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Office of the Provost: 2006-2007 Annual Report

The Provost made the following appointments: Vicki Walton, Assistant Vice Provost; William Winner, Coordinator of Environmental Programs; Betsy Brown, Special Assistant to the Provost; Amy Jinnette, Executive Assistant; Bob Beichner, Director of Initiative for Discipline-Based Education; Bailian Li, Vice Provost for International Affairs; and Barbi Honeycutt, Interim Director of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. The Provost conducted five-year leadership and program reviews of three units: Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications, Office of Equal Opportunity, and the Information Technology Division. All three reviews were favorable to the vice provost incumbents.

Credit Programs & Summer Sessions (CP&SS)

Enrollment for the 2006 Summer Sessions totaled 12,370 (7630 students for Summer Session I and 4740 students for Summer Session II). Lifelong Education enrollment in on-campus and distance education courses averaged 2829 students per semester. In conjunction with distance education, CP&SS provided proctoring services for 7939 examinations during calendar year 2006 (a 26.0% increase over the previous year).

Effective August 2007, the Credit Programs and Summer Sessions office will be reorganized with management responsibility moving to the colleges and Enrollment Management and Services. This reorganization will enhance the success of our students by building summer school more strategically into our overall approach to academics. The staff of the CP&SS organization are to be commended for their service to this office during its many years of operation.

Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications (DELTA)

Demand for DELTA’s services in support of teaching and learning with technology continued on a strong growth trajectory for 2006-07. Campus-wide utilization of the Vista learning management system usage was 30,508 total enrollments in spring 2007, a 50% increase over the previous year. Wolfware utilization was up 6% to 58,478 enrollments. Faculty participation in DELTA training programs overall was up 25% to 586 enrollments. Faculty participation in the week-long Summer Institute program was up 34% to 43 in 2007. Equipment was acquired to upgrade our tele-classroom facilities and support the increased learning management system utilization noted above.

Overall distance education enrollments increased by 14% as compared to 2005-06, with 15,443 enrollments by 8,475 individual students (preliminary data). Two new undergraduate DE degree programs targeting North Carolina’s military population were launched—Leadership in the Public Sector (CHASS) and the BSE Mechanical and Aerospace Concentration, offered in collaboration with Craven Community College in Havelock. Five new Master’s degree programs were launched: MBA at RTP, Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Soil Science, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Twelve additional DE programs are in development. DELTA assumed distance education student proctoring and advising functions previously outsourced to CP&SS.

Staff accomplishments: Paul Brinich, Lisa Fiedor, and Tricia McKellar, participants, Pathways program; Lisa Fiedor, recipient; Pathways Achievement Award; Stacy Smith, participant, NC State Performance Leadership program; Lou Harrison participant, Educause Leadership Institute; Tom Miller, participant, Center for Creative Leadership’s Leadership Development Program; Donna Petherbridge earned the EDD; Betty Byrum earned the B.S. in Business Administration and was appointed Assistant Vice Provost for Finance and Business; Kay Zimmerman was named Business Woman of the Year by the Tar Heel Chapter of the American Business Women’s Association, elected Vice President of the NC Distance Learning Alliance and was recruited by UNC-GA to spend 60% of her time leading the development of the University of North Carolina Online portal.

Diversity and African American Affairs (DAAA)

DAAA continued its efforts to help create a diverse and inclusive campus community. This year we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of African-American Undergraduate students enrolled at NC State with a yearlong series of commemorative events and activities, co-chaired by Dr. Tracy Ray and Felicia Baity. The return to campus of three of the first four African-American undergraduate students to enroll at NC State in 1956 was a special highlight. The University-Community Brotherhood Dinner was conducted on April 5, 2007 with a new format involving the presidents of Shaw University and Saint Augustine’s College, and the Raleigh Mayor. Dr. Lawrence Clark, Sr. was the Benjamin E. Mays Award Recipient.
The National Association of Black Culture Centers (ABCC), part of DAAA, hosted the 16th National Conference of the ABCC in the McKimmon Center. DAAA also participated in developing and reviewing a faculty well-being survey. The results suggest that senior African-American faculty are less satisfied with their well-being at NC State, relative to junior African- American faculty and majority white faculty.
DAAA, the Office of International Affairs and the Office for Equal Opportunity entered into a partnership to develop an International/Diversity/Equal Opportunity Certification program for students. Students who complete a series of proposed education and experiential programs will earn a certificate and transcript entry for having achieved increased International/Diversity/Equal Opportunity competency.

Enrollment Management and Services (EMAS)

EMAS continues to promote access to higher education and the success of students enrolled at NC State. During 2006-2007, EMAS enrolled and funded the first cohort of students through the new Pack Promise program (approximately 300 students). The department has now added staff to coordinate the activities necessary to ensure the academic success of these students, and is starting to assess the program. In addition, the department successfully packaged two new federal aid programs into our financial aid awards this year. These programs were the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG) and the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant (SMART).

During the past year the division has made difficult choices and diverted resources toward its highest priorities. We continue to build upon our partnership with the Office of Public Affairs to provide high quality publications, which is creating efficiencies and promoting a consolidated brand image for the university. We continue our efforts of community outreach. We visited high schools around the state to present our high school teaching award, now in its second year. We continued our partnership with Wake County Public Schools to encourage the academic aspirations of low-income students. We have initiated conversations with Wake Technical Community College to transfer more students to NC State. In the past year we have intensified our recruitment of under-represented, out-of-state and international students.

Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO)

Through education, intervention, compliance, and service, the Office for Equal Opportunity (OEO) continued its mission to ensure that NC State is a non-discriminatory and harassment-free environment in 2006-2007.

The Raleigh-Wake Chapter of the Human Resource Management Association and the Triangle Industry Liaison Group presented OEO with the 2006 Diversity Award for “outstanding diversity initiatives.”

In its eighth year, OEO’s Equal Opportunity Institute graduated 203 students who completed the 30-hour certificate program. OEO sponsored the campus affiliate chapter of the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI) and trained 11 new facilitators to present the “Building Bridges” diversity workshop. Building Bridges workshops were presented to 770 participants in 2006-07. OEO hosted the regional “Train-the-Trainer” workshop at NC State for NCBI diversity training facilitators at universities in North and South Carolina. OEO offered five sessions of the 5-week “Study Circles on Race and Race Relations” program to 43 participants and “Dismantling Racism,” an advanced level of Study Circles, with 6 participants. OEO partnered with DAAA and the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences to offer the 3-day Opening Doors diversity workshop to faculty and staff.

Graduate School

The Graduate School continued its proactive approach to recruiting, especially from underrepresented groups. We funded $45.5K of departmental recruiting proposals, distributed 2000 copies of our recruiting CD, attended 36 recruiting fairs, and sponsored “Visit NC State Day” in the spring. Graduate enrollment (on-campus and DE) in Fall 2006 was at an all-time high of 6180, a 0.8% increase from Fall 2005. Of particular note, African-American student enrollment increased by 2.3%, Hispanic-American by 10.2% and female enrollment by 3.5%.

In 2006-07, besides managing portable fellowships from NSF, EPA, NASA and others, the Graduate School administered institutionally awarded GAANN Fellowships in computational science, biotechnology, and electronic materials, NSF IGERT traineeships in genomic sciences and an NIH Training Grant in biotechnology. We also received $766K in new GAANN fellowships for 3 students in biotechnology and 3 in computational science, were in the second year of a 3-year renewal of our NIGMS BRIDGE Program (>$639K) and a 5-year renewal of our NSF OPT-ED program ($3.3M). The Graduate School managed fellowships for 271 students, 111 of whom received diversity grants.

The Graduate School also continued and expanded our offering of professional development programs: 2nd annual graduate student research symposium (77 presentations from 10 colleges and 39 graduate programs); Preparing the Professoriate (17 fellows); 4th annual undergraduate summer research symposium (232 students from 55 universities, 21 states and Puerto Rico); NSF-funded statewide mentoring workshop for current and future faculty (with UNC-CH and NC A&T – 103 participants from 12 NC institutions); “OPT-ED Alliance Day” to promote diversity in Ph.D. programs and among faculty (with UNC-CH and NC A&T - 919 middle school through Ph.D. students from 86 institutions); and summer and academic-year seminars on preparation for and success in graduate school.

