Campus Events Category
04.19.2012
Did Dr. Thomas Stafford ever stop and talk to you on the Brickyard? Did you ever go to his office for advice or to voice your concerns about an issue? Ever high-five him at a basketball game?
If you have any memories of Stafford, who is set to retire June 30, mark your calendars for Monday and attend a retirement celebration for Stafford, the vice chancellor for student affairs, as he finishes his tenure as one of NC State’s most widely known leaders.
The event will be held from 3-5 p.m. Monday, April 23, at the McKimmon Center. Coworkers, retirees and
friends are welcome to attend. For more information or to RSVP, send an email to special_events@ncsu.edu.
We profiled a day in the life of Stafford in the current issue of NC State magazine.
04.17.2012
Festivities are abundant on campus as Earth Day is approaching. NC State will host many events Wednesday through Saturday. The events range from discussions on alternative fuel vehicles to Hillsborough Street’s own Earth Day Music Festival.
Here are some of the highlights of the week:
Wednesday, April 18
Campus Farmer’s Market: The farmer’s market will open in the Brickyard at 10 a.m. and close at 3 p.m. The local vendors offer a variety of products, from produce to baked goods to jewelry.
Alternative Fuel Vehicle Showcase: The event will run from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. in the Brickyard. Electric, hybrid, diesel and natural gas powered vehicles will be featured, and university departments will be available to talk to about alternative commute options for the NC State community.
Empower Film Series: A sneak peek of DisneyNature’s “Chimpanzee” will be shown at Campus Cinema at 7 p.m. Tickets are available in Talley Student Center and Ticket Central, and are free to all visitors.
Thursday, April 19
Electric Vehicle Town Hall: At 2:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Monteith Research Center, the Centennial Campus Development Office will host an Electric Vehicle Town Hall. Advanced Energy will give a presentation on electric vehicles and officials from Centennial Campus will be there to answer questions about the charging stations that will be unveiled on that part of campus.
Centennial Campus Field Day: From 3-6 p.m., University Recreation is hosting Centennial Field Day. There will be many outdoor activities and events for NC State students, faculty and the community to participate in. The event will take place at MCR plaza and Lake Raleigh. Free pizza will be offered to the first 100 attendees.
Friday, April 20
Earth Day Celebration: The celebration will take place in the Brickyard from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The theme is “Green Careers”, and there will be vendors and a green career coaching session. Students will be able to talk with a career adviser, or an expert in the sustainability field, about preparing for a green job.
Earth Day Concert: Holy Ghost Tent Revival will headline the event on Harris Field. Activities will start at 4 p.m. and end at 7 p.m. There will be food for the first 150 attendees.
Saturday, April 21
Hillsborough Street Music Fest: Live It Up on Hillsborough Street and the Earth Day Committee have partnered to bring an Earth Day event to Hillsborough Street that will top all others. Eleven venues will host about 25 bands for an Earth Day Music Festival. The bands range in genres from DJ Special Guest to Johnny Swank, who plays a bluesy grunge on his guitars made of recycled materials.
A full list of events can be found on NC State’s Earth Day website.
04.05.2012
Old Man Whickutt performs at Reynolds. From left to right: Greg Tart, Marcus Hall and Rob Hall.
Rob Hall, one of the two brothers who form the nucleus for North Carolina bluegrass band Old Man Whickutt, doesn’t care if he plays the Ryman Auditorium or Carnegie Hall. That’s because he’s played Reynolds Coliseum.
“I’ve told people that if I never play another gig, I’d die a happy man,” Hall says.
Rob Hall and his brother, Marcus, took the stage Monday at NC State’s 125th anniversary celebration with their band to perform their YouTube sensation “When Jesus Comes Back,” a song describing how Wolfpack fans will be spared over UNC fans when the end of time comes.
They even enlisted Chancellor Randy Woodson to join them for some picking. “He just jumped right in,” Rob says. “He’s now an official member of Whickutt. We call him Chancellor Whickutt.”
The Halls grew up as die-hard fans of NC State, which came pretty easy for them. Their father, Bobby Hall, played running back for the Wolfpack in the late 1960s and was drafted by the Buffalo Bills. “We grew up in Carter Finley. We went to every game,” Rob says. “We would stay until there were four zeroes on the clock.”
So when the brothers Hall and OMW’s other members, Greg Tart and Craig Thompson, got a call a couple of months ago to perform at the NC State celebration there was no hesitation. Marcus even delayed a trip to Jamaica just to make the Monday’s gig, which they found a humbling experience.
“It’s just one of those out-of-body experiences,” says Rob, who spends his days as a realtor in Greenville, N.C. “We were ball boys growing up at basketball games. You think about the history there. You think about David Thompson and Tommy Burleson and Jimmy V and all the people who’ve graced that floor.”
Though both Halls followed NC State sports growing up, it was music that captured their attention in their formative years. Rob was at East Carolina and Marcus went to NC State, where he got a management degree in 1998.
