Growing a good idea in the North Carolina foothills

If you have a brilliant idea and it works, do it again.

That’s the simple and powerful reason why the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics grew from one campus to two, why the brilliant idea that first took root in Durham has now flourished so beautifully in Morganton.

It was John Ehle, a son of the North Carolina mountains and a man unusually prone to good ideas, who first suggested that the state would benefit from a residential high school designed to welcome the most talented students from every region and offer them a world-class education. North Carolina has long understood that cultivating the capacities of our young people is both the highest calling of good government and the surest route to prosperity in a demanding world. Ambition and intellect are renewable resources, if you tend them with care.

That’s what the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics was built to do. By selecting some of the most gifted students across the state, gathering them together, and pairing them with an extraordinary faculty, NCSSM was meant to serve as a beacon for the very best of teaching and learning. It was meant to be a showcase for the latest and greatest in science, technology, and innovation in the classroom. It was meant to inspire rising generations of North Carolina’s best students to cherish their home state and help it grow.

“The school would be a pioneering effort to boost the quality of education for high-caliber students and to catalyze improvement in science and mathematics across the state and nation,” according to a 1988 report from the Institute of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill. “In this way, North Carolina would develop the scientific and technological leadership of the twenty-first century, consolidate its successes in landing high-technology industries, and prepare the state and its people for the complexities of the technological age and competition in a global economy.”

In every one of those aims, NCSSM succeeded beyond the best hopes of its early backers. So, when lawmakers and education advocates began to consider an expansion nearly a decade ago, the case for NCSSM-Morganton was compelling. Voters agreed, and the 2016 Connect NC Bond paved the way for John Ehle’s pioneering idea to come home to Western North Carolina.

One of the things I love best about this beautiful school in the Blue Ridge foothills is that it brings together students from every part of our state and every possible background. When I was here a few years ago to celebrate commencement with the first class of graduates, I met students whose families have been in North Carolina for generations. I met the sons and daughters of immigrants. I met the children of suburban doctors and the children of factory workers. Every one of them here together, every one of them united by a spirit of curiosity about the world and a burning desire to pursue the best education our state can offer.

It makes me proud, both as president of our public university system and as someone who grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina, to see this place thrive. It takes courage to try something new and untested, and it takes sound common sense to let a good thing grow. North Carolina has been blessed with both.