Higher cred: trained in the trenches of Texas and national politics, Margaret Spellings tackles the state's most important job.

AuthorMartin, Cathy
PositionCover story

On her 100-day tour of the state last year, newcomer Margaret Spellings hung out in the cockpit of a training aircraft at Elizabeth City State University, wove a pine-needle basket at UNC Pembroke and cruised around the UNC Greensboro campus on a golf cart with Chancellor Frank Gilliam. The UNC System president delivered 17 dogwood trees to school leaders, enjoyed fireworks celebrating N.C. A&T State's 125th birthday and listened to an oboe riff on Lady Gaga at North Carolina School of the Arts.

That was the fun part. Now, with a new strategic plan in place that will lift expectations for the system's 17 institutions. Spellings' job is about to get tougher. Her first year was a whirlwind of traveling, reorganizing staff and forging relationships with state legislators, administrators, faculty, students and alumni. It's a formidable job that has been made more challenging by the extraordinary political divides and increasing tensions between rural communities clinging to fading economies and fast-growing metro areas luring the state's best and brightest.

"It's a big platform," says Spellings, whose enthusiasm and good-humored style has drawn praise from state business and education leaders. "We have 17 outposts that are hugely valuable to the communities that they're in, and regionally and nationally," she says. "It's an awesome task." A Republican who over the years has taken stances that have roiled both arch-conservatives and liberals, the former U.S. secretary of education has brought a new perspective to a university system rooted in tradition but compelled to evolve amid the state's rapid growth and increasingly diverse population.

Spellings came to North Carolina last March after three years leading the George W. Bush Presidential Center, a leadership institute and policy center based in Dallas. A senior adviser during Bush's days as Texas governor, she became an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and later education secretary from 2005-09. She helped craft and promote No Child Left Behind, which aimed to improve K-12 education by holding schools more accountable for student outcomes. The program launched with bipartisan support, though it later became a punching bag for both Tea Party conservatives who said it reflected excessive federal oversight of schools and Democratic-leaning teacher unions who criticized it for overemphasized testing.

As education secretary, she oversaw a nearly $70 million budget and more than 10,000 employees and contractors. Though that stage was much larger. Spellings now deals with bigger numbers: The UNC System spends more than $9 billion a year and has more than 60,000 employees. For the 2017-18 academic year, UNC is asking the state legislature to approve an operating budget of more than $2.76 billion, a slight increase over the current year. Tuition, grants and federal aid provide the balance.

"I always knew that North Carolina had this amazing history of inventing higher public education and investing heavily in this unique, system wide platform," Spellings says. What surprised her were the multiple layers of oversight surrounding the university system--in plainer speak, bureaucracy. "The way North Carolina governs things is interesting," she says diplomatically. "There are a lot of players on the battlefield," including the General Assembly, a large board of governors, and chancellors and trustees at each of the 17 institutions. "I think that can be a bit of a challenge in an environment like this," she says. "The good of it is, there's a lot of involvement and, theoretically, buy-in around decisions."

While state lawmakers earlier this year passed...

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