Post by captaggie on Apr 20, 2005 18:12:23 GMT -5
www.ncatregister.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/04/16/4260014005cd3
The future of A&T
By Chad Roberts
April 16, 2005
By the year 2012 North Carolina A&T will have a student enrollment of nearly 16,000. Access to financial aid information, campus library, meals and medical service will be available on a 24-hour basis. Due to A&T's global partnerships, students will have the option of studying and interning at institutions like the Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology in India, Nigeria's University of Oyo, or the Carlos III University of Madrid in Spain.
On the A&T main campus, students design their own course of study, and take classes that specifically relate to all the different aspects of their careers. Many students enroll in new interdisciplinary programs, like the School of Business' Interdisciplinary Center for Entrepreneurship and E-business. Other students, as a part of their course requirements, spend time working and researching at the Greensboro Center for Innovative Development, the partnership with UNCG commonly known as the "Millennium Campus."
Through collaborations at the national, state and local level, students work side-by-side with professionals, developing firewall security for communications and networking giant AT&T, crunching numbers for worldwide auditing and business firm Ernst & Young or analyzing molecular cells for new biotechnology and agromedicine companies. Scenarios like these are the outcomes of FUTURES, the strategic visioning and planning process for the A&T campus that Chancellor James C. Renick started in 2001.
"Every high-performing institution has some process that allows it to plan forward and include lots of people in the process, to think about the institution's future," Renick said. "That's what the FUTURES proess, and the planning process -- that's what that's all about."
FUTURES is the roadmap that Renick hopes will lead A&T to becoming the premier interdisciplinary university in the state and in the nation. By interdisciplinary, he means combining different subjects.
"It's (interdisciplinary) the idea that most of the interesting work going forward into the future will have multiple disciplines," Renick said. "The intersection of those disciplines and understanding how they intersect will allow us to better respond to challenging problems and create useful solutions."
For example, the worldwide AIDS epidemic cannot be addressed effectively, he said, solely through medicine, politics, education or sociology. It takes a contribution from all those disciplines for an effective solution. The same approach can be taken for air pollution, energy shortages or other public health problems.
"It's a combination of those areas, and we're going to have to draw on all those areas to solve it," Renick said. "That's why it's so important."
Renick and the FUTURES planning and resources council came up with five specific goals. To reach each goal there are strategies, both long term and short term. Each goal has a Goal Implementation Team that supervises the progress being made. In many cases the work is ongoing, but the university has already begun to see some tangible results.
Goal One is to establish and ensure an interdisciplinary focus for A&T. Strategies for achieving this goal include evaluating A&T's internal goals, taking note of and judging the quality of interdisciplinary education models already in existence, supporting new interdisciplinary initiatives and developing ways to promote A&T's new focus to its stakeholders -- which is everybody from current and prospective students, parents of students, alumni and the local community, to lawmakers, donors, faculty and businesses.
With those strategies in mind, the implementation team has been busy working on numerous projects. Mable Scott, vice chancellor for university relations, conceived "Aggie Life," a comic strip that highlights A&T's distinctive features. The strip is published every Sunday in the News & Record, Greensboro's daily newspaper. Some of the comic strips' topics include famous alumni, unique degree programs and information about A&T activities.
The comic strip has won several awards, and the newspaper recently ranked it as one of the most-read features in its Sunday edition.
Another part of the FUTURES-driven marketing process was the name-branding of A&T-related paraphernalia. Two new mascots, an Aggie puppy and a full-grown Aggie dog, were designed. The two characters replaced the half-man, half-bulldog that was A&T's mascot in the past.
To support new interdisciplinary initiatives, the chancellor established a Ventures Fund, which is a $250,000 program that provides grant money for students, faculty, staff or alumni to start interdisciplinary programs. In 2002, the first year of the fund, 19 of 107 proposals were funded through the Ventures Fund. Over the next two years, 35 proposals were funded, at a maximum of $15,000 per project.
As a result, A&T students have studied in Russia, traveled back and forth to South Africa as part of a cultural exchange, and tackled the problem of infant mortality neighborhood-by-neighborhood.
"I've been very pleased with those grants," Renick said. "It's allowed creative people on campus to experiment and work with interesting ideas. Part of the process is providing incentives, encouragement and support to people who are moving in this direction."
The goals that the FUTURES strategy hopes to achieve are not limited to what goes on inside the classroom. FUTURES is comprehensive, and includes on-campus construction, globalization, and building wealth -- not just the physical kind, but also the intellectual type.
"It's not only the buildings, but what goes on inside the buildings," Renick said. "You've gotta have an intellectual framework for what it is we as an institution want to do and what we're planning on becoming in the future."
