doctor see you for that type of exam?
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Yeah, any eye doctor can, any optometrist or ophthalmologist can
see you for a full comprehensive eye exam. But what
just happens, what they're looking out for diabetes is also
looking at the back of the eye. To effectively do that,
you kind of need to get a dilated exam, and
that's when they put the drops in your eyes, so
(28:36):
the pupil opens up like a big window if you
look at the back and you can see what's going
on there.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Can people live longer, healthier lives with diabetes.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Oh, definitely if you manage it. You know, if you
manage your blood sugar, if you have a good, healthy
lifestyle where you're fairly active, you're checking your sugar levels
right on a daily basis, and you know where you
need to be, you're eating well, then anyone with diabetes
(29:08):
can really live a healthy, long lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Good good. Is there a place where we can go
to look at the find out more?
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Yeah, definitely. We have a great partner called Prevent Blindness.
They're the nation's leading volunteer eye health and safety organization.
But you can go to Prevent Blindness dot org, forward
slash diabetes to learn more about diabetes and iehealth.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
For questions to comments on today's program, you can email
me John Clark at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks for listening.
I'll talk to you next week right here on your
local radio station on Tennessee Matters
It's Tennessee Matters on the Tennessee Radio Network. Welcome to
Tennessee Matters. I'm John Clark on the Tennessee Radio Network.
University of Tennessee is a state rights system of higher
education with campuses in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Pulaski, Martin, and Memphis.
(00:21):
It enrolls about sixty two thousand students statewide. The Grand
Challenges Initiative was established in twenty twenty three to address complex,
large scale issues that threaten the future of tennesseeans. Today,
we're going to be talking about both of these things
with University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd and John Lacy,
system strategists in the Department of Communications and Marketing. Well,
(00:42):
first of all, I want to thank you both for
being on the show today.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
It's ought it to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
John, Great, It's great to have you guys here. President Board,
you know what's going on at University of Tennessee. First
of all, talk about that. You did the State of Tennessee,
the State of the University address, talking about some of
the highlights of that.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, Well, thank you. Actually that would be thirty minutes,
so I'm gonna have to work to keep this down
to two minutes. I want to say it was an
honor to be able to provide the State of the
University address about five weeks ago, and I was really
happy to be able to say that in the two
hundred and thirty one years of the University of Tennessee's history,
(01:24):
the University of Tennessee has never been stronger. And I
can say that with confidence for just a few easy
to support stats. One, enrollments has never been higher. Every
single one of our campuses has record enrollment. UT noxl
at thirty nine thousand students, up six point six percent
(01:44):
since last year. UT Chattanooga eleven eight hundred and ninety four,
up four percent than the year before. UT Southern I
knew this campus was up seven point six percent. And
then UT Martin another campus in rural West Tennessee in
an area which has demographic challenges, meaning the population is
(02:07):
declining rapidly there, so you would imagine it would be
challenging for them to have enrollment growth. They led the
entire system with an eight percent increase in enrollment. Retention
is up. You know, we always say it's great to
bring kids into our school, but we got to graduate them.
Now they came to us with their hopes and dreams.
We've got to make sure we fulfill those. And at
(02:29):
every one of our campuses, retention was up. Research dollars
is up, and we'll talk a little bit more about
research and for research, dollars were up. Financially, our university
has never been stronger. Since twenty twenty, cash on hands
gone from six hundred million to one point nine billion,
(02:49):
Our endowment's gone from five hundred million to one point
six billion. Across the board, revenues are up forty percent
over the last five years to three point five billion.
Warren Buffett likes to say, when the tide goes out,
you can see who's swimming naked. Now, I told my
team we're in. We're in a full swimsuit. We're good.
(03:13):
And there's some challenging times. No one's to put too
much roast clutter glasses on it, but there's a lot
of chaos in the economy in the country right now.
Going into these difficult times. You want to have a
strong balance sheet and we're in a great position to
do that. So by pretty much every metric, things are
(03:34):
going great. And I'll say one last thing, as the
land Grant University of the State of Tennessee. It's our
responsibility to serve the people at Tennessee and we do
that in three ways. One is around education. We got
to keep providing great education to as many Tennessee ends
as we can. Two is around research, finding solutions and
(03:55):
agriculture and healthcare, things that affect people's lives in the
State of Tennessee. But another's just to be directly involved.
