Creating Opportunities for Tennesseeans with Randy Boyd
Randy Boyd, legendary Knoxville entrepreneur and current President of the University of Tennessee, is a lifelong Knoxvillian who’s dedicated to giving back to his community. On this episode of ConnectTheKnox, he describes how an early failed...
Randy Boyd, legendary Knoxville entrepreneur and current President of the University of Tennessee, is a lifelong Knoxvillian who’s dedicated to giving back to his community. On this episode of ConnectTheKnox, he describes how an early failed business in his career lead him to where he is today, and the work he’s doing to help send Tennessee kids to college free of charge. Randy and Julia discuss how UT is growing along with the rest of Knoxville, and ways that the local community can get involved in their Everywhere You Look, UT campaign.
Highlights:
00:00 Intro
00:50 Randy introduces himself and describes his dedication to Knoxville and family
2:13 Randy describes his entrepreneurial journey and how he started his non-profit, tnAchieves
05:12 Why Randy launched the “Everywhere You Look, UT” campaign
10:32 Randy describes the partnership between UT and Oak Ridge National Lab
12:33 The Tennessee Promise program and how it inspired Randy to create something similar for UT
16:10 The growth plan for UT Knoxville and the rest of the UT campuses state-wide
19:13 Ad - Just Homes Group
19:58 How people can help support the Everywhere You Look, UT campaign
21:03 Randy describes his running career and his favorite marathons
23:46 Julia fires off her lightning-round questions on Randy’s favorite local spots
Links:
- tnAchieves: https://tnachieves.org/
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Transcript:
Julia: Welcome, everybody to Connect the Knox. I’m your hostess with the mostest, Julia Hurley, connecting the nation to Knoxville, Tennessee. Today’s guest is literally my all-time favorite Knoxvillian. I don’t know how everybody else feels about it, but that’s just how you’re going to get it today. Mr. Randy Boyd, University of Tennessee Knoxville’s president, all-around most amazing father, most amazing son, most amazing husband, most amazing friend, I think the best president UT has ever had. I’m going to keep going. But we’re going to start and let him talk a little bit about himself. Randy, can you tell us a little bit about you, about your family, your Knoxville history, and how you ended up where you are today?
Randy: Oh thanks, Julia. And I’m going to go back and check your other podcasts and see if you introduce all your other guests exactly the same way.
Julia: [laugh].
Randy: But for the moment at least, I’m going to suspend disbelief and say thank you for that very kind introduction. But yeah, I’m a Knoxville native, born and raised, president of the University of Tennessee. I tell everybody all the time that I’m going to be a resident long after I’m a president. This is where I was born and this is where I’ll finish the rest of my lives. I guess if I started with the most important thing to know about me is that I’m a grandfather.
I’m called Poppi and I have two granddaughters that are the most adorable in the world. One’s four-and-a-half; she’s [Wiley 00:01:23]. Another that’s two; her name is Penelope. I have two sons. One is the father of my granddaughters, Thomas, and his wife Lindsay, and my younger son is Harrison.
Both live in Fourth & Gill in Knoxville, Tennessee. I’ve been married to Jenny now for 37 years. We’ve known each other for 39 years, and we built this wonderful life here in Knoxville. She’s the talent in the family. She plays the clawhammer banjo, the fiddle, the mandolin, and owns Boyd’s Jig and Reel. That’s her place where she has—
Julia: My favorite restaurant.
Randy: Oh, thank you for that. She tries to—her mission is to preserve and promote our musical heritage, which is the Scots, the Irish, the African music that kind of combined here and created this great music scene that we think of as Appalachian Country, and all the things that emanated from it. So, that’s her contribution to the community. For me, Born and raised in Knoxville, went to the University of Tennessee. First one of my family’s history to graduate from college.
Started my first business at age 23, which failed. I always tell young people that it’s always a good I—
Julia: Fail forward.
Randy: Yes. It’s always good to get a failure out of the way early. You learn more from your mistakes than you do from your successes. Started a second company that was a bit more pedestrian, selling electric fencing out of the back of a Dodge [unintelligible 00:02:41] van with no air, no radio. Customers started asking me for this product called the Invisible Fence.
Make a long story short, I decided to make one of my own. 30 years later, it’s an $800 million company with 4000 products and 1400 employees selling in 45 countries around the world. I sold the company about July of 2020. Meanwhile, had a few other little side projects. I’ve been Special Advisor for higher education for Governor Haslam and was able to create something called the Tennessee Promise and the Drive to 55.
I was able in 2017 to start a nonprofit called tnAchieves, which has now sent over 130,000 kids to community college free of charge. They’ve all on their own, have provided 4 million hours worth of community service, so we’re really proud of that little organization. Got to serve as Commissioner of Economic and Community Development. Had a lot of great projects working with Governor Haslam that I wanted to keep going and the best way I felt like to make sure that they didn’t end was to run for governor myself. That didn’t work out but I ended up in an even far better place.
I believe God always has a better plan for you than you do for yourself and I’m now the president of the University of Tennessee. I’m just about to hit my four-year anniversary on November 26th, 2022. And it’s been just an incredible adventure. I believe that if you want to serve the people of Tennessee, the University of Tennessee is the best place that you can do that.
Julia: I feel like after you lost the gubernatorial election, that Covid hit, and honestly [laugh] I was like, “Hmm…” I felt like God had a better plan for Mr. Randy Boyd. When you started at the University of Tennessee—it’s one of the biggest campuses that I’ve ever visited. I’ve visited all the state—the SEC colleges anyway. I was very lucky to have that, my very first failure, at the age of 23 myself, so I understand and appreciate that.
As you continue to grow UT, there’s a project that you all have: Everywhere You Look, UT. And when you started doing that and really promoting it, I genuinely felt like, even just living in the area, we saw more of UT everywhere. And now we’re looking at—I can see places—the second largest fanbase in the world by the way, right behind Florida, and I think that’s only because they have Gatorade. That’s the only reason I think that people know about Florida is Gatorade. But University of Tennessee is the second largest fanbase, and I feel like as president, you’re not just growing the sports fanbase, you’re actually growing the college fanbase.