In 2006-07, the Graduate School participated in two major national projects focused on assessment of doctoral education (NRC Assessment of Doctoral Education) and retention of doctoral students (Ph.D. Completion Project).

Information Technology Division (ITD)

During 2006-07, ITD’s expanding efforts to create IT partnerships and collaboration helped NC State achieve innovation in education and research. The Virtual Computing Lab (VCL), a partnership of the College of Engineering and ITD, received a Computerworld Honors Laureate in June 2007 for the use of IT to benefit education. ITD was an important partner this year for NC State’s new Institute for Advanced Analytics. Also supporting educational innovation, ComTech worked collaboratively to set priorities for providing 60% wireless access on campus, ClassTech led a campus team to establish standards for student response (“clicker”) systems, collaboration with The Libraries increased, and the IT Accessibility team was the first in the world to create a way for people who are blind to have remote online access to Linux computers. Thanks to faculty participation in the HPC Partners Program, HPC Linux clusters now provide the power of over 1000 processors for undergraduate teaching as well as advanced research.

As part of the 2007-10 Compact Plan, NC State’s new Tape Backup System and the much-needed expansion of the Storage Management System received funding; major AC and power upgrades for Data Center II are on schedule for completion in June. ITD’s collaboration on the Student Information System roll-out included developing new authentication processes, password standards, email practices for students and employees, and Help Desk support strategies. Orientation and training sessions reached over 7500 students and employees this year; illegal file sharing was a featured topic. The Remedy call-tracking system, used by more than 100 campus support groups, logged its 1,000,000th call in June 2007.

Office of International Affairs (OIA)

OIA provided leadership, innovation, and coordination to integrate global perspectives into all aspects of the University’s mission--teaching, research, extension, and engagement. Several new programs have been implemented to 1) Enhance University-wide International Programs (redesigned website, regular GlobalEyes newsletters, 10 faculty development seed grants, travel grants to 23 faculty members, 35 delegations from 20 different countries); 2) Develop Strategic International Linkages (29 new international MOU and agreements with some outstanding universities, research institutions and government agencies, two major international centers in Chile and China for study abroad, research collaboration, faculty exchange, and student exchanges; 12 new agreements with Chinese universities resulted in more graduate students to study at NC State University; 3) Increase International Student Enrollment (6.4% increase over last year students with over 2000 from 115 countries at NC State, 25% of the university’s graduate student population; Global Training Initiative launched with two certificate programs); 4) Increase Study Abroad Enrollments (enrollment increased 11.4%, to 715 NC State students studying abroad; summer and short term program enrollment increased 21.9% (434 to 529), while full-semester or year program enrollment declined 13.9% (216 to 186); pilot phase of the Cultural Correspondents K-12 outreach program launched); and 5) Establish the Confucius Institute.

NCSU Libraries

The NCSU Libraries Annual Report may be found at the following link:

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/administration/annualreports/reportch07.html

Undergraduate Academic Programs

The 2nd annual State of NC Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium (SNCURCS) of 2006 was created by the Office of Undergraduate Research, with Partners from the 16 UNC System Universities, the President of the Independent College and Universities of NC, and the President’s Office of the NC Community College System. The 25 sponsors of SNCURCS included other state and private universities, the UNC-GA President, state government offices, the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, NC Sea Grant, NC Space Grant, and the National Society of Sigma Xi. The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences provided special instructional programs for high school students and teachers.

In partnership with the Office of Undergraduate Research, the First Year Inquiry (FYI) program is creating a research track within the program. An interdisciplinary course was offered in spring 2007 focusing on research in the natural sciences (Introduction to Undergraduate Research) and this fall 3 existing courses (Latin America Since 1826, Principles of Sociology, and An Introduction to the Honey Bee and Beekeeping) will focus on common research concerns.

In Fall 2006, NC State launched a new program (Pack Promise Program) that reaffirms the university's mission and proven historical record of access, affordability and student success. More than 300 students became Pack Promise Scholars this year and another 400 are enrolled for Fall 2007. This past year, OASIS designed the core elements of this program – college liaisons, academic coaching and the peer mentor program.

 

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