How do we engage with people and help make lives
better for them today through our actions? And John Lacey,
who's with us today, helped lead something called the Grand Challenges,
(04:17):
which he can talk a little bit more about, but
a way in which our experts across a range of
areas pulled to get their talents together to have an
impact now on the lives of tennesseeans.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That's fantastic. Well, John, let's let's go ahead and talk
about that. Talk about your Grand Challenges and what are
some of the things you're doing with that and you're
going to be doing with that.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah, absolutely, And John, thanks so much for having us on.
I appreciate that. And just to ego a lot of
what present boys already shared, we US University really embrace
the idea that university should devote some of their time, resources,
and creative energy to research the addresses the real needs
(05:01):
of our local communities. And so community based research is
central to our mission as a public university that exists
to serve the people of Tennessee. So with that value
in mind, President Boyd and our UT leadership made a
deliberate decision to focus attention and resources on issues that
(05:23):
matter most to Tennesseans, so real concerns that impact daily
life and shape the future of our state. To really
get a good understanding of what those are, we had
one of our consumer researchers, doctor Shelley Rampold, with the
Institute of Agriculture, lead a statewide study back in twenty
(05:44):
two to twenty three with the goal of trying to
figure out what was top of mind for Tennesseeans, what
was what were some of their highest concerns at that time.
And so some of the responses that we got back
we're outside of our direct scope, things like rising housing costs.
You know, there's not too much we can do there.
(06:07):
But many of the issues that came out were aligned
closely with areas where UT is already active and areas,
like President Boyd mentioned, where we can make a real difference.
And so the President Boyd and UT leadership identified three
priority areas for us to focus resources and attention on,
(06:29):
and those being advancing K through twelve education, so enhancing
the quality and experience of education not only for students,
but for educators across Tennessee as well kindergarten through twelfth grade.
And then strengthening real communities was the other one that
we they picked, and that's implementing projects in rural Tennessee
(06:53):
so our residents have better access to things like healthcare,
educational materials, and other resource versus that are difficult to
get in those areas. And then overcoming addiction as the
third Grand Challenge area, so tackling things like substance misuse
and all the related variables that help individuals and communities
(07:17):
hill and thrive as areas where we are focused. So yeah,
we call these three areas the Grand Challenges and really
reflect what was top of mind for those for Tennessee
and when we got back that research, and so what
we've done with that is to make meaningful progress in
(07:38):
those areas. We launched the Grand Challenge Grants program and
President Boyd committed five million dollars to support projects aimed
at real lasting impact in those areas. So the projects
from all across our campuses and institutes across the system.
(07:58):
So we ended up awarding forty one projects across all
those campuses, in all our campuses institutes. And I think
what President Boyd probably echo this. What makes these projects
especially powerful is their collaborative nature. So these projects are
connected with a community partners, They're collaborating across their campuses
(08:25):
and even across the system. So we have a lot
of cross sector teams and even collaborating with external experts,
you know, outside of the university there and all this
design to boost long term impact and sustainability.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
President Boyd, you knew add to that. So he was saying,
you've committed to a certain amount of dollars to add
to that a little bit. Talk about that more detailed.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Well, well, it's good to say a word about the
grand challenges. John did a great job. John, Alisa did
a great job of helping us identify regrain challenges. I
started talking about that when I became president. I guess
maybe an example, when I first became president, I was thinking,
you know, some of your listeners might know. I had
(09:13):
applied for a different job and I didn't get it.
I ended up with a better job, by the way.
But one of the things I thought, you know, the
downside with being the president of the University of Tennessee,
there's a lot of things that I really cared about
that I'm not going to be able to make a
difference in, one of which was drug abuse, substance abuse
and misuse across our state because but formerly as Commissioner
(09:34):
of Economic and Community Development, I saw that no matter
how many companies we could bring to a particular area,
if the people couldn't pass drug tests, where the companies
aren't going to be successful and the community is not
going to be successful. So it was a real foundational
problem we had to address. But it turned out all
across the University of Tennessee people were working on it.
(09:55):
The health science that was working on addressing what are
the adictors of people becoming addicted to drugs? What things
that could we predetermined or maybe somebody more susceptible. The
College of Social Work was doing work in Knoxville to
help provide aid to student or people that had had
(10:17):
addiction issues. The ut or the Oakage National Labs with
the supercomputer was using data from the Veterans Administration to
mine the records of over a million veterans to also
do predictive analysis, and all across the system people were
doing things. So I decided to pull together a conference.
(10:41):
It was just bring the people that were working on
things together and have a talk. We scheduled this like
three months in advance. I was hoping maybe we might
find about one hundred people that will show up by
the time. By the time we ended up with the conference,
we had seven hundred people all across the system gathering
and it just showed me that there is so much
(11:01):
expertise across the system in so many different areas. And
started talking about the thought of what is a grand challenge.
A grand challenge is those problems that probably will take years,
maybe decades to solve. They're not easy problems to solve.
There's state ride problems. It's not a local issue, it's
(11:22):
a state wide problem, and it's going to take lots
of talent to solve. For its interdiscipline areas, Like with drugs,
for example, it's medical, and it's social, and it's economic.
There's a lot and educational. There's a lot of different
facets that need to come together to solve these and
I realized that the University of Tennessee could do all that.
(11:45):
We are statewide, we are sustainable, we've been here for
two hundred and thirty one years, will be here for
another one hundred years, and we've got experts across the
field of so many fields that could work together. I
feel like, you know, if if somebody is going to
solve these problems, it needs to be us. And if
(12:05):
not us, who uh So I talked about that enough.
John decided, Okay, enough talking, let's pick. Let's pick three
areas in which we could weigh in which and that's
how this came about. And then and the idea behind
the Grand Challenges grants was that it was it was
as John's already mentioned, the key part it was collaboration.
(12:29):
It wasn't good enough for having one person with one
idea that wanted to go off into a lab and
do research. I find there's power in working together. And
so a key part of winning a grant was to
make sure that you reached out not only to other campuses,
but to people in the community, nonprofits and other people
that are passionate about the same things we are. So
(12:51):
we're all working together with UH to help solve these problems,
and some of the ideas that they've come up with
a really impactful and exciting and we're looking forward to
seeing the future of these these projects and how they
(13:11):
impact people across the state.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Well so far, let's let's talk about talk about them
one by one. Are they all together? Are they you
look at them one by one each one? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, yeah, there's three grand Now there's some intersection obviously,
but there's as John mentioned, three one around K through
twelve education. We've it's not a secret we are failing
as a state K through twelve education in particular early
reading and early math, and so how can we help
address some of those issues We've already mentioned the issue
(13:46):
around substitute abuse and misuse, how do we solve the
opioid and broader drug issues across their state, in particular
in our rural communities. And then finally helping our rural communities.
And as you as you imagine, all three of these
things intersect in our rural communities that are struggling. If
you want to make them more successful, you had to
(14:07):
fix K through twelve education and mitigate the drug use
and misuse. So if you can do those things in tandem,
you're going to be more effective.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
John, how are you starting, How are you undertaking this
and going forward with it to solve these problems? Taking
each one of them, each one of them.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Well, so there's forty one total projects. Okay, projects all
across you know, in this program right now. They're spread
across the system. So when we launched the grants back
in the summertime and people are getting their funding and
they're just now kind of beginning their projects and sort
(14:49):
of getting the ball rolling across those different areas. And
then we've we're going to have actually coming up this month,
we're going to have a consortium meeting where we bring
together people that are working on these projects and just
talk about what are some of the challenges that you're facing,
how can the system help you overcome some of those challenges,
(15:10):
and kind of get an update on where they are. So, yeah,
they're really kind of just now, i'd say, in the
early phases of getting launched. But there's some really neat
stuff that's going on out there. One, for example, I
just want to highlight it's called reach and it's basically
(15:31):
a group of researchers is going to use AI artificial
intelligence for rural genetic counseling. So a lot of people
in rural areas don't have access to genetic counseling that
you know we do in our more urban areas. There's
transportation barriers, there's lack of access to healthcare facilities, lack
(15:53):
of access to experts. So we've got researchers that are
building an AI and that can help, you know, overcome
those barriers and give those same folks, our real residents
access to genetic counseling that they otherwise might not get.
And that's something that helps you know, identify diseases like
(16:15):
cancer and you know, all sorts of all sorts of
neat stuff. So that's just one example of the neat
things that our university researchers are working.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
One effective weigh in on. Another example that's one of
my favorite just because I'm aware of it, but there's
a Audiology is Speech Clinic in Knoxville as part of
the Department of Audiology is Speech with the ut Health
Science that are I've gotten to visit them multiple times
each time I want to feel inspired I go and
(16:45):
take a tour because they're just doing really cool things.
And you know a lot of the work that they
do is for or for children. You know, if they're
born with a hearing impairment, it also affects our speech.
