People, ideas, and discoveries that impact North Carolina and the world

February 2009

What the World Needs Now

Holding hands
Neighborhood children watch NC State students build a Habitat for Humanity house in the Dominican Republic.

The toughest challenges confronting society are global-from the spread of rapidly evolving microbes to the growing risk of economic decline. At NC State, we believe global problems demand global leadership.

Just ask Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of the multinational force that is fighting to secure freedom and security for the Iraqi people. He earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering at NC State.

Or Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He earned a master's degree and two doctorates at NC State in the 1970s and later served on the faculty as an assistant professor of economics.

Pachauri returned to campus this year to headline the university's Emerging Issues Forum, leading a collaborative effort to build a plan for North Carolina's energy future.

Odierno and Pachauri – and thousands of NC State students and alumni – are putting their knowledge and expertise to work, and finding themselves at the center of global efforts to address many of society's most pressing needs, from the battle against violent extremism to the drive to expand access to education and economic opportunity.

Every year, hundreds of NC State students use their spring, summer and fall breaks to organize service trips around the globe. They've built houses in Ecuador, taught English to orphaned children in the Dominican Republic, assisted homeless families in Philadelphia, and worked with residents of the Gulf Coast struggling to rebuild their lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Students logged more than 100,000 volunteer hours last year alone.

An emphasis on global solutions extends to our classrooms and laboratories, driving us to collaborate across disciplines and across time zones. Our students are developing the driverless car of the future in collaboration with Lotus Engineering and working to understand the protein interactions that enable a fungal pathogen to threaten much of the world's rice crop.