Faculty and Staff Notes

Visiting Scholars on Campus

Fifteen graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are visiting campus this week for the Building Future Faculty program. Participants come from some of the nation's top universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rice University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others. The scholars' disciplines range from English to Civil Engineering, covering 10 departments in five colleges at NC State.

This year's program features presentations by Terri Lomax, vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, and Lisa Bullard, director of undergraduate studies in chemical and biomolecular engineering. Visiting scholars will meet with a panel of NC State faculty to discuss their experiences, and with Dr. Daniel Solomon, dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, for a question-and-answer session. Participants will be matched with a department based on their area of research interest. They will also participate in a presentation skills workshop, a curriculum vitae clinic, and tours of campus facilities.

Two previous Building Future Faculty scholars have joined the NC State faculty: Milton Welch, assistant professor of English and Africana studies; and Marc Dudley, assistant professor of English.

The Building Future Faculty program is sponsored by the Graduate School with funds from a National Science Foundation Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate grant, the College of Engineering, and the Office for Diversity and Inclusion. More information and photos from the 2008 program are available online.

Find Out About New Tax Withholding Tables

Payrolls processed in April will be calculated using new federal tax tables prompted by the Making Work Pay Credit in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed by President Obama in February. Many employees will realize lower federal income tax withholding as a result, but there are some pitfalls to be aware of. For more information, please refer to the article, "The Economic Stimulus Package: What's in it for you?" at http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/hr/news/.

Tetro to Head National Council

Mary Alice Tetro,  coordinator of Pre-Law Services, has been elected chair-elect of the Pre-Law Advisers National Council for 2009-11. She is president of the Southern Association of Pre-Law Advisers.

Office of Information Technology Rewards Excellence

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) has recognized Noah Genzel of Technology Support Services and Sundae Lewis of Enterprise Application Services as the winners of the 2009 OIT Awards for Excellence. The awards were announced at a ceremony March 23 in the Walnut Room of Talley Student Center. Dr. Marc Hoit, vice chancellor of information technology, presented plaques and $250 gift checks to Genzel and Lewis. The winners also received eight hours of paid time off and are now nominees for the NC State Award for Excellence.

Also nominated for the OIT awards were Jason Austin and Rhonda Greene of Outreach, Communications and Consulting; Brandon Barbour, Damian Boyce and Franklin Finch of Technology Support Services; and Sherwood Bryan, Craig Moore, Mitchell Nipper and Brian Ott of Enterprise Application Services.

New Campus Enterprises Division Formed

NC State bookstores, University Dining, and the associated entities of convenience stores, vending, concessions, and campus retail operations, as well as the All-Campus card, will now be organized under the new Campus Enterprises division, Chancellor James Oblinger announced last week. The mission of the new division will be to provide support for student facilities, programming and scholarship. Funding for the division will come from non-appropriated sources.

The responsibilities of the division will include managing the the Talley Student Center, Witherspoon Student Center, Erdhal-Cloyd Atrium, and support facilities in the future Town Center and Alliance Center on Centennial Campus. As the lead division for NC State’s retailing and hospitality functions, Campus Enterprises also will provide coordination with the Centennial Campus golf course and the future conference center and hotel. Student programming activities will continue to be part of the Student Affairs division.

Bob Wood has been named interim associate vice chancellor for Campus Enterprises until a national search can be completed for the position.

New Tourism Extension Web Site

The NC State Tourism Extension unit has launched a new Web site, which is designed to benefit extension agents and other professionals working throughout North Carolina. The Web site will provide useful information on a variety of tourism-related topics, identify resources, and provide a forum for sharing current news and information. Visit the new Tourism Extension Web site at http://www.ncsu.edu/tourismextension/.

Capitalism and Social Capital at Research Symposium

Students in design and public administration took top honors in the graduate student research symposium on March 18 at the McKimmon Center.

Alberto Rigau, a graduate student in graphic design, took first place. He says his study, "attempts to describe the consumer relationship to the credit card in its broader context in this financial landscape – in its ecology – to design a product to fit its content. The study evaluates some of the ways in which design can address consumption induced behaviors and proposes tools to help consumers manage, control and personalize fiscal activities."

Roxana Toma, who is working on her Ph.D. in public administration, took second place. She says her project, "investigates perceptions of corruption in the Romanian civil service and the factors that facilitate these perceptions." And, she notes, "While most of the literature treats administrative corruption as a principal-agent problem between the state and government employees, this study employs social capital theory in the context of cultural factors that exist in post-communist states and are associated with dysfunctional social capital, of which administrative corruption is a type."

McCall Receives Guggenheim Grant

Professor Patty McCall in the sociology department has received a grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation that will fund an 18-month study examining violent crime in the European Union. The cross-national study will evaluate the influences of social and economic factors on homicide at the subnational level. The findings will provide policymakers with information on the relationship between welfare policies and violent crime.

Cobb Briefs Congress on Nanotech

Political science professor Michael Cobb joined Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University, and 12 other recognized scholars studying the societal implications of nanotechnology, to brief the U.S. Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus, with an estimated attendance of 40 congressional staff and other federal policymakers on March 9. The briefing was organized by the NSF-funded Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU), in collaboration with the Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Cobb’s briefing presentation reported on data from both the National Citizens’ Technology Forum and the subsequent national public opinion poll about public values toward nanotechnology and human enhancement. These data suggest, among other findings, that the public remains hopeful about potential therapeutic advances but that upon deliberation they disfavor many particular potential enhancements.

Faculty Collaborate on Health Care Research

The Center for State and Local Government Excellence wants more help from NC State researchers to understand how to design, fund, and administer state and local government retiree health care. Rick Kearney, director of the School of Public and International Affairs, Jerrell Coggburn, chair of the Department of Public Administration, and Robert Clark, from the College of Management’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, are extending their data collection and analysis work for the national center.

“We’re examining the gaps in health care benefits for state, local, and teacher retirees,” says Kearney, who is serving as principal investigator. “The funding status of health care plans remains in flux, particularly in the context of the current economic crisis. The field of teacher retirement plans and funding status requires in-depth examination, as does the role of retiree health plans in strategic human resource planning.”

The team will use the data it collects to develop proposals for joint funding by other organizations with an interest in retiree health care.

NEH Grant Supports Book on Bergman

Professor Ora Gelley in the English department will conduct research in Rome this summer for her book project, Ingrid Bergman in Rossellini Italy: Stardom and the Politics of Neorealism, through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.