And the things that they can do to help two
three year olds learn to be able to communicate better
(17:05):
and compensate for that disability is just amazing. How they
bring life and opportunity and hope back to those kids.
It's great to see. Here's the downside. The people to
get the service have to drive and see them in Knoxville.
If you're in rural Cott County or Finerst County or
(17:27):
Scott County, it's maybe hard to get to these services.
So one of the grants was to create a mobile
unit where they can actually take these experts in these
services and these devices out to rural communities so they
can service or serve children and families these and more
rural parts of our state. Just one of the mission
(17:49):
John mentioned forty one different projects. This is an example
of one of the projects that this Grand Challenge is
initiative is helping to provide support for.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Do you have things with students are involved with with
the students involved with this too.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I think the one, well, I don't know about all
of them, I can say with that specific one, students
and students are part of that experience. They're going out
into the field and learning and getting practical experience as
we're serving, as we're serving the the families.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, I know you've got researchers involved in what to
do and all that, but I was just wanting whose
students were involved. You're advancing your K through twelve education.
What are some of the things you're doing in terms
of that.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
John, You want to take that sure?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you. And this is a great
example of students doing some work here as well.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
John.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So there is one project that I'll mention that's trying
to help develop like STEM literacy in students where English
is not their native language in the home. So they
want to bring in those students to UT campus or
it may work out where they go out to the
community and give them lessons and STEM literacy to you know, science, technology, engineering, mathematics,
(19:18):
things that they may not be exposed to in their
schools and help them like gain an understanding of what
what is STEM? How do we apply it? And students
are working with those are going to be working with
those young folks in the in those different areas, and
that's something that if successful here, you know, they want
to pilot it here, but then maybe it can have
(19:40):
the opportunity to be utilized all across the state. So
there's actually several STEM projects that our researchers are working
on to not only help students learn STEM literacy, but
also educators that may not have had that same training
when they were going through their pre service education at
(20:01):
the university. So we've we've got several projects that again
are focused around STEM and getting our students across the
state up to speed on STEM literacy and our educators
as well.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I know it too. Your you're strengthening your rural communities.
That has to be that's that's probably met with great anticipation.
I'm from a real community, so I value what you
do in reural communities. So I'm sure the real communities
are really excited about things like that.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, And like President Boyd mentioned, a lot of these
different challenges overlap and you so you can focus in
one air like education for example, and that's going to
have an impact, you know, all the way down the
line to workforce pipeline in the future. If you can
help community overcome addiction or help them deal better with
(20:57):
addiction challenges, that's going to help FAMI, which helps students
in the schools, and that experience, which impacts future workforce opportunities.
So all these things overlap and are interconnected. And yes, absolutely,
real computies are very excited to get services like present.
Boyd mentioned the mobility units that are going into these
(21:20):
places that again have some barriers as far as transportation
and access to healthcare. We actually have a couple of
mobile other mobile health units as nursing mobile health units
that are going into the community as well to offer
services to folks. So yes, a lot of our real
(21:42):
communities are very excited about what's going on with UT
and our partnerships with their communities.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Now, you mentioned that there are forty forty something other
opportunities to do our projects you're working with. Can you
go on a website and look at those somewhere?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Absolutely, If you go to Grand Challenges dot Tennessee dot edu,
if you'll look under partnerships and grants, there's you'll have
to jump through a few links, but without you know,
sparing you the long ur L just got a Grand
Challenges Dot tennesseeeed you and you'll uh, you'll find where
it says grants and you can see the awarded projects
(22:24):
and there's a description of each project. There's also uh
the researchers who are working on those projects. And I'll
go ahead and put a plug in for a lot
of our university researchers are looking for partners to do,
you know, different projects with So if somebody listening has
(22:47):
a need for I don't know, whatever it may be,
then definitely look and see who at University Tennessee is
doing that work and there might be potential for some
research and a partnership there as well.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Great, great, Well, I know this sounds like a great
opportunity and great project for you to work on a
Grand Champions Grand Challenges. I'm sorry, Grand Challenge.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I headed it.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Out Grand Challenges, and I really appreciate y'all doing it.
In President Boyd, I'll give you the final word. We
have a few minutes left, So anything else you wanted
to say about University of Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Well, I just want to make sure that all of
your listeners know that we are your AAN Grant University.
