The new top administrators at University of North Carolina Wilmington and Cape Fear Community College are not looking back to their institutions’ recent rocky leadership experiences because they say their focus is firmly on the future.

Asked how she moves forward from the controversy surrounding CFCC and its former president, Ted Spring, who resigned earlier this year, new president Amanda Lee said “That’s relatively simple: focus on the students.”

New UNCW chancellor Jose “Zito” Sartarelli responded to the question about dealing with the university's recent leadership transition by saying “We’re all about the future. The best years at UNCW are ahead of us.”

Lee and Sartarelli were featured in Tuesday’s Power Breakfast program on the future of higher education, hosted by the Greater Wilmington Business Journal. The question-and-answer format, moderated by Business Journal editor Vicky Janowski, allowed them to share their perspectives on a wide range of topics with an audience of about 570 people.

Asked his top three current priorities, Sartarelli mentioned the development of a strategic plan to make the university “better in everything we do”; helping to increase UNCW’s engagement in the region; and making UNCW more global, both in its student body and through programmatic emphasis and international partnerships.

Lee said her three priorities are the new Humanities and Fine Arts Center, which opens with a gala Oct. 3; maintaining CFCC’s “very significant role” in area economic development; and streamlining the educational experience to make it easier and quicker for students to complete their coursework and find jobs.

Both leaders expressed concern about the rising cost of tuition and how it is affecting students’ access to higher education.

Lee said that making education affordable – both for entering college students and for workers returning for further training – is the biggest challenge she sees between now and 2020.

Many states have “retrenched” in terms of their support of higher education, Sartarelli said, adding that the concept of state-supported higher education is “somewhat broken,” as states such as Wisconsin make huge cuts in the amount of money allocated to their public universities. The original agreement, he said, is that if a state university delivers student credit hours, the state will continue to fund it.

“Can we ever regain that consensus?” Sartarelli mused, noting that, of the $17 trillion total debt in the United States, $1.3 trillion of it is student debt, and the burden of that debt is affecting many students’ life choices and options. In an effort to keep its expenses down, UNCW is going through a “procurement exercise” to determine how it can buy goods and services for less, he added.

Both Lee and Sartarelli mentioned they are paying close attention to the General Assembly’s budget decisions as well as the fate of Gov. Pat McCrory’s ConnectNC bond initiative, which would provide some funding for capital improvements at community colleges and universities within the UNC system.

Both leaders said their business backgrounds were helpful to them as heads of educational institutions, and expressed optimism about the growing potential for their institutions to have a positive impact on the economic development of the region.

Lee emphasized CFCC’s 55 vocational/technical programs, each of which has an advisory committee that provides ongoing assessment and refining of the program as needed.

“CFCC is the fifth- or sixth-largest community college in the state and has one of the best reputations, based on student satisfaction and student outcomes,” she said. One of her goals, she added, is for CFCC to become a "best practices" model for other community colleges.

Sartarelli, who said he sees “no disconnect” in the university’s role as a classroom educator and as a research-based economic driver, said he would like to add graduate degree programs, especially in academic areas in which UNCW is already strong, such as psychology, chemistry, accounting and computer science.

“I hope the system in Raleigh allows us to grow,” he said."I would like UNCW to be a true university, with great undergraduate, great master's and great Ph.D. [programs]," he added. "We have two Ph.D. programs now and could have others that could be of use to the state."

The chancellor also mentioned that UNCW has received a $390,000 grant from the Duke Energy Foundation for a research project with significant business implications. The grant, announced Monday, will underwrite the development of a program dedicated to clinical research and economic development in southeast North Carolina. With the funding, UNCW's College of Health and Human Services will create new programs specific to biostatistics and clinical operations, according to a news release from the university.