In a new video created in partnership with Acumen Media, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill celebrates the vital role its leadership as the nation’s first public university has meant to the nation and the world.

Chancellor Lee H. Roberts anchors the six-minute video, part of a series honoring America 250 to be displayed on CNBC’s website and on social media. Carolina’s video traces the 232-year history of the University and emphasizes its impact in research, value, athletics and service to the state of North Carolina.

“This University has been a catalyst since our very inception,” Roberts says. “We were formed to do the research that addresses the societal challenges faced by our state and by the world at large, in ways big and small, seen and unseen.”

Other speakers in the video include a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a robotics pioneer and an award-winning doctor with an innovative solution for “maternity deserts.” Interviews and other footage filmed on the historic campus in Chapel Hill, with its lush tree canopy, low stone walls and brick walkways, complement archival stills and news coverage.

The video shows how the history of UNC-Chapel Hill — chartered in 1789, the same year the U.S. Constitution went into effect — parallels that of the nation. As the birthplace of public higher education, Carolina is America’s flagship, founded by Revolutionary War military officer William Richardson Davie.

“Davie and the state’s founders recognized that higher education would be absolutely foundational to the new republic in order to educate the citizens and the leaders that would sustain it by serving North Carolina and the people around them,” says UNC-Chapel Hill history professor Kathleen DuVal, winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for history.

After establishing the University’s historic importance, the video then celebrates its highest achievements: best value in public higher education, outstanding athletics as the University of National Champions and world-class research.

“We’ve got great research going on in our labs, but it doesn’t stay there,” says Magnus Egerstedt, provost and executive vice chancellor as well as a robotics engineer. “We are laser-focused on translating what happens in our labs out into the community and into the world. We are all about impact.”

Nowhere is that impact more evident than in the work of Dr. Jeffrey S.A. Stringer, creator of a battery-powered, AI-driven device that brings obstetric expertise to the remotest areas, be it in Zambia or the mountains of North Carolina.

“The software we’ve developed allows essentially everyone to do an obstetrical ultrasound anywhere,” says Stringer, a faculty member in both the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

His innovation is just one example of a university that the provost urges to “be scrappy, be forward looking and be hungry.”

Not resting on its laurels, this historic place continues to prove its resilience and relevance in the 21st century. “That’s what we’ve been doing for 232 years,” Roberts says in closing. “We’re going to do it for at least the next 250 years and beyond.”