We are here to serve the people at Tennessee, and
we're much more affordable than you might think. The University
of Tennessee on average, has only increased in tuition by
about ero point eight percent over the last five years,
where inflation has been five point two percent. Sometimes you
(23:46):
hear radio or new and politicians talk about how our
intuition is skywrocketing. We're better by now than we were
five years ago and two five years ago. We also
created a new program called thet UT Promise, and the
UT Promise says that if your family income is under
seventy five thousand dollars, you can come to any one
(24:08):
of our campuses free of tuition and fees. That's two
thirds of all Tennesseeans can now come to any of
our UT campuses free of tuition and fees. So the
big key message, I want folks to know everything that
John said. We're reaching out, we're making an impact, and
if you have children that are looking for a great education,
(24:29):
they can. We would want them to come to UT
and they can afford to come to UT. We're working
hard to make us more accessible.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Right, stay at home and go to University of Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Right, that's exactly right. Thank you well.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Thank you both for being on the show today. I
really appreciate it, and thank you so much for taking
time to be here.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Bet, thank you for having us.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That's University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd and John Lacy,
system strategists in the Department of Communications and Marketing. You
can find out more about their Grand Challenges at Grand
Challenges dot Tennessee dot edu. Diabetes is on the rise
among young people in the United States. We significant increases
in type run and type two diabetes. Doctor Primila and
(25:12):
Wait is vice president of Clinical Programs for United Healthcare.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
So, diabetes is a disease that is actually fairly prevalent
now in the United States. From what we're seeing today,
about thirty eight million adults in the US now have diabetes.
And the concern is that younger and your individuals are
also getting diabetes. And when we say younger, we mean childhood.
(25:42):
Diabetes is also on the rise. But diabetes is one
blood trigger levels in the blood increase and it can
be due to various different things depending on what kind
of diabetes you have. So there's type one diabetes and
that's when the pancreas organ in the body starts to
(26:07):
shut down, and then the body can't process the sugar,
and then there's two which is more acquired. And that's
something that's due to unhealthy lifestyle, not eating you know,
healthy foods, processed foods, not having an active lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
What is meant by juvenile diabetes and problems it can
have with your vision and also your eye health.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, so what happens to diabetes is because all the
damage that happens to the blood vessels from the high sugar,
it starts to really impede the ability for the blood
to get to certain parts of the eye. And one
of those parts of the body is the eye, and
the eye has a lot of tiny blood vessels in
(26:56):
the back of the eye, and so when the blood
doesn't get there when there's damage, you can imagine it
starts to really hurt the back of the eye and
then cause vision loss if there's bleeding or leaking a fluid.
So that's something that actually happens in diabetes after you've
been die for a good number of years. But in
(27:17):
a lot of cases, many people don't even realize how
long they've had diabetes for before they actually get diagnosed.
So it's so important to go in to get an
eye exam to detect if there's any issues happening with
the back of the eye.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
What about doing pregnancy, can they pass those problems along
as envision problem?
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Not really passing it along. But what happens is when
a woman is in a pregnant state, their body is
more susceptible to the high sugar levels and they fire
diabetes during pregnancy. And so it's just something that pregnant
women have to be aware of and their primary die
doctor typically is checking out for that as well through
(28:03):
the tests that they do when they're pregnant.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Now, what is a diabetes eye exam and should should
regular doctor see you for that type of exam?
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Yeah, any eye doctor can, any optometrist or ophthalmologist can
see you for a full comprehensive eye exam. But what
just happens, what they're looking out for diabetes is also
looking at the back of the eye. To effectively do that,
you kind of need to get a dilated exam, and
that's when they put the drops in your eyes, so
(28:36):
the pupil opens up like a big window if you
look at the back and you can see what's going
on there.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Can people live longer, healthier lives with diabetes.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Oh, definitely if you manage it. You know, if you
manage your blood sugar, if you have a good, healthy
lifestyle where you're fairly active, you're checking your sugar levels
right on a daily basis, and you know where you
need to be, you're eating well, then anyone with diabetes
(29:08):
can really live a healthy, long lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Good good. Is there a place where we can go
to look at the find out more?
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Yeah, definitely. We have a great partner called Prevent Blindness.
They're the nation's leading volunteer eye health and safety organization.
But you can go to Prevent Blindness dot org, forward
slash diabetes to learn more about diabetes and iehealth.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
For questions to comments on today's program, you can email
me John Clark at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks for listening.
I'll talk to you next week right here on your
local radio station on Tennessee Matters
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