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Check us out to get the latest online from the Volunteer Stop. Javonka and her guest discussed everything from life, love, and business with the Tennessee store. The Tennessee Time! Always relatable, always relevant, and always a good time. This is Talking Tennessee, and now your host, Javanka.

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This episode is brought to you by Turning Knox Rental, your go-to for event rental services. We have selfie machines, 360 photo machines, and food servicing machines that you can rent out to give your parties the best experience possible. Get the TKR experience with Turning Knox Rental. You can find us at www.turningknocksrental.com.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Welcome back to Talking Tennessee with Yavonka. I am your host, and I am here with a dear friend of mine, Randy Boyd, and we are having a great conversation. We're doing a part two because he has a lot to say and I have a lot of things to ask him. It's a great conversation. Let's go.

Why He Became UT President

SPEAKER_02 1:04

So you're the president and CEO of University of Tennessee. How did that come about? You're so successful in so many different other things. When I was reading different things about you, I'm like, he didn't have to do that. Why I have to ask him what made him want to be in that position?

SPEAKER_03 1:24

I think it's preparedness and opportunity and passion all need to come at the same time. So I've always been passionate about education. Okay. Every volunteer hour, every uh investment in philanthropy had been related to education. So that's something that I was passionate about. So that that was part one. Uh part two, we talked about in our last session about running for governor and losing, and what would that what was that like? Um and this some could uh uh uh say this is just a lot of rationalization, but um I learned so much as running for governor that helped me prepare to be uh the president of the University of Tennessee. There's a lot of things in my past I think helped prepare being I think being an entrepreneur, knowing how to run a large organization as a CEO, those are managing people, leading people, leading change, those are important. But one of the most important things is the University of Tennessee is the land grant university of Tennessee. And so often land grant universities in other states, and even in our state at times, go out and hire somebody from uh the outside the state to come in and lead the state. And I always think, you know, how can you serve the people of Tennessee if you don't know them? That's true. Um running for governor, if nothing else, you get to know the people of the state. You know everything. You shake hands, you hear stories. You know, you talk to the people at the Taco Bell or the bird. There's a point there's a group of old men, the wise men of the community in every town that at 8 o'clock every morning are sitting around talking at a table, having a coffee, coffee at uh either a McDonald's or a Burger King. It's a different place at every town, but you get to sit and talk about those people and get to understand what's on their mind. And and uh so all I think, all those things I think prepared me. And for me, it was uh just a serendipitous opportunity, had no intention of ever being a university president. It was the furthest thing from my mind. President of the University of Tennessee, Joe D. P. called me one day about a week after the election. He had supported me. I went by to see him. And uh at the end of lunch, he surprised me with the idea that maybe I could uh serve. I went back and talked to my wife about it. And uh we had had all these vacations that we were gonna plan after the election that I was gonna do now that I had some extra time, and we managed to get one of them in. Uh you got one. I took a week off and then came right back and started serving as the president of the University of Tennessee. Wow, a week later. Well, let me be be clear. So um I came back from the vacation. Okay. The board voted me to be the next president, but I finally this was September, but I officially didn't start until the current president uh quit and uh or retired in November 26th of that month, 2018, or that year, 2018. But wasn't doing anything anyway. I thought, you know, I'm gonna hit the ground running. So I immediately started working. I'm not gonna get paid when I take the job, I'm not getting paid now, I might as well go to work. So uh I was uh inter interim president in waiting. Uh so I traveled all over the state, talking with each of the campuses, the Institute of Public Service, extension offices, just getting to know the the organization. So on my first day, we already had a clear set of ideas of what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Okay. So when you walked in the door and you said to Jenny, I have this opportunity, and what do you think? Did she tell you you're crazy? No. Or did she say? Okay, let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

One of the many things I've been blessed with, but none better than my wife, who's always been supportive. Yes. Um, she may have thought I was crazy, but but uh she's always been supportive.

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I I

Marriage Support And Staying Grounded

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let me say this about marriage, and um I'm glad you touched on that. I truly believe to be truly successful, you have to be equally yoked. You have to have someone in your life if you're married, someone in your life that will cheer you on, hold you accountable of being successful, and and tell you and push you into in uncomfortable positions of okay, you can do this. I know my husband has pushed me in in areas that I'm like, I can't do that. And he's like, Oh yes, you can. And Jenny's probably that person for you, and you you're that person for her. Every time I see you and Ginny out, y'all walk united. And I and I notice that it's just like y'all are in this together, and you can see it in your face, you can see it in just how y'all talk to people, you know, and just really love on this community. When we were at the light show at the at the zoo, do you remember that? At the zoo, and and me and you were standing there talking, and she was right there beside you talking. Yeah, I mean, me and you talking, but she was there like your support when I said, Okay, are you gonna come on the podcast? And you're like, I'll come, reach out to me. But she was she had that smile in her face to say it's okay. You know, she didn't say anything, but that face and that smile on her face. So please tell Jenny, thank you so much because it gave me comfort.

