Charlie Nelms will certainly miss spending Sunday mornings at First United Methodist Church in Bloomington. \nWhen asked what he would miss most about IU, the outgoing vice president for institutional development and student affairs, who will assume the position of chancellor at North Carolina Central University on Aug. 1, said he would also miss the campus’ beauty and the people he works with at the University where he has spent 22 years total over three different occasions.\nMost of all, however, Nelms said he will most miss working with IU students.\n“(I feel) a tinge of sadness with leaving a place that is really special to me,” Nelms said in his office Tuesday morning. “This is not just a job for me.”\nIU Director of Media Relations Larry MacIntyre said he was not surprised that Nelms was appointed to lead North Carolina Central University. MacIntyre added, however, that IU will be sad to see Nelms leave in August.\n“It didn’t really surprise anybody,” MacIntyre said, “because we knew he was in high demand and we knew he was a very attractive candidate. Everybody here will be sorry to see him go.”
Unlimited opportunities
Nelms said, however, that his excitement about his new job at NCCU outweighs his sadness at leaving IU. \n“This (NCCU) is a place with unlimited opportunities,” he said. \nHarold Martin, senior vice president for academic affairs with the University of North Carolina system, said the university is excited to have Nelms coming to NCCU.\n“We are all very excited; we’re very pleased,” Martin said. “Charlie brings a wealth of experience in higher education. He has been involved in tough decisions about the future of two organizations. He understands the relevant and important issues in higher education today.” \nMartin pointed to Nelms’ history of working with faculty and increasing retention and graduation rates at universities he has worked for as strong reasons for his appointment as NCCU’s next chancellor.\nMartin also said Nelms impressed during the interview process, drawing on his experience in higher education to illustrate his qualifications for the position. \nMartin said he expects Nelms to make an immediate impact on NCCU from his chancellor position. \n“(Nelms) will indeed be able to make a difference,” he said. “We have confidence that he has the confidence and leadership skills to enhance North Carolina Central University.” \nNelms said he sees the potential to expand current enrollment at NCCU from about 8,500 to 10,000 -11,000 in five years.\nHe also pointed to a focus on biotechnology found in the “Triangle Region” in North Carolina similar to IU’s life science initiative, and said he hoped to encourage work in that field at NCCU, a historically black university. \nNelms also said he hopes to encourage study in education, nursing and law. Including biotechnology, these four fields need more diversity in faculty, administration and the work force, Nelms said. \nMartin echoed those desires, saying each of those were fields where NCCU is strong. He added that each of those fields is currently experiencing shortages in North Carolina, and Martin said he saw the potential in NCCU, under Nelms’ leadership, to help alleviate those shortages and benefit the state. \nNelms said the first thing he will do upon arrival at the Durham, N.C., campus will be to learn about “the history, the culture and the traditions” of the university in an effort to build what he terms “a contextual framework for leadership.” Nelms said he believes one must have to have a certain level of familiarity with an institution to be able to lead it, and he said he will speak to students, faculty, administration and alumni, among others, to gain such familiarity.\nMartin said UNC officials saw and were impressed by Nelms’ desire to seek out and build relationships with aforementioned members of the NCCU community. He said Nelms began that familiarity process the day of his appointment, meeting or arranging meetings with several members of the NCCU faculty, staff and community at large.
Promoting collaboration
Nelms talked about using a “collaborative approach” both at IU and NCCU to accomplish goals he considers important to each institution. Nelms said using such tactics in his nine years in the IU administration, as well as during his time as chancellor of two other universities, have prepared him well for his next job.\nNelms spoke of a “collaborative approach” to bettering higher education as something he has tried to encourage and enhance here in Bloomington, as well as something he hopes to take with him to NCCU. Nelms said collaboration helped enact IU’s strategy to increase enrollment of underrepresented minorities on the Bloomington campus. However, the soon-to-be chancellor said collaboration is more to a leader than simply an approach to enacting a plan or adopting an initiative.\n“Collaboration is as much a spirit as it is an act,” Nelms said. “An institution’s ability to succeed is incomplete without taking advantage (of such collaboration) ... It’s one of the cornerstones of effective leadership.” \nNelms said he has tried to illustrate in his work at IU that a good leader “facilitates collaboration” because no one person can complete such overarching tasks by themselves. \n“There’s so much expertise that’s needed for success that you (as an individual) don’t have,” Nelms said. “Collaboration is a thing that I think has defined my work and my time at Indiana University these last nine years.”\nNelms said he believes this collaborative approach is illustrated in IU’s enrollment diversification plan. The plan calls for joint work in 10 different areas, including aggressive marketing of the University, improved financial aid for prospective minority students, pre-collegiate outreach programs for minority students and efforts to hire more minority faculty and staff.
Counsel for the future
Nelms did warn that IU must follow up on promises made in initiatives like the aforementioned plan to diversify campus. This claim seems especially important with Nelms and outgoing IU President Adam Herbert, two of the top minority administrators in the University, both set to leave the University this summer.\nNelms said IU needs to expand its minority presence not just in the student body, but also in the curriculum, faculty and staff. \n“We have to diversify Indiana University at the departmental level,” he said. “We need to work harder to get a more diverse (faculty and staff).” \nNelms said he believes diversity is important to education, not just minority education. He said even majority students must be prepared for the diverse world they will enter upon graduation. \n“Diversity, I think, is an important issue,” he said. “We need to intensify our efforts.”\nNelms said president-elect Michael McRobbie and whoever follows McRobbie as provost will have an opportunity to intensify diversity efforts at IU by detailing and effectively communicating plans to accomplish such goals.\nThe outgoing vice president also said IU needs to make “human and fiscal investments necessary to achieve the vision (of diversification).” He challenged the whole University to make diversity a top priority in the future. \n“The key issue,” Nelms said, “is to follow up on the commitments that have been made and to get all of the players involved.”
