Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Dr. Keith Carver and I believe that anything is possible.
Welcome to Anything is Possible. I'm Halloran Hilton Hill and these are of course great
stories about great people whose lives prove that anything is possible. My guest today
is Dr. Keith Carver. See I had to put that doctor on the front of it. But let me tell
you how your reputation precedes you. I have been doing this show for quite a while now.
In fact we've done well over 500 episodes. The one thing that I have come to trust as
much as anything is when somebody walks up to me and says have you met or you've got
to meet or you guys are going to click. And that is what I have been told about you for
quite a while. So it is a high honor to have you here in the studio with me today because
I think the world of you and we hadn't got to spend that much time together.
Absolutely. Well let me tell you the honor is all mine. Big fan of your work and love
to watch these shows. They're fantastic. So I'm very honored.
Did you think that you would end up at this level of the education game? Did you think
your life was going to play out? Was this a possibility?
Absolutely not. When I got into higher education I was raised by my mother and my grandparents
in a very rural part of West Tennessee. Whereabouts?
Little town. It's Crockett County which is still I think the only county in the state
with no stop lights. But they had, my grandparents had a country store and a country grocery store
in Frog Jump, Tennessee. And so they lived next door to the store and then my mother
and I lived in a one bedroom efficiency apartment behind the meat counter of the grocery store.
And so really? Yeah. It was a great place to be raised.
What was that like growing up there in Frog Jump, Tennessee?
Well, our entire community was agrarian. Everyone farmed or had cattle or were involved in agriculture.
And if they didn't have a farm, they worked in agriculture. And it was the only business
in that community. So it opened about 5 a.m. and we served breakfast and lunch and then
it had groceries, just the staples you might need. It had a little feed and seed. And then
closed down every night about 6 o'clock. So by the age of 7, I could cut and smoke baloney
but also would sweep the floor and pump gas and it was a great place to be raised.
You said it was you, your mother and your grandparents.
Mm-hmm. What about your dad?
My dad and mom divorced when I was about 6 years old and he moved to middle Tennessee.
And we had a great opportunity later in life to really be reconciled. He passed a year
ago this month. Sorry for your loss.
But had a great opportunity as an adult to really come back and foster that relationship.
So your little kid in Frog Jump, you probably don't see chancellor, agriculture, institute,
that, that, that, yada, yada, yada. That's nowhere on the radar.
No, not at all.
What were the options for a kid like you growing up in Frog Jump?
Good public schools, but wasn't prepared for college. And so Halloran probably should have
gone to a community college, gotten some basics and go, but instead went to a large state
university and almost flunked out.
Really?
So after my first...
So you went to...
It was then Memphis State, which was about an hour and 15 minutes away from home. I needed
to go somewhere, A, where I could get a whole lot of financial aid with my mother and grandparents.
There just wasn't a lot of money.
They just didn't have it.
So I had to go where I could get the most financial aid, went to Memphis State and knew
that I was going to be a medical doctor because all the successful people I knew growing up
were physicians and chemistry and physics and home sickness.
And I came home with a 1.98 GPA that Christmas and I had told myself, okay, I'm not cut out
for college. I'm going to drop out. And in those days, Halloran, remember, you waited
the mailbox to get your grades. But when I got my grades, I said I was on academic probation.
And I thought at that point, well, I'm done. I'm stupid. I can't go back. But my mother
and grandmother called the school and found out that probation meant you've got one more
chance.
And so they sent me back and with some help of some good mentors, I turned my grades around
and had a really good mentor that was the dean of students.
Who was that mentor?
His name was Don Carson. He is Don Carson. He's originally from Oneida, Tennessee. And
he was the dean of students. And our scholarship folks had said there's this young guy from
a rural area, much like he was growing up, and that I might need some mentoring. And
so he took me and gave me a job in his office. I worked 15 hours a week. He also made me
come back an additional 15 hours a week and study in his conference room until I got my
grades up. And it was at that point, Howard, and I knew I wanted to go into higher education
because I wanted to try to help kids like me.
Like he did. Isn't it amazing how possibility can turn on a relationship if you run into
the right person and they pour into you in a way that resonates with you? Like Alex Haley
would often say, if you see a turtle on a fence post, he had help.
That's exactly right.
So, but I'm just thinking about how possibility can really be born of someone believing for
you in you, believing with you. So that turned your life around academically.
It really did.
Because you saw the power of that relationship on your life, you wanted to be involved in
that.
Exactly. And all I ever really wanted to be was a dean of students, just like he was.
And yet I've never been able to be one. Maybe I haven't succeeded yet. But that's what got
me into higher education. I had my grandparents love and support, my mothers love support,
but I just needed someone, they've not finished college. I just needed someone who was there
to have confidence in me and say, you can do it.
Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Finish Memphis State.
And then what?
Then I came to the University of Tennessee to study higher education and worked here
starting then, and I guess that was 30 years ago this past summer. So really, really exciting.
But met a guy at church the first Sunday I was here named Joe Johnson.
Oh my goodness.
We just a great...
What a run.
Unbelievable.
What a run.
Unbelievable. What a run.
Unbelievable.
What's your favorite Joe Johnson story in your life?
In my life, I think Dr. Johnson taught me many lessons, but I think the most incredible
lesson is observing how he treated people that could never, ever help him.
Unbelievable.
So it was probably 19... It was probably 2004. He had been president and retired. We had
a couple of derailments and he came back.
I remember all of this.
It's an unprecedented...
I remember all of this.
So my daughter was about five, so it was probably 2003. My daughter was about five, and he's
going to be the grand marshal in the UT homecoming parade. So we go, we get her out of school.
She wants to see her friend Joe Johnson. And we're standing on the parade route, and Dr.
Johnson had been throwing candy. When he got to that corner, he was out of candy.
So the next Sunday, we were at church. Carson's five, they speak the truth, right? Children
speak the truth.
And Dr. Johnson said, Carson, I saw you at the parade, and thank you for coming and waving
at me. And she said, Dr. Johnson, you didn't throw me any candy.
The next day at our house, by courier, Dr. Johnson sent her a huge bag of candy bars
and said, I'm so sorry, Carson, it'll never happen again. It was a five-year-old.
But there are thousands of stories like that about Dr. Johnson, but the way he treated everyone
and treated them equally and made them feel so special, what an example.
I'm thinking about when I started my daily radio show, nobody knew who I was. I didn't
have any contacts in town. And I remember I reached out to Dr. Joe Johnson to be on
my radio show. Nobody knew who I was. I was not connected. I didn't know the people that
I know now. And lo and behold, he says yes, and he shows up, comes and does the show.
You'll know this. If you know Joe Johnson and anybody watching that knows Joe Johnson,
you've had this experience, no doubt. A week after he's on the show, I get a letter.
Amen.
I get a letter from Joe Johnson. I think you're fantastic. You're going to have a great future.
If there's ever any way I can help you, you let me know. You're an absolutely fantastic
guy.
Personalized.
Yeah. Now I'm looking at different touch points in your life. You had a mentor there
that showed you how to be. And then you have a mentor in Joe Johnson that shows you how
to lead. So what happened after that?
I worked here, finished graduate school, married my college sweetheart, Holly Ann, and was
offered a job back at UT upon graduation. But my mother said, you and Holly Ann are
forming your own traditions. You're newly wedded couple. Maybe you should look outside
the state, outside UT, just explore a little bit. So we went for two years and I worked
at a school about the size of Marible College called Marietta College in southeastern Ohio.
Howler went through two winners in Marietta and came back to Knoxville as quick as we
could.
So in fall of 1997, came back to Knoxville and have been full time with UT ever since.
But I did student activities and student programming kind of in that student line. Then I got
into fundraising and development at the law school for about eight years. Then I went
moved to UT Martin to take on a campus wide role.
Chance.
Well, development, I went back to Martin a little later as chancellor. But then went
to UT Memphis, the Health Science Center and worked as their vice chancellor for advancement.
And then they hired Joe DiPietro to be president of the University of Tennessee. So Dr. DiPietro
asked me to come back and work for him in a chief of staff role.
What a great leader he was.
He was still just such a phenomenal, phenomenal guy. But six years under him was magical.
And worked there. Then went to UT Martin for a little over six years as chancellor. And
then last January, Randy Boyd and Don De Plowman reached out and said, we need a new leader
over the statewide Institute of Agriculture. We think you'd be a great fit. Would you come
back to Knoxville? And I said yes, but also knowing that our first grandchild was going
to be born in Knoxville last June. So it's been a homecoming. All three of our adult
children are here in Knoxville and now with this grandbaby and it's come full circle.
I've seen the University of Tennessee through various and sundry cycles of leadership.
Yes, you have.
You tease on fire right now.
It's phenomenal.
Your teams are just, I'm not talking about the athletic teams, which are on fire.
I was on campus the other day speaking at an event on campus. The place is crackling
with possibility. Am I misreading that?
I don't think you are. And when in the University of Tennessee system, it's a small system when
you look at Penn State or Texas A&M, that sort of thing. So it's a family. It's an intimate
family. But when you have a visionary president and when you have a visionary chancellor of
the Knoxville campus, magic happens. And I think you're witnessing that right now with
Randy Boyd and Dottie Plowman. They work together so well. They're both such phenomenal leaders.
