Planning
for growth
East Carolina is developing a new facilities master plan that will guide the selection and location of new buildings on campus for the next several years. The new master plan should be completed within the next 18 months and will consolidate infrastructure planning for the entire university into one document.

“This plan has been needed for two years,” said William E. Bagnell, ECU’s director of facilities, engineering and architectural services. The previous master plan was completed in 2000 and included only the Main Campus. It did not cover planning for the Health Sciences Campus or for athletics facilities, which were treated separately.

The new master plan will focus on buildings needed to house programs in the Colleges of Education and Business, along with other buildings needed on the Health Sciences Campus, including the dental school and a family medicine center.

“This master plan will be inclusive of all university assets—our Main Campus, the Health Sciences Campus, the West Research  Campus and outlying properties that include the north recreation fields complex,” Bagnell said. “It will be comprehensive.”

SmithGroup, a national architectural and planning firm with offices in Raleigh-Durham, was selected to create the new master plan. The firm is being guided by the university’s mission statement, strategic plan and corresponding academic programs.

A major focus of the plan is “academic building A,” a shorthand description for a large new building that will house the Colleges of Education and Business. The plan also will address the need for a performing arts center and additional research spaces for biology and other sciences.

Bagnell said the previous master plan had served its purpose of guiding university growth up to now. “A good portion of it has been implemented or, through the dynamics of growth of the institution, has changed,” he said. “There is a need to revisit it.” —Marion Blackburn


Searches for two
deans near end
The university is close to hiring new deans for the Brody School of Medicine and the School of Dentistry. Separate search committees have been at work for months on what Chancellor Steve Ballard has said are two critical hiring decisions.

Dr. Daniel Moore, chairman of the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation who chairs the 20-member medical school dean’s search committee, said the group has met weekly since August to develop guidelines and procedures for applications. “We are very focused on finding a new dean,” Moore said.

The search will include physicians in medical specialties not currently part of the medical school and will actively seek minority candidates. “Consideration of minority candidates is an important part of our goal,” Moore said.

By December, the search committee had sent about 2,200 letters and e-mail messages across the country announcing the opening. Advertisements also have appeared in several national medical journals. To assist with the search, the medical school has contracted with Witt/Kieffer, a Chicago consulting firm.

Interviews could begin as early as February, with a new medical school dean on site by late spring or early summer. A timetable has not been set, however.

Chairing the 13-member committee searching for a dental school dean is Stephen Thomas, dean of the College of Allied Health Sciences. That committee will contract with a still-undetermined search firm that has experience relevant to dental school dean recruitment, Thomas said. The search will include internal candidates as well as those currently outside ECU. Dr. Gregory Chadwick, a former Charlotte endodontist, is serving as interim dean.

The School of Dentistry will be housed in a 112,500-square-foot, $60 million building on the Health Sciences Campus where students will study general dentistry. The architectural firm BJAC of Raleigh has been selected to design the building. Students’ dental training will take place, in part, off campus at one of 10 planned “service-learning centers,” the dental offices where they will work with a faculty member. These practices will be built in areas across North Carolina that don’t have enough dentists to serve their residents. The dental school will help address a statewide shortage of dentists, which is especially acute in the East, where four counties have no dentists at all.

“Our national search will enable us to find the most qualified candidate to help us build the new dental school and bring it to prominence,” Thomas said. The new dean could be in place as early as the summer or fall, he said. The first dental school class of 50 could enter as early as 2011. The dean will oversee building, hiring and academic policies related to the new school.

The positions of medical school dean and vice chancellor of health sciences, traditionally the same person, will now be separate. A decision on that post will be made once the deans are in place. —Marion Blackburn



Mayo Boddie Sr.

Boddie endows
Heart Institute
Two major centers within the new East Carolina Heart Institute will be named for the Boddie family of Rocky Mount family that pledged $500,000 toward costs of the pediatric cardiology and cardiac diagnostics units. “We are happy that we are in a position to contribute to a worthy cause that will mean so much to the people of eastern North Carolina,” said Mayo Boddie, chairman of Boddie-Noell Enterprises. David Whichard, chairman of the ECU Medical & Health Sciences Foundation, said, “Their gift will help us improve services to both children and adults with heart problems in our community.”

The ECHI comprises two buildings. The ECU building, funded by state appropriations and private contributions, is under construction on the medical campus. It will house offices and research labs for cardiologists, cardiothoracic surgeons, vascular surgeons and scientists. The four-story, 206,000-square-foot, $60 million building also will house outpatient treatment facilities and educational facilities for students, physicians and scientists. The six-story, 375,000-square-foot, $150 million cardiovascular bed tower Pitt County Memorial Hospital is building on Moye Boulevard will house operating rooms, 13 interventional labs and 120 patient beds. Both buildings should be complete later this year.

