Category — 100 Days at NC State

I have often referred to myself as the head cheerleader for NC State University (a nice job to have last night in the RBC Center.  Go Pack!)  I’m proud to be part of the university and I want everyone to know about it.   I suppose that’s what you might expect from a dyed in the wool PR and marketing guy.   Despite their great work, many faculty members are not as outgoing as I might be and that may not do them well within the institution or among their peers in higher education.  At least that’s what Dr. Sastry Pantula thinks.

Pantula is Head of the Department of Statistics and President of the American Statistical Association and he and Steve Townsend (Director of Communications, College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences) have been talking about PR and publicity.  Dr. Pantula might not be the head cheerleader, but he recognizes the importance of individual recognition among faculty members and he shared that recognition with his group recently.  Here’s what he told Steve about a recent article he read:

Steve:

I enjoy reading Gary Olson’s articles in the Chronicle.  I have shared  the following with our junior faculty.  I appreciate what you and the Dean do with the Scope magazine and Scope Academy also.  I know the more I know about our faculty’s accomplishments, the easier it is for me to help make opportunities for them. Even a diamond needs to be dug out, and polished 😉

Here are some common ways that new faculty members might begin to make themselves known in their disciplines: [Read more →]

NC State University has successfully negotiated an agreement with Google Inc. that will enable us to provide improved e-mail and other hosted services for students through the free Google Apps Education Editionâ„¢ program. This action was recommended by the Student E-mail Task Force in their March 2009 report (http://oit.ncsu.edu/student-email-initiative/report ).

Outsourcing e-mail is a growing trend in higher education because it enables universities to improve technology services for students while reducing costs. The Google Apps Gmail services will give NC State students more than 7 gigabytes of storage per account, something they have been requesting for years but the university has been unable to afford to provide. Based on the current level of student e-mail services, the Student E-mail Task Force estimated that outsourcing student e-mail would save the university an anticipated $60,000 per year. In addition to e-mail, Google Apps Education Editionâ„¢ offers a suite of popular communication and collaboration applications designed for schools and universities.

OIT has formed a Google Apps @ NC State Implementation Team to plan the  rollout of the new services. While e-mail and related services (calendaring, online document sharing, etc.) will be provided by Google, students will retain their official @ncsu.edu address. We expect to launch a student beta e-mail service by mid semester this spring and are encouraging students to request an invitation to participate by visiting NC State’s Google Web site: http://google.ncsu.edu. The production service will be rolled out over the coming year.

More information about NC State’s implementation of Google Apps Education Edition™is also available at http://google.ncsu.edu.

I should note that NC State Chief Information Officer, Dr. Marc Hoit,  and the Office of Information Technology, spearheaded the effort from the administrative end.  You guys Rock!  Now if you can just help me sync my Gmail account to Groupwise we’ll really be in business.

Passion Rules!.

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I’m pretty excited about this evening’s dinner with the Boards of Trustees from NC State University and UNC — Chapel Hill.  We all live and work together and are kind of the yin and yang of higher education locally.  In fact, you could probably use the two as the definition of yin and yang in the dictionary…an example of how seemingly disjunct or opposing forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world.

I don’t think anyone really knows what will come out of this first meeting between boards, but I’ve gotta believe it will be something good.  But why not push for more?

As I noted last week, the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill region is a hotbed for higher education.  In addition to the three major universities, we’ve got more than a handful of excellent smaller colleges and a strong community college system.  A mecca for higher education if you will.

So, if our trustees can work well together and our faculty and staff are already working together, what about a joint effort to promote higher education in the triangle.   I think NC State, UNC – Chapel Hill and Duke are up for it.  What about the others in the region. What do you think?

From today’s N&O:  http://www.newsobserver.com/news/education/story/291630.html.

Passion Rules!

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[Read more →]

Today’s Op-Ed piece from the News & Observer’s Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jim Jenkins highlights the opportunities at NC State University now that Randy Woodson has been selected to be the new Chancellor.

Been having a good conversation with David Green over at the College of Veterinary Medicine regarding branding strategies for NC State and other universities and it occurred to me that the discussion is similar to those I had at Harley-Davidson and Sea-Doo back in the days.

