As students finish final exams, Provost Larry Nielsen said the University’s administration completed one step of its own “term paper” May 1 — its UNC-Tomorrow response.
The UNC-Tomorrow Commission asked that University leaders draft plans for how their schools will respond to the needs of the state in the future. Nielsen headed the drafting committee at N.C. State and he said changes to the University are evident in its response.
“There’s some stuff on this list that’s pretty imaginative …,” he said. “But it’s important because it’s setting the direction for where we want to go as an institution.”
The University’s goals require a balance between its mainstay engineering and agricultural departments and expanding programs for the performing arts and humanities.
“In order to be the institution we want to be, a strong program in the arts and humanities and social sciences is absolutely necessary,” Nielsen said.
The response states that while the College of Engineering has been expanding to Centennial Campus and progressing in its research, it has not been able to keep up with some peer institutions.
After the college hired additional faculty in the 2007 to 2008 school year, however, it moved to 30 on the U.S. and World Report’s rankings of engineering programs.
The response also says the number of “research active faculty” must increase by 100 to “attain a level of annual research expenditures commensurate with a premier college of engineering.”
Nielsen said ranking the different colleges in importance is like deciding between a heart, a brain and a stomach.
“All of it is essential,” he said. “We just need to spend a little more money and a little bit more attention on the arts and humanities and social sciences than we have in the past.”
The UNC-Tomorrow response also includes ideas about global readiness, accessibility, outreach and an emphasis on environment and health.
Greg Doucette, a senior in computer science and Student Senate president, was recently elected president of the UNC Association of Student Governments and said some students are unsure how serious their school’s plans are, and whether student fees will be increased as a result of the new programs mentioned.
Doucette said accessibility should be the commission’s primary goal in drafting a response.
“I’m not convinced [accessibility] is something that they’re pushing as seriously and as hard as they should be,” he said.
While Doucette said added efforts with outreach may negatively impact the University’s accessibility, Doucette said, but he thinks the drafting process has been a good one. “This will probably end up being a serious planning initiative for some time to come,” Doucette said.
There is nothing to fear in UNC-Tomorrow though, Nielsen said.
“It’s allowing us to express our aspirations and our plans concretely,” he said. “And N.C. State is one of the two really research-extensive institutions of the state that serves the entire state, because of the breadth of our programs. Because of that, we have everything to gain by this process.”
