ECU's new vision
East Carolina has adopted a strategic plan that will guide it into its next century of service, and the university invites all alumni and friends to read the booklet.

In addition to reflecting key values and projecting a vision that is appropriate to this moment in East Carolina’s history, ECU Tomorrow lays out five strategic directions intended to guide the university as it begins its next century:

Education for a new century—ECU will prepare our students to compete and succeed in the global, technology-driven economy.

The leadership university—ECU will distinguish itself by the ability to train and prepare leaders for tomorrow for the east, for North Carolina and for our nation.

Economic prosperity—ECU will create a strong and sustainable future for eastern North Carolina through education, innovation, investment and outreach.

Health care and medical innovation—ECU will save lives, cure diseases, and transform the quality of health care for the region and the state.

The arts, culture and the quality of life—ECU will provide world-class entertainment, culture and performing arts to enhance the quality of our lives.

According to Chancellor Steve Ballard, “These five strategic directions represent great strengths of ECU, opportunity for growth and, most importantly, they all have positive impacts for our citizens.”

Executing the plan will depend upon the support of private donors. With that in mind, the university is preparing to announce a major fund-raising campaign in March 2008.





Another Doogie Howser?
If it weren’t for the lab coat and the stethoscope around his neck, you might mistake James Smith Jr. ’07 (above) for one of the thousands of undergraduate students on campus. He certainly looks like one. But he’s already graduated from college and is well into his first year of medical school. In fact, he is the second-youngest student ever accepted by the Brody School of Medicine and missed holding the all-time record by two months.

“It is a privilege to be enrolled here no matter what my age,” says Smith, who was 20 years, 10 months and 14 days old when he matriculated at Brody after completing a biology degree in three years. According to university records, the youngest-ever Brody student—the Doogie Howser of Greenville—is Joseph E. Beshay ’97 ’01, who was 20 years, 8 months and 6 days old when he matriculated. In its 35-year history, only six Brody students had not yet turned 21 when they entered medical school.

Smith comes from a family of medical professionals. His grandfather, father and aunt are pharmacists, and one of his grandmothers is a nurse. He was inspired by their service: “They all have a common goal to work closely with others to improve their quality of life, and through years of observation and their nurturing, I have developed a deep compassion to use my talents to help others.”

He became a certified nursing assistant in high school in Fayetteville and started shadowing Dr. Carol Wadon, a neurosurgeon at Cape Fear Medical Center, during his senior year. If Wadon had to perform emergency surgery in the middle of the night, she called Smith to observe. She quizzed him on patients’ conditions and included him in the diagnoses. Smith was hooked. “Having the opportunity to observe first-hand the miracle of medicine has been one of the most positive impacts on pursuing a career in medicine,” he says.

Going far so fast in higher education isn’t that hard, Smith says. “Time management is everything, and putting school first is a must. If you study a little bit every day, then you have all the time in the world for a few extracurricular activities.”

Reached at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, where he is a resident, Beshay said his age wasn’t a problem during his years at Brody. “I recall some of my classmates thought it was amusing that I turned ‘legal’ during my first year of medical school, but it was never a hindrance.”

Beshay said his early start in medicine worked to his advantage in one respect. “I decided to switch gears by switching specialties after my internship. I switched from internal medicine, a three-year residency, to neurosurgery, a seven-year residency. I’m no older than my classmates despite the switch and will finish at a reasonable age. The education I received at Brody was superb, and it prepared me well for residency.”

Beshay and Smith agree that the doctor’s age shouldn’t be a factor in the quality of care a patient receives. “Patients want a physician who is knowledgeable and caring regardless of their age,” Beshay says. —Leanne E. Smith


Survey exposes diversity issues
Seventy-five percent of white students, faculty and staff members are comfortable with the state of race relations and attitudes toward people with disabilities, but only 61 percent of minorities on campus feel that way, according to a survey conducted by the administration. Overall, the survey suggests that East Carolina faces several challenges eliminating all vestiges of discrimination but those issues are the same ones faced by most universities.

