Provost’s Corner: August 2017

Dear faculty and staff,

Welcome to the 2017-2018 academic year! I’m excited to see everyone back on campus, and am looking forward to what this year will bring.

Wolfpack Welcome Week is in full swing, with plenty of activities open to faculty, staff and students. We held a successful convocation on Monday in Reynolds Coliseum, including heartfelt and inspiring remarks from Rupert Nacoste on what it means to be a member of the Wolfpack, and I hope that each one of you were able to be there. For a full schedule of this signature campus event, which culminates in Packapalooza this Saturday, visit packapalooza.ncsu.edu.

In addition to welcoming nearly 4,600 first-year students, we also invited 110 new faculty members to New Faculty Orientation. I encourage you to introduce yourself to the new faces in your department and show them how NC State values creating community among all on campus.

In light of recent events in Charlottesville, I want to reiterate that making our community safe and inclusive is a top priority for the university. Hatred has no place here. I want to ensure that we are all working together to provide a welcoming environment for all faculty, staff and students, to allow them to conduct and express themselves freely.

This community remains an integral part of what makes NC State a world-class university where experiential education and service make up some of our core values. These values in action make our students more successful now than ever before. If you’d like to see where we’ve been and where we’re heading with student success, I encourage you to check out the recently published Five-Year Student Success Report. You’ll find updates on ongoing initiatives that will continue to impact all of us this academic year and beyond.

We’ve made great strides in other areas that will make this year one of our best yet. The 2017 fiscal year closed with more than $405 million in sponsored program awards, a university record. This is more than $50 million more than the previous fiscal year.

We’re also coming up on the one-year anniversary of our inaugural Provost’s Office newsletter, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed our content so far. To make sure that you don’t miss news and updates on academic happenings at NC State, sign up to receive the newsletter monthly in your email.

With everything that has happened and is going on currently, we’re shaping up to have an incredibly productive year. Please keep me updated on how you #ThinkAndDo at NC State.

To keep up with all academic and faculty- or staff-related developments, follow @NCStateProvost on Twitter.

Until next time,

Warwick Arden
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost