MR. ROGERS' TURN: East Carolina University's chancellor stares down declining enrollment and a challenging health care outlook.

• Author: Barkin, Dan
• Position: POINT TAKEN

A year ago this month, Philip Rogers became chancellor of East Carolina University, which went against the narrative in Eastern North Carolina of folks going to the city and not coming back.

Rogers, who turns 39 in March, grew up in Greenville and went to Wake Forest University. He came back in his 20s as an ECU policy analyst, then chief of staff for Chancellor Steve Ballard. He later became a top executive of the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C., for nearly eight years.

Before describing his current mission, he talks about why he returned. His roots are deep in Greenville. His great-grandmother graduated from East Carolina Teachers Training School in the early 1900s. His mother is a graduate. His wife, Rebekah Rogers, earned two of her three degrees from ECU. His father has been the pastor at Greenville's Oakmont Baptist Church since 1986.

When Rogers left Greenville in 2013 for the ACE job, it was to learn how higher education works, then return. "I could then bring it back to Eastern North Carolina and apply [it] in my own hometown, in my own region."

He wants ECU to focus on "being the national model for student success, on serving the public, and on advancing regional transformation."

"Student success is the hottest topic in higher education right now. And we have an obligation to ensure that we see more students come into this university, succeed while they're here and then leave this university with as minimal debt as possible. With an education that allows them to be a well-rounded citizen and contributor to society, and with a job and a career that can help them give back to the economy of Eastern North Carolina and our state."

That's it. Graduate more students; help them land good jobs; and help a struggling region improve its prospects.

It's a traditional ECU mission. Things were different, at least in tone, with former Chancellor Cecil Staton, who came to Greenville in 2016 and lasted three years before resigning. Staton talked about ECU becoming "America's next great national university. ... This sleepy little school in Eastern North Carolina is not going to be a sleepy little school anymore."

That is not how Rogers talks. There are very specific regional challenges, and he has to get everyone on board to meet them, daily. Here's one: Soon there will be fewer 18-year-olds in most Eastern North Carolina counties.

So less about "Harvard on the Coastal Plain," as one columnist described Staton's vision. More about reversing enrollment declines, which requires, in part, admitting more students from poorer, rural areas and keeping them in school. Or adults juggling work and family and keeping them on track. That is what student success means. It is not a slogan.

It is the most critical job in higher education. Rogers understands the problem.

Enrollment decline

ECU's enrollment has declined since 2017 while the 16-university UNC system has...