NC State University will bring focus to a world of high-speed technological and human change

In January I talked a little about a report created by the Art & Sciences Group about NC State.

Recommendations in the report were based on hundreds of interviews on campus and with “opinion leaders” around the nation.  The report has helped me understand some of the bigger issues facing the university and  while I don’t agree with everything they suggested, I do think the information may be very useful in our strategic communications planning efforts.

Here, in abbreviated fashion, are more of those observations and recommendations:

• North Carolina State University is poised to become the leading land-grant institution on the east coast of the United States. A comprehensive university centered in the sciences and engineering.
• NC State is a place of uncommon focus: students focused on service and career, a research enterprise focused on the great issues of our time, and a faculty that welcomes its responsibility for both.
• The times call for leadership from a major university located in one of the world’s great research and industry hubs in the population center of the U.S., yet also keenly attuned to the opportunity divide separating city from small town, and haves from have-nots.
• NC State, in partnership with its great neighboring universities, is the engine that continues to power the Research Triangle. We are applying our research and educational resources to five issues of surpassing importance to the nation, the world, and every county in North Carolina. Together, our unusual constellation of colleges and Centennial Campus—our pioneering community integrating the work of the university, industry, and government—will focus on:

1. producing leaders for the state, nation, and world
2. energy and environment
3. health and well-being
4. educational innovation across all grade levels, and
5. economic development and social equity

• NC State will be an international leader in those fields of science and engineering, humanities, arts, and social sciences where we can contribute to breakthroughs of understanding and application focused on these issues.
• NC State’s faculty are delivering an education matched to the particular needs of a society and economy dramatically shaped by technology and constant innovation. We know we will depend, for example, on scientists adept with demographics, art, and policy; on lawyers, entrepreneurs, and doctors who think like engineers; and on graduates in every field who as students already have experience in the global workplace.
• The people of North Carolina State University bring focus to a world of high-speed technological and human change.

Wow.  That’s how others see the potential of NC State University.

I am proud to be part of that university.  I am proud to be part of NC State.  We’ve just got to make it happen and it all starts with a vision. We’ll work with our new chancellor to help craft that vision then take it to the masses, creating disciples along the way.

Passion Rules!

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