But when you talk about the campus, Chancellor Plowman came in. If you look, the whole face
of campus is changing instead of not just beautiful buildings, but accessibility, new
programs, new colleges being launched, much less athletic programs being on fire. But
she's engaged. I mean, she is out. She's out raising money. She's working with alumni and
industry partners. And she loves all those students. And they love her back. And it's
phenomenal watch. Then you've got Randy, who is an incredible business person, entrepreneur,
but visionary and first generation college student. And he's out there working with
the Board of Trustees and the legislature and the governor's office and these big constituencies.
But they're working together. And it's fun. It's fun.
You as a leader, though, what's happening in the Ag Institute?
For us, agriculture is still Tennessee's leading industry. So last year, right about
a $90 billion economic impact for Tennessee. And so I think for the Institute of Agriculture,
we have offices in all 95 counties. We've got research centers in 10 counties, 4H, about
150,000 Tennessee students a year going through leadership activities. Here in Knoxville,
we've got the Herbert College of Agriculture, about 2,000 students generating the next leaders
in agriculture and then the College of Veterinary Medicine, which is the world class hospital.
Unbelievable.
And it does great work. And I think a couple of things are happening to us as a state.
I think since COVID, people have become more concerned about scarcity of food, where their
food's coming from, quality of food, cost of food, and then the logistics, shipping and
receiving. And so our mission every day is to make sure that Tennesseans have access
to high quality food, food that's affordable, that we're improving fiber. Unfortunately,
and a lot of our community members just don't know it, Tennessee is number three in the
country now in farms lost per year. And so when you think about that from a food distribution,
food supply standpoint, we're advocates for smarter farming, more efficient farming,
but also general awareness that we need to protect our farmland and our food sources.
Technology and farming. My understanding is that the technological advances that are occurring
in your field are yielding hyper productivity. Like you can grow more in less space.
That's right. Cycle times are different. Maybe speak just a little bit to what technology
is doing. Technology has helped. And let's just say in dairy farming, when you think
about the dairy farmer and the time it takes to produce milk cows, it's usually twice a
day if you're doing it by hand or machine. We are working on and working with business
on the rise of robotic milkers where a cow walks into a chute, it does a retinal scan,
and it can tell the farmer if that cow is a fever, if it's not feeling well. And so maybe
that cow doesn't get milk that day. Maybe you rest them, but you still feed them and
then let them go out after they eat. Or cows healthy and happy, you can milk them three
times a day. And they stay in an air conditioned barn and life's pretty good. But the technological
advances are huge. And we're hoping that those technological advances in farming, drought
resistant soybean plants, insect proof corn, things that we can do to make sure our yields
are better does help. We still have to be so careful with that balance of losing the
family farm and yield on crops.
But I am delighted though at the quality of leadership that I'm seeing across the board
in our state. And with you, I have heard so many good things about the way you lead and
how you are with people. And today, probably my big insight just from talking to you is
that people that pour into you, when they do it well and do it the right way, it creates
possibility. Like when I think about the, and you really have many more, but the mentors
at the milestone points of your life, that person created possibility. And I think you
are doing the same thing. Maybe as we close, you could talk about maybe just some of the
things you've learned about leadership.
Sure. Of course, I love to read. And I've got, and a lot of times when you read it really
provides you an opportunity just to do some reflection. And you know, back in the late
80s, I read this timeless book called Leadership as an Art by Max DePri. And Helen, if you
pick it up, it's a weekend read. It's great. And I read it every December. But Max DePri
said, one thing I'll never forget. He said the thing about leadership, there are two
components. One is you need to define reality. And the second thing is you need to say thank
you. And so when you think about that with organizations, you know, defining reality
means setting a culture, setting an example, leading, providing direction, but then just
as equally important is the gratitude. You talked about Alex Haley and the Turtle on
the Post. We have teams, we've got colleagues, we've got people that are helping out. And
they all have a first name and they all have a story. And so you've got to really nurture
those relationships and show gratitude for the folks that are helping the organization
move forward. And those are the, when I think about leadership, and for me and organizations
I've led, those are the two things I try to think about. They're looking for you to be
the culture champion and set the vision, but they also, they want to feel appreciated.
And I love relationships. I love people. It's what drives me to get my energy from it. And
just remembering all those folks working with you have a story. And you need to get to know
those stories.
All the way from Frog Jump.
M-N-C. Dr. Keith Carver, thanks for being on Anything is Possible. And thanks for being
a representation of what's possible.
Well, thank you and God bless you.