North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University is among more than 120 engineering schools in the United States leading a transformative movement in engineering education announced at the White House on March 24.

In a letter presented to President Barack Obama, N.C. A&T and peer institutions committed to establish special educational programs designed to prepare undergraduates to solve “Grand Challenges,” complex yet achievable goals to improve national and international health, security, sustainability and quality of life in the 21st century. Together, the schools plan to graduate more than 20,000 formally recognized Grand Challenge Engineers over the next decade.

The College of Engineering at A&T, a leading producer of African American engineers on the undergraduate level, will be an enabler for graduating engineers in accordance with the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) vision for ensuring a competitive engineering workforce ready to create solutions to the complex challenges of the present and the future.

The Grand Challenges Engineers Program will emphasize students gaining expertise in entrepreneurship and innovation; global and cross-cultural perspectives, and social consciousness with exposure and experience in other areas as specified in the deans’ letter to Obama.

“For the College of Engineering at N.C. A&T, the decision to participate in this initiative was any easy one for our leadership team since the elements central to preparing Grand Challenge Engineers align strongly with our strategic agenda,” said Dr. Robin Coger, dean.

“A&T’s engineering and computer science students have consistently built competitive portfolios in preparing for their professional careers. The GCEP at N.C. A&T is a logical ‘next step’ because it links that tradition with a nationwide framework.”

As a part of the initiative, Coger and engineering deans from around the country met with the White House and the NAE on March 24.

Goals of A&T’s GCEP include the following:

The program is designed to prepare the type of engineering workforce needed to address the complex technical problems of the nation and the world.

Each A&T Grand Challenge Engineer will build an individual portfolio that displays their accomplishments in the five key elements of the program (i.e., Grand Challenge research/projects, experiential and inter-disciplinary experiences, entrepreneurship and innovation, global and cross-cultural perspectives, and social consciousness).

The NAE’s Grand Challenges span topics ranging from energy and water to cyberspace security to engineering the tools of scientific discovery. Hence, these Challenges overlap strongly with the
five cross-department research strengths of the college.

Student portfolios will be assessed by a panel of industry partners. Students that meet the standards specified by GCEP at A&T will be recognized as Grand Challenge Engineers.

For more details about the initiative, see the National Academy of Engineering release, “U.S. Engineering Schools to Educate 20,000 Students to Meet Grand Challenges,” online at www.nae.edu. For more information about A&T’s College of Engineering, click here.

NBCUniversal and North Carolina A&T State University have established a partnership to further develop initiatives to direct graduates of historically black colleges and universities into media careers. The media and entertainment company donated $50,000 to the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication to support such efforts.

NBCUniversal was a sponsor of this year’s National Association of Black Journalists Multimedia Short Course, which convenes each spring at A&T. The short course program has been held for more than 20 years and is a rigorous four-day seminar that allows HBCU journalism students to gain hands-on experience and a practical understanding of broadcast newsroom jobs.

Exposing students to real-world media environments and introducing them to industry professionals has been a hallmark of the short course since its inception in the 1990s. A&T’s partnership with NBCUniversal will support such efforts to position HBCU graduates for careers in media, film and entertainment.

Journalism graduates of the JOMC department at A&T have found success with NBC-affiliated organizations, including Anzio Williams, ’94, vice president of news at NBC10-WCAU in Philadelphia; Danya Baachus, ’04, an NBC 7 News anchor in San Diego; and digital journalist Kyle Harvey, ’09, music editor for NBCUniversal’s thegrio.com, a multimedia news community that focuses on stories and issues that affect and reflect black America.

A&T joins other HBCUs that have partnered with NBCUniversal’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion to bolster the percentage of graduates of color who enter industry jobs. The partnerships also help the media organization find talent for media-related jobs.

The JOMC department also will utilize NBCUniversal’s Campus 2 Careers internship program. The internship initiative focuses on linking students to positions under the NBC umbrella that include news, research, TV programming and public relations.

NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corp. It is one of the world’s leading companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news and information to a global audience. NBCUniversal owns and operates a portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, the Universal Studios Theme Parks and a suite of Internet-based businesses.