The Vision Behind UT Everywhere

SPEAKER_02 6:16

So let's go back to being the president of the University of Tennessee. The biggest I meant platform in Tennessee. So when you got into the position, what what was your dream? Well and are you making it?

SPEAKER_03 6:31

Uh yes, when we talk about the first thing though, just when you when you first take uh the role of the president of the University of Tennessee, I remember one of our marketing people had just come up with this campaign, Everywhere You Look, UT. I wanted to be supportive and encouraging, but I thought, I don't really get that. That doesn't I don't doesn't make any sense. I don't understand. Within the first two months, I I realized what we were trying to say. We are literally everything in the state. Every single county in 4-H, 156,000 4-H students. We have uh 10 research centers are totaling over 40,000 acres, the five campuses managing Oak Ridge National Labs. We have the health sciences in in Memphis that have over 800 clinics all across the state with faculty and students training and studying in them. It's it's it's massive. It's a great organization. So I think I started off with five big goals. We were able to accomplish all those pretty quickly. And then we've since, of course, added um others for the decade. Our goal is to make this uh the greatest decade in the history of the University of Tennessee. We're halfway through the decade. I started in 2018, 2020, we announced this goal making this the greatest decade. That's a big goal, by the way, because we've been around for 232 years. To say this is gonna be the greatest decade after the other 22 decades before us, that's that's ambitious. That's a big, Harry Audacious goal. But I think you're there.

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I think you're there.

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We haven't got there yet because we've we're only halfway through the goal, but I don't think we there's never been a first half of a decade that comes anywhere near what this first half has been. And that's due to the great team we have.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

Well, I'll tell you this. Um, being on campus, first of all, let me give you a little background of our family. We're an alumni family. My husband and his sisters all went to the University of Tennessee, okay? And then my father-in-law taught in tickle engineering for 30 years, okay? And so three and a half years ago, God puts in my life, in my ear, that I'm gonna open this company. Uh, it's called Turn and Knox. And so I wanted my husband, I went to my husband at 10:30 at night, Randy, and said, I've got this idea. I just knew he was gonna tell me no, Randy. And he said, It's brilliant. Let's do it. So we look at 10:30 at night. So, anyway, so I I started embarking on that and I was like, okay, I'm a real estate agent. So where can I go that I can give back to my community at the same time build this business that it doesn't affect my real estate business? I didn't want to give up my real estate career. Okay. And I said, you know, and I want to do business with everybody, but you have to have your eye on something. University of Tennessee was it. And so when I decided that I wanted to come after University of Tennessee and see if I could bring something that University of Tennessee needed, I started seeing you all over campus. And I would see you talking to the students, I'd see you talking to the faculty, I would see you talking to dignitaries. I I saw you talking to everybody. And the reason why I'm bringing this up, you remember you a minute ago you said we're everywhere. Okay. Well, when you when that first came out, I was like you. What does that mean? What is we're I mean, what does that mean? The more and more I kept coming up on campus, I noticed, I was like, okay. And then I kept seeing everywhere I would come off of campus, U T was. So then when I would see you, I'm like, he talks to everybody, you know, and I it and it's not doubting anyone, but I'll say this when you're well-rounded, that you allow yourself to stay humble and the humility just pours out of your uh soul, you can see it. Randy, I have watched you in rooms that you can come off a stage and you can tell that you're tired because when you speak, you do get tired. But it's I've watched people walk up to you. I've never seen you like showing somebody and tell somebody, oh not now. I've never seen you do that. I've all you've always given that person their moment. So let me say this. What have you always been that way? That's my first question. Have you always been that way?

SPEAKER_03 10:48

Yeah, I think though, I think my my mom would always tease we go on a vacation, we're at the holiday end swimming pool. I'd never I never met up somebody that was my friend. So so I I've always been uh open to do new friendships and new relationships. So I think that's that that that part came nationally. I think back to maybe this is your second party question. I'm jumping ahead. You're fine. I'll just say that um both Virginia and I, uh, I think we I think most people are, most people, not everybody, but most people are who they start off being. And I was a uh uh kid running running working in injection water machines to pay my way through college. Then I was a salesman trying traveling this Dodge Maxi van with no air and no radio. I'm still trying to sell cold calls to little farm stores. I'm still that guy. I'm still a guy out hustling and trying to remember. Trying to that that's who I'm that's I've always felt like that's who I really am. Sometimes we might have the pretense of being a president, giving up, getting up on a stage and giving a speech. I'm still that guy, just out trying to make a living.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

I see it. But I'm telling you, because I I've watched you and I'm like, he speaks to everybody. He talks to everybody. And I think that's the reason why that so many of the students, I think that's the reason why University of Tennessee, because I truly believe in the Bible it says the head and whatever the head does, it trickles down. Okay, so you're the head and your spirit is trickling down. You have so many wonderful people on your campus that helps bring it, you bring the vision together and that works together, and you are very strategic on who you hire, what you know, and what the mission and and making sure that they see the vision.

Leading Through COVID With Decisiveness

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So has there ever been times that you felt like, okay, am I challenged? Is there any challenges there, even like with COVID? What was it like?

SPEAKER_03 12:28

Yeah. Well, there's challenges every day, big and small. But you know, if you know where you're going and you got a great people, a group of people around you, and you know uh that you have confidence in the team's ability to get through it, you it it's a challenge, but it's just something you know you're gonna work through. It's not uh any time where you think we're gonna fail. You just know this this problem might take longer to solve. We may not know the answer just yet, but we know we're gonna be able to get through it with COVID. Um that was a great uh uh experience to go through. I uh I'll uh it's sad for any family that that lost any family members. Yes. But as an organization, to make this the great and to make this the greatest decade in the history of the University of Tennessee, you can't be the greatest decade if you don't overcome challenges. If it was easy the whole way, it's gonna be hard to make that claim. Exactly. A great a great decade, any great organization has to overcome a challenge, some challenges. Going overcoming the pandemic was our test, and that happened like on the third month of the greatest decade. But we came together. We learned to work together. If we worked together and communicated, uh we were stronger. We learned the value of communicating, we learned the value of making being decisive when you have optimum information. You never have perfect information. When we knew all that we could possibly know about a particular situation, we'd make the call. Uh, there was a lot of organizations, a lot of other universities that were kind of paralyzed, waiting for the perfect information, just didn't have it. So we we closed one of the first public schools to close in the state when we felt like we needed to. We're the first ones to say, we're not gonna open back up this semester. And then in June, we're the first ones to say, we're gonna all come back in September and we're gonna figure it out together. We don't know exactly how it's gonna work, but we're gonna figure this out.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Well, I'll tell you this uh being on campus as much as I am, uh, the students seem very happy. You're always having something for the students. It it blows my mind how much University of Tennessee does for the students. And I'm speaking on what I see. You give so much, and your staff and everybody collectively give so much. I meant to the barbershops for kids to get their hair uh to get young people's hair cut, to the food trucks that you bring in to make sure these kids are fed, to the entertainment, the engagement, everything. When they go to the games, y'all make it such an experience. I truly believe University of Tennessee is unmatched. And I think it's because of your leadership, Randy, because you have stayed humble. You your humility just pours out of your skin. And I think it trickles down to all of your staff. You make people, you give people their moment. And I think the future of University of Tennessee is so great because you are in that position. Can you tell me the future? What does the future hold for University of Tennessee?

SPEAKER_03 15:22

I want to

Access, Growth, And Less Student Debt

SPEAKER_03 15:23

make one really clear important point. So as the president of the system, I have five campuses. My job primarily is to make sure I have a great leader on each campus. Yes. Here at UT Knoxville, we have a great, I if I take credit for anything, it would be hiring Dondi Plowman as my our chancellor there. She's doing a great job, and she's assembled a great team. So one of the things we see in Knoxville, um, I attribute to her. But we're doing similar great things at our other campuses as well. So I'm really proud of the leadership that we that we have there. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of things that a university does. It's about research, it's about community impact. But what makes us a university is our ability to provide education and opportunity to students. And so we if we don't do that well, we're we're we we've lost our core. That's what we need to do. And so our goal is to be more accessible to more students. We're we're trying to grow. We're not growing because we need the money, but we're not growing because we want status. We're growing because students need the opportunity. So all of our campusers are growing, we're finding ways to make sure that we can grow and provide a quality education. We don't want to grow and do it irresponsibly, but to provide a quality education, a quality experience, and at the same time, we also want to be affordable. We want them to be successful when they graduate. And one of the ways we want to do that is make sure they don't graduate with a lot of debt.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:37

We were really proud two years ago when 45% of our students graduated with no debt last year. Amazing. 55% graduated with no debt. Our goal by 2030 is to have 65% of our students graduating with zero debt. And so we're working on 65%. Graduating with zero debt. Wow. There's a lot of impets that go into that. Making sure that we don't raise tuition uh much at all, you know, keeping that moderate, working to get financial aid for our students. That comes through endowments from donors, that comes from working with the state legislature, and to some degree with the federal government, that's a little harder to influence, making sure that we're getting all the financial aid and protect the financial aid that we have for our students. But you know, we want more students to be able to graduate, get a great education, and graduate with as little debt as possible, and then go on to have a very successful life.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Well, I'll tell you this. He said that's it. But I'll tell you one thing that you do, uh you may never never think about, but the vendors that you have that come service the students, you're helping a lot of families there, a lot of small business, local businesses that you're allowing to come on the campus. We're one of them. And I can say that there has been several of your staff that has made a made a uh way for me. Heather Cochran is one of them. She has hands down, has truly, truly uh explained how things work, explained, you know, how to do uh I've learned a lot from her uh on event planning. And I just want you to know you have a lot of great people that is helping vendors and in this community feed their families. And I I don't know if you've ever thought about that part, but you're not just helping students, you're helping other families outside uh that doesn't go to University of Tennessee to feed their families. So I thank you for that. So I will, as we get to the end of this uh interview, what's next for Randy Boy?

What’s Next For Boyd And UT

SPEAKER_03 18:32

Well, I've got uh at least four more years to the end of the decade. So we've got a lot of big goals to accomplish between now and the end of that. We just finished our strategic plan about a month ago and got the board to approve it. We've got dozens and dozens of really big Harry Nations goals that we want to accomplish. So I want to continue on that path. Uh personally, uh Jenny and I want to continue to give back and support our community in in every way that we can. The baseball stadium has been, I think, an overwhelming success. We've got a lot of ideas for ways to help develop other things around the community to make it even more impactful. Um, and then lastly, um say that, and I just talked to uh Jenny about this this morning, and we've got to find a way to spend more and more time with the granddaughters who are growing growing up way too fast.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Oh wow, oh wow. So you've got private time, private time with your family. Now, and and I want to uh touch on the baseball because it's so big. I want y'all to understand that this was years in the planning, and every time I go to the stadium, it's a great experience. And every time I go, it's something different, totally different. And so I truly, truly uh want to tell my viewers and um my listeners go out to the baseball field and have a great time with your family. You will get to see how Tennessee, uh Knoxville, Tennessee, is shaped. You'll get to see history, and you'll get to see how Randy Boyd is still that hum that young man that said, I've got to work at 11 years old and uh and make a life that I he can be proud of and his family can keep going in his legacy. And one last thing, one last thing. I'm gonna throw in one question for you. Here it goes. Tell

The Surprise Theater Named For Jenny

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us about the theater. I want people to know about Jenny's theater.

SPEAKER_03 20:12

Well, so I'm the one that's uh maybe uh focused on athletics and education and some of these other things. My wife has always been a big advocate for the arts. My children and I surprised her. Uh UT was trying to raise money to create a new uh theater, replace the carousel theater. So we had a secret foundation meeting and all agreed to fund the fund the theater, and then unbeknownst to her, announced that it was going to be named after her. So I was very anxious the day that we uh announced the uh the naming. She didn't know it, and then I thought this could go really good or really poorly for me. Yes, yes. She doesn't like notoriety. Yes. But she was she was uh honored, and and the theater turned out to be magnificent. It's just one of the most uh unbelievable places to watch uh live theater. It's so intimate you feel like you're you're literally on the stage and part of the part of whatever it is they're trying to recreate. If you haven't been, you should go.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

I will. I will. And I highly recommend you to go. So, Randy Boy, everybody, he's done.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Thanks

Wrap Up And Where To Follow

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for listening to Talk in Tennessee with Yavanka. Watch out for our weekly episodes from the first family of real estate. And check us out on the web, www.yavanka sounds realestate.com. See our videos on Yovanka's YouTube channel or find us on Facebook under YovankaLanded and Twitter at YavankaLanded. And don't forget to tell us the button. Don't YavankaSign Office.