Chancellor uses sax appeal to launch Triad jazz festival.

• Position: Interview - Statistical Data Included

A&T State University Chancellor James Renick was rushing through the Jacksonville, Fla., airport in April 2000 when he glanced at a poster promoting a jazz festival. It nagged at the one-time saxophone player. "Man, if Jacksonville can have a jazz festival, we in the Triad, the birthplace of John Coltrane, ought to be able to have a jazz festival," he remembers thinking.

Renick, 52, spread the idea, spurring jazz fans in Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem to stage the first Piedmont Jazz Festival, which drew 10,000 fans over five days in April and covered its $140,000 in expenses. Headlining were saxophonists Kenny Garrett and Ravi Coltrane, son of the late saxophonist John Coltrane, who, though born in Hamlet, grew up in High Point. "Something I hear from people is that High Point, WinstonSalem and Greensboro don't cooperate," Renick says. But he put together a steering committee made up of arts, business and education leaders across the region. That's been Renick's riff since arriving in Greensboro in July 1999.

Renick got the urge to teach from his mother, Constance, an educator in Rockford, Ill. After his father died from complications from a Korean War injury, an uncle introduced him to jazz records by Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. Renick left Rockford for Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, where he earned a bachelor's in social sciences in 1970. Two years later, he got a master's in social work from Kansas University in Lawrence. He returned to Rockford as an ombudsman for the school system. In 1975, he moved to Pensacola, Fla., where, over the next five years, he was a county mental-health counselor while earning a doctorate in public administration from Florida State University in Tallahassee.

He then spent eight years as a teacher and administrator at the University of South Florida in Tampa. In 1989, he left for Fairfax, Va., where he was vice provost for academic affairs at George Mason University. In 1993, he became chancellor at the University of Michigan at Dearborn. He strengthened ties between the university and the Big Three automakers and created an interdisciplinary degree in engineering and management.

His relationship with Ford Motor Co. paid off when he took the job at A&T. Ford already supported the school, having donated nearly $525,000 for campus improvements since 1968. But when executives learned Renick was headed to Greensboro, the company pledged $3 million over five years -- the largest...