March 2021 Announcements

COVID-19 Updates:

• NC State is planning for a normal fall 2021 semester, to the fullest extent possible. Our goals and expectations for the fall include the following:
  • Students and faculty will be in face-to-face classes.
  • Residence halls will return to full occupancy.
  • Staff will be back in offices and/or returning to normal workplace activities.
  • Buildings and facilities, including dining operations, NC State University Libraries and the Wellness and Recreation Center, will return to normal hours and increased capacity.

We also intend for the university to return to pre-pandemic modes of course delivery, residence living and overall operations. Look for many more details about fall operations over the coming weeks and months, and keep up to speed with updates on the Protect the Pack site. 

• NC State plans to honor spring 2021 graduates at two in-person commencement ceremonies at Carter-Finley Stadium on the evening of Friday, May 14, and the morning of Saturday, May 15. Please mark your calendars for our very special spring commencement ceremonies on May 14 and 15. Please continue to check our commencement website for more updated information.
• Executive Order 195 eases a few of the COVID-19-related restrictions previously imposed in North Carolina. Executive Order 195 is effective through March 26 at 5 p.m. Here are a few significant highlights:
  • Mass gathering restrictions have been increased to no more than 25 people indoors (from the previous limit of 10). Restrictions for outdoor gatherings remain at a maximum of 50 people.
  • Face coverings are still required.
  • The executive order provides the potential for increased seating capacity at athletics venues. The NC State Athletics Department is evaluating the order and will provide community updates about seating capacity at sporting events.
• All faculty, staff and students can pre-register to get vaccinated at NC State. Please click here to pre-register. We plan to start administering vaccines by appointment at Talley Student Union the week of March 22. After pre-registration, you will receive more information about scheduling an appointment. We encourage everyone in our community to get vaccinated once you are eligible to do so. You can use the statewide tool Find My Vaccine Group to determine your eligibility group. You can also make an appointment to receive a vaccine elsewhere once your group becomes eligible. For more information on vaccination locations throughout the state, please click here. 
• Even if you are fully vaccinated, NC State community standards related to COVID-19 still apply. Everyone in the community is expected to continue doing their part, including:

• Continuing to participate in mandatory surveillance testing programs on campus. 
• Continuing to adhere to community standards, including wearing a face covering, washing hands regularly, staying home when sick and practicing physical distancing. Please continue to check the Protect the Pack site for the most up-to-date information. If you have questions regarding vaccines at NC State, please call 919.515.6850. 

• In consultation with the Office of State Human Resources, the University of North Carolina System has updated its work and leave provisions. Those provisions will remain in effect until June 30 unless revised or rescinded. The revised guidance includes the following provisions:
  • COVID-19 Vaccinations
    • All permanent and temporary employees can get their first and second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine during the university’s normal hours of operation, and they will receive paid work time (not to exceed eight hours for each dose) for doing so. Employees must obtain their supervisor’s approval to get the vaccine during work hours. This paid work time does not count against COVID-19 paid administrative leave.
    • All permanent and temporary employees who experience any reaction to the vaccine on the day they are vaccinated or the day after receiving the vaccine may request COVID-19 paid administrative leave if they need to take time off work as a result of their reaction.
      • Employees who experience a reaction to the vaccine on any day after the days mentioned above can request personal leave if they need to take additional time off work as a result of their reaction.
      • Leave may be applied retroactively back to Jan. 1, 2021.
      • Employees may request paid administrative leave by logging into MyPack Portal and selecting the COVID-19 paid administrative leave tile.
  • Provision for Interchangeability of Leave
    • The UNC System has extended through June 30 the provision allowing employees to use accrued sick leave, vacation and bonus leave for approved absences related to COVID-19.

Administrator Updates:

• NC State Senior Vice Provost for Academic Outreach and Entrepreneurship Thomas (Tom) Kenan Miller III has led Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications (DELTA) since its inception in 2000. Miller was named the founding vice provost in January 2001, following a national search. While SVP Miller is not leaving NC State, he is stepping back from his leadership role with DELTA and his oversight of the McKimmon Center for Extension and Continuing Education effective July 1, 2021. Miller will continue to report to Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Warwick Arden and focus on leading NC State Entrepreneurship and working closely with the Wolfpack Investor Network in the next phase of his career.
• Director of the Shelton Leadership Center Barbara Mulkey has announced that she will retire effective May 1. As director, Mulkey helps fulfill the Shelton Leadership Center’s mission to develop the next generation of values-based leaders. She also oversees personalized educational and hands-on outreach programs for professionals, college students and pre-college students. Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Warwick Arden said an announcement will be made soon about the future leadership of the Shelton Leadership Center.
• Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Search: Finalist interviews were held March 10-17. Stay up to date on the search by visiting the search page on the Provost’s Office website or go.ncsu.edu/chass-search.
• Senior Vice Provost for Enrollment Management and Services Search: The nomination committee conducted first round interviews the week of March 15. Four tentative campus interview dates have been set and the finalist names will be shared soon. Stay up to date on the search by visiting the search page on the Provost’s Office website or go.ncsu.edu/emas-search.