I’ve relocated less than I think 25 to 30 new professors that are teaching new and exotic ways to think outside the box, new curriculums, new conversations. Tell us about that project and what you’re really growing there.
Randy: Well, so the Everywhere you Look UT campaign isn’t so much a project but a brand awareness campaign to make sure that people understood that Everywhere You Look, UT is present across the state of Tennessee. We are the land-grant university for the state of Tennessee, which means we are here to serve the people of Tennessee. Unlike a lot of other universities, our mission is to serve the people of Tennessee. And we literally are everywhere. And you know, President, I’m not just responsible for UT Knoxville, but for all of our campuses.
In the West, we have the UT Health Science Center that trains over 70% of the dentists and over 40% of the doctors for our state. And they have five campuses around the state. They’re not just in Memphis. They have faculty and students in Nashville, working out of the hospitals in Knoxville, in Chattanooga, in Jackson, Tennessee. And they have exactly 888 different clinics across the state of Tennessee providing medical care to people in the state at the same time training students.
Then of course we have UT Martin in Northwest Tennessee. And they have five satellite campuses all across West Tennessee. We have UT Chattanooga. They became a University of ours 52 years ago when they were acquired into the system. They had 1000 students then; now they have over 11,000. Doing a fabulous job in that part of the state.
At UT Knoxville, our flagship, we’ve grown by over 15% last year in our undergraduate enrollment. It’s 32,000 students now. And within UT Knoxville, we also have the Institute of Agriculture with an extension office in every single one of our 95 counties across the state. And then finally, we just added a new campus called UT Southern in Pulaski, Tennessee. We created something called the UT Promise a few years ago that says if your family income is under $60,000, you can come to any of our campuses, free of tuition and fees.
Julia: Wow.
Randy: So, that makes it possible—
Julia: Wow.
Randy: —for over half the population to come to UT for free. But if you can’t, if you lived in Southern Middle Tennessee, there was no campus anywhere near you. The only way you could have come get a college education at UT was to move and live on campus. And if you’re like a lot of people, leaving your family is not an option. And so, by acquiring what used to be called Martin Methodist, we now have a new UT campus in Pulaski, Tennessee, changing and transforming that part of our state forever, giving more high-quality public education opportunities for the people in that area. Also, by the way, we manage this little laboratory over in Oak Ridge called Oak Ridge National Labs, which I’m currently the chairman of UT-Battelle that runs the lab as well. So—
Julia: Just a little, just a little something extra [laugh].
Randy: Across the state, literally everywhere you look, UT is there with the mission of providing more opportunity for more people to get a great education and a better job and a better life.
Julia: Combined with what you have actually been able to accomplish in your very short lifespan of being here, let’s say, you know, at all—at 23, so you barely had 30 years in this business of being in business, what you have accomplished in this very short time having such a successful campaign of passion, especially toward education. We—I just had an interview with Loudoun County Education Foundation Director, Michelle Lewis, and she actually commented on this as well that education feels like—and I’ve said this—it feels like it’s changing and it’s changing so fast. And having someone like you’re passionate for this education growth and the workforce development, what future do you see UT playing in more of a mechanical, hands-on process, versus just the university path? Where are we headed with that, do you think?
Randy: Well, I think the University of Tennessee is going to be training a lot of the teachers that provide the education and a lot of our other types of schools. But that but there is a difference between I think what maybe what she was referring to in the technical fields that you would [unintelligible 00:09:29] one of our Tennessee colleges of applied technology. Those are critically important to our state and we’re trying to be great partners with them in our community colleges. Where I think the university’s biggest role is in providing transfer pathways to those students. So, they should go to the state—the [unintelligible 00:09:46] should go to a technical school and get some of that hands-on training, but then some will want to transfer into a community college, and then others still will decide, you know, actually, I want to learn even more and I’d like to transfer to a university and be able to get a bachelor’s degree in engineering. It was great to learn to weld, it was great to get a mechatronics associate’s degree, but I think I could actually like to get it all, a mechanical engineering degree. And our role in that continuum is to be great partners for the technical colleges and the community colleges.
Julia: That is amazing. What’s the new partnership—it’s not new—but what is the partnership like with Oak Ridge National Lab? That’s actually been a topic of conversation a lot recently. A lot of relocations coming in with Bechdel on top of that and a lot of things come out of Washington DC. In this very small town. I don’t think people know that the Knoxville, Tennessee, area houses all of this and the responsibility is connected.
Randy: Yeah, Oak Ridge National Labs has had tremendous growth over the last ten years. In fact, I’m going to be celebrating soon at a retirement party with Thomas Zacharia who has led a lot of that growth after having served as the lab director for the last five years. But the lab has grown over 2000 employees in the last five years. There are now an organization with 6500 of some of the smartest engineers and scientists, the most loyal, dedicated staff in the country. They’ll do $2.7 billion in research this year, which is also up, like, 40% over what it was just ten years ago.
The partnership with UT has been since the very beginning. UT’s engineers and faculty members helped in the creation of the lab back in the ’40s. Twenty-two years ago, the Department of Energy had a bid for a contract to manage the lab. The University of Tennessee partnered with Battelle out of Ohio for that bid and we won. And so, now we’ve been the managing partner in partnership with Battelle for 22 years.
Every five years, the bid comes up for renewal. We’re hopeful that we’re going to be the managing partner of Battelle—or Oak Ridge National Labs, hopefully for decades to come. We have a really, really close relationship.
Julia: Yeah. Huge. It’s huge. I think that is one of the biggest research facilities in the country.
Randy: It is the largest non-weapons research facility in the country.