They started playing guitar and realized that music gave them a bond with each other, a bond that reflected summer trips of their youth to North Carolina’s Toe River Valley where they would visit their mother’s family and sing folk songs around the campfire. But it wasn’t until 1997, when they took a cross-country trip in a Winnebago with their parents, that the idea for a band was born as they obsessively played guitar together.
“I’m pretty sure my parents got sick of hearing ‘Wild Horses,’” Rob says.
The two enlisted Thompson and Tart, also a lifelong Wolfpack fan who grew up helping his father, Stephen, pick up referees for football games. “I grew up on the sidelines of NC State,” Greg Tart says. “I had no other option but to be a State fan.”
Tart, who sells building materials at his day job, says that last year was when the band made a conscious effort to start playing gigs around North Carolina. It was a December 2011 Christmas show, he says, where they really found their niche. Decked out in elf regalia, the band performed their NC State-centric songs in front of 400 people that night.
“We’re all about comedy, all tongue and cheek,” Tart says, adding that their song about the end of days is just harmless ribbing at UNC’s expense.
Rob says the performance at Reynolds and the subsequent hits on YouTube count as a major break for Old Man Whickutt. But it’s not a record deal or a Grammy he hopes the buzz brings.
“We don’t know where it’ll go from here,” he says. “But we hope that it will be played over Carter-Finley Stadium.”
Tart agrees.
“This,” he says, “will become the unofficial anthem of NC State.”
04.02.2012
A cupcake given out at NC State's 125th birthday party.
Students, alumni, faculty and staff gathered this afternoon at Reynolds Coliseum to celebrate NC State’s 125th birthday. The party is one of several events planned for the yearlong celebration of the university’s anniversary.
“It’s always great to see students, but I look out and see faculty and staff,” said Liana Fryer, who works for NC State in the Office of Research and Innovation. “It’s a unifying experience.”
Reynolds did see some basketball, as the men’s team took the stage at the celebration. But the coliseum was mainly transformed from a basketball court into a dance floor as a the packed house “jumped around” to hip-hop beats. Some even hit the stage to dance, including Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Thomas H. Stafford Jr., who held a mask of Alexander Holladay, the university’s first president.
Chancellor Randy Woodson couldn’t be swayed. “The chancellor does not dance,” Woodson said.
Woodson did show off one of his talents when he took the stage with Old Man Whickutt, a North Carolina-based bluegrass and American roots band, and performed NC State’s fight song on guitar. After he performed, Woodson had advice for the crowd. “Plan on the future,” he told the audience. “Be bold in everything you do. And 125 years from now, we’ll be celebrating NC State.”
Old Man Whickutt also took the opportunity to perform its new song, “When Jesus Comes Back,” which celebrates State’s long-standing rivalry with UNC with such lines as: When Jesus comes back, I know that he will. He’ll save every city except Chapel Hill. When Jesus comes back, this is what he’s gonna do. He’ll paint the sky red, no more Carolina blue.
Jude Jackson, a sophomore from Jacksonville, N.C., said it was wonderful to be a part of the birthday bash and such an energetic salute to the university. “It’s just great to see NC State’s 125 years of history alive,” he said. “[NC State] is just a great place to be in a great city.”
But the event took time to reflect on NC State’s past and its commitment to the values as a land-grant institution. Instead of blowing out candles on a cake, the audience watched a video celebrating the university’s history and achievements.
The crowd gathers in Reynolds for NC State's 125th.
“I think of the mark of NC State and all of us graduates,” said Fryer, who earned her Ph.D. from NC State in 1996. She cited the roads that Wolfpack engineers have built and the innovations of textiles graduates. “Nobody wakes up in North Carolina without being touched by NC State in so many ways.”
03.30.2012
NC State is having a birthday party, and you’re invited!
Alumni, students, staff and other friends of the university are invited to a celebration on Monday of NC State’s 125th anniversary. The party is being held from 1:30-2:30 p.m. at Reynolds Coliseum. Doors open at 1 p.m. and, best of all, it’s free.
The party will feature lots and lots of giveways, including Tradition Scarves and other great Wolfpack gear. Entertainment is being provided by DJ Tim Gunter, emcee Kornelius Bascombe, the band Old Man Whickutt and other special surprise guests.
The Wolfpack basketball team, fresh off their Sweet 16 run in the NCAA basketball tournament, will also be there. Come by and say hello!
And, of course, no birthday party is complete without cake and ice cream, so we’ll have that, too. See you at the party!
Following the party, the Alumni Association Student Ambassador Program is hosting the first annual Tradition Run.
The event will begin the Brickyard, where teams of two will race around campus to complete several NC State traditions in 1 hour and 25 minutes (in honor of the 125th anniversary, of course). Alumni are invited to come out and cheer the students on.
03.30.2012
Jim Futrell remembers the day his parents dropped him off at NC State and drove away. It was more than 50 years ago, and Futrell still says that was the most lonesome moment in his life. “I was scared to death,” he says.
But Futrell, who grew up in the Eastern North Carolina town of Potecasi, quickly found a home at NC State. He was president and social director of Bragaw Dorm and majored in agricultural education, graduating in 1962 before going on to earn a master’s degree in adult education in 1968. He went on to work as vice president of public relations/communications for Farm Credit Banks of Columbia, S.C., and then as a city and county manager in South Carolina.
Futrell is back on campus today for the 50th reunion of the Class of ‘62. He is joined by more than 80 classmates and their spouses, the largest group to attend a 50th reunion at NC State.
Futrell is quick to thank the members of the reunion planning committee for the turnout, but it started with Futrell and the many hours he spent on the phone. Futrell, the permanent Class of 1962 president, had a goal to contact all 1,200 living members of the class. He would start calling at 10 a.m. every Saturday and Sunday morning, and make calls for 6-8 hours. By the time he was done, he had reached about 1,000 classmates.
“I told them to get these dates on your calendar,” he says. “A lot of them were very excited.”
The reunion activities kick off this morning with a tour of the chancellor’s new residence next to the Park Alumni Center. The group will also visit D.H. Hill Library, tour the Bell Tower and hear from former UNC system President William Friday ‘41 at a banquet tonight at Vaughn Towers. Friday spoke at the group’s graduation 50 years ago.
On Saturday, the group will take a bus tour of campus before being welcomed into the Forever Club during a lunch at the University Club. The weekend’s festivities will end Saturday night with a barbecue dinner at the Park Alumni Center.
“I hope they will see how much the university has grown and changed,” Futrell said of his classmates. “But changed for the better.”
03.29.2012
Students were joined on the Brickyard today by Chancellor Randy Woodson, Mr. Wuf and others to sign a large Thank You card to show their appreciation for the alumni and friends of the university who have made contributions that help raise the quality of education at NC State.
The event was hosted by Annual Giving at NC State as a way to help students understand the importance of giving back to the university after they graduate.
“Thank You Day is an exciting opportunity for NC State to thank our donors for all of their support,” says Amanda Paine with Annual Giving. “Their generosity helps NC State continue to make enhancements and transform the student experience. This day will allow us to celebrate these donors and educate the students on the importance and impact of giving back to NC State.”
In addition to signing the card, students were given a chance to win gift certificates to area merchants, enjoy Howling Cow ice cream and share a “Congratulations” cake for seniors.
03.29.2012
Stephen F. Angel, an NC State engineering grad who is now chairman, president and chief executive officer of Praxair, Inc., spoke on campus Wednesday as part of the Poole College of Management’s Wells Fargo Executive Leadership series.
Here’s a quick glance at some of his tips for would-be leaders in the business world:
- Work for people who will challenge you, not someone you’re comfortable with.
- Learn to give and ask for feedback.
- Don’t be too general a manager. Develop strong competence in at least one area and maintain it throughout your career.
- Learn finance. It’s the language of business.
- Don’t be viewed as high maintenance or a self-promoter.
- Develop the proper balance between self confidence and humility.
- Be yourself. Be authentic.
- Be someone who can be counted on to keep confidences.
- Don’t always rely on email. Step away from the computer and walk down the hall to have a conversation.
- Write heartfelt, thoughtful notes.
- Prepare, prepare, prepare.
- It doesn’t cost you much to be gracious.
Praxair is the largest industrial gases company in North and South American and one of the largest in the world. It produces, sells and distributed atmospheric and process gases and high-performance surface coatings. Before joining Praxair in 2011, Angel was the general manager of General Electric’s $2-billion power equipment business.
03.29.2012
Everyone, it seems, has a Facebook page and we know that when someone says they Tweet they don’t mean that they chirp like a bird.
But as familiar as we are with social media, there’s a great opportunity on Monday to hear from one of the pioneers of social media.
Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, is delivering the 2012 Harrelson Lecture at 3 p.m. Monday at Stewart Theatre. His topic is “The Changing Media Landscape: How Social Media is Transforming News and Information.” The talk is free and open to the public.
Hughes has also worked in politics (director of online organizing for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign), investments (General Catalyst Partners) and the nonprofit world (he founded Jumo, a tool to help people find high-quality nonprofits).
In the fall of 2011, Jumo merged with GOOD, an online community of young adults interested in social activism. Hughes is currently a senior adviser at GOOD. In March, it was announced the Hughes had purchased and will be the publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic magazine. Hughes, a native of Hickory, N.C., is a Harvard University graduate.
The Harrelson Lecture is made possible with support from the Harrelson Fund, the College of Education, the College of Engineering, the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, the Entrepreneurship Institute, the Institute for Emerging Issues, the University Scholars Program, the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the Department of Athletics and the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science.
03.27.2012
Stephen F. Angel, an NC State engineering grad who is now chairman, president and chief executive officer of Praxair, Inc., is speaking on campus Wednesday as part of the Poole College of Management’s Wells Fargo Executive Leadership series.
Angel’s topic for the afternoon talk is “Leadership: What Really Matters.” The event, at 4:30 pm in the auditorium in Nelson Hall, is free and open to the public.
Praxair is the largest industrial gases company in North and South American and one of the largest in the world. It produces, sells and distributed atmospheric and process gases and high-performance surface coatings.
Before joining Praxair in 2011, Angel was the general manager of General Electric’s $2-billion power equipment business.
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