The future of A&T
By Chad Roberts
April 16, 2005
By the year 2012 North Carolina A&T will have a student enrollment of nearly 16,000. Access to financial aid information, campus library, meals and medical service will be available on a 24-hour basis. Due to A&T's global partnerships, students will have the option of studying and interning at institutions like the Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology in India, Nigeria's University of Oyo, or the Carlos III University of Madrid in Spain.
On the A&T main campus, students design their own course of study, and take classes that specifically relate to all the different aspects of their careers. Many students enroll in new interdisciplinary programs, like the School of Business' Interdisciplinary Center for Entrepreneurship and E-business. Other students, as a part of their course requirements, spend time working and researching at the Greensboro Center for Innovative Development, the partnership with UNCG commonly known as the "Millennium Campus."
Through collaborations at the national, state and local level, students work side-by-side with professionals, developing firewall security for communications and networking giant AT&T, crunching numbers for worldwide auditing and business firm Ernst & Young or analyzing molecular cells for new biotechnology and agromedicine companies. Scenarios like these are the outcomes of FUTURES, the strategic visioning and planning process for the A&T campus that Chancellor James C. Renick started in 2001.
"Every high-performing institution has some process that allows it to plan forward and include lots of people in the process, to think about the institution's future," Renick said. "That's what the FUTURES proess, and the planning process -- that's what that's all about."
FUTURES is the roadmap that Renick hopes will lead A&T to becoming the premier interdisciplinary university in the state and in the nation. By interdisciplinary, he means combining different subjects.
"It's (interdisciplinary) the idea that most of the interesting work going forward into the future will have multiple disciplines," Renick said. "The intersection of those disciplines and understanding how they intersect will allow us to better respond to challenging problems and create useful solutions."
For example, the worldwide AIDS epidemic cannot be addressed effectively, he said, solely through medicine, politics, education or sociology. It takes a contribution from all those disciplines for an effective solution. The same approach can be taken for air pollution, energy shortages or other public health problems.
"It's a combination of those areas, and we're going to have to draw on all those areas to solve it," Renick said. "That's why it's so important."
Renick and the FUTURES planning and resources council came up with five specific goals. To reach each goal there are strategies, both long term and short term. Each goal has a Goal Implementation Team that supervises the progress being made. In many cases the work is ongoing, but the university has already begun to see some tangible results.
Goal One is to establish and ensure an interdisciplinary focus for A&T. Strategies for achieving this goal include evaluating A&T's internal goals, taking note of and judging the quality of interdisciplinary education models already in existence, supporting new interdisciplinary initiatives and developing ways to promote A&T's new focus to its stakeholders -- which is everybody from current and prospective students, parents of students, alumni and the local community, to lawmakers, donors, faculty and businesses.
With those strategies in mind, the implementation team has been busy working on numerous projects. Mable Scott, vice chancellor for university relations, conceived "Aggie Life," a comic strip that highlights A&T's distinctive features. The strip is published every Sunday in the News & Record, Greensboro's daily newspaper. Some of the comic strips' topics include famous alumni, unique degree programs and information about A&T activities.
The comic strip has won several awards, and the newspaper recently ranked it as one of the most-read features in its Sunday edition.
Another part of the FUTURES-driven marketing process was the name-branding of A&T-related paraphernalia. Two new mascots, an Aggie puppy and a full-grown Aggie dog, were designed. The two characters replaced the half-man, half-bulldog that was A&T's mascot in the past.
To support new interdisciplinary initiatives, the chancellor established a Ventures Fund, which is a $250,000 program that provides grant money for students, faculty, staff or alumni to start interdisciplinary programs. In 2002, the first year of the fund, 19 of 107 proposals were funded through the Ventures Fund. Over the next two years, 35 proposals were funded, at a maximum of $15,000 per project.
As a result, A&T students have studied in Russia, traveled back and forth to South Africa as part of a cultural exchange, and tackled the problem of infant mortality neighborhood-by-neighborhood.
"I've been very pleased with those grants," Renick said. "It's allowed creative people on campus to experiment and work with interesting ideas. Part of the process is providing incentives, encouragement and support to people who are moving in this direction."
The goals that the FUTURES strategy hopes to achieve are not limited to what goes on inside the classroom. FUTURES is comprehensive, and includes on-campus construction, globalization, and building wealth -- not just the physical kind, but also the intellectual type.
"It's not only the buildings, but what goes on inside the buildings," Renick said. "You've gotta have an intellectual framework for what it is we as an institution want to do and what we're planning on becoming in the future."
