It was past noon in the American studies class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but several dozen students were still sipping coffee and chewing on bagels when UNC system President Molly Broad slipped off her jacket, flipped on her PowerPoint presentation and launched into a guest lecture on leadership.

Broad outlined the campaign strategy that persuaded voters to approve $3.1 billion last year for the state's public universities and community colleges --the largest higher education bond in the nation's history. But when it came time for questions, a young man in the middle of the room had something else on his mind.

"What's it like to be a leader in this state when you're not from North Carolina?" he asked. It has been more than four years since Broad became the third president of the UNC system, and she still finds it impossible to escape that question.

"It is a great disadvantage not to be from North Carolina," Broad answered bluntly. "People talk about me being the first woman president, but what was a very big deal was that I'm a non-North Carolinian. There are families and connections and stories that I cannot be a part of. But I can observe it, understand it and applaud it."

As the students filled their backpacks and filed out of the room, Broad headed for the car at her usual brisk clip and offered one more thought. "I also think I see things in this state that native North Carolinians just don't see."

What Broad sees -- and will tell people when prodded -- is that she inherited a system with aging buildings, lagging salaries and a flawed plan to keep the rising costs of college within the reach of blue-collar families. She sees a General Assembly so fond of its higher education system and so wrapped up in age-old debates that it doesn't recognize the future that is right around the corner.

"This is arguably the most challenging time in higher education in the past century," she said. "I don't want to say anything unkind, but we were not the exemplar of best practices when I arrived here as president. This is a great university that in my judgment was at risk on multiple fronts. So I have been in a hurry. We don't have time to screw around."

As the tobacco and textile industries crumble in North Carolina, the 16 universities of the UNC system are under enormous pressure to help the state reposition its economy. And Broad faces the more fundamental task of running one of the state's largest institutions.

While UNC's share of the state budget has declined for 14 consecutive years, the universities still spend about 13 cents of every state dollar. Broad's decisions affect 37,000 employees, 170,000 students and combined budgets that total almost $4.8 billion.

She leads a system that owes its history to the families and powerbrokers who define what is right about the state's good-old-boy network. But with her corporate suits and highlighted hair, Broad is definitely not a good old boy. Good old boys swap stories and work their connections. Broad reads reports until midnight and takes home canvas bags filled with mail on weekends.

She is an Irish Catholic who grew up in Pennsylvania, an economist by training who went to college in New York and a national leader in education who never found the time to finish her doctorate. The daughter of two schoolteachers, she sometimes jokes that a native Tar Heel might know better than to tackle the issues she has taken on.

Broad has challenged the state's allegiance to rock-bottom tuition costs, a decision that touches the bank accounts of every parent who enrolls a child in a state university. The effects of her work on the $3.1 billion construction project --nearly 10 times larger than any previous building program by UNC --will ripple through the state's economy for more than a decade. She has almost single-handedly created a place for the system in national policy debates about issues ranging from genomics to distance learning to the future of the country's great land grant universities.

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