The discussion was around branding strategies.  Brand strategies typically fall on one end of a branding continuum often referred to as a brand spectrum. At one end, you have a “branded house” strategy, where the “big” brand is firmly established and plays the driving role across all product offerings.  At the other end is the “house of brands” strategy where  the larger brand is behind the scenes and often unnoticed.

Harley was clearly a branded house. The products (motorcycles, motor clothes, accessories, etc.) were closely tied to the Harley-Davidson name.  At Sea-Doo it was the other way around.  Sea-Doo was owned by Bombardier Inc. and you rarely, if ever, heard that name in marketing.  You had Sea-Doo, Ski-Doo, Lear Jet, Challenger, etc.  All were/are part of the Bombardier family of products.

You can probably think of other consumer brands and put them in the appropriate brand buckets.  Apple is a branded house.  All of its products shout out “look at me,” we’re from Apple.  General Mills on the other hand, house of brands:  Cheerios, Haagen-Dazs, Betty Crocker, Green Giant.

In higher education, there are few examples of the extremes, but many universities slide toward either side of the spectrum.

Duke is a good example of a university that is closer to the house of brands.  As David pointed out, Duke has an extremely strong brand, but it’s not monolithic. For example, news releases reference the college/ center/or institute; it’s not just a Duke professor.  NC State, on the other hand, is closer to the branded house side of things.  It’s the NC State college of … education, design, physical and mathematical sciences, humanities and social sciences, etc. [Read more →]

If you thought our search for Chancellor Woodson was accelerated, check out this story from West Layfatte about Purdue’s search for his replacement.

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By ERIC WEDDLE
eweddle@jconline.com

In the next three weeks, candidates for the next Purdue University provost will be found.

The breakneck pace of the search committee announced Monday to find a replacement for Provost Randy Woodson is to keep the university on track as it pursues its strategic plans and faces budget issues.

“Is it unusual? Yes, it is,” said Rabindra Mukerjea, Purdue executive director of strategic planning. Mukerjea is providing support for the committee and serves as the first point of contact for prospective nominees. “We need to find someone very quickly because we are in the midst of the strategic plan. I think the internal search is very appropriate. We have a lot of talent on the campus.”

The 12-member committee has been asked to zero in on internal candidates.

Last week, Woodson was named the chancellor at North Carolina State University. He is expected to start that job by May.

The provost, which also holds the title of executive vice president for academic affairs, works with the president on overall leadership and is responsible for recruiting, hiring and reviewing deans and department heads, among other duties.

Finalists for provost will be announced Feb. 1, and public presentations will follow. President France Córdova’s goal is to present the top pick at the Feb.11 board of trustees meeting. [Read more →]

Just couldn’t resist when I saw this photo.  Speculation about The Man in the background on the right (Chancellor-elect Randy Woodson) generated the banner headlines.

Welcome to N. C. State Chancellor.  You, your wife and family will love it here.  Can’t wait to get down to work!

Passion Rules!

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P.S.  Great photo. Credit Roger Winstead of N.C. State’s University Communications office.

Yesterday’s blog about the Chancellor Search sure raised lots of discussion.  Some claimed I was a genius, others a fool.  I claim neither, or either, because the discussion that followed was great.

Some of those outside the university thought I was unfair to the media.  They believed the paper was just doing it’s job.  Honestly, I don’t disagree with them. Today news happens at lightning speed and is reported even faster.   I just have a problem when the best you can do is four unnamed sources.  Guess that’s better than one or two unnamed sources, but if the news is so important that you banner it across the top of the front page of the paper, shouldn’t you at least have one source who is willing to fess up?  I think so, but then I’m not in the news business and I don’t have to sell newspapers everyday and compete against the likes of TMZ, Stossel, Facebook and Twitter.

But  a media critique was not the purpose of my blog.  I like the N&O and the reporters who cover our industry.  I was just trying to illustrate the difficult position those in university communications find themselves in when something like this happens.  My focus was the internal audience, us.

Sure, we all heard the rumors and saw the story.  We couldn’t refute it because we didn’t know if it was true or not.  But because the story was about a decision that only University of North Carolina President, Erskine Bowles, could make, only Erskine Bowles could confirm  and he hadn’t done that.  In fact, he was on record stating that he would not announce his recommendation until Friday (today.)

In our excitement (the news reported in the paper was really, really good) a couple of us posted blog, Facebook and Twitter links to the newspaper story, but in doing so, we provided additional cred to the report…a report we wouldn’t confirm…but couldn’t deny.  I’m not even going to try to decide whether that was good or bad it’s just what it was. [Read more →]

Last night and this morning were the kind of challenging times communicators have to deal with in today’s always on, 24-hour news cycle.

Around 9 p.m. the News & Observer posted an article with the headline “NCSU set to announce chancellor.”  The story was picked up by local television and radio news crews and by 9:30 p.m. it was spreading like wildfire.  A number of people in the area and on campus had even posted links to the story or tweeted about the article on university sites.  This morning, it was the lead story in the N&O.

Only problem, neither the university nor the Board of Governors would confirmed the story…and won’t.

We won’t confirm the story because until the Board of Governor’s receives a chancellor recommendation from Erskine Bowles, and until the Board of Governors votes to accept that recommendation, and until the individual recommended and approved (if he or she is approved) accepts the BOG’s action, it’s not news.

Really?  Really!

I know it’s hard to accept, but until it’s a done deal, it’s not a done deal.  You know, the fat-lady-sings thing.  Just go back to Sunday’s basketball game.  The Wolfpack had it,  up by two with two seconds to play, ball at the far end of the court.  No way could Florida win.  But win they did when a 75-foot Hail Mary swished through the nets.  And think about it, this kind of thing happens all the time, and not just in sports.  GM had Saturn sold. GM had Saab sold.  Now look.  Anybody want to buy a car company today?  I’m not trying to pick on GM, it’s just the way of the world.  Always was, always will be. Things change.

The search for a new chancellor is not basketball or automobiles, but as a public institution we’ve got to play by the rules and follow good journalistic principles;  It’s not a done deal until it’s a done deal and it’s not a done deal until it has been confirmed by those directly involved. We aren’t trying to sell newspapers here, therefore stories we hear from a friend of a friend of a friend (regardless of how good we think those sources are) will never be reported as news from a campus news source.  And never should be. [Read more →]

I’m not going to endorse or dismiss Breen’s discussion of creativity below because it raises good points for all of us to consider.  It also recognizes the reality of the world in which we live; a world where budgets are under pressure, resources under even more pressure, and personnel often seen as an expendable item.

Be that as it may, it’s a good read and I’ll be interested in your reaction.

Passion Rules!

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By: Bill Breen

Creativity.

These days, there’s hardly a mission statement that doesn’t herald it, or a CEO who doesn’t laud it. And yet despite all of the attention that business creativity has won over the past few years, maddeningly little is known about day-to-day innovation in the workplace. Where do breakthrough ideas come from? What kind of work environment allows them to flourish? What can leaders do to sustain the stimulants to creativity — and break through the barriers?

Teresa Amabile has been grappling with those questions for nearly 30 years. Amabile, who heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School and is the only tenured professor at a top B-school to devote her entire research program to the study of creativity, is one of the country’s foremost explorers of business innovation.

Eight years ago, Amabile took her research to a daring new level. Working with a team of PhDs, graduate students, and managers from various companies, she collected nearly 12,000 daily journal entries from 238 people working on creative projects in seven companies in the consumer products, high-tech, and chemical industries. She didn’t tell the study participants that she was focusing on creativity. She simply asked them, in a daily email, about their work and their work environment as they experienced it that day. She then coded the emails for creativity by looking for moments when people struggled with a problem or came up with a new idea.

“The diary study was designed to look at creativity in the wild,” she says. “We wanted to crawl inside people’s heads and understand the features of their work environment as well as the experiences and thought processes that lead to creative breakthroughs.”

Amabile and her team are still combing through the results. But this groundbreaking study is already overturning some long-held beliefs about innovation in the workplace. In an interview with Fast Company, she busted six cherished myths about creativity. (If you want to quash creativity in your organization, just continue to embrace them.) Here they are, in her own words. [Read more →]