[00:00:00] Ron Menchaca: Hello and welcome to speaking of College of Charleston. I'm Ron Menchaca from the Office of Marketing and Communications, and on today's episode, I speak with College of Charleston, president Andrew Hsu about the college's upward trajectory as we aspire to become a national university. So without further ado, let's get started.
Welcome President Hsu
[00:00:32] President Hsu: thank you, Ron. Good to see you here.
[00:00:34] Ron Menchaca: So it was almost exactly a year ago that we had you on as a guest on our podcast. So here we are again, almost a year later. We're making a bit of an annual tradition here. That's right. And we're in the better studio now. That's right. We're here in Bell Studios, so I'm just gonna jump right in.
President Hsu this may. marks your fourth anniversary as president of the college. Does it feel like it's been four years? And are you pleased with what you and your administration [00:01:00] have accomplished thus far?
[00:01:01] President Hsu: In certain, ways, it feels like forever because of covid really changed, one's perception of, of time.
But on the other hand, it just seems only yesterday that I just started here, but certainly I'm very proud of, what, the college have achieved, during the last four years. I'm very proud of the progress we're making on, our strategic plan. And, we have. Assembled an all-star team of, higher education leaders, during this past, four years, and now have seen the college trust in making significant gains in many areas, student success, faculty success, diversity and so forth.
So it's very gratifying to see the positive momentum of this great institution. So as we're recording this interview, final exams for spring have just wrapped up and spring commencement is a little more than a week away. Can you share a few [00:02:00] highlights from this academic year? I can share quite a few highlights.
There are so many positive things happening on this great campus. First of all, there's a record number of applications, for the College of Charleston. We have seen such an increased demand for. A College of Charleston degree. In fact, our application numbers went from about 12,000 applications four years ago to nearly 27,000 applications, for this freshman class.
In fact, I'm proud to report that as of today, we have a record number of new students committed to this fall coming to the College of Charleston. That's great news, president Hsu Also some big news, big highlights on the athletics front. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yes, Ron, what a great year for our athletics, for the academic year of 2022 to 2023.
Our men's basketball program had [00:03:00] such a huge season. They ended the season with a record of 31 and four. And put us, to the top of the NCAA division one teams as one of the winningest teams in the entire country. And our. Women's golf team won a back-to-back C AA championship, and we also had one of the top pole vaulters in the country with, an individual c aa Title Lucy.
Leaguer. Yeah, president Hsu speaking of the basketball team. So you actually got to go down to Orlando and watch, and you wanna talk a little bit about, who we lost to and where that team ultimately went?
Sure. Of course, I want to first talk about my experience in Washington DC when we won the.
CAA conference. What an experience. At the CAA conference, finals, our team were celebrating on court. I got a trophy [00:04:00] myself, together with, all the team members and we all got to go up and, cut a piece of the net off. So that was, quite an experience. And then of course, we went to Orlando.
For the, NCAA tournaments and we had such a tight game, close game, even though it's the first round. But, little did we know we lost, to San Diego State who eventually went to the NCAA finals. So quite a performance from, the College of Charleston basketball team.
[00:04:33] Ron Menchaca: That's great. Some other highlights of our achievements for this academic year.
[00:04:39] President Hsu: Great work from our committee on commemoration and landscapes. They worked very hard to refresh and rededicate the Septima Clark Auditorium in our. Education Center. We commissioned a beautiful mural, from a South Carolina artist, of [00:05:00] Septima Clark, which adorns the outside wall to that space.
We created a museum style exhibition highlighting Septima Clark's Life. Inside the auditorium is one of the first, of many projects. Tell a more complete story of our campus in our city. And another, event that is worth noting is that we had our first food security summit. We have, many well-known international speakers.
It, it's a conversation that was both global and local. We had the former US Secretary of Agriculture here. We have the president, CEO of the World Food Program usa, and we also have the president of our low country food bank. So a lot of exciting things happening around the college. So the roadmap for much of the college's success and future goals is of course the 10 year strategic plan, tradition [00:06:00] and transformation.
[00:06:01] Ron Menchaca: Can you give our audience an update on the plans implementation?
[00:06:04] President Hsu: Sure. Just to remind everyone, our 10 year strategic plan that was, approved, three years ago has three pillars. The first one is student success, second one is academic distinction, and of course the third one is, employee experience and employee success.
And then we also have three cross-cutting themes. First one is, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Second one is innovation, and third one is, partnership and engagement. So let me start with, student success and student experience. We, invested, in our student success in all areas. One of the most interesting area for our minority student success is that we established a barbershop known as Cougar Cuts.
It opened this fall and it. Serves our African American students on campus. We have many efforts around retention advising, [00:07:00] and we're seeing gains in these areas. We're prioritizing mental health and belonging and improving advising and communications to students. And we're also trying to establish meta majors to help improve, our student retention.
[00:07:18] Ron Menchaca: Great. And what about pillar two, academic distinction?
[00:07:22] President Hsu: Sure. Pillar two, academic distinction. We have several priorities. Some of them involves, our vision of becoming a national university, which would require us to start offering doctoral programs. And we finally, have a new state policy that, granted our.
University the status of a doctoral granting university. Our first, doctoral program was approved in December, which is, mathematics and computing degree. And, we're gonna start, admitting students this coming fall. We have several, new academic [00:08:00] programs that are, at various stages of our approval process.
In fact, the, we had three. New programs just approved that the board of Trustees and is now going through the next steps of, state approval. The first one is, ed d or Doctor of Education Program, in our school of Education. The second one is an executive MBA program from the School of Business.
And the last one is in our New School of Health. We have a new. BS degree in health services administration and management. Our engineering program is, growing well. We rebranded the School of Sciences and Mathematics, to now the new School of Sciences, mathematics, and engineering. We have created a new department, the Department of Engineering, and our, first systems engineering [00:09:00] graduates will cross the system.
This, the spring, in fact, in just about a week. What a great moment for our great university. Exciting. And then the last pillar, employee experience and success. Sure. We're making great progress in, in helping our, faculty and staff, be more successful. And one area that I have been focusing on and our strategic plan in, Implementation had been focusing on is to continue to improve our faculty and staff compensation.
I'm very proud to say that we have been able to make salary increases three years in a row. This has certainly been the most consistent effort regarding compensation campus-wide, that we have been able to do in the last three decades. No, that's great news. We want, we wanna keep our excellent employees here.
And so compensation is certainly one way to do that. And finally, the three cross-cutting themes that cut [00:10:00] across all of the pillars. Do you wanna touch on those?
Y these cross-cutting themes are very important elements of our strategic plan. In fact, the first cross-cutting theme is one of the most important themes of our, strategic plan, which is diversity, equity, and inclusion.
We continue to invest, in the 1967 Legacy program, which is a, scholarship. Program that, attracts some of the best students, from our local minority groups to the College of Charleston. So we also established, a new. Professorship, the Lucille s Whipper Distinguished Professorship. We have our inaugural Whipper Distinguished professorship, appointed, professor Anthony Green, the director of our African-American Studies program.
That professorship is established to support our minority professors and make sure that they are promoted, but [00:11:00] also, develop our leadership, pipeline among from among our minority faculty members. I'm gonna lump our second theme and third theme, which is innovation and engagement together, because, those two are closely.
Aligned. We continue to be one of the most innovative universities in the South, and we continue to deepen our industry partnerships. So we have, developed, research projects, our faculty and students are working on together with, Our industry partners. For example, we have, projects with Bosch and Siemens.
And, these research projects are real world industry, problems that our students are trying to solve. And they're actually funded, by both industry and the South Carolina Fraunhofer Institute, in Columbia. We have a great, Program, [00:12:00] sustainability program, partnering with Siemens to make our campus carbon neutral, which is making great progress.
Charleston region is now becoming a high tech center and, we're continue our partnerships with our high tech industry. We hosted, Dig South a high tech conference here on our campus. We're also working with industry partners on continuing education to meet industry workforce demands.
So much going on, we probably could do an entire episode about the strategic plan alone.
So what we will do is we'll include links. We've written a lot about all of these achievements on our news site, the college today, so we'll be sure to include notes and links to all these stories in the show notes for this episode. We're winding down here for President Hsu. Just a, a couple more questions.