Julia: Right. All housed again, in the Knoxville, Tennessee market. A lot of things that people just don’t know. A little bit about the Connect the Knox situation is connecting the dots in Knoxville to the things that go outside of this area. And a big question I had for you—going to revert back to education; I still think that is such, such an amazing opportunity for the rest of the country to mimic, maybe, or possibly, you know, rip off and develop your process for getting kids a free education. How is the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s platform, I guess, as president allowing you to have those conversations and show the rest of the nation, hey, this can work and you can build your workforce out at almost no cost?
Randy: So, I’m really—as I mentioned—really proud of the work that we did around the Tennessee Promise. And that’s a state-led program that allows everybody in the state of Tennessee to be able to go to a technical college or community college free of charge, forever. And they were matched with a mentor, which is so critically important to make sure that not only go but they’re also successful once they get there. And they also—and it’s technically not free because when they go, they also had to do one day’s worth of community service each semester. So, that’s the Tennessee Promise program.
When I got to UT, seeing how well the Tennessee Promise program worked for students wanting to go to technical community colleges, I wanted to do something similar at the University of Tennessee. The trick to the Tennessee Promise was that it’s a last-dollar scholarship so that at the state, we would apply or provide the funding for students to be able to go that was already provided by either state programs like HOPE Scholarship, or federal programs like Pell. Now, the fact is that 53% of those students could have gone free anyway, they just didn’t know it. We apply that same kind of logic and same kind of plan to that program that we call the UT Promise which says that if you can academically earn the right to any one of our colleges you can go—universities, you can go free of tuition and fees. We’re the first system across the country to be able to do that.
[unintelligible 00:14:21] means there have been a few other single campuses that have done some programs somewhere, but no statewide system had ever done anything like what we were able to do. And I mean, it’s been game-changing for so many families and students. Last year we had over 1100 students be able to come to one of our campuses completely free of tuition and fees as a part of this program. They also are required to have a mentor, which even though it’s a requirement, it’s actually a benefit to have somebody, like yourself maybe, like so many others that volunteer to help support these students and then also like Tennessee Promise, they’re required to do a community service project, which I think is also not only something that—a way in which they’re giving back but they’re also learning at the same time. Because a lot of times they get exposed to programs they might not otherwise have known about and find that they have a passion for it. So, we actually create lifelong people that want to give back to their community. So, we’re really excited about that program.
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Julia: It feels good because I was actually waiting in line, I don’t know, a [Petros 00:15:50], I think, at the UT football game a couple of games ago, and this young lady next to me, she says, “Julia?” And I was like, “Yes, that would be me.” She goes, “You were my mentor in Tennessee Promise.” And I was like, “That is—” right there, just standing right next to me.
So, I mean, you get some sense of she’s there, she’s accomplished, she’s telling me all about it. And she walked back to our chairs with us and she was so sweet. And I was like, one, I can’t believe you remembered me, and two, I can’t believe that fortuitously we were standing here together, it’s your junior year, you’re about to graduate. You get such a reward of giving back to these kids. And it’s just like they actually remember the impact you have on them and it changes your life and their life and the whole community. It’s an opportunity.
Randy: I think sometimes we mentors, or just adults in general, forget how—or even supervisors or leaders in organizations—forget how a kind, supportive word at the right time can transform somebody’s direction. And you don’t—sometimes you don’t even think about it. You don’t think it’s very material, but it really does make a huge difference. And we’re always recruiting mentors [unintelligible 00:16:55] turns into a pitch for recruiting mentors because we’ll always be [closing 00:16:58]—
Julia: That’s okay. Take what you can get [laugh].
Randy: But the time that’s required is so minimal but the impact that it can make on a person’s life can be so, so transformative. It’s a great investment that really makes a difference.
Julia: Where do you see the future of the University of Tennessee, including—I mean, it’s a small town in and of itself, right? 32,000 people, that’s almost as big as our county over here, one county over. Where do you see the growth on that? How are we going to continue housing the students on campus? Are we going to continue to build outskirt campuses? What’s your growth plan there?
Randy: Yeah. Well, so—and remember, I as the president of the University of Tennessee system responsible for all the campuses, and we have 53,000 students across the state and each one of them has their own growth plans. UT Knoxville has a tremendous amount of demand, more than we could possibly bring in. Well actually, we had 38,000 students apply to come to UT Knoxville, we’re only able to bring in 6800. This coming year, I can tell you that the applications are going to be even greater still.
So, it’s a real challenge to be able to choose the few very fortunate students to get to come. But in every case, we’ve got to make sure we give them a great experience. So, one of our challenges as we continue to grow is to make sure we’re building out housing, building out apartments on campus, but also encouraging the broader community. If we had a growth plan to add 5000 additional beds—we have about 8000 now—if we had another 5000 over the next five years, which would be incredibly aggressive, that would only meet the enough for the freshmen and about 25% of the sophomores, which means as this growth keeps continuing, your upperclassmen are going to need more and more beds.
So, the same number of beds that we’re having to increase for the freshmen and that percentage of the sophomores, the broader community is going to need to be able to create. So, we’re—just for Knoxville campus alone, we need a tremendous amount of new construction. And then you add to it all the faculty and the staff that come here to support them. One of our biggest challenges in Knoxville is creating the housing to meet just UT Knoxville’s growth in addition to all the other businesses that are growing.
Julia: Amen to that. It’s one of our biggest struggles in my industry as well. We’re constantly asking for more land to be open for development. There’s only so much land around your campuses, even statewide though. How do you find more opportunity for growth, like the land and the building? How does that come across?
Randy: Well, I think [unintelligible 00:19:38] of think about land differently. If you look at the University of Tennessee on an aerial map, there’s a tremendous amount of it—I don’t know the exact percentage, but a tremendous amount of surface parking. I think we just can’t afford to have a significant part of our campus anywhere taken up by surface parking. So, changing the way we think about parking is one. And also maybe the way you think about even allowing cars on campus.