Dr. Virginia Hardy, interim chief diversity officer, said the survey provided valuable insights for developing strategies to enhance the climate for diversity and maximize equity throughout the campus. “The university is unequivocally committed to diversity,” she said. “This survey is another tool in helping us understand what improvements are needed and how we should make them.”

The survey questionnaire was posted at ECU’s web site, and all members of the university community were urged to participate. Surveys were completed by 3,237 individuals, including students, faculty and staff. Those who participated included 1,747 students, 749 people of color, 2,378 white respondents, 151 people who identified a physical disability, and 247 individuals who identified a psychological condition or learning disability.

Twenty-one percent of respondents said they had personally experienced offensive, hostile or intimidating conduct that interfered unreasonably with their ability to work or learn. Other key findings:

•    Nine percent of respondents said they had been subjected to sexual misconduct, such as touching in a sexual manner. Four percent said they had been victims of sexual assault while at ECU.

•    Thirty percent of respondents reported that they had observed discriminatory hiring. Twenty-eight percent said they had observed discriminatory promotion practices.

•    Forty-nine percent of respondents believe that ECU values their involvement in diversity initiatives on campus. Thirty-four percent said ECU ought to include diversity-related activities as a criterion for hiring.


Grant endows faculty chair
A $500,000 grant from the Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina (IIANC) will allow the College of Business to establish a faculty chair for risk and insurance. Officials announced the gift at a luncheon held on campus where IIANC past presidents, board members, and staff members presented the first $200,000 of the donation (photo below). The chair will be named the Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina Distinguished Professor.

The endowed chair will be a key component of the undergraduate business concentration in risk and insurance to be offered by the finance department. Faculty will develop the program during the current academic year.

The IIANC has a long history of supporting higher education. Currently, the organization is completing a program of endowed scholarships at colleges and universities across the state.

Mini-Med School participant Donna Raynor gets pointers on giving shots from graduate nursing student Priscilla Bryan.

You be the doctor

He’s learned to use a hypodermic needle to inject himself with saline and watched high-intensity beams destroy a brain tumor, but Jim Westmoreland isn’t a medical student. He’s participating in ECU’s Mini-Med School in which the Brody School of Medicine throws open its doors to the community. About 100 business and civic leaders, government officials and the plain curious are exposed to the world of doctoring, taking them from bedside manner to bioethics in only six weeks.

Westmoreland said he’s experienced some things he expected, like lectures on cancer, stroke and heart disease and discussions on medical ethics. There were some unexpected moments, too, such as hearing doctors make jokes about each other.

“I was impressed with the science, with their knowledge and with their personal skill,” he said of the presenters, who included some of the medical school’s most accomplished physicians. “The Mini-Med School gives us a chance, in a really short time, to better understand the life-saving medical care that comes from real human beings.”

Although he works for the university as associate dean for external affairs in the College of Business, Westmoreland wanted to learn more about what was taking place at the medical campus—and was amazed. “It was unlike anything I had ever seen before,” he said. “It was encouraging to see the advancements being made, many of them unique to our medical school.”

That kind of response wouldn’t surprise Kathy Kolasa, a professor of nutrition and education section head for the family medicine and pediatrics departments, who served as program co-director, along with Virginia Hardy, senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Brody School of Medicine.

“Sometimes even our own community doesn’t realize how cutting-edge we are,” Kolasa said. “The Mini-Med School is an exciting educational opportunity for ECU faculty to share information about the major health concerns in our region and how we are contributing to improve health through research and teaching.”

Participants eyeballed such developments as surgical robotics and even sat at the controls of the da Vinci Surgical System teaching model, which allows surgeons to perform heart surgery and other procedures using precision-guided mechanical arms.

“People come from around the world for our programs,“ Kolasa said. “We recently had a visitor from Britain who was studying childhood obesity. We were the first stop.”

Lectures such as “Cancer: Chaos in the Cell” helped participants better understand modern medical mysteries and treatments. They also heard updates on the new East Carolina Heart Institute, expected to open in 2008, and other planned expansions at the medical center.

In one workshop, audiences learned the difference between heartbeats and heart sounds. “They’re not dumbed-down lectures,” says Dr. Harry Adams, a professor emeritus of internal medicine and one of the original organizers of the Mini-Med School. “Presenters may use less medical terminology, and more phrases understandable to someone without a medical background, but the information is up-to-the-minute.”

This year’s curriculum showcased developments at the medical school and in the larger field of human illness and health. During small working sessions, participants tried to diagnose “standardized patients,” those who act out diseases and illnesses to give medical students a dress rehearsal.

Visiting the hospital’s emergency department, participants worked with a computer-operated emergency “patient,” a model known as Stan, who mimics a gunshot wound, heart attack and other serious conditions. Models like Stan can help teach high-risk procedures, such as finding chest vessels for delivering hydration or IV medication.

“These simulations allow us to teach and assess medical students in a safe environment,” says Dr. Walter “Skip” Robey III, clinical associate professor and director of the Medical Simulation and Patient Safety Laboratory.

Despite its complexities, medicine is not unlike other professions, especially law and the clergy, where professionals must be trusted with a person’s deepest secrets.

“The medical school is kind of a mystery to people, even if they have friends who are physicians or researchers,” Adams said. “It’s teaching people to take care of lives, to deal with people in a nurturing manner. Patients tell you things they’re not telling anyone else, and you have to understand and not judge.”

When their training ended, graduates of the Mini-Med School had gained a taste of how it might feel to hold someone’s life in your hands.

“You really have insight into some of the things doctors go through,” said Stanley Zicherman, 72, who took part in the 2000 Mini-Med School and now helps teach medical students as a standardized patient. —Marion Blackburn


Enrollment nears 26,000

Year    Students 1987    15,901 1988    16,501 1989    16,954 1990    17,926 1991    17,926 1992    19,264 1993    18,186 1994    18,086 1995    17,445 1996    17,583 1997    18,271 1998    18,263 1999    18,881 2000    18,750 2001    19,412 2002    20,577 2003    21,756 2004    22,767 2005    23,154 2006    24,351 2007    25,990

Enrollment hovered at 26,000 for the fall semester—about 1,500 more students than a year ago—as East Carolina labored to provide enough dorm rooms, classrooms, teachers, books and food for its swelling student body. Still, only a few problems impeded the start of another term on the crowded campus, including a glitch in the university’s new computer system, called Banner, which resulted in long lines of students outside the Financial Aid office.

Campus Dining officials reported serving 288,066 meals in the first three weeks of this semester—roughly 14,000 a day—compared to 253,505 meals in the same three-week period last year, about 12,000 a day. The enrollment surge also is evident off-campus in overcrowding on some ECU Transit buses serving several large apartment complexes. About 70 percent of students live off campus.

At least two apartment complexes paid for expanded bus service after some students couldn’t find seats. Residents of North Campus Crossing, a large apartment complex about four miles from Main Campus, now can catch a bus to campus every 10 minutes. Each apartment complex that uses the ECU bus system pays 65 percent of the operating costs, which officials said averages about $28,000 a semester.

This is the sixth year in a row that ECU has been the fastest-growing of the 16 UNC campuses. As one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, North Carolina is struggling with exploding numbers of people wanting a college education. A long-range plan by the Board of Governors last revised in 2004 anticipated that East Carolina’s enrollment would hit 24,600 by 2007, a mark it reached a year ahead of schedule.

