Giving a good kid a break
When College of Business Dean Rick Niswander read about Maria Guillermo-Salinas’s misfortune in the Raleigh newspaper, he was moved to try to help. “Here’s a student who has persevered through some very challenging conditions and succeeded, and that’s exactly the kind of student we need in the College of Business,” he thought to himself.

Guillermo-Salinas knew just one word of English —hello—when she emigrated with her parents from Mexico to North Carolina four years ago. But she studied hard and became an honors student who was offered scholarships to attend UNC Greensboro after graduation last spring. But there was a problem. Because she didn’t yet have permanent resident status, she was ineligible for the federal financial aid she needed to pay the bulk of tuition.

Niswander pulled together financial resources from the College of Business, the Dowdy Student Stores and the Division of Student Life. He then called her with the good news that the door was open at ECU.

 “I never imagined that someone would call and offer that,” Guillermo-Salinas says about the help offered by Niswander. Her mother’s reaction was, “Go for it!” And that is what she is doing. She plans to gain permanent resident status soon and begin the naturalization process.

Eventually, she wants to work in accounting and travel internationally. For now, Guillermo-Salinas enjoys the challenge of being independent in college and says, “I am going to do my best to do well in classes and not disappoint all the people who are helping me and who have given me this opportunity.” —Leanne E. Smith


By the numbers
While the financial scale of East Carolina’s technology transfer programs don’t match those at Harvard, MIT and some other schools, we do merit high marks for getting the best bang for the buck, according to a new report from the Milken Institute. The 316-page report by the independent think tank ranks East Carolina in several top 10 categories, including:
6th for inventions per million dollars of research
8th for patents applied per million dollars of research
3rd for patents issued per million dollars of research
6th for start-ups per million dollars of research
9th for patents issued to patents filed

Partnerships between universities and the private sector in bringing innovative products to market are vital these days, the report concludes. “Research and innovation are increasingly shifting away from the corporate lab and back to where they began: the university campus. With government sources of R&D funding often mandating in-kind private-sector investments, the university-industry relationship is growing more complex and entwined.”


Ballard acts to halt red ink
Chancellor Steve Ballard is awaiting a consultant’s report recommending ways to increase revenue and cut expenses at ECU Physicians, the clinical arm of the Brody School of Medicine that has lost more than $25 million over the last six years.

“ECU has to do a better job of getting the business side of our Medical Faculty Practice Plan going in a better direction,” the chancellor said. “I want to be very careful about stressing the business side because we’re doing great academically.”

ECU Physicians offers medical services to the public through offices at the Brody School of Medicine and about 15 other locations throughout Greenville and other communities. Ballard said he hopes to see a final plan for improving the practice’s finances this spring. Implementing the plan could take as many as three to five years, he said.

ECG Consultants, the Seattle firm retained for the evaluation, previously advised the university on improving its relationship with University Health Systems and drafted the business plan for the East Carolina Heart Institute. In its previous work with the university, ECG has recommended incorporating ECU Physicians as a nonprofit organization, an option Ballard supports.

Many factors have contributed to the practice’s financial woes, Ballard said, including changing trends in health insurance, declining reimbursement rates for Medicare patients, billing issues and $150 million in unreimbursed care for the poor this fiscal year.

ECU asked the General Assembly for a special $2.5 million appropriation this year to help cover the deficit for treating the indigent, but the request was denied. “The state either has to reimburse us more for that (indigent care), or we have to do less of it,” Ballard said. “We have to find other creative ways to hopefully get people served, but we can’t do it to the financial detriment of the Brody School of Medicine.”

He knows why hospitality pays               
Travis Peterson intended to study biology or medicine when he came to East Carolina in 1996. But he took a part-time job his freshman year with Aramark Campus Catering and found he had a knack for staging meetings and feeding the participants. He decided to major in hospitality management, which some might assume would be a less promising career choice.

Far from it. Today, Peterson ’00 is sales manager for the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C., responsible for $4.5 million a year in room sales. He also markets the hotel’s meetings spaces and directs sales meetings to pump up Hyatt’s staff. He’s so good at his job that in 2005 he was nominated for sales manager of the year for all Hyatt hotels and resorts worldwide.

Many of Peterson’s classmates in ECU’s hospitality management program also are enjoying successful careers. Jeff Bass ’98 is national senior account manager for MBM Foods; Perry Dunbar ’98 was the youngest-ever general manager for the Marriott hotel chain; John LaMarche ’99 is national account development manager for Bettcher Industries; Jennifer Kosiak ’00 is assistant food and beverage director at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Va.; Ryan Mason ’02 is events manager at Café Luna in Raleigh; and Mike Santos ’01 and Kevin Brighton ’02 are co-owners of Chefs 505 in Greenville.

The success of alumni and growth of the hospitality industry are major reasons why ECU this fall created a Department of Hospitality Management in the College of Human Ecology. It also explains why the university created the new interdisciplinary Center for Tourism.

ECU launched its hospitality management program in 1988 with about 25 under¬graduates. By 1998 that number had grown to 150. Today there are 300 students majoring in the field and more than 50 minoring in it. That’s more than twice the number of hospitality management majors at Appalachian State, Western Carolina, N.C. Central and UNC Greensboro combined, according to professor Jim Chandler.

Chandler adds that East Carolina has the only hospitality management program in the state offering a bachelor of science degree in the field. Most other schools house their programs in the school of business, which limits a student’s course work in the specialty to 24 hours. ECU requires 60 hours, plus 24 hours in the business administration minor.

“ECU prepped me to handle the fast paced world that I jumped into after school, and it gave me the foundation to interact with people from diverse backgrounds,” Peterson says. “For this I’ll always be grateful.” —Peggy Novotny

Seeing India’s sacred sites
Many teenagers flipped burgers last summer or worked at the mall. But a dozen East Carolina students enjoyed a 32-day tour of India’s sacred spaces, sailed along the shores of the Ganges River and gazed at the wonders of the Taj Mahal. They visited Jain and Hindu temples in Delhi and visited the home of the Dalai Lama. They traveled by train and rickshaw and grooved to the soundtrack of popular Bollywood films like Fanaa.

Like other summertime study abroad trips offered at ECU, the students’ laboratories were the streets; their sourcebooks were their interactions with people; and classroom discussions took place on rooftops, restaurants and dimly-lit train berths. Learning happened through living.

“There are so many different ways to learn,” said Geoffrey Handsfield, an ECU junior physics major from Beaufort. “You’re taught in high school: stay in public schools and get straight A’s, and then go to college. But I’ve learned so much being in India, just by seeing it.”

Educators hope more ECU students will adopt Handsfield’s zeal for international adventure. The number of ECU students who study abroad at some point in their college careers is low compared to other universities. Roughly 270 students, or 2 percent of ECU’s student body, study abroad annually, compared to 37 percent at UNC Chapel Hill. Two years ago East Carolina pledged to double the number of students who study abroad, and already professors have responded by organizing summer trips to places like Peru, Ghana, England, Japan and France.

Derek Maher, a professor of religious studies who directed the trip to India, said he enjoyed watching his students learn about themselves through their interactions with others on the month-long journey.

“For many reasons, it is so valuable for American students to study in a foreign environment,” Maher said. “The little glimpses they gain into alternate ways of living life end up being so meaningful.”
In addition to faculty-led summer programs, ECU’s Office of International Affairs offers semester-long exchange programs in 42 countries. Terry Rodenberg, assistant vice chancellor for International Affairs, said studying abroad offers students opportunities for academic and personal growth in ways that are impossible to duplicate at home.

“A common question I hear is, ‘What can I learn abroad that I can’t learn here?’” he said. “Students today are growing up in a world that we, as adults, don’t know. They can get online and have an instantaneous link with a person in, say, Siberia. It’s instantaneous. It’s free. We have to prepare these students for the world they’re living in.”

“Definitely a large part of our trip was looking at sacred sites, but walking around and living among the people who live in India is a great aspect of our trip,” said Forrest Hill, a senior political science major from Raleigh. “I don’t think there’s any other way to experience a country than by interacting and speaking with the people who live here.”  —Erica Plouffe Lazure



Five join Hall of Fame
East Carolina University inducted five new members into its Athletics Hall of Fame this fall. They are:

Jeff Blake, who orchestrated the greatest season in modern Pirate football history, leading ECU to an 11-1 overall record and a No. 9 national ranking in 1991. As a senior quarterback, Blake finished ninth in the Heisman Trophy voting, and was named second-team All-America. Blake spent 14 years as a quarterback in the National Football League with seven teams, passing for over 21,000 yards. He was named to the Pro Bowl in 1996.

Pat Dye, who compiled a 48-18-1 record as head football coach for six years ending in 1979. His Pirates won at least seven games each year, including a pair of nine-win seasons in 1976 and ’78. Dye also directed the Pirates to a Southern Conference championship in 1976 and an Independence Bowl victory in 1978. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2005.

Ted Gartman, co-captain of the 1957 swimming team, led East Carolina College to its first national championship that season and earned All-America honors in the 200 fly and 400-medley relay. The following season he received All-America honors in the free relay and 400-medley relay and became the first student-athlete to receive four letters in swimming. He spent 30 years as a member of the ECU faculty before retiring in 1999.

Gaynor O’Donnell, a native of Merseyside, England, lettered in basketball at ECU from 1989 to 1993 and still holds the all-time record for assists. As a senior, she led the nation in assists, averaging 10.7 per game. She was the 14th ECU female player to score more than 1,000 career points, finishing her career with 1,015.

Pat Watkins, named the conference baseball player of the year as junior in 1993, was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds and remains the only ECU player ever to be taken in the first round. He batted .445 as a junior with 19 home runs and 57 RBIs and finished his career with a .352 batting average. He led the Pirates to NCAA Regional appearances in 1991 and ’93, and the NCAA Tournament Championship in 1993.




The physics of a Stradivarius
For almost two centuries scientists have tried to understand what makes a Stradivarius such a great violin. East Carolina physicist George Bissinger (above) is getting closer to an answer after testing two legendary Stradivarius violins—the 1715 “Titian” and the 1734 “Willemotte,” as well as the 1735 “Plowden” Guarneri del Gesu.

Bissinger, who has studied the acoustics of violins for 30 years, worked this fall with leading violin makers and the California-based Polytec Inc. to expand his research using the company’s 3-D laser scanning equipment. The violins also underwent CT scans at ECU’s Leo W. Jenkins Cancer Center at the Brody School of Medicine. Those tests support the strongly held opinion that there are certain sound qualities associated with old Italian violins that modern instruments do not attain.

Bissinger hopes these tests will reveal new ways that Stradivarius violins vibrate and thus provide information on how they radiate sound. “We’re getting a taste for how things move,” Bissinger said. “It’s more interesting to me from the science point of view. I can say, here are ways you can incorporate what you do with violins.”