You know, a lot of campuses around the country don’t allow cars for their students in their freshman year. And so, we think about what kind of impact that would have on the need for parking, which then what impact that would have on our space. So, we’re going to have to be more efficient with the land that we have, we’re going to need to be going up, and we’ll have opportunities to go and expand a bit as well. A project that—this will be interesting to the those that are in Knoxville, if they don’t know, but the city along with UT has proposed to the governor to finance a pedestrian bridge from Thompson–Boling River over to the South Knoxville waterfront, if the state provides the funding to do that, if the governor funds that, then suddenly, there could be a whole community on the other side of the river that can walk to UT’s campus within ten minutes. And that would be a tremendous boost for that part of our community and gives us the ability to have some additional very accessible residential space.
Julia: Is there anything that the public in all 95 counties can do to educate themselves more on what they can be involved in, what they can’t be involved in, how they can help grow or maintain? What can everybody help University of Tennessee do for that Everywhere You Look, UT, and they can understand how to be involved in that and watch its growth?
Randy: Yeah, there’s so many opportunities, but reaching out to your local campus. If you’re in Northwest Tennessee, reaching out to UT Martin or UT Southern, there’s so many volunteer opportunities. One of the things that I’ve been amazed at in this University of Tennessee system is how many people step up and volunteer. So, much of the work is done by volunteers, people that either graduated or just have an affinity to the University of Tennessee. So, reach out to the local campuses and volunteer.
Another opportunity is reach out to the local extension office. Again, we have one in every county, they have all kinds of programs, including 4-H. We have 186,000 4-H students in the state of Tennessee. They’re all managed by the 4-H agents at UT’s extension offices. So, UT manages that whole program and they are always looking for volunteers. There’s unlimited ways in which one can volunteer. If you have no time, you just got a lot of money, you can also donate as well.
Julia: [laugh]. If you have a lot of money and you’re looking to donate, I’ll find a way to connect you. That’s the whole point of the podcast. I’m going to shift gears just a bit. A lot of things that people do know about you and don’t know about you: you are an avid runner, and I think that by even just looking at your social media pages, and now UT’s social media because you are head to toe orange wherever you go; everyone knows where you UT is. Tell us a little bit about your running career and some of your favorite places and maybe not so favorite places of where you run.
Randy: Well, first of all, I will say, I do run a lot, but I do it from my mental health as well as my physical health. And I only get participation medals. I’m never standing on a podium, just to be clear. But I have done a lot. I have ran 47 full marathons and 85 half marathons. Goals would be to run 100 halves, 50 fulls.
And I want to do a full one every continent. I’ve done three continents so far, including Antarctica last December, which that’s a whole podcast story, but it was very, very challenging. It just turns out by the way, it’s pretty difficult getting to Antarctica. Getting there was an adventure just by itself. But my favorite marathon is New York. I’ve done it 15 times in a row.
I just did it two weeks ago and I like it because of just the pageantry and the immenseness of it. There’s 35,000 runners from 150 different countries, 2 million fans along the way. It’s a spectacle. And it’s just really fun to be a part of. And so, that’ll probably the one that you know, at age 90, I’m just trying to stay ahead of the street sweepers and try to get my medal and finish. But that’ll be the one that I’ll continue to do forever.
Julia: I just finished a half marathon at Disney about three weeks ago and it was not—
Randy: Good for you.
Julia: —yeah thank you. I’m back running. It took me two years to heal for my injury. It’s not going to keep me down, so I was like, “We’re going to fix this. I’m getting back on the road.” Those balloon ladies were one mile behind me the whole time. I was like, “You’re not getting me. You’re not getting me.” I made it, but I [unintelligible 00:24:18] understand the struggle bus. I understand the struggle bus.
Listen, is there anything that anybody out here right now, anything you need to be connected to? You’re very connected in and of yourself, but is there anything that anybody on our podcasts that can help UT or help you grow, get to know? Is there anything you need to be connected with that Connect the Knox can help you with today?
Randy: I’d say just what we talked about earlier. Go to the local campus website, reach out to a local extension office. Probably most everybody on this call knows somebody that is involved in UT; ask them how you can help. This university is here to serve the people of Tennessee, but it serves best when the people of Tennessee are also serving the university and we all work together to make a difference. And I hope that we can. Julia, thanks so much for letting me be on with you today.
Julia: Oh no, this has been my pleasure. It always is. You always make time for everybody, and I think again, that’s the servant leadership part you’ve always had, always. Love to do a whole ‘nother podcast on that. I’m telling you. I got a whole lot of [unintelligible 00:25:18] Randy Boyd stories. Anyway, fire round: favorite Knoxville restaurant?
Randy: Boyd’s Jig and Reel.
Julia: Boom. It is the best. It’s where I take all my [NIL 00:25:28] kids on the football team for lunches because they never leave campus and I’m like just meet me at the Jig and Reel [laugh] and they love it. They love it. Favorite bar?
Randy: Also Boyd’s Jig and Reel.
Julia: [laugh]. Why, though?
Randy: Yeah. But I’d say Brother Wolf, right next door—
Julia: Oh yeah, it’s really good.
Randy: —would be—
Julia: Jig and Reel has the world’s largest Scotch selection, correct?
Randy: That’s right. And if I were going upmarket, I go to the Brasserie.
Julia: Oh. Off Northshore. Yes, yes. Yes, they still have the whole Fish Fridays, which is rare to find anymore. Rare to find. Okay, let’s see what we’ve got. Favorite grocery store?
Randy: I like Fresh Market. My wife likes Butler & Bailey though, so we’re kind of a split family on that. I like Butler & Bailey, as well.
Julia: Butler & Bailey actually came up two podcasts ago. It’s very interesting. Everybody’s got a different conversation with how all the favorites. Favorite gas station?
Randy: Any Pilot. But also, I like [Weigel’s 00:26:22], too.
Julia: Coffee?
Julia: Uh… you know, it’s maybe not politically correct, but I do like Starbucks. I like to get a grande black [unintelligible 00:26:34]. It’s two shots.