Boddie-Noell Enterprises employs more than 12,750 people and is the largest Hardee’s franchise operator in the United States, with 343 restaurants. The company owns the Texas Steakhouse & Saloon and Café Carolina and Bakery restaurant brands. It also operates Moe’s Southwest Grill franchises and the historic Rose Hill Conference Center in Nashville, N.C.

Coach Skip Holtz hoists the Hawaii Bowl trophy after ECU's victory over Boise State.

First class of engineers graduates

A student grinds the axle for a Baja race car built by ECU’s budding engineers.

East Carolina’s first class of engineers will graduate this spring, four years after the UNC Board of Governors approved creation of a degree program tailored to boost economic development in the region. About 24 ECU students representing the inaugural class of engineers are expected to receive their diplomas during commencement exercises on May 10, university officials said.

The students have been trained in an emerging field called systems engineering. Systems engineers—as opposed to civil or electrical engineers—focus on ways to integrate technology, people and organizations to achieve a specific mission. The job of a systems engineer is to find out how to best solve problems given a variety of constraints, especially time and money. Officials said that type of training is particularly needed in eastern North Carolina to bolster economic development in the region.

Ralph Rogers, dean of the College of Technology and Computer Science that houses ECU’s engineering program, first approached the Board of Governors in 2002 about creating an engineering program in Greenville. The board voted its approval in March 2004, an action followed by an unexpected flurry of criticism.

Within days, N.C. State’s trustees voted 12-1 to express displeasure with the Board of Governors’ action. The resolution said State was concerned that an engineering program at East Carolina would sap money from its program, which, with about 5,700 undergraduates, is the nation’s fifth-largest.

ECU’s engineering program became the fourth in the UNC system, joining those at N.C. State, UNC Charlotte and N.C. A&T in Greensboro. At least seven private schools in the state also offer engineering.

Since its inception, East Carolina’s engineering program has grown to offer three additional concentrations, in engineering management, biomedical engineering and bioprocess engineering. The department currently has 13 professors. Total enrollment is around 200 and is expected to grow to more than 400 within a few years, according to Paul Kauffmann, department chair.

Kauffmann said roughly three-fourths of the first graduating class of engineers are from eastern North Carolina. Most of the rest are from Wake County, he said. “These graduates demonstrate ECU’s capability to provide engineering talent, which is essential to attract and retain industry and grow economic development in the region,” Kauffman said.

Officials said ECU would seek national accreditation of its engineering programs from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) this coming fall. ABET cannot accredit a program until it has produced graduates.

About 2,000 students and as many parents have signed up for the university’s new cell phone emergency alert system, a measure implemented to improve campus safety in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy. The system will transmit text messages alerting students in the event of school closings, severe weather, a campus lockdown or other emergencies. The new program bolsters East Carolina’s existing emergency notification system, which includes campus-wide blast e-mail, web site updates, an emergency hotline and pop-up instant messages on PCs. To sign up for the service, click here.

Pact strengthens cancer research
The Leo Jenkins Cancer Center at East Carolina and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have agreed to collaborate on research and patient care. The agreement is further evidence of a growing relationship between the state’s two public cancer research centers.

Produced after more than a year of negotiations, the agreement widens access by ECU physicians to facilities and resources available in Chapel Hill, and vice versa. Officials said doctors at the Jenkins Cancer Center are particularly interested in genomics, cell biology and library resources available at Lineberger.

The agreement calls for an integration of the two schools’ clinical research programs. ECU doctors and patients now will have access to research results at Lineberger, which is among the top 15 nationally in cancer research funding. “What (Jenkins) patients and the region will gain is access to new drugs and therapies, some of which are still under study,” said Dr. Adam Asch, associate director of the Jenkins Cancer Center.

That opens the possibility, for example, of patients from eastern North Carolina receiving bone marrow transplants and post-surgical care in Greenville, rather than having to travel to Chapel Hill, Asch said.

The agreement “sets out the framework and a direction, and I think that five years from now our relationship is likely to be tighter and more significant,” Asch added.

The agreement “represents another significant partnership in medical education with UNC Chapel Hill,” said ECU Chancellor Steve Ballard. UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser said, “North Carolina’s two medical schools and their cancer centers can offer more services for more people as a result of this collaboration.”

UNC President Erskine Bowles said “working together, medical faculty and scientists at ECU and UNC Chapel Hill can accomplish far more than they could individually. This is truly a case where two plus two can equal five.”


