PHOTO | TROY HULL

Queens University of Charlotte President Daniel Lugo is the first black CEO in the school’s 162-year history.

Queens University of Charlotte President Daniel Lugo understands the challenges of higher education.

Lugo, who has been on the job nearly six months, is the school’s third president in the last 42 years and the first African American to hold the position in Queens’ 162 years. Lugo, an attorney by training, was previously vice president of advancement at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where he oversaw development, alumni relations and networking.

In an interview with The Post, Lugo talked about challenges facing the school, disruption in American education and juggling multiple roles as president. Responses are edited for brevity and clarity.

The Post: How are you finding life at Queens and in Charlotte?

Daniel Lugo: I would say that both experiences are going extremely well. Exceeding my expectations. I'd heard from the outside that Charlotte is a welcoming city. And there are a lot of places that advertise themselves as a welcoming city, and so far, Charlotte has outpaced my wife’s, our family, and my expectations for what welcoming really means to Charlotteans.

It means that not only are they friendly to you when they see you, they actually seem interested in who you are, where you're from, they're interested in connecting you to the greater community, and make always great suggestions about who I should know and what places I should go to and what things I should take in.

I am just blown away at the openness to me and my family, that the Queens University community has shown and embraced us with. We have been able to hit the ground running and really being immersed into a new community learning the culture learning the history. There's, there was a little bit of fear on my side about this place that's you know been around since 1857 has such deep traditions and cultures whether they'd be open to new leadership and to change. And I think this is a unique place that believes, both. Yes, you need to honor what we've been but they're excited about what we can do in the future, and they're excited about a new administration's vision for the future so all going really well.

The Post: Charlotte is a metropolitan kind of place. Queens is a rising star in terms of independent schools and you've got big shoes to fill. When you look at the job ahead what do you have to be able to do a better job of in terms of your time at Queens?

Daniel Lugo: I think that great institutions have great leaders and great sequences of leaders having the right leader at the right time and that queens, you know, I can go back the last 41 years to talk about great timing leadership, to Dr. Billy Wireman, who occupied this office for 24 years and did incredible work and taking an institution that was candidly, a bit at the abyss of higher education disruption back then, to really find a way to survive, and then to Dr. (Pamela) Davies, who for 17 years led this institution so well at really building an incredible, incredible community. A great strategic plan, and a beautiful, beautiful campus infrastructure that really needed a lot of attention when she got here.

I stand on those shoulders, and now I have the opportunity to grow our reach to grow the knowledge and demand for a great Queens education. We are a place of great quality academically, the scholarly achievements of our faculty, the outcomes that our students have as a result of getting a Queens education are just so strong, but I think that that we're not well known enough. We're not well known up here in our own region in North Carolina and the Southeast. I think we’re the type of place that should have reach across the country. People should really want to have a Queens experience and a Queens education.

The Post: Do you see your job as president as part pitch man, part administrator to go out and spread the word about the university?

Daniel Lugo:  Yes, I do. I enjoyed the kind of like complexities of the role. I think there's an operational leadership for decision making and a strategic role to play as I lead a really strong team of senior leaders here on campus. but I think there’s a very important external focus for college presidents on being the champion for the value proposition of the school and the brand, stretching using the, the president’s voice, the president’s kind of channels of communication to stretch the reach of who we can have pay attention to us, and also to be out there fighting for resources.

…That is definitely something that that I think the CEO of great institutions need to be focused on in 21st century higher education.

The Post: North Carolina has this reputation that it is very affordable in terms of  public education. How does that challenge fit in terms of being able to say you can succeed here as a student, and it won't wreck your economic future?

Daniel Lugo: It starts with educating the public and the market of folks that are looking for a great education to know our value proposition. And yes, we are really fortunate to be in a state that has a great system of state-funded education at the community college level, at the four-year level.

And we compliment that system, and we are worth a premium on that because of the things that we add on top of just the transaction of learning. We add on intimate scale of learning where our students learn in smaller environments where they're cared for beyond just being a large lecture hall, we add value because all of our students are getting incredibly privileged access to career curriculum and support and multiple internship opportunities that are have happening with the best companies in our backyard here in Charlotte, we add value because a high percentage of our students take and all of our students are afforded opportunities to study internationally.

We overperform because our students plugged into an alumni community that has a tradition that goes back to 1857 of taking care of each other. So, our value proposition is one that we think for the right student that wants that type of additional opportunity in their learning experience. If we can articulate it, then people will get what's different about us. But we also provide great, great aid opportunities for students that have need, and students that have high potential, so there is a such a thing as a sticker price and by the way, I feel very, very confident about our value in a comprehensive cost. Right now, our tuition is about $35,000 a year, which is similar to what our state institutions are charging out of state students to come.  For an apples-to-apples experience, I’d put our experience up against it.

The Post: This is your first experience as president of a school. How much of a learning curve do you have, or do you require in terms of feeling comfortable as president?

Daniel Lugo: I don't know that this is a job that I ever endeavor to treat like I got it down pat. I think this is a really challenging role at a challenging time in the higher education world, and things are changing all the time. So yeah, there's no question this is a there's a definitely a learning curve. I would say that I have learned from a number of some of the best presidents that I can imagine in the country, being involved at the senior leadership of to really strong institutions and learning directly from those other presidents has been a huge help to me.

I think that that I could probably be here for seven, eight, 10 years, and we’ll be just putting new challenges and new opportunities and new things for us to think about because I just think that we have to have that kind of culture of newness, of entrepreneurship, of innovation. As soon as we get comfortable. I think we're in trouble.

The Post: Talk about disruption. We're a technological world where everything is disrupted almost on a daily basis. What do you see as those types of challenges, whether it's online education or the education arms race between brick and mortar campuses where today's students demand facilities as much as they demand a topline education.

Daniel Lugo: I think people want real value for their educational investment. There is hyper competition for fewer number of students. There's demographic challenges. Birth rates have been going down and I think the wonderful thing about demography is that you know what's going to happen 10 years from now, because those people are already born. There are fewer people being born, so 10 years from now we're going to be fighting over fewer students, their challenges around the delivery of education, how do we deliver a high quality educational experience at a price point that's affordable but allows you to keep to keep investing and making sure that it's state of the art.

There's also, to me, very big challenges that are the first time that we're encountering them with a marketplace that is questioning the value of education. This is something that everyone, for 200 years, had a sense of if you had the opportunity to get an education, it would better you. Right now, we're questioning that model for the first time, whether it's media, whether it's politicians, whether it's folks in the statehouse. And this is, unfortunately, ignoring the evidence that you know there's a $1 million, $1.1 million premium on average, on the earnings of someone with a college education versus someone that only has a high school degree. So, the data isn't in alignment with the suspicion, but we have to confront that now.

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