If current trends continue, East Carolina could surpass UNC Chapel Hill in a few years to become the second-largest university in the state. The difference in enrollment between the two campuses was roughly 6,000 students in 2000; now the difference is roughly 2,000. N.C. State University, the largest campus, has more than 31,000 students. However, officials say ECU has little room left to grow.

Recruiting and hiring enough faculty to teach the ever-expanding course catalogue is a challenge. Officials say the faculty has grown nearly 50 percent in the past few years to more than 1,700. However, the student-faculty ratio is better today than it was a decade ago. The average SAT score of incoming instate freshmen—at 1,031 in 2006—also is higher than a decade ago.

There are about 200 international students from 54 countries on campus this year. —Adeline Trento, a staff writer for The East Carolinian, contributed to this report.



Dental school funds approved
After months of uncertainty, funding is in hand for the planned ECU School of Dentistry. The North Carolina legislature approved $25 million for the project before it adjourned at the end of the summer. That’s enough money to complete the design phase and begin constructing the 112,500-square-foot building, probably on the west side of the current Health Sciences Building on university-owned land. BJAC, a Raleigh architectural firm, has been retained to design the dental school. Groundbreaking was expected to occur before the end of the year.

Though the allocation is short of the $87 million required to complete construction of the facility and practice sites where dental students and residents will train, Dr. Gregory Chadwick, interim dean, believes the state is firmly committed to the plan.

“We’re really excited to have this funding from the state,” Chadwick said. “That is a huge step that will mean we can begin to move forward. It will allow us to complete the planning process and get into the initial construction phase.”

The School of Dentistry is expected to open by 2011, with 50 students enrolled in the first class. Part of their education will take place at one of 10 university-owned dental practices, or service-learning centers. The school also will have two residency programs in general and pediatric dentistry. Residents will learn and practice in the centers, which will be placed in rural, underserved areas of the state. Of the first three centers to be built, two likely will be in eastern North Carolina, with a third in the mountains.

The ECU dental school is part of the ambitious “Plan for Dentistry” approved by the Board of Governors in November 2006, a joint project with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The new budget allocates $25 million for Chapel Hill’s planned dental school expansion, which will focus on research and education, especially in the dental specialties.

The next steps include filling several key administrative roles. Chadwick will continue as interim dean while the search begins for an associate dean for academic affairs and an associate dean for finance and operations. Those jobs are expected to be filled within a year, along with a director of the service-learning centers. After these posts are filled the school will begin to select department heads and faculty.

In addition, planning will soon begin for the school’s residency programs. “It’s a lengthy process,“ Chadwick says. “There are a lot of things to do.”

Meanwhile, the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust awarded a $296,000 grant to the Brody School of Medicine to establish a dental clinic for overweight children without access to dental care. The program will be the first of its kind in the country and will serve as a model for the integration of dental care in the treatment of children with complex diseases, said Dr. Sara G. Grossi, a periodontist, research professor and director of the grant.

Patients will come from East Carolina University’s Pediatric Healthy Weight Research and Treatment Center, created in 2003 by the Department of Pediatrics in response to the epidemic of childhood obesity in eastern North Carolina. When 30 children participating in the research clinic received dental exams, 50 percent had untreated dental cavities, 95 percent had gingivitis, 60 percent had bleeding gums, 19 percent had tartar buildup and 10 percent had juvenile periodontitis, an aggressive form of gum disease. —Marion Blackburn






100 top alumnae honored
The diversity of successful ECU alumnae was on display at the “One Hundred Incredible ECU Women” event in October. A good example was the panelists at the Women’s Roundtable session (above, left to right), which included Linda E. McMahon ’69, CEO and co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment; Dr. Lynn L. Lawry ’92, associate director of the Center for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Medicine; and Beverly Cox ’67, director of exhibitions and collections management at the National Portrait Gallery.