Julia: I’m big on the flat whites. They’re fantastic. Flat whites. All right. I appreciate you. I’m not going to grill you anymore on favorites. Thank you so much for taking time. We know that your time is valuable. Everyone: Everywhere You Look, UT. This is UT president—and this is statewide—Randy Boyd, again one of my favorite people. And no, I don’t introduce everybody like that. We’re going to do another podcast on that run in Antarctica, and do just a runner’s Podcast. I’m really excited for everything that you’ve done and appreciate you so greatly, again. Thank you for being on our show today. Is there a website specifically that everyone can go? I would love for them to look at the volunteer opportunity for tnAchieves.
Randy: Just Google UT and you’ll find plenty, plenty of different ones. Thank you, Julia.
Julia: Thanks, Randy. Have a good one.
Randy: Bye-bye.
Julia: Bye.
Julia: Welcome, everybody to Connect the Knox. I’m your hostess with the mostest, Julia Hurley, connecting the nation to Knoxville, Tennessee. Today’s guest is literally my all-time favorite Knoxvillian. I don’t know how everybody else feels about it, but that’s just how you’re going to get it today. Mr. Randy Boyd, University of Tennessee Knoxville’s president, all-around most amazing father, most amazing son, most amazing husband, most amazing friend, I think the best president UT has ever had. I’m going to keep going. But we’re going to start and let him talk a little bit about himself. Randy, can you tell us a little bit about you, about your family, your Knoxville history, and how you ended up where you are today?
Randy: Oh thanks, Julia. And I’m going to go back and check your other podcasts and see if you introduce all your other guests exactly the same way.
Julia: [laugh].
Randy: But for the moment at least, I’m going to suspend disbelief and say thank you for that very kind introduction. But yeah, I’m a Knoxville native, born and raised, president of the University of Tennessee. I tell everybody all the time that I’m going to be a resident long after I’m a president. This is where I was born and this is where I’ll finish the rest of my lives. I guess if I started with the most important thing to know about me is that I’m a grandfather.
I’m called Poppi and I have two granddaughters that are the most adorable in the world. One’s four-and-a-half; she’s [Wiley 00:01:23]. Another that’s two; her name is Penelope. I have two sons. One is the father of my granddaughters, Thomas, and his wife Lindsay, and my younger son is Harrison.
Both live in Fourth & Gill in Knoxville, Tennessee. I’ve been married to Jenny now for 37 years. We’ve known each other for 39 years, and we built this wonderful life here in Knoxville. She’s the talent in the family. She plays the clawhammer banjo, the fiddle, the mandolin, and owns Boyd’s Jig and Reel. That’s her place where she has—
Julia: My favorite restaurant.
Randy: Oh, thank you for that. She tries to—her mission is to preserve and promote our musical heritage, which is the Scots, the Irish, the African music that kind of combined here and created this great music scene that we think of as Appalachian Country, and all the things that emanated from it. So, that’s her contribution to the community. For me, Born and raised in Knoxville, went to the University of Tennessee. First one of my family’s history to graduate from college.
Started my first business at age 23, which failed. I always tell young people that it’s always a good I—
Julia: Fail forward.
Randy: Yes. It’s always good to get a failure out of the way early. You learn more from your mistakes than you do from your successes. Started a second company that was a bit more pedestrian, selling electric fencing out of the back of a Dodge [unintelligible 00:02:41] van with no air, no radio. Customers started asking me for this product called the Invisible Fence.
Make a long story short, I decided to make one of my own. 30 years later, it’s an $800 million company with 4000 products and 1400 employees selling in 45 countries around the world. I sold the company about July of 2020. Meanwhile, had a few other little side projects. I’ve been Special Advisor for higher education for Governor Haslam and was able to create something called the Tennessee Promise and the Drive to 55.
I was able in 2017 to start a nonprofit called tnAchieves, which has now sent over 130,000 kids to community college free of charge. They’ve all on their own, have provided 4 million hours worth of community service, so we’re really proud of that little organization. Got to serve as Commissioner of Economic and Community Development. Had a lot of great projects working with Governor Haslam that I wanted to keep going and the best way I felt like to make sure that they didn’t end was to run for governor myself. That didn’t work out but I ended up in an even far better place.
I believe God always has a better plan for you than you do for yourself and I’m now the president of the University of Tennessee. I’m just about to hit my four-year anniversary on November 26th, 2022. And it’s been just an incredible adventure. I believe that if you want to serve the people of Tennessee, the University of Tennessee is the best place that you can do that.
Julia: I feel like after you lost the gubernatorial election, that Covid hit, and honestly [laugh] I was like, “Hmm…” I felt like God had a better plan for Mr. Randy Boyd. When you started at the University of Tennessee—it’s one of the biggest campuses that I’ve ever visited. I’ve visited all the state—the SEC colleges anyway. I was very lucky to have that, my very first failure, at the age of 23 myself, so I understand and appreciate that.
As you continue to grow UT, there’s a project that you all have: Everywhere You Look, UT. And when you started doing that and really promoting it, I genuinely felt like, even just living in the area, we saw more of UT everywhere. And now we’re looking at—I can see places—the second largest fanbase in the world by the way, right behind Florida, and I think that’s only because they have Gatorade. That’s the only reason I think that people know about Florida is Gatorade. But University of Tennessee is the second largest fanbase, and I feel like as president, you’re not just growing the sports fanbase, you’re actually growing the college fanbase.
I’ve relocated less than I think 25 to 30 new professors that are teaching new and exotic ways to think outside the box, new curriculums, new conversations. Tell us about that project and what you’re really growing there.
Randy: Well, so the Everywhere you Look UT campaign isn’t so much a project but a brand awareness campaign to make sure that people understood that Everywhere You Look, UT is present across the state of Tennessee. We are the land-grant university for the state of Tennessee, which means we are here to serve the people of Tennessee. Unlike a lot of other universities, our mission is to serve the people of Tennessee. And we literally are everywhere. And you know, President, I’m not just responsible for UT Knoxville, but for all of our campuses.
