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With enrollment hovering at 13,885 as of fall 2023, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (N.C. A&T) is the largest historically Black university in the country. With roots dating back to 1891, the university has evolved to address new technologies, especially in agriculture, and prepare readily employable graduates.
“We’re going to produce — and it’s happening now — graduates in critical areas at the research level, at the workforce level, in ways that are meeting critical needs particularly of talent,” says Dr. Tonya L. Smith-Jackson, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs. “As we are preparing our students for skills in artificial intelligence, we know that by 2030 there will be new positions that we don’t even know what they’re called at this point, but we want our students to be ready.”
At present, none of the nation’s 101 HBCUs has Research 1 status, which refers to doctoral universities with high research activity. N.C. A&T is joining other HBCUs, like Morgan State University in Baltimore, in taking steps to achieve that prestigious classification. At the institution, academic studies are divided among nine colleges, two schools, and an extended campus, each with a specific focus. The number of master’s degree and doctoral degree programs continues to grow and the faculty is achieving national and international recognition for its research.
Equity
Seeing so many African American undergraduate and graduate students excelling in STEM fields is inspiring to Smith-Jackson. Citing the shortage of STEM graduates across the nation, she says these students are filling positions of impact, including national security. Looking at the average first salary offers for recent graduates, she points out that N.C. A&T is the second highest among institutions in the University of North Carolina System.Â
“We graduate the very highest number of Black engineers, Black women engineers, Black agriculturists,” says Smith-Jackson. “It’s quite important that more STEM degrees are being produced in the United States because without that we just won’t be able to address the very difficult issues that require all disciplines, but also require STEM, like climate change.”
Over the course of more than 30 years as a faculty person and researcher, Dr. Godfrey A. Uzochukwu, a professor in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and the founding director of N.C. A&T’s Interdisciplinary Waste Management Institute (WMI), has taught more than 12,000 students. Among them is the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Michael S. Regan.
“Our aim is to train students with in-depth knowledge of how to develop innovative and creative solutions,” says Uzochukwu. “We focus on interdisciplinary learning in our degree and certificate programs at undergraduate and graduate levels. We infuse ethics, character, and leadership with our courses as unique features. The reason for this is they will graduate and serve society.”
Under Uzochukwu’s leadership, N.C. A&T has hosted six successful national conferences to address current and emerging environmental issues and solutions, and foster relationships that result in partnerships to protect and sustain the environment. He has achieved national recognition and has been named chair of the Science Advisory Board Clean Air Status and Trends Network, a rural ambient air monitoring network that works with the EPA to provide information on air pollution in national parks, in rural states, and on tribal lands.
Dr. Paula E. Faulkner, a professor of agricultural education and co-director of N.C. A&T’s 1890 Center of Excellence for Student Success and Workforce Development (SSWD), earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at N.C. A&T. The nurturing she received as a student motivated her to pursue a career in science and fueled her desire to return to the university in 2007 and give the same to students. SSWD is dedicated to encouraging and supporting young people from underrepresented minority groups to pursue studies and careers in food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences, and other STEM fields.
“One thing that’s happening here at A&T and especially with digital agriculture and digital technology are the robots that we have out at the farm with the dairy unit,” says Faulkner. University Farm is a 492-acre working, producing farm. It has a robotics milking system.
Agriculture is a complex field and N.C. A&T is on the cutting edge. “We have so many students who love drones, robotics, and artificial intelligence,” says Faulkner. “Also, we’re getting people out of the silos. We are encouraging researchers and faculty across campus in different disciplines to work together.”
Ambition
N.C. A&T is working to get undergraduate students more involved in scientific research projects, says Faulkner.
“If you do it early on when they’re undergraduate students, they will be more prepared if they go on to the graduate college for their master’s and Ph.D.s. In our department we have an undergraduate research program that allows undergraduate students to work side by side with researchers in the College of Agriculture,” she says.
Faulker has a research project with the U.S. Department of Agriculture for which she’s partnered with researchers in Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies. Four undergraduate students worked with her and were able to travel with her to Grenada to do poster presentations on the research they conducted.
Smith-Jackson says N.C. A&T works to be a producer of knowledge. Having robust doctoral programs sets up a strong ecosystem where the knowledge enterprise produces new knowledge for others to use. This is particularly important when looking at people of color who have not been researched and have had others’ theories imposed upon them.
“We get to bring a lens such that we can develop knowledge that’s going to be meaningful, helpful, beneficial to people who have been underserved,” Smith-Jackson says. “That’s why these doctoral programs are so very important, and ultimately as a possible outcome, it gets us to R1.”
Dr. Leonard L. Williams is director and professor of food safety and microbiology at N.C. A&T Center for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies (CEPHT), located on the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC) in Kannapolis. This is a $1.5 billion biopolis making breakthrough discoveries in nutrition. It involves seven state-supported universities and one private university, including UNC Chapel Hill, NC State, and Duke.
“The primary goal is discovering better ways to preserve or process fruits and vegetables to prevent diseases,” says Williams. “Secondly, we are trying to enhance the health and well-being of our stakeholders, in particular North Carolinians, because this is a state-funded initiative through House Legislative appropriations. Thirdly, we want to increase the value to our North Carolina agriculture by improving ways to retain freshness, preserve health-promoting compounds and nutrients that will make our food safe for consumption.”
There are currently 18 ongoing projects at the CEPHT. In one of the projects, a scientist is focused on discovering ways to develop new low-carbohydrate prebiotic cereal snackbars that contain no sugar or additives, which would help improve gut health. Williams is working on research focused on developing an all-natural, anti-viral disinfectant that has shown promising results in controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2.Â
Williams is also involved in curriculum development and recently received a $600,000 grant focused on food allergies research in education. He says N.C. A&T offers students excellent experiential learning opportunities, which spurs innovation and intellectual property.
“N.C. A&T is very strong on teaching our students how to be effective and critical thinkers, and also taking what they learn in the classroom and in laboratories and applying it to real world applications and solving real world problems,” he says.
Although Williams is not on the main campus, he still serves as a mentor and advisor to undergraduate and graduate students, high schoolers, and post-doctoral scholars. The CEPHT is located near a train station, and students come from the main campus to observe, learn, and take part in research. Mentoring is of particular interest to Williams because he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from N.C. A&T, where he found his life’s passion as an undergraduate.
“Now, the medical industry understands how agriculture plays a crucial role in overall health and wellbeing,” says Williams.
Athletics
“There are not a lot of R1s that don’t have robust athletics programs,” says Earl M. Hilton III, N.C. A&T’s director of intercollegiate athletics. “Athletics provides a set of activities around which current students and alumni engage with the institution and provides the setting for the transmission of the institutional culture, the traditions, the lure, the values of an institution,” he says.
It is often the activity around which the larger community engages with the institution, says Hilton, adding that successful athletics programs often serve as a proxy for the academic strength of the institution to the national audience.
Hilton describes the Aggies as having “a dogged, unrelenting commitment to excellence and being the very best that we can be in every possible endeavor.” The goal of N.C. A&T coaches, he says, is to identify young men and women who are prepared to embrace being students and meet the demanding academic rigor of the university while being coached and developed to championship level athletes.
“If we can hit some key areas in terms of dealing with stress, dealing with deadlines, learning how to work with people that are new and unfamiliar to you toward common goals and objectives, overcoming disappointment and frustration, then our young people have the tools necessary to not only succeed in college and athletics but certainly once they leave us and go into the wider world to be successful professionally and personally,” says Hilton.
Innovation
N.C. A&T watches trends and works to innovate with its $202 million endowment, the largest of any public HBCU and among the top HBCUs, public or private, in America. “Whether it’s curriculum design, micro-credentialing, new degree programs, and graduate degree programs, we’re making sure we’re producing people who can meet future needs,” says Smith-Jackson.
Dr. Kaushik Roy is the Jefferson-Pilot/Ron McNair endowed chair in the department of computer science in the College of Engineering. He is also director of the Center for Trustworthy AI (artificial intelligence), the Center for Cyber Defense (a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity), and the Cyber Defense and AI lab. Roy has been the principal investigator or co-principal on $23 million in research grants funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense (DoD), National Security Agency, Department of Energy, and CISCO Systems.
“The Center for Trustworthy AI is mainly funded by the Office of Naval Research, DoD,” says Roy, who is leading the project, which also has 12 other faculty members involved. “It is five years, $9 million funding, so it is extremely multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, so we have 10 departments involved, not only computer engineering and computer science. We have faculty from outside the College of Engineering. For example, we have departments of education, criminal justice, and sociology.
“This is a center where we can conduct research to advance trustworthy technology,” he continues. “Our focus is how to develop safe, secure and reliable AI technology through inclusive and multi-disciplinary research.”
There is a focus on cyber defense. Roy says issues around healthcare, agriculture, robotics, and natural language processing are also being addressed. Several students are involved with the research. One challenging and interesting point they are exploring is whether there is bias in an algorithm. Another is whether a decision can be made with sparse data.
Roy is playing a significant role in the push to Research 1. As a faculty member and endowed chair, submitting proposals, securing funding, conducting inclusive research, being published and presenting at conferences are all important. The work around AI is especially impactful. He tries to develop and offer new courses related to AI, and he led the development of an online master’s program in cyber security.
“I believe we’re going toward the right direction,” says Roy, who sees across the university increased research, meaningful collaborations with other universities, significant hires and excellent students completing their doctorates.
Williams shares an N.C. A&T motto: “Aggies are always doing and never done.”