The 100 honored alumnae are: Alison H. Atkins, Performing Arts; Irene F. Bailey, Fine Arts; Edna Earle Baker, Public Service; Judy B. Baker, Public Service; Cassandra D. Bell, Fine Arts; Lisa D. Benton, Business/Industry; Margaret E. Bishop, Fine Arts; Rebecca Y. Bloxam, Education; Emily S. Boyce, Education; Carolyn J. Breedlove, Education; Susan C. Brooks, Business/Industry; Suzanne J. Brooks, Business/Industry; Judith H. Budacz, Education; Lisa R. Callahan, Sports; Shirley A. Carraway, Education; E. Carol Carrere, Education; Madge S. Chamness, Health Sciences; Gloria A. Chance, Business/Industry; Joyce G. Cherry, Education;

Maggy M. Costandy, Business/Industry; Beverly Cox, Fine Arts; Michele C. Daenzer-Sapp, Business/Industry; Nancy W. Darden, Public Service; Deborah C. Davis, Health Sciences; Jane M. Dillard, Performing Arts; Patricia C. Dunn, Public Service; Linda R. Edwards, Health Sciences; Laura L. Elliott, Public Service; Susan W. Engelkemeyer, Education; Janet P. Ennis, Media; LaRue M. Evans, Public Service; Beth G. Everett, Business/Industry; Janice H. Faulkner, Public Service; Pansie Hart Flood, Fine Arts;

Barbara B. Forester, Business/Industry; Robin L. Good, Media; Beth Grant, Performing Arts; Paula M. Hale, Sports; Shelly S. Harkins, Health Sciences; Lynn B. Hoggard, Health Sciences; Deborah A. Holloman, Public Service; Deborah L. Hooper, Media; Phyllis N. Horns, Health Sciences; Brenda P. Hughes, Media; Malene G. Irons, Health Sciences; Renu G. Jain, Health Sciences; Elizabeth M. Jones, Fine Arts; Leora "Sam" Jones, Sports; Alice F. Keene, Public Service; Barbara A. Kelly, Sports; Mary P. Kirk, Education; Jenni Kolczynski, Business/Industry; Deborah G. Lamm, Education; Lynn L. Lawry, Health Sciences; Jessica R. L. Leif, Health Sciences; Nell J. Lewis, Public Service; Jennifer S. Licko, Performing Arts; Debra K. London, Health Sciences; Valeria O. Lovelace, Media; Deitra L. Lowdermilk, Health Sciences;

Carol M. Mabe, Business/Industry; Catherine S. Marx, Performing Arts; Marian N. McLawhorn, Public Service; Linda E. McMahon, Business/Industry; Lyda T. Mihalyi, Public Service; Wendy A. Miller, Education; Katie O. Morgan, Public Service; Catherine T. Morsell, Business/Industry; Maureen J. O'Boyle, Media; Margaret R. O'Connor, Media; Michelle Orsi, Business/Industry; Wendy L. Perry, Business/Industry; Jeanne Piland, Performing Arts; Jean H. Preston, Public Service; Emily Procter, Performing Arts; Jane S. Ranum, Public Service;

Nina B. Repeta, Performing Arts; Lucy E. Roberts, Education; Sandra M. Rowe, Media; Coretha M. Rushing, Business/Industry; Brenda M. Ryals, Research; Mary C. Schulken, Media; Ruth G. Shaw, Business/Industry; Lindsay C. Shepherd, Performing Arts; Betty S. Speir, Public Service; Mary Rose Stocks, Education; Shelby S. Strother, Public Service; Kathy A. Taft, Public Service; M. Louise Thomas, Business/Industry; Rosalynn "Rosie" Thompson, Sports; Kenya T. Tillery, Performing Arts; Emilie M. Tilley, Education; Linda Lynn Tripp, Business/Industry; Beth B. Ward, Public Service; Margaret C. Ward, Public Service; Edith D. Warren, Public Service; Rhonda J. Warren, Business/Industry; Linda L. Willis, Health Sciences; Annette B. Wysocki, Research; Sandra Kay Yow, Sports.