About the Bulletin

The Bulletin is North Carolina State University's faculty and staff newspaper. It is published every three weeks during the academic year and once per month during the summer. Approximately 7,200 copies of each Bulletin are distributed across campus through the university's Mail Services office.

The Bulletin is written, edited and designed by the NC State News Services office, which is a division of NC State's Office of Public Affairs.

The Bulletin Online is the publication's Internet version. In addition to providing an electronic version of the print Bulletin's content, the Bulletin Online provides fresh content between print cycles.

The Bulletin is the primary mechanism for the distribution of information to all of NC State's roughly 8,000 employees. As such, it plays an important role in the life of the university community.

The Bulletin distributes useful information to the university community in a timely, accurate and representative manner. It serves as a forum for the discussion of issues important to faculty and staff members. And it builds a sense of pride in NC State by highlighting the accomplishments and activities of the institution and its employees -- including the university's teaching, research and outreach efforts.

The Bulletin Online aims to be an interactive source of news and information that compliments the printed version. As such, it includes the same information in the printed in the printed Bulletin -- but aims to offer much more by capitalizing on the university's extensive World Wide Web presence. In short, it should be a user-friendly tool to access a wide variety of important, up-to-date information across the campus.

When a campuswide survey, conducted in 2000, asked what NC State employees want from the Bulletin, the answer was fairly apparent: A little bit of everything.

That's pretty much what the Bulletin aims to offer. In addition to news stories, the publication includes a wide variety of features, which run on a varying degree of regularity (usually depending upon space). They are:

Bulletin Board (runs every issue)
Calendar (runs every issue)
Faculty & Staff Notes (runs most issues)
Faculty & Staff In the News, a section which highlights the appearances by NC State faculty and staff in mainstream print and broadcast meeting (runs occasionally).
Faculty Senate and Staff Senate meeting agendas (run when necessary)
Provost's Column/Chancellor's Column (run frequently)
Guest Columns (run occasionally)
Obituaries (run occasionally)
Letters to the editor (run occasionally)

The Bulletin Online offers links to a wide variety of other important information which cannot be run in the printed Bulletin because of space restrictions.

There's a variety of ways to contact the staff of the Bulletin. The staff welcomes your comments, questions and concerns. We also would like to hear about potential stories for the Bulletin -- whether about a campus event, a university issue or an interesting employee.

The Bulletin staff strives to ensure that all faculty and staff members at NC State University have access to the printed Bulletin, which is distributed in bulk across campus by the Mail Services office. Office managers should not hesitate to notify us -- preferably in writing -- when they are not receiving enough copies to distribute to everyone who wants one.

The Bulletin staff supplies Mail Services with a list showing how many Bulletins should go into each campus mail box. The staff should update the list annually using computer print-outs from Administrative Computing Services. The staff also will immediately update the list if an office manager calls or writes to say that the number of people who receive Bulletins through a particular box has changed.

Because Mail Services cannot count out the number of copies for each box, we rely on them to make a quick, experienced guess when distributing the Bulletin. The distribution system, therefore, is imprecise; some boxes will receive a few too many, and some not enough. The News Services staff will provide extra Bulletin copies to those who tell us they have not received enough.

As NC State's faculty and staff newspaper, the Bulletin strives to keep the campus community informed. To do so, the staff needs to hear from readers: If you have a story idea, an opinion you'd like to share or an announcement you'd like to post, please let us know.

All items may be faxed to 515-2556, mailed to Campus Box 7504 or e-mailed to bulletin@ncsu.edu.

Deadlines: Due to space and time limitations, the deadline to submit informational items to the Bulletin is noon the Tuesday 10 days before the Friday of publication. (Please see the Deadlines/Publication Schedule information). Exceptions to the deadline rules can be considered -- but not guaranteed -- if advance notice is given, or if special arrangements are made for regularly published sections. If you have questions, please contact the Bulletin staff.

Style: The staff will edit submissions to comply with Associated Press style rules. Contributors do not need to know AP style, but they should make sure to include all pertinent information -- including time, date and location of events. When submitting an item for publication, please include your name and campus telephone number.

Notices: Brief items of interest to the faculty and staff -- including awards, publications, presentations, appointments, promotions, benefits, training sessions, construction notices, changes of office addresses and telephone numbers, college faculty meetings, retirements and receptions -- are published in the Bulletin. Items submitted are edited by the staff for brevity, clarity, style and grammar.

The Bulletin does not run "thank you" notices or notices that are of interest only to students. Items usually will run only once. However, the editor will consider requests to run short items again, if they are of broad, ongoing interest.

Calendar: NC State-sponsored events -- including films, forums, lectures, workshops, seminars, exhibitions and cultural events -- are published in the calendar. Calendar submissions should state the time, date, place, sponsor and title of the event, the name of the speaker and affiliation, the admission cost and the name and telephone of the contact person. Late submissions will not be printed; for more information, contact the Bulletin at bulletin@ncsu.edu or 515-3470.

Items appear in the Bulletin issued before the event date. Items are grouped by the dates of the events. Ongoing events, such as exhibitions, are grouped in a separate "Ongoing" category.

Feature and news articles: The Bulletin staff encourages faculty and staff members to give us their ideas for stories to run in the Bulletin. Call 515-3470 or e-mail bulletin@ncsu.edu if you have an idea for an NC State person, event, program or issue to be covered in the Bulletin.

Guest columns and letters to the editor: The Bulletin welcomes guest columns and letters to the editor. They may be on any topic of interest to the campus community. To be published, a letter or column must be signed and include the writer's campus address and telephone number. Letters are edited for style, grammar, clarity and length; they should address a single idea and should not exceed 250 words. Responses to columns published in the Bulletin are run as letters to the editor. Columns, which run when space is available, should generally be less than 550 words.

Contributors: Chad Austin, Cherry Crayton, Mick Kulikowski, Keith Nichols and Tracey Peake