You mentioned leadership earlier. There are a number of new faces on your senior leadership team, which includes your cabinet of [00:13:00] course, and as well as the deans of the schools. Can you highlight some of the new people and also talk about the importance of a good leadership team? Sure. I'll answer your first, last question first because, what really moves a university, to a new level of excellence is the leadership team.
And without a strong leadership team, we would not be able to, affect the changes that we're trying to make. It's extremely important to have, a. Strong leadership team, and I'm very proud to say that, if I were, In the, professional basketball program. Then I would say I now have a, an all-star dream team, on this campus.
For example, we have several, new deans under the leadership of, Provost Suzanne Austin. We, recruited, a new, school of Business Dean Paul Schwager, who, started less than a year ago. We [00:14:00] also have, our new interim dean for the brand new school of, health Sciences Wes Dudgeon who started, also last fall.
We just recruited a new. Language Culture and World Affairs Dean, Dr. Amy Arias, who will start in July. And in fact, we're still, we just finished the interviewing process. For our new dean of, school of the Arts and that's just completed yesterday and was doing the process of, making decisions there.
And, same thing happens, in the cabinet level. And, we have a new general council. Chuck Baker who joined us, back in February. We have a new Chief Advancement Officer, Dan Frezza who came to us, from, William and Mary just last month. We [00:15:00] reformed, our marketing and communications function under your leadership, Ron.
You're one of, my new stars on the team. We also have a, New enrollment and management. Vice president, Jimmy Foster, who came back from a three year sabbatical at Franklin Marshall, and who just joined us on May 1st. That was great. It is a dream team. And that's a credit to you.
We're all excited to be working for you under your leadership, so it's, these are good times. So just a couple more questions, president Hsu one, how can people, keep in touch with you and keep up with you on social media? I only have, two social media, accounts. So it, it's easy.
The handle is, cofchsu basically, that's. The acronym of College of Charleston cfc, and my last name is H s u. If you link those together there, you can find me on Twitter and [00:16:00] Instagram and or else, if you're old fashioned like me, you can send me a email, and my email address is president at.
CofC.edu or you could also send it to me at president@cofc.edu you might need to explain that last one there about charleston.edu. President Hsu. That is the brand new, IP address we have acquired and that's the new direction we're moving to in the future. Our website.
Are gonna be@charleston.edu instead of cfc.edu so that people from even overseas would recognize our website right away. That's good news. And that really ties in directly to what you were talking about earlier in terms of the strategic plan and becoming a national university. That's great. Okay, last question here. We talked about a number of highlights. What's one moment from this past [00:17:00] academic year that stands out and why? I have to say that it, it was, one very embarrassing moment. I had at a basketball team, basketball game and as our basketball team is doing so well that our, TD arena is always filled.
I, all 5,000, and 200 seats are, were occupied, but, I was foolish enough to one day, in the, in-game contest, I was running a foot race, also known as ladder sprints or in tennis. It's known as, suicide run, against a student picking up groceries on the court, along the way.
So I thought, there were only three sprints and I thought I won and I finished and then people were yelling at me. Saying that there's one more, one more round or one, one more lap. So I started running again and of course, I have a very young mind and older body, and I, and my mind was [00:18:00] there, but my feet were not there, so I fell right, on court right there in front of, 5,200, fans.
That was, an embarrassing moment, but, it's a life lesson. We all stumble and fall, but we can do, we, we always can pick up and, we can also embrace the moment, the cheers and cheers. It doesn't matter. Just get right back up and start running again.
So I, I did finish the race. So that was the bright side of that whole story. By the way. I'm glad that the student won and we should say President Hsu. You were not injured in your fall. I was not that, that we're happy about. This has been really fun. President Hsu thank you so much for being on our podcast.
Thank you Ron for having me on.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Speaking of College of Charleston with today's guest president Andrew Hsu. For [00:19:00] more episodes and read stories about our guests, visit the College of Charleston's official news site, the College today@today.cfc.edu. You can also find episodes on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcast.
Spotify and Stitcher. If you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave a review. This episode was produced by Amy Stockwell from the Office of Marketing and Communications with Recording and Sound Engineering by Jesse Kunz from the Division of Information Technology. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.