From DELTA:

• Save the date for DELTA Grants! Group consultations and info sessions are now open for registration. The submission system opens on April 19, and proposals are due on May 21. Contact deltagrants@ncsu.edu to schedule a DELTA Grants presentation for your department.

• DELTA has launched an NC State virtual background generator for your favorite web conferencing tools. Users can enter text and choose other parameters to customize the image. Try it out in your next meeting! 

• The newest cohort of NC State faculty members in the Online Course Improvement Program are proving their commitment to high-quality online course design, and Poole College of Management’s Leigh Shamblin is lending her expertise in online course quality as an official Quality Matters Peer Reviewer. DELTA’s Course Quality Program will begin accepting applications for its fall programming on April 1.

• Starting in May, Panopto will be available universitywide as NC State’s new enterprise content capture tool, and a group of early access users from across the university are sharing their first impressions. Get ready with a 30-minute Panopto overview on March 25. 

• This year’s Moodle upgrade to version 3.9 at NC State brings modifications and improvements to existing features to make content creation much easier for instructors. Here is an overview of what’s coming.

• Check out the latest WolfWare News to learn more about the recent updates to our learning technologies to help you make the most effective use of WolfWare tools in your courses.
• Christine Cranford, a senior lecturer in the Department of English, works with DELTA as a Faculty Fellow to give NC State students the best online learning experience possible and to help faculty develop different approaches when teaching online. Read more about Cranford’s fellowship.

From the Office of Faculty Development:

• The Office of Faculty Development invites you to apply for the 2021 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Institute (SoTL), a program designed with busy faculty members in mind who would like to explore teaching as a form of scholarly work. The SoTL 2021 theme is Crafting Educational Innovation in Difficult Times. Any full-time faculty member at NC State may apply to participate in this program.

This is a 1-year commitment that begins with an intensive Virtual Institute held in mid-May. Participants will present a poster with their findings at the 2022 Teaching and Learning Symposium held at the end of February 2022. Each participant is eligible for a mini-grant for up to $1,250 that can be used for conference travel or other allowed project-related expenses.

Applications close at 11:59pm on Friday, April 9. Proposals to study topics related to the theme Crafting Educational Innovation in Difficult Times will be given priority in the selection process. If accepted, you must commit to attending all program sessions. Acceptance notifications will go out on Monday, April 19, 2021. Apply at go.ncsu.edu/sotl-2020. For more information contact: Jennifer Stanigar or Maria Gallardo-Williams.

From the Office of Global Engagement:

• The Developing Cultural Competence (DCC) certificate program from the Global Training Initiative (GTI) was first launched in 2018 with 49 students participating in at least three of the workshops and a total of nine students graduating from the program. There are 259 students enrolled in the February DCC sessions. Sixty of the participants are NC State students, and the roster is rounded out by participants from partner institutions in China, Colombia, and SKEMA Business School. The program will continue to run throughout the spring semester, and GTI is currently recruiting for additional sessions through March and April. Learn more.
• GTI has also been working on a new online professional development program for English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in Azerbaijan to improve their English fluency and teaching effectiveness.
• The University Global Partnership Network (UGPN) Virtual Conference 2021 will bring together delegates from four world-leading Universities: North Carolina State University, University of Sao Paulo, the University of Surrey and the University of Wollongong, to promote and facilitate innovative collaborations in research and education. Organized virtually this year for the first time, the conference will be held over  four days: March 22-25.
• The Office of Global Engagement led campus participation in the first annual UN Sustainable Development Goals Action and Awareness Week. The week featured a series of events and programs to highlight the many ways in which NC State is advancing the mission of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• On December 28, 2020, the NC State community lost a valued member of the pack. Dr. Dmitri Zaykin was an international alumnus of the class of 1999, earning his Ph.D. in Biomathematics. To honor his memory, Dr. Zaykin’s family has requested that family, friends, and former colleagues make a donation to the International Student Support Fund. To make a donation ‘in honor of, or in memory of,’ please use the name “Zaykin” as the Honoree Name. This will notify Dr. Zaykin’s wife and son, Svetlana and Roman, that a donation has been made in his memory.

From the Office of Information Technology:

• Universal Design for Learning During a Pandemic – The pandemic has created complex learning barriers for many students. Join Michelle Bartlett of the NC State College of Education and Crystal Tenan of the NC State IT Accessibility Office at  2 p.m. on Thursday, April 8 to learn how to utilize the three principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to serve diverse learners. You’ll also learn how to identify opportunities to implement UDL in your online, hybrid or in-person classroom. To register, visit REPORTER.
• The NC State IT Accessibility Office is sponsoring its annual Web Accessibility Challenge in celebration of the Tenth Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). Step up to the challenge and make your website more accessible and inclusive. The Web Accessibility Challenge encourages campus website owners and designers to make accessibility improvements to their websites and amplifies GAAD’s mission to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access, inclusion and people with different disabilities. The 2021 Web Accessibility Challenge will run Monday, April 12 through Friday, May 7. The challenge will recognize campus websites that improve their overall accessibility errors by the greatest percentage. To participate, complete the 2021 NC State Web Accessibility Challenge Form by Friday, April 2. You will be sent an initial accessibility report of your website along with instructions for the challenge. Challenge winners will be announced on Friday, May 14 on the NC State Website Accessibility Challenge Champions website. For questions or more information, contact the IT Accessibility Office at accessibility@ncsu.edu or at 919.513.4087. Take the Challenge!
• The Office of Information Technology will perform extended IT maintenance during the weekend of April 10-11. The MyPack Portal and services available via the portal might be degraded or unavailable for extended periods during the maintenance window from 6 a.m. Saturday, April 10 to 6 p.m. Sunday, April 11. This means you might NOT have access to your 2020 Form W-2 Wage and Tax Statement. Log in to the MyPack Portal now to download your Form W-2 prior to the maintenance window. 

From the NC State University Libraries:

• Join the Libraries on Thursday, March 25 from 2-3 p.m. for a facilitated discussion regarding student food and housing insecurity at NC State. During the course of this hour we will present new data on student homelessness and food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This new information builds upon a 2017 study which showed that 14% of NC State students were food insecure in the past 30 days and 9.6% had experienced homelessness in the past year. Joining us for a panel discussion are Dr. Mary Haskett (Professor of Psychology at NC State and Co-Chair of the NC State Student Food and Housing Security Initiative), author and filmmaker Diane Nilan (Dismazed and Driven: My Look at Family Homelessness in America) and recent NC State graduate and advocate, Indira Gutierrez, now a doctoral student at the University of South Carolina. Please register here.
• Tuesday, March 30 is the final day for faculty to apply for an Open Textbook Grant. A collaboration between the Libraries, DELTA, and Wolfpack Outfitters, the NC State Open Textbook Grants are a faculty incentive initiative encouraging the use of open textbooks while maintaining high quality course design and instruction. Proposals are being accepted from individual faculty and departmental groups for projects to explore and adopt open textbooks. 

Other Announcements:

• Two faculty members received the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by NC State and the university’s Board of Trustees. Chancellor Randy Woodson will recognize the awardees during a virtual Celebration of Faculty Excellence on May 4.The 2021 honorees are:
  • Bob Kelly, Alcoa Professor of Chemical Engineering, director of Biotechnology Program, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
  • Robin Moore, professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning, director of Natural Learning Initiative, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
• The Jenkins MBA Women’s Club is happy to announce that the seventh annual Innovative Women’s Conference will be held on Friday, March 26 via Zoom. The conference is designed to bring together women in the Triangle area – from graduate students to entrepreneurs to corporate executives – to encourage discussion and hands-on learning in the areas of business innovation, science, technology and entrepreneurship. Registration is free and more information will be coming soon.
• Congratulations to the Sisterhood Equity for Women nominees and awardees! The event was recorded and can be found @ www.go.ncsu.edu/sisterhood-2021. The awardees by category include:
  • Faculty Award: Jill Sexton, NC State University Libraries
  • Staff Award: Women & Minority Engineering Program – Laura Bottomley, Angelitha Daniel and Kimberly Pender
  • Student Awards: Undergraduate – Joanay Tann, Sociology; Graduate – Perusi Benson, Psychology
• Each spring, dozens of NC State students from across campus sell their original artwork at the Student Art Sale. Last year’s sale put over $10,000 in the pockets of student artists. In addition to a platform for selling artwork, students are selected for award prizes in 2D, 3D and digital work.
  • Student Art Sale Friday April 16 starting at noon. See all details.
  • Learn about the 2020 Visual Artist Award recipients.
  • Questions? – Please contact Amy Sawyers-Williams at acsawyer@ncsu.edu.