By Spencer Schneier, Staff Writer

This interview is the first part of a larger initiative The Carolinian will be exploring this semester, during which we will investigate the wide variety of political and economic factors that affect both UNCG and the UNC system at large. With a Republican vice-grip on North Carolina politics, continued tuition hikes, a “student-loan debt crisis,” a new chancellor arriving at UNCG next academic year and the recent news that President Ross will be stepping down, it is crucial to understand the plethora of factors that impact our education and our financial freedom.

The Carolinian’s, Spencer Schneier, sat down with Director of Strategic Initiatives Mike Tarrant from the Office of Government Relations to discuss what his position entails and the inner workings of the UNC system.

The Carolinian: What do you guys (the Office of Government Relations) do?

Mike Tarrant: The university is of course a public institution and we are still significantly supported by the state. In recent years, we have at all public universities, not just locally but nationally, seen levels of funding that we once saw from the state decline. But we still remain strongly supported by the state. I think we’re (UNC-Greensboro) at 40% of our overall budget is coming from the state of North Carolina, from the taxpayers.

We— as liaisons to the legislature, I am our official liaison, each campus has a legislative liaison—we serve in similar roles as other state agencies have, they also have a liaison, someone who serves as that agency’s point of contact to our state General Assembly.

Our purposes could vary from agency-to-agency, campus-to-campus. But when it comes to the legislative liaison role, we serve as the point of contact for elected officials as they work on issues that impact our respective campus—our respective state agency.

So you can imagine, obviously having 40% of our funding be from the state, we interact with legislatures around the formation of the state budget on an annual basis.

Policy, too. So laws— legislation that is being proposed that would impact students or universities’ operations. We help legislators get questions answered that they may have as they start to formulate that legislation.

We also interact with lawmakers on the federal level. This is a little bit different, we don’t receive directly from the federal government funds to conduct our normal operations like we do at the state level.

Federal funding comes in different forms. For us, the majority of our federal funding is to support research— faculty here. We are a strong research institution.

Institutions that do research depend on our federal agencies to support much of it. Agencies like the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Education, every year put out a request for proposals and encourage researchers from around the country to apply for grants, and so those grants are awarded typically on a competitive basis, and they’re reviewed by panels of experts who make decisions as to what projects they want to fund. Our faculty, in the last 10-15 years, have increased the amount of applications we are submitting to federal agencies each year.

So we help, sort of be the eyes and ears of the university as to what we think the funding levels are going to be for those federal agencies. Because those agencies get their funding from awarded grants from Congress.

So while our faculty are interacting individually with the program managers who oversee the grants at their respective federal agencies, we spend a lot of our time interacting with congress and their staff to help them understand how our faculty fit into that picture of research, because how would they know unless we come and communicate with them, explain it to them?

So, that is another aspect of our job, not just monitoring and helping to answer questions and influence policy and funding at the state level, but also at the federal level.

Nikki is the assistant in my office, she joined us two years ago, seems like longer (laughs, Nikkie: “I feel the same way”). It has been great for the university to have an office that is focused on these external sources of revenue and external agencies that play a major role in the overall well-being of the university.

Because in recent years as you know, funding has been tighter at the state and federal level, and it is increasingly important, I believe, for the universities to have someone or a team of people monitoring and helping to translate what’s happening back to the campus community, so the campus community is ready to respond or try and influence those processes as they take place.

TC: One of the political forces at play when it comes to UNC-Greensboro and its line of funding is the UNC System. Where does the UNC System fit in the picture of UNCG’s funding?

MT: I used to work at the UNC System when I was a student at UNC Chapel Hill. My sophomore year I started interning there, and that was my introduction to higher education. I didn’t know a system office existed, most people don’t. Why would you unless you’ve had experience with them? And most students, frankly, don’t because the system office is an administrative body; they don’t have students.

It is really there to function as a coordinating and administrative body of the larger university system. It’s role is very significant in terms of being able to coordinate the activities that’s taking place on each campus, and make sure that we’re aligned around a shared mission and vision for higher education in the state of North Carolina, and that we’re not having duplicative efforts or academic programs and we can make sure we’re being good stewards of taxpayer dollars.

Making sure we’re able to serve students from all walks of life, all parts of the state, in an efficient and effective manner— that’s really hard for any one campus to do on its own, and that’s why you need a coordinating administrative body in the system to help be effective across the state.

When it comes to General Administration’s role in looking at state and federal policy, state and federal funding, GA has a President who oversees the entire system, and the President has the ability to formulate a cabinet. Each time a President comes in, they have the ability to coordinate their cabinet, and what those cabinet members are going to be doing in order to carry out that President’s agenda.

Historically, we have seen Presidents appoint cabinet level positions that interact with state and federal governments. For instance, GA has a Vice President for Federal Relations, and a Vice President for State Relations. That shows you how critical a President views those jobs, as to put them at the Vice President level. That’s been consistent dating back to president Molly Broad who served in the late-90s/early-2000s, since then we have had President Erskine Bowles, and current President Tom Ross.

Our main point of contact from this office at GA is those two VPs. Those two VPs serve in a coordinating function for us and our counterparts across the system, and help make sure that we’re aligned, and that we are working together to formulate, alongside our colleagues at other campuses, a common agenda for us to work from as we go to Congress, or we go to the legislature and say, ‘These are the issues that are important to us, here’s what is critical to our students, and our faculty.’

We want to advocate as one body and hope that the legislature will support us. As you can imagine, it’s much more effective for us to do that as a team, as a system, than it is for any one of us to try and do that on our own. Without the system there, serving as that coordinating body, it would be very difficult for us to do it individually. That’s very important.

One other aspect of GA is that they and the President report to the board of governors, which is the elected 32 member governing body of the UNC System, which retains the majority of oversight in terms of policy issues for the UNC System. While we each have respective boards of trustees who govern our institutions and approve changes to policy and increases to tuition or student fees, most of those policy changes or increases in tuition and fees have to be approved at the board of governors’ level as well.

The president makes sure that him and his VPs are being responsive to the priorities of the system board. It is an elected body, which is meant to be representative of the state of North Carolina, and it is very diverse in terms of its geographic profile, and that’s because it’s elected by the General Assembly, which of course is geographically dispersed and diverse.

The board of governors will approve each year, a set of priorities which is the legislative agenda for the UNC System at the state and federal levels. We as a campus and system, we don’t do things on our own or in a vacuum. We work as part of a body that has many levels of oversight and governance, and that system office is there at the top, helping to make sure we’re all coordinated and on the same page.

TC: These people in the UNC System, they work hard, they care, right? There’s this idea that they have bad intentions at times, but is that honestly the case?

MT: I would say people, from my experience, who are working in the UNC System, or at UNCG— if you’re working in the university system in one capacity or another, either as a staff member at GA or if you’re on the board of governors, if you’ve raised your hand and said you wanted to serve in either capacity, you’re doing it because you believe in the power of higher education to change lives in our state.

I don’t think folks should be concerned that is not the mission and goal of those who are part of our great university. North Carolina has a reputation for its higher educational institutions, both community college and university, and people want to be a part of that. One of the highest honors one can receive as part of this is the appointment to the board of governors, and to have an opportunity to help influence the direction of the university system.