ec alumni :: winter 2013

PAINTING SAN DIEGO PURPLE GREEN! Holly Smithson ‘92 represents East Carolina wherever she goes.

MISSION TO MARS Scott Maxwell ‘92 drives the Mars rover Curiosity for NASA.

A WINNING VISIONElexis Gillette ‘07 competes in the 2012 Paralympics in London.

Taste of SuccessDave Fussell ’90 has made success come to fruition at Duplin Winery

Wounded WarriorArmy First Lt. Nathan Rimpf ’10 was injured July 8 in Afghanistan just two months after arriving there. Rimpf ’s injuries included the loss of one leg below the knee and the other leg lost through the knee. This past summer he received prosthetic limbs at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C. where he continues to recover. Rimpf ’s rehabilitation progress has outpaced expectations; just fourteen weeks after his injury in Afghanistan he hand-biked the Army Ten Mile Run on October 21 in Washington, D.C.

Rimpf assisted officials with the opening coin toss for the annual military appreciation game on October 27 against Navy. His brother Brian was an offensive lineman for the Pirates from 1999-2003 and is currently the head football coach at Jack Britt High School in Fayetteville.

Anyone who wishes to assist Rimpf or his family can do so through the “Nathan Rimpf Support Fund” page on Facebook. Contributions can also be made to the Wounded Warrior Project at www.woundedwarriorproject.org or 877-TEAM-WWP. The mission of the Wounded Warrior Project is to honor and empower wounded warriors by providing programs and services to meet the needs of each injured service member.

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9 painting san diego purple green! Holly

Smithson ’92 represents ECU wherever her career takes her, including

California’s clean technology field

12 mission to mars Scott Maxwell ’92 beat the odds to

drive a rover for NASA

16 taste of success Dave Fussell ’90 has made success

come to fruition at Duplin Winery

22 a winning vision Elexis Gillette ’07 sees his way to

silver at his third Paralympics

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

Dave Fussell ’90 presents a bottle of Duplin Winery’s signature Carolina Red straight off the bottling line in his facilities in Rose Hill

ON THE COVER

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dear pirate nation

pirate connections

legislative matters

advancement update career corner

around campus

a look back

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EC Alumni, the magazine of the East Carolina Alumni Association, takes a closer look at the accomplishments of our alumni, bringing you engaging feature articles highlighting their success. EC Alumni also features news from around campus, updates from University Advancement, career advice, how alumni and friends can support ECU’s legislative initiatives, and a look back at the University’s treasured history.

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2 EC ALUMNI WINTER 2013

In this season of Thanksgiving, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on how great it is to be a Pirate! We have a lot to be thankful for and celebrate at East Carolina. Here is my personal list. I am thankful for:

Our alumni scholarship program since 2005 has awarded more than $225,000 to 178 students. Take a few minutes to visit PirateAlumni.com/2012Scholars where you’ll meet this year’s recipients.

Dentists. We are now making an impact and fulfilling our mission of service by educating dentists to address the dental health crisis our state faces. This is just another example of East Carolina being the University FOR North Carolina.

The Pirates will be making a trip to a bowl game for the sixth time in the past seven years and out of the ground is rising another world-class athletic facility with construction of the Basketball Practice Facility.

Membership in the Alumni Association is at an all-time high and on the verge of breaking the 8,000 member threshold, a good milestone for a program that is a mere six years old.

Most of all I am thankful for our supportive and passionate alumni. East Carolina University has a proud heritage and big dreams due in large part to our generous alumni and friends.

It has been said that, “If you are standing still, you are also going backwards. It takes great effort to maintain forward movement.” The East Carolina Alumni Association is constantly moving forward and we need your help to keep us moving in the right direction!

By now many of you have received an invitation to participate in our Alumni Satisfaction Survey. This is part of our ongoing effort to ensure that the programs and services we offer are aligned with the most important needs of the 140,000 alumni we serve throughout the Pirate Nation. If you have already completed the survey, thank you for your feedback. If you have yet to fill out the survey, I encourage you to participate in this important study. You can access the survey online at www.pegsurvey.com/eastcarolina12.

As you and your family celebrate your many blessings during the holiday season, I want to extend our most heartfelt thank you for all you do for East Carolina!

Keep living a Pirate’s life,

Paul J. CliffordPresident & CEO

The mission of the East Carolina Alumni Association is to inform, involve, and serve members of the ECU family throughout their lifelong relationship with the University.

Paul J. CliffordPRESIDENT AND CEO

Monique BestACCOUNTING TECHNICIAN

Linda Cataldo ’80ALUMNI CENTER COORDINATOR

Jackie DrakeASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR ALUMNI COMMUNICATIONS

Candi High ’97ACCOUNTANT

Michael S. Kowalczyk ’09, ’10ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR ALUMNI PROGRAMS

Shawn Moore ’91, ’98ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR ALUMNI PROGRAMS

Doug Smith ’00, ’07VICE PRESIDENT FOR

ALUMNI MEMBERSHIP & MARKETING

Chris Williams ’01ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR ALUMNI MEMBERSHIP

EC Alumni (ISSN: 2152-3886) is published quarterly by the East Carolina Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is a member of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and Council of Alumni Association Executives (CAAE) and is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that operates interdependently with East Carolina University. The views expressed in EC Alumni magazine do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Alumni Association or the University. Reproduction of EC Alumni in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

©2012 East Carolina Alumni Association

Read EC Alumni online at:PirateAlumni.com/ECAlumni

ISSN: 2152-5668

To contact us or comment on this magazine:252-328-4723 | 800-ECU-GRAD

[email protected]

Send change of address to:East Carolina Alumni Association Taylor-Slaughter Alumni Center

Mail Stop 305East Carolina University

Greenville, NC 27858-4353

EC Alumni is paid for with non-state funds.

DEAR PIRATE NATION

VOL. 6, NO. 1ALUMNI

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Pirate Career CastsCareer-related Webcasts to enhance your work experience P

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Pirate Career Casts are interactive webcasts, hosted by the Alumni Association and various ECU departments, facilitated by industry experts. Offered throughout the academic year, each session covