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00:00:00 Speaker: Welcome back to the At Scale podcast. I'm Chrissy D'Alessandro, president and CEO of Tennessee Achieves, joined today by Graham Thomas, who serves as our chief every time. Graham Government Relations and External Affairs officer. Is it all that? That's it. I'm so bad with titles I need to, like, actually learn titles at some point in my time here. Really cares deeply about titles and I fail at that part all the time. I'm so excited about today's guest, so I don't think she knows this, but I'm actually a huge fan girl of our guest. I barely know her and but anytime I can be in her space, I try to find myself there. Because she is bold and innovative. It always seems like she just says what she means, which I think is really rare in the spaces that we work in. I am such a big admirer. Thank you. Thank you. So happy to be here. And I never know what that means. Like she says what she thinks and I'm thinking, uh oh. But yeah, I think that's like that. You're a straight shooter. So joined by Chancellor Donnie Plowman. Um, you know, I was looking at your bio today. I didn't realize you've been here since twenty nineteen. How did I miss all that? Six and a half years, y'all. That is killing the national average of people need jobs. Yeah. You're, like, really bucking the curve here, which I love. Yeah. Flown by, I love it. I love what I'm doing. I mean, I should remember because as I was reflecting, like you led the university through Covid, right? So serving as chancellor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, a big sort of explosive moment in the world, but specifically in the higher ed space. So we're going to get to that. But why don't you talk to us? Just kick us off. Like, what's the journey that got you here? Right. Well, you know, um, I had a career in higher ed as a professor. I originally got into the business of higher ed. I got a master's degree in a PhD just so I could check the box that I. I had the degree that a vice chancellor of student life would have. And then. So I got a PhD in management business. And in the course of doing that, I started doing research and teaching, and I just abandoned the goal of wanting to be a student life person. And so I spent a good my early part of my career as an assistant professor, associate full professor. I moved up the ranks traditionally, but in business schools, which is different than, you know, if I was in a College of Arts and sciences. And then, uh, I joined the faculty here at Knoxville in twenty twenty. Uh, I always think twenty two thousand and seven and my husband was a full professor. We thought we had killed it like full professors you had. We each had a professorship. I was the blah blah blah professor of, you know, and um, then I got pulled back in kind of to leadership. I became the department head, and then Nebraska was looking for a dean of the College of Business. And the truth is, I really like leadership. I didn't I didn't feel safe admitting it in in certain spaces, like my colleagues. I remember a journal editor hearing I was going to Nebraska. Dean and they go, why would you do this? You've just killed your career. Like, well, I see a different path for myself, and I like leading groups to try to do big things. And I just discovered that about myself. I'd had a little stint as an associate dean at UT San Antonio, came here. I was taught for three years and was department head, then went to Nebraska, where I inherited a college that I used to describe it. It was like a wilted flower. And my job was to start pouring water in there and, you know, mixing it up. And like, we had just Nebraska just gone into the Big Ten. And I, I used that early on, like, look at this, look at all these business school. There's like the most highly ranked business schools in the country. We're in there now. Like what are we going to do. And so that began that journey, to be honest with you, culminated in a we raised eighty four million dollars for a brand new building in twenty twelve, which is a lot of money then. Um, and then I, I did that job for six and a half years. Dean loved every single day of it. My husband says I forget there were bad days. I don't remember any bad days because as Dean, you're just doing things, and then you get to feel and get the satisfaction of experiencing, accomplishing some things. Then I moved into the role of vice chancellor and provost. Honestly, I didn't really like that job that much. I lasted two and a half years before I started, before I came here, like I saw this job open up as chancellor. I was ambivalent about it because it was I was being hired by an interim president named Randy Boyd. I did not know Randy, and I was he's not well known. He's not very well known. Well, no, I just wasn't in the right circles. But, um, I thought it was risky to take a job with someone who's an interim and that it had a lot of turnover. Yeah, either a president or a chancellor or a head coach who's being fired all the time. That was my perception, not knowing very much. So I interviewed for the job and Randy Boyd, of course. And you would know this very unconventional academic leader. Sometimes when I say him, he's like, I'm not sure I like the way you describe that, but true. And he he came out on his plane to Lincoln, Nebraska and picked me up for the interview. Mm. I'm telling you, that's a case of one that that's ever happened like that. And it was such a meaningful move because we had about two and a half hours on the plane to get to know one another, just him and I. And I immediately dropped my concern about him being interim. I remember thinking, I really like this guy. I want to work with him. He's a big thinker. He's unconventional. I want to do big things like this can work and maybe I can talk him into wanting to stay. I was so like, I don't know if that's like egotistical or naive. I thought maybe, maybe he'll stay as as president. And so that was really the beginning of it. And I just the interview here didn't last very long. That was a change. Usually interview for university presidents like three or four days. He did it in twenty four hours. So I met enough people, made a presentation, and I went back and I just told my husband, I really want to do this. And Tennessee, this is the way I think about it. It was the right fit. And you hear people talking about that all the time. My skills, my gifts were really what I think this place needed. And in my what I could do would matter here, I thought, it's not. That's not true everywhere. So I just have loved every second of this job harder in this role than being a dean or even a provost. But I love the job and we're off and running, and I feel like you just said Chrissy about like, I can't believe this is my seventh year. It seems like it's flown by. It has. It does feel like it's flown by. Yeah, but you've had a lot of things happen over those seven years. Well, Covid was seven months after I started. And if the truth be told, Covid was really we it was an opportunity for us we didn't even know it at that much, although I did. I did put my my team just before we went home in March of that year. You remember in spring of twenty twenty, I do I did this little exercise. It's called predictive hindsight. So I wrote I wrote up what looked like a Wall Street Journal article being published in twenty twenty three, and it was all about the changing higher and higher education landscape because of the pandemic. And there are some school a lot of schools went out of business, which was true. Others experienced incredible financial stresses, which was true. But there was one at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains not only survive, but they thrive. They got more enrollments, more money, more. You know, everyone wants to come there. Here's what they did. Handed that to my team and said, so let's fill this blanket. And I'm telling you, the things that we did for that or the beginning of the rest of my life here. Like one of the things we had and we had teams do this. One of the ideas that came out of that exercise is, okay, we're going to call every single student that we had twenty nine thousand students at the time. We got three hundred volunteers. I made phone calls myself, we're going to call them and say, you got to come back. Just are you are you having any problems? What do you need? And thinking back, just remember faculty people like me, I didn't know how to use zoom. I didn't even know what it was. And we just shut down and said, go teach with zoom. And we knew it was. We felt like this will be a disaster. And so another one was, well, we need to call all the people that have been admitted. Think about that. In retrospect, it seems like nothing but. So we made thirty thousand calls to students. We had admitted thirty thousand calls to existing students. We we left messages. You know, uh, another thing was, why don't we get some of our famous Vols, like Peyton Manning was number one to crash some of these classes? Mhm. The very first one, he did it and we knew that if he did it, it would get on the news, which it did. And so it just began this thing and we thought then it was they came, we opened back up really quickly. Kids in the northeast were out for two years basically. Mhm. So we that's how we started becoming on the on the radar of parents in the northeast. Schools in the South aren't closed. I did this live update twice a week. I don't know if you remember it Chrissy, but I remember this. Yes. It was just for like our community and parents and it turned into this thing, like people were watching it. Yeah. Anderson Cooper heard me go on there as one of his staff did. And I was upset with one of the fraternities because they'd been partying. And back then you were supposed to stay in groups of six. Do you remember that? I mean, and I went on the live updates and you guys were breaking the rules, and, you know, I'm going to I'll use every means I have to hold you accountable, blah, blah, blah. And then then not. So the Anderson Cooper show called and said, would the Chancellor come on and talk about what's going on in Tennessee? So it was a risk. I went to my marketing person, communications person said, if it goes well, it could help our brand. If not, it's bad. So we did it. And, um, it helped our brand among parents, amongst the fraternities here. They were really mad at me and they came to see me like you threw us under the bus. And anyway, you know, you were just trying stuff. And I think that is a bit of a demonstration of my leadership style. I mean, I we try to think things through, don't get me wrong, but being willing to just put stuff out there and get going, Try something. Learn. Learn as you go. And adapt. And I work for someone who believes in that. You know Randy Boyd? Yeah. Go ahead. I remember when you came on board. I remember thinking, the university, the institution needs someone that's going to come provide leadership and stabilize. To your point, there was a lot of turnover. It's like people were coming and going all the time. Um, I now serve on a couple boards with the College of Communication and Information, and it seems like everyone is lockstep, moving in the same direction. I've heard you before say you define leadership as the willingness to act, right. How did you do that? How did you get the whole university moving into one direction in this? Well, you know, I think that's an example of where we used Covid. All of us, none of us knew what was going to happen. And so there was an an opportunity to lead. And and I think the rest of the our campus community was open to that differently than like, we didn't we weren't really talking about shared governance so much. We we said to the faculty, okay, we think you need we need to let students switch to pass fail after the fact because we don't know how this is going to go. And they did it. We the faculty Senate to pass this. But so we were stepping out and leading with what we thought we needed to get done. And I, I think the campus appreciated in that moment. And we came up with three guidelines. If you don't know what to do, be creative, be flexible and be compassionate. And if you do those things, you won't make a mistake that we can't fix. So it was sort of interesting people. And that was really the beginning of we're in this together, all dispersed all over the country. Our students were back wherever they came from, in their bedrooms at home. Um, and then some. Many came back in the fall. And I think just continuing to talk about and that's one of the ways I try to lead, is these problems are complicated. So we often start with, wait a second, let's back up. And I did this just the other day. I can't even remember now what it was. Oh, I know it was on. We were trying to decide whether or not we were going to, um, open, close the university, go remote. And I had a team that works on that. They follow the weather and everything. And the leader of that group had written to me and I said, look, I will follow your recommendation, but here's the two principles I want you to use one, we want to keep people safe. And number two, I want us to be have a generous spirit of any humanity sense, like, let's be compassionate. People have little kids who aren't going to school. And so I feel like we should be aware of that and just use those two principles and then whatever you recommend will follow. And we did. So I that helps me sometimes when I don't know what to do. Exactly. Like alright, back up what's kind of two non-negotiables? Let's don't do anything that would make us seem like a jerk and insensitive, and let's don't do anything that would put anyone at risk. Like for example, we switched to we switched our culture around parking here to a park and ride situation, and the students have kind of gone along with it. But if the buses weren't able to get them from where they park to here, that would be unsafe. So kind of an example. Yeah, I think I think it's um, I love the humanity thread there, but I also think that you've, you've made some bold decisions around putting the stake in the ground on being first in class. Like, I'll be honest. So when I graduated one hundred thousand years ago. But from high school, UT was like, you know, okay. But it wasn't like I'm desperate to go to UT, right? I mean, it just wasn't at like the top of my list. Well, I have a sixteen year old and he's desperate to go to UT. I also have three kids, and I have three separate UT students that come to my house. None of which are from Tennessee. And I know you've done a lot of intentional things to make this a land grant flagship university open to Tennesseans, but you're clearly doing something if Indiana, Colorado, and Ohio want to also come here. And they're all smart young women with big aspirations. And so talk a little bit about that. I mean, I said, I don't know if you know this, but I go to lunch once a month with the Bill Fox. And so I have a lot of I know a lot of data. He's so awesome. He's the greatest of all time. Yeah. but, uh. But I want to know, like, in your head. Like, tell me what? Like, what do you think sets you apart now? UT Knoxville apart in a way that maybe wasn't true twenty years ago. Right. Well, I think it's we did put a stake in the ground and and we said we we've inched our way into it. We're really clear right now. We want to be a world class research university that is the very best at undergraduate education, most world class research universities. I mean, I think many of them would. The emphasis sometimes seems more like on graduate students than undergrad. So we can do both things really well. But we got there by just starting off by saying, look, we we are so much better than we think of ourselves as. So let's go back to the way you thought about the place back then. That was kind of the way people thought, well, like, we're we're Tennessee, we're a Were state school, where we've been great at football at times. And, um, that's kind of who we are. So we, we, we did the traditional thing during Covid. We got our strategic vision underway, which was really focused on being the modern land grant that has high aspiration. And we started talking. And this is something we we kind of forget how the power of words sometimes, I guess until they're misused and then you have a big problem. But I started talking about this as a university on the rise. Just look at us, look at everything. And I could every single metric I could put in front of you, I put it in front of the board and stuff like, look at this, everything's going up. And it started with, honestly, Covid was a springboard. Enrollment started going up and they they've been going up inside the state of Tennessee and outside and bringing in students from outside the state of Tennessee. I will just say in response to that, the student like this past December, we we offered first round decision, in-state students went first and all the guaranteed apps. I love that we're doing that. Kristi. The guaranteed application. So you know that's awesome I love that that was risky. That is risky. It was. But you know, I had a board and a president who are willing to take some risk. And if you put the first year we it didn't work perfectly. We didn't specify the Act score. We said, you have to take the Act, but anyone with a four point oh or higher or top ten percent, you're in what end up happening. That first year, we we ended up with some Act scores that were really, really low. And we know that that is a predictor of success to some degree. So the next year we put in and the board was open to us learning from the first year and fixing it. So we came back with we at UT Knox, we're going to be at twenty four. The other campuses don't have that same. Same thing. But we want people to know because I want your children to be aspiring to that so they can think to themselves, okay, I know I'm in at UT Knoxville. I don't have to worry about that. If I do these two things, score on that, act at least to twenty four, and if I get at least a four point oh, and these days everything's on a five point scale, or a lot of schools are excuse me. So our our applications inside Tennessee went up once we started doing that guaranteed admission. And they've gone up among students who think they can meet it. And so it doesn't mean every student that gets admitted has a twenty four or has a four point oh. Obviously there's everything in between. And so it just one thing fed on another. And we we I had to overhaul the athletic department during that same time period. I don't know if you remember now. So that was a big change. And that's where I first started talking about alignment when I went to hire the new athletic director. I'm sorry. I'm about to choke here. Please don't choke. Can I have thirty? Take a minute. Yeah. Of course. Take whatever you need. What direction do you want to go next? You can go next. I like this athletics thing. I hope we keep going down that road. Of course you do. I like how you nod your head that you remember. Overall, of course. Talking point in here about, like, being well, being accessible to students is a good one. The partnerships one kind of see where she goes and maybe try to go in one of those two directions. Got it. I want to know how she's doing. I'm sorry. Can you guys cut that part out? Of course. That's what Ben said. Okay, we can't Graham and me, but Ben can. Okay. Alright. Yeah. We are all good here. Don't worry. So I think I was saying, like, when I went to hire the new athletic director, the only thing I really had to sell him was alignment. What I said to him was, if you come here, we got a lot of things to fix. I had just turned us into the NCAA for violations and a lot of kids transferred because we fired football coach. I said to Danny, me, the president and the chair of the board are are aligned And you're not going to have to worry about. He asked me. Well, donors go around me to. The the president or the board chair? Or will coaches go around me to you? And I said, I don't think they will, but if they do, I'll send them all back to you. Mm. And and we I don't even think that was really tested. But he took the risk. And what I was telling him was come help me build this place. They hired me, Randy. John Compton, bill Haslam was in that decision. Um, hired me to come take this school I thought was really good and make it great. It really was a good a great kind of conversation, and I can't we can't we will not be the university that we want to be without a great athletic department. So we started Danny gets here kind of cleans things up. He start we start succeeding in all the athletic. I mean, I remember my son saying to me, who was in Texas and in athletics saying, mom, you better enjoy this moment because this doesn't happen all the time. And so it just felt like, and it has been ever since, it feels like the trajectory is just continuing to move. Now we're really focusing on how do we attract more big time scholars in the fields doing research that Tennessee needs. That's the difference in how we're doing it. Nuclear AI, quantum advanced manufacturing, supply chain management those are all things we're really, really good at. So we have this, um, initiative underway where we're hiring preeminent scholars. Here's another gamble we took last June. I went to the board and asked for their support to. We set aside money from the budget to hire fifty five big scholars over the next few years. And I just figured there are people out at other big, other prestigious universities who are thinking, I'm just I just want to go somewhere where I can do my good work with other people doing good work, and not worry about politics. And, you know, just all the things that are going on in higher ed. And so far, very little preliminary data. I think we may be really successful at this. So we I want the people of the state of Tennessee and you guys can test this on me. I want them to be so proud of this university. Like we have a great university in this state. It's our flagship land grant. And they're great because of A, B and C they can talk about it. You know, the work we're doing in student success. And I'm so proud of that. And we're gaining a national reputation. I think you can combine that with being a great research university. That's what we're trying to do. So that's that's the the experiment. So we'll see if it works. You know, as an alum with a degree from the university, one of the things I always tell my friends is like our our degrees are more valuable now because of all of these things. And now I can come on and talk to you for the full time about athletics. Chrissy might fire me, but I'll just say this I've got a I've got a two year old at home. He has two favorite songs and one is here to do the woo during Rocky Top. So we're raising them right. But yeah, all these like big ideas. But one of the things I think is I've found really impressive is that you have are still carving out time to be present on campus and to meet with students. I know that's carrying down through the deans there, following your leadership, but what are you learning in those times when you're when you're meeting with students and you're hearing from them like, what are you learning from the students that you're you're putting into place at the institution? You know, I just had lunch today with seven students who won a prize of lunch with the Chancellor because they'd gotten involved in this new program we're calling Ball Edge, which is a program that students can volunteer to do where in their sophomore year, they start meeting with a coach about what are the jobs out there and how am I going to look good to an employer. And it's it's simple things in a way. We know that when students are highly engaged outside the classroom, they do better on the job market. It's not just like checking a box I'm in. These organizations go on study abroad, get an internship. We're trying to change every single student worker job we have on campus into something that has professional career aspects to it. So we're asking supervisors, for example, to give their students an assignment with Ball Edge, and they've been doing it. So these students today, we've had sixteen thousand students volunteer to participate in this far. And they were asking me questions about my career and just leadership and everything. And one of them said, well, we know what your vision is for the campus. How can we as students help help you with succeeding in your vision? I'm like, oh my goodness, did you hug that student? Like that's amazing. Leadership is contagious. I think that's what we're learning here today. You know. And I told them, keep doing what you're doing. When I was in college I was just thinking about, I don't know, just I wasn't thinking about a career and how to prepare myself and how to grow up. I was just there having a good time. And I did love classes. I was just impressed with him, like making the most of this experience. And kids want to be volunteers. And Graham, I'm so happy to hear you say that, because about the the value of your diploma. I jokingly say that all the time, but it's the truth. Mhm. That is our job and I want people to feel proud of this place. Yeah, I love that. Oh you go Graham. I just say it's a message I share with with my friends and family that are also alums. And you know, I know one of the things that you get measured on is like, alumni involvement. I'm like, you know, y'all chip in and do your part because it's a different place and it's a better place than hopefully we played a little part in making it a better place. But it's yeah, you do doing such great things now. And we're shouting from the rooftop. We know people like being part of a winner, right? All of us do. And so it you can feel a really positive energy on campus. And it it partly comes from alums who are there on advisory boards and they're, you know, showing up and it's it's making a big difference. So it's exciting. It is. It is exciting. You know, Donny, I've heard you speak many times about how you're a student of leadership. Obviously, you're utilizing leadership tools at UT. I do, we haven't talked about that, but I know that's been a big game changer for how you guys are thinking about how you show up and meet students where they are. Right? How how do you when you're thinking about, I mean, you know, twenty years ago I hitched, um, my, I don't know, I'm always so bad with sayings like my trailer to Randy Boyd, and I thought, this is the guy I want to work for forever, right? Like, and I find that, um, everyone that comes into Randy's circle wants to work for him because there's a lot of trust and there's a lot of risk taking. He allows, and, you know, fail fast. The whole Randy Boyd like spiel that that we know there's got to be your method when you're picking leaders like Amber Williams I think is a superstar. Like, what's your strategy there? You talked about Danny White. How are you? How do you think about when you're building out your cabinet? Yeah. So I have there's a couple things I think about now that I didn't used to. One is I mentioned it earlier what I sold to Danny. I've been selling that back when I was Dean, we were trying to hire new faculty, and I would meet with them and say, I'm looking for someone to help me build this college, and I don't want to take ten years to do it. I want to get it built quickly. And and if you're looking for a place that's already built, we are not that. So I like try to be really clear. And with these preeminent scholars, I'm doing the same thing. Come here and help us build this place. And I think there are two types of people in the world. People who want to build things and, and, and grow things, and people who, who want to be where someone something's already built. And so I'm trying to sort those out. That's that's like the first cut And then I'm a big believer. Chrissy, I know you've heard me talk about this in this strengths approach that we use. And under underlying that is this sort of conceptual framework of, you know, we're not, um, we, we approach everyone, but particularly students with not with a deficit mindset, like, what's wrong with you? You're going to come here. And if you do this, you're fail. If you do that, you'll fail. And, you know, many of you got through high school and didn't do what you needed to do, like always so negative. And instead we focused on this strengths approach. So the students take their strengthsfinder. We've had forty eight thousand people take it now twenty eight thousand are students. We've had a lot of faculty and staff. My entire team, we use it constantly. I'll say to two of the people of the that are really, really important to me on my team have harmony as one of their top strengths. And they're sometimes I think they're embarrassed by it. Two males. But I need that. It's like thirty thirty on the on a list of thirty four with mine. But there are other times when we'll be and they'll say to me, okay, this is like a harmony suggestion. Have you thought of calling this person first before you do such and such like that is it just helps us find harmony. We need that. We have that on my team. But I'm going to start calling it that Harmony suggestion. Yeah. And or then the other side of it is sometimes I'm like, okay you guys, enough with the harmony stuff. I really and I want to know, but we gotta get down to it. There's no harm. That's right. So it's become a language and I use that. I don't pick people to be on the team because of their strengths. I don't know what they are, but once they're there, we use it a lot. But I'm looking for people who are willing to have an idea when I say willingness to act. Sometimes it's just have a question. Have an idea that you'll put out there. And so I don't want people that come in here and want to figure out how to please Dawndy. I want people who want to come in here and make the place better. So I think acting one of the things the reason I landed on that is I just seen too many people in higher ed in these positions who are scared. And this was even before the most recent kind of attack on higher Ed. It just we just need a little bit of courage in most organizations. Just a little bit. You don't have to be all like, I'm going to go be Braveheart or something, but just asking a question sometimes is such a brave thing to do, really is. And like I if I were raising my children again, I would that I would talk about things like that. Are you asking questions at school? Like, don't just sit there passively, you know? Yeah. I love this talk about the leadership part of this conversation today I think is really fun. So what's next? We hear you're a university on the rise. We hear Randy talking about the best decade in the history of UT. So what does that look like? How do we keep rising? How do we make this the best decade? What we're going to do here at UT Knoxville is, um, go after we're going to continue to recruit hard in Tennessee students. I want more of last year, there were fourteen hundred students with Act scores of twenty nine or higher who left the state for college. I want them coming here. So we're working on that. We got some strategies around that. Um, and then I think the other thing is getting the state to look at us as not just a place where I send my kid to go join a fraternity, be at UT, go to games, but a place to get a great education that leads to a good job. I'll tell you a story. Last night I was over at the hospital and the nurse manager on the floor. I was over there visiting someone. She came up to me, she recognized me. She said, I want to tell you that during Covid, I watched all your podcasts or your live updates all the time. She's my daughter in her school there in the fall of twenty twenty. And I said, oh my gosh, that's the bravest student. They moved in wearing masks. Mhm. They couldn't bring their whole family with them because we had space considerations, she said. I said where, where were you all living. She said Connecticut. I said so your daughter came as an out-of-state student. She said yes. And I said, and you followed her down here and went to work here. Yes. And it was just kind of an amazing story. And I think that that just was a testament to we're doing something right. And so what I hope at the end of this decade is the whole state is saying, we're so proud of that university. We love that we have Vanderbilt. And I love my friend Daniel, who's running Vanderbilt doing a great job. But I want them to think about us from the standpoint of the quality of our work. I think we do a terrific job at undergraduate education. We're going to keep working at that, getting kids jobs, not being afraid to talk about it. But also the state going, oh my God, thank, thank goodness we have them. Their expertise in nuclear is going to change the world. We see how it is. They're out there with Oak Ridge. They're doing all this stuff. I would like for everyone in the state to know what Oak Ridge National Lab is, and that they partner with UT. Those two go together. That would be a a success story. I think those are some b hags to, uh, steal from our boss. Um, and, you know, I, I feel like. And this is the last question, I do feel like you and Randy are a dream team, honestly, and I hear that often. So it's fun to be out and and to hear about, gosh, look at the trajectory of you since Randy and Dondi joined forces. I mean, you know, you can't be in Knoxville without people really talking about that. So, you know, I would love like, you get all this done. I have no doubt with the two of you that this happens, like, what's next for you? What's on? What are you thinking about next? Do you go back to teaching leadership at that point? You know, I could or maybe I write I write the great book, you know, putting it all together. I have not been doing the work I should do to do that, you know. But, um, I don't know, I I'll never be satisfied with just sort of. Okay, I'm going to rest on the laurels. There'll always be something next. I think people people ask me and Randy about this a lot. Like, okay, well, what's going to happen when when you guys aren't here anymore? And I think both of us have the attitude, like we're not thinking about that. We have so much we're trying to do. And, um, I'm. I couldn't be more excited about it. And I love I think Randy and I have worked. We have a great rhythm about our work relationship. I called him this morning, for example, and said our text and said, do you have five minutes? I think I said, two minutes. We have a yeah, you always gotta it's gotta be less than five. I know for him to be on board and we have an agreement that when it's the Chancellor of Uhtc calling him, I say it's not an emergency. It's not a crisis. Um, I just want you to think this through with me, and I just walk through what I was thinking about something. He goes, I'm one hundred percent. I agree with you. I do the same thing. And I love having that type of relationship. Mhm. So I think he does that with me in in different ways. So it's he doesn't try to do my job. I don't try to do his. And it just seemed like we it's a it's a good it is a good team. And I'm really what it makes it fun to be honest a big part of it. Yeah. I think I said earlier that six and a half years ago it felt like we needed stability. I think that you've brought stability and then so much more, um, to the roles. And just thank you for your leadership as an alum. Thank you for everything you've done to me. Also an alum, you act like you're the only alum. I'm also an alum. Also, as a person who's blood orange orange his whole life. Thank you for what you've done with the athletic department. I have to at least get like a little bit in there on that. Yeah. Um, it's a great time to be involved. Well, if you can get Christie to let us talk about athletics, I'd love to do that sometime. No, not on our. I'm kidding. Yeah, yeah. You guys, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. It's been a gift. Really? Truly.