CHAPEL HILL – Kevin Guskiewicz is a proud alumnus of the University of Virginia.

But he’s even more proud to have been at UNC Chapel Hill for the past 24 years, Guskiewicz – now Interim Chancellor at Carolina – says in the accompanying video. 

Guskiewicz was finishing his PhD in sports medicine at Virginia in 1995 and had already been offered a faculty position there. His wife, an elementary school teacher, had a job she liked in Charlottesville. 

But Guskiewicz decided to check out UNC Chapel Hill in one last interview.

“And the minute I stepped foot on this campus, I felt something,” he says. “I sensed this culture of collaboration that would continue to be necessary to carry out my research, which at that time was fairly novel – there were very few researchers doing work in the area of sport concussion.”

As he drove back to Charlottesville, his wife, Amy, called.

“She said, ‘How did it go?’ And I said, ‘Well it – something special about this place. It just feels right.’

“And there was dead silence on the phone.”

After a second visit and interview, Amy was sold as well. They’ve been in Chapel Hill ever since – though Virginia didn’t give up on Guskiewicz. 

“About 13, 14 years ago, they were trying to recruit me back there into an endowed professorship, and she said, ‘Don’t even think about it,’” the interim chancellor says. “It is a special place.”