Studying a royal relic
Five graduate students in the maritime studies program traveled to Stockholm to participate in the first collaborative project between ECU and the Swedish National Maritime Museums. The students assisted Swedish scholars working on the Vasa, a 17th-century royal warship that sank on her maiden voyage in Stockholm Harbor in 1628. Raised in 1961, Vasa has yielded remarkable insights into 17th-century maritime history but the ship’s hull has not yet been completely recorded. During their three-week study, the ECU graduate students helped museum personnel record Vasa’s breakhead.

Schools gain college status: Two UNC Board of Governors voted to grant college status to ECU’s School of Allied Health Sciences and the School of Nursing. East Carolina now encompasses nine colleges as well as the medical school and the graduate school.

Dorms to get sprinklers: Sprinkler systems will be installed in Cotten and Fleming residence halls this summer at a cost of about $1 million. Aycock and Jones are scheduled to get sprinklers in the summer of 2009. All UNC campuses must install sprinklers in all residence hall rooms by 2010. ECU has more residence hall rooms without sprinklers than any of the
16 campuses.

Student fees rising by $38: The Board of Trustees voted unanimously for a $38 increase in student fees for the coming academic year, the smallest increase in several years. Currently, fees are $1,423 annually for a full-time in-state student, plus a $144 technology fee and a $220 health service fee. A semester at ECU now will cost $2,245 in tuition and $1,961 in total fees.

Water use cut by 17%: Conservation measures cut the university’s water consumption by 4.4 million gallons, or 17 percent, in one month last fall. Officials said most lawn watering was stopped and fountains were shut off. The outside pool at the Student Recreation Center also was taken off line. About all non-necessary use of water was halted.

Requirement delayed: East Carolina delayed requiring all students to carry health insurance next school year, but officials said the mandate may come in fall 2009. Chancellor Steve Ballard put off a decision on a hard-waiver policy, which would require full-time students to carry insurance or buy it through the university. More financial aid will be available to students next year, Ballard said. Administrators estimate 9,500 ECU students who get financial aid aren’t covered under a parent’s health insurance.

Eakin honored: The College of Nursing is naming its first endowed distinguished professorship for former Chancellor Richard Eakin, who led ECU from 1987 to 2001. The professorship will support a nurse scientist who will specialize in research into the health needs of eastern North Carolinians. The endowment is made possible by a $667,000 challenge grant from the C.D. Spangler Foundation and $333,000 in state matching funds.


AROUND CAMPUS
Dr. Sam Sears, a nationally recognized leader in the psychological care of patients with implantable cardiac devices, has joined the faculty as director of health psychology in the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences at the Brody School of Medicine. Sears will oversee the development of the doctoral program in health psychology at the new East Carolina Heart Institute.

The founders of the North Carolina Literary Review—Alex Albright, professor of creative writing; Eva Roberts, professor emeritus of graphic design; and W. Keats Sparrow, former dean of Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, were recognized for their longtime commitment and development of the state’s literary journal of record. The award was presented at ECU’s Fourth Annual Literary Homecoming, a two-day celebration of writers with roots in North Carolina.

Professor of literature and folklore C.W. Sullivan III won a Fulbright grant to study and teach in Hungary. He left in January to be senior lecturer in English Studies at the University of Debrecen, which is about 100 miles east of Budapest. He visited the university last January to address the Hungarian Society for the Study of English.

Scott Snyder, senior associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, retired after a 35-year career at East Carolina. He started as an assistant professor in 1972 and became a full professor in 1983. He spent 10 years as director of graduate studies for the Department of Geology, then served as chair of the department from 1988–98. In 1998, Snyder became director of the PhD program in coastal resources management.

Dr. Cynda Johnson, senior associate vice chancellor for clinical and translational research, resigned to become the dean of the new medical school at Virginia Tech. The school is planning its first class for 2010.

Kenny Flowers, former executive director of the N.C. Rural Development Council within the state Department of Commerce, was named director of community and regional development. Flowers has 17 years of experience in economic development in the state’s 85 rural counties.

Pat Bizzaro, director of the university writing program and former chair of the Writing Across the Curriculum Committee, is retiring after a 20-year career at ECU.



YOU SHOULD GO



Feb. 21—University of Minnesota historian Lisa Norling lectures on the intersection between maritime history and women’s history in “Captain Ahab Had a Wife,” at the Sallie Southall Cotten Lecture at 7:00 p.m. in Wright Auditorium.

Feb. 25—Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin will be the keynote speaker for the College of Business’ Beta Gamma Sigma speaker series. His 7:00 p.m. address at the Hilton Greenville is open to the public. Before becoming a Fed governor in 2006, Mishkin was the Alfred Lerner Professor
of Banking and Financial Institutions at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University.

April 10—Cambridge University librarian Mark Nicholls addresses the life and times of Sir Walter Raleigh in the annual Thomas Harriot Lecture at 7:00 p.m. in the Science and Technology Building.