In the West, we have the UT Health Science Center that trains over 70% of the dentists and over 40% of the doctors for our state. And they have five campuses around the state. They’re not just in Memphis. They have faculty and students in Nashville, working out of the hospitals in Knoxville, in Chattanooga, in Jackson, Tennessee. And they have exactly 888 different clinics across the state of Tennessee providing medical care to people in the state at the same time training students.
Then of course we have UT Martin in Northwest Tennessee. And they have five satellite campuses all across West Tennessee. We have UT Chattanooga. They became a University of ours 52 years ago when they were acquired into the system. They had 1000 students then; now they have over 11,000. Doing a fabulous job in that part of the state.
At UT Knoxville, our flagship, we’ve grown by over 15% last year in our undergraduate enrollment. It’s 32,000 students now. And within UT Knoxville, we also have the Institute of Agriculture with an extension office in every single one of our 95 counties across the state. And then finally, we just added a new campus called UT Southern in Pulaski, Tennessee. We created something called the UT Promise a few years ago that says if your family income is under $60,000, you can come to any of our campuses, free of tuition and fees.
Julia: Wow.
Randy: So, that makes it possible—
Julia: Wow.
Randy: —for over half the population to come to UT for free. But if you can’t, if you lived in Southern Middle Tennessee, there was no campus anywhere near you. The only way you could have come get a college education at UT was to move and live on campus. And if you’re like a lot of people, leaving your family is not an option. And so, by acquiring what used to be called Martin Methodist, we now have a new UT campus in Pulaski, Tennessee, changing and transforming that part of our state forever, giving more high-quality public education opportunities for the people in that area. Also, by the way, we manage this little laboratory over in Oak Ridge called Oak Ridge National Labs, which I’m currently the chairman of UT-Battelle that runs the lab as well. So—
Julia: Just a little, just a little something extra [laugh].
Randy: Across the state, literally everywhere you look, UT is there with the mission of providing more opportunity for more people to get a great education and a better job and a better life.
Julia: Combined with what you have actually been able to accomplish in your very short lifespan of being here, let’s say, you know, at all—at 23, so you barely had 30 years in this business of being in business, what you have accomplished in this very short time having such a successful campaign of passion, especially toward education. We—I just had an interview with Loudoun County Education Foundation Director, Michelle Lewis, and she actually commented on this as well that education feels like—and I’ve said this—it feels like it’s changing and it’s changing so fast. And having someone like you’re passionate for this education growth and the workforce development, what future do you see UT playing in more of a mechanical, hands-on process, versus just the university path? Where are we headed with that, do you think?
Randy: Well, I think the University of Tennessee is going to be training a lot of the teachers that provide the education and a lot of our other types of schools. But that but there is a difference between I think what maybe what she was referring to in the technical fields that you would [unintelligible 00:09:29] one of our Tennessee colleges of applied technology. Those are critically important to our state and we’re trying to be great partners with them in our community colleges. Where I think the university’s biggest role is in providing transfer pathways to those students. So, they should go to the state—the [unintelligible 00:09:46] should go to a technical school and get some of that hands-on training, but then some will want to transfer into a community college, and then others still will decide, you know, actually, I want to learn even more and I’d like to transfer to a university and be able to get a bachelor’s degree in engineering. It was great to learn to weld, it was great to get a mechatronics associate’s degree, but I think I could actually like to get it all, a mechanical engineering degree. And our role in that continuum is to be great partners for the technical colleges and the community colleges.
Julia: That is amazing. What’s the new partnership—it’s not new—but what is the partnership like with Oak Ridge National Lab? That’s actually been a topic of conversation a lot recently. A lot of relocations coming in with Bechdel on top of that and a lot of things come out of Washington DC. In this very small town. I don’t think people know that the Knoxville, Tennessee, area houses all of this and the responsibility is connected.
Randy: Yeah, Oak Ridge National Labs has had tremendous growth over the last ten years. In fact, I’m going to be celebrating soon at a retirement party with Thomas Zacharia who has led a lot of that growth after having served as the lab director for the last five years. But the lab has grown over 2000 employees in the last five years. There are now an organization with 6500 of some of the smartest engineers and scientists, the most loyal, dedicated staff in the country. They’ll do $2.7 billion in research this year, which is also up, like, 40% over what it was just ten years ago.
The partnership with UT has been since the very beginning. UT’s engineers and faculty members helped in the creation of the lab back in the ’40s. Twenty-two years ago, the Department of Energy had a bid for a contract to manage the lab. The University of Tennessee partnered with Battelle out of Ohio for that bid and we won. And so, now we’ve been the managing partner in partnership with Battelle for 22 years.
Every five years, the bid comes up for renewal. We’re hopeful that we’re going to be the managing partner of Battelle—or Oak Ridge National Labs, hopefully for decades to come. We have a really, really close relationship.
Julia: Yeah. Huge. It’s huge. I think that is one of the biggest research facilities in the country.
Randy: It is the largest non-weapons research facility in the country.
Julia: Right. All housed again, in the Knoxville, Tennessee market. A lot of things that people just don’t know. A little bit about the Connect the Knox situation is connecting the dots in Knoxville to the things that go outside of this area. And a big question I had for you—going to revert back to education; I still think that is such, such an amazing opportunity for the rest of the country to mimic, maybe, or possibly, you know, rip off and develop your process for getting kids a free education. How is the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s platform, I guess, as president allowing you to have those conversations and show the rest of the nation, hey, this can work and you can build your workforce out at almost no cost?
Randy: So, I’m really—as I mentioned—really proud of the work that we did around the Tennessee Promise. And that’s a state-led program that allows everybody in the state of Tennessee to be able to go to a technical college or community college free of charge, forever. And they were matched with a mentor, which is so critically important to make sure that not only go but they’re also successful once they get there. And they also—and it’s technically not free because when they go, they also had to do one day’s worth of community service each semester. So, that’s the Tennessee Promise program.
When I got to UT, seeing how well the Tennessee Promise program worked for students wanting to go to technical community colleges, I wanted to do something similar at the University of Tennessee. The trick to the Tennessee Promise was that it’s a last-dollar scholarship so that at the state, we would apply or provide the funding for students to be able to go that was already provided by either state programs like HOPE Scholarship, or federal programs like Pell. Now, the fact is that 53% of those students could have gone free anyway, they just didn’t know it. We apply that same kind of logic and same kind of plan to that program that we call the UT Promise which says that if you can academically earn the right to any one of our colleges you can go—universities, you can go free of tuition and fees. We’re the first system across the country to be able to do that.
[unintelligible 00:14:21] means there have been a few other single campuses that have done some programs somewhere, but no statewide system had ever done anything like what we were able to do. And I mean, it’s been game-changing for so many families and students. Last year we had over 1100 students be able to come to one of our campuses completely free of tuition and fees as a part of this program. They also are required to have a mentor, which even though it’s a requirement, it’s actually a benefit to have somebody, like yourself maybe, like so many others that volunteer to help support these students and then also like Tennessee Promise, they’re required to do a community service project, which I think is also not only something that—a way in which they’re giving back but they’re also learning at the same time. Because a lot of times they get exposed to programs they might not otherwise have known about and find that they have a passion for it. So, we actually create lifelong people that want to give back to their community. So, we’re really excited about that program.
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Julia: It feels good because I was actually waiting in line, I don’t know, a [Petros 00:15:50], I think, at the UT football game a couple of games ago, and this young lady next to me, she says, “Julia?” And I was like, “Yes, that would be me.” She goes, “You were my mentor in Tennessee Promise.” And I was like, “That is—” right there, just standing right next to me.
So, I mean, you get some sense of she’s there, she’s accomplished, she’s telling me all about it. And she walked back to our chairs with us and she was so sweet. And I was like, one, I can’t believe you remembered me, and two, I can’t believe that fortuitously we were standing here together, it’s your junior year, you’re about to graduate. You get such a reward of giving back to these kids. And it’s just like they actually remember the impact you have on them and it changes your life and their life and the whole community. It’s an opportunity.
Randy: I think sometimes we mentors, or just adults in general, forget how—or even supervisors or leaders in organizations—forget how a kind, supportive word at the right time can transform somebody’s direction. And you don’t—sometimes you don’t even think about it. You don’t think it’s very material, but it really does make a huge difference. And we’re always recruiting mentors [unintelligible 00:16:55] turns into a pitch for recruiting mentors because we’ll always be [closing 00:16:58]—
Julia: That’s okay. Take what you can get [laugh].
Randy: But the time that’s required is so minimal but the impact that it can make on a person’s life can be so, so transformative. It’s a great investment that really makes a difference.
Julia: Where do you see the future of the University of Tennessee, including—I mean, it’s a small town in and of itself, right? 32,000 people, that’s almost as big as our county over here, one county over. Where do you see the growth on that? How are we going to continue housing the students on campus? Are we going to continue to build outskirt campuses? What’s your growth plan there?
Randy: Yeah. Well, so—and remember, I as the president of the University of Tennessee system responsible for all the campuses, and we have 53,000 students across the state and each one of them has their own growth plans. UT Knoxville has a tremendous amount of demand, more than we could possibly bring in. Well actually, we had 38,000 students apply to come to UT Knoxville, we’re only able to bring in 6800. This coming year, I can tell you that the applications are going to be even greater still.
So, it’s a real challenge to be able to choose the few very fortunate students to get to come. But in every case, we’ve got to make sure we give them a great experience. So, one of our challenges as we continue to grow is to make sure we’re building out housing, building out apartments on campus, but also encouraging the broader community. If we had a growth plan to add 5000 additional beds—we have about 8000 now—if we had another 5000 over the next five years, which would be incredibly aggressive, that would only meet the enough for the freshmen and about 25% of the sophomores, which means as this growth keeps continuing, your upperclassmen are going to need more and more beds.
So, the same number of beds that we’re having to increase for the freshmen and that percentage of the sophomores, the broader community is going to need to be able to create. So, we’re—just for Knoxville campus alone, we need a tremendous amount of new construction. And then you add to it all the faculty and the staff that come here to support them. One of our biggest challenges in Knoxville is creating the housing to meet just UT Knoxville’s growth in addition to all the other businesses that are growing.
Julia: Amen to that. It’s one of our biggest struggles in my industry as well. We’re constantly asking for more land to be open for development. There’s only so much land around your campuses, even statewide though. How do you find more opportunity for growth, like the land and the building? How does that come across?
Randy: Well, I think [unintelligible 00:19:38] of think about land differently. If you look at the University of Tennessee on an aerial map, there’s a tremendous amount of it—I don’t know the exact percentage, but a tremendous amount of surface parking. I think we just can’t afford to have a significant part of our campus anywhere taken up by surface parking. So, changing the way we think about parking is one. And also maybe the way you think about even allowing cars on campus.
You know, a lot of campuses around the country don’t allow cars for their students in their freshman year. And so, we think about what kind of impact that would have on the need for parking, which then what impact that would have on our space. So, we’re going to have to be more efficient with the land that we have, we’re going to need to be going up, and we’ll have opportunities to go and expand a bit as well. A project that—this will be interesting to the those that are in Knoxville, if they don’t know, but the city along with UT has proposed to the governor to finance a pedestrian bridge from Thompson–Boling River over to the South Knoxville waterfront, if the state provides the funding to do that, if the governor funds that, then suddenly, there could be a whole community on the other side of the river that can walk to UT’s campus within ten minutes. And that would be a tremendous boost for that part of our community and gives us the ability to have some additional very accessible residential space.
Julia: Is there anything that the public in all 95 counties can do to educate themselves more on what they can be involved in, what they can’t be involved in, how they can help grow or maintain? What can everybody help University of Tennessee do for that Everywhere You Look, UT, and they can understand how to be involved in that and watch its growth?
Randy: Yeah, there’s so many opportunities, but reaching out to your local campus. If you’re in Northwest Tennessee, reaching out to UT Martin or UT Southern, there’s so many volunteer opportunities. One of the things that I’ve been amazed at in this University of Tennessee system is how many people step up and volunteer. So, much of the work is done by volunteers, people that either graduated or just have an affinity to the University of Tennessee. So, reach out to the local campuses and volunteer.
Another opportunity is reach out to the local extension office. Again, we have one in every county, they have all kinds of programs, including 4-H. We have 186,000 4-H students in the state of Tennessee. They’re all managed by the 4-H agents at UT’s extension offices. So, UT manages that whole program and they are always looking for volunteers. There’s unlimited ways in which one can volunteer. If you have no time, you just got a lot of money, you can also donate as well.
Julia: [laugh]. If you have a lot of money and you’re looking to donate, I’ll find a way to connect you. That’s the whole point of the podcast. I’m going to shift gears just a bit. A lot of things that people do know about you and don’t know about you: you are an avid runner, and I think that by even just looking at your social media pages, and now UT’s social media because you are head to toe orange wherever you go; everyone knows where you UT is. Tell us a little bit about your running career and some of your favorite places and maybe not so favorite places of where you run.
Randy: Well, first of all, I will say, I do run a lot, but I do it from my mental health as well as my physical health. And I only get participation medals. I’m never standing on a podium, just to be clear. But I have done a lot. I have ran 47 full marathons and 85 half marathons. Goals would be to run 100 halves, 50 fulls.
And I want to do a full one every continent. I’ve done three continents so far, including Antarctica last December, which that’s a whole podcast story, but it was very, very challenging. It just turns out by the way, it’s pretty difficult getting to Antarctica. Getting there was an adventure just by itself. But my favorite marathon is New York. I’ve done it 15 times in a row.
I just did it two weeks ago and I like it because of just the pageantry and the immenseness of it. There’s 35,000 runners from 150 different countries, 2 million fans along the way. It’s a spectacle. And it’s just really fun to be a part of. And so, that’ll probably the one that you know, at age 90, I’m just trying to stay ahead of the street sweepers and try to get my medal and finish. But that’ll be the one that I’ll continue to do forever.
Julia: I just finished a half marathon at Disney about three weeks ago and it was not—
Randy: Good for you.
Julia: —yeah thank you. I’m back running. It took me two years to heal for my injury. It’s not going to keep me down, so I was like, “We’re going to fix this. I’m getting back on the road.” Those balloon ladies were one mile behind me the whole time. I was like, “You’re not getting me. You’re not getting me.” I made it, but I [unintelligible 00:24:18] understand the struggle bus. I understand the struggle bus.
Listen, is there anything that anybody out here right now, anything you need to be connected to? You’re very connected in and of yourself, but is there anything that anybody on our podcasts that can help UT or help you grow, get to know? Is there anything you need to be connected with that Connect the Knox can help you with today?
Randy: I’d say just what we talked about earlier. Go to the local campus website, reach out to a local extension office. Probably most everybody on this call knows somebody that is involved in UT; ask them how you can help. This university is here to serve the people of Tennessee, but it serves best when the people of Tennessee are also serving the university and we all work together to make a difference. And I hope that we can. Julia, thanks so much for letting me be on with you today.
Julia: Oh no, this has been my pleasure. It always is. You always make time for everybody, and I think again, that’s the servant leadership part you’ve always had, always. Love to do a whole ‘nother podcast on that. I’m telling you. I got a whole lot of [unintelligible 00:25:18] Randy Boyd stories. Anyway, fire round: favorite Knoxville restaurant?
Randy: Boyd’s Jig and Reel.
Julia: Boom. It is the best. It’s where I take all my [NIL 00:25:28] kids on the football team for lunches because they never leave campus and I’m like just meet me at the Jig and Reel [laugh] and they love it. They love it. Favorite bar?
Randy: Also Boyd’s Jig and Reel.
Julia: [laugh]. Why, though?
Randy: Yeah. But I’d say Brother Wolf, right next door—
Julia: Oh yeah, it’s really good.
Randy: —would be—
Julia: Jig and Reel has the world’s largest Scotch selection, correct?
Randy: That’s right. And if I were going upmarket, I go to the Brasserie.
Julia: Oh. Off Northshore. Yes, yes. Yes, they still have the whole Fish Fridays, which is rare to find anymore. Rare to find. Okay, let’s see what we’ve got. Favorite grocery store?
Randy: I like Fresh Market. My wife likes Butler & Bailey though, so we’re kind of a split family on that. I like Butler & Bailey, as well.
Julia: Butler & Bailey actually came up two podcasts ago. It’s very interesting. Everybody’s got a different conversation with how all the favorites. Favorite gas station?
Randy: Any Pilot. But also, I like [Weigel’s 00:26:22], too.
Julia: Coffee?
Julia: Uh… you know, it’s maybe not politically correct, but I do like Starbucks. I like to get a grande black [unintelligible 00:26:34]. It’s two shots.
Julia: I’m big on the flat whites. They’re fantastic. Flat whites. All right. I appreciate you. I’m not going to grill you anymore on favorites. Thank you so much for taking time. We know that your time is valuable. Everyone: Everywhere You Look, UT. This is UT president—and this is statewide—Randy Boyd, again one of my favorite people. And no, I don’t introduce everybody like that. We’re going to do another podcast on that run in Antarctica, and do just a runner’s Podcast. I’m really excited for everything that you’ve done and appreciate you so greatly, again. Thank you for being on our show today. Is there a website specifically that everyone can go? I would love for them to look at the volunteer opportunity for tnAchieves.
Randy: Just Google UT and you’ll find plenty, plenty of different ones. Thank you, Julia.
Julia: Thanks, Randy. Have a good one.
Randy: Bye-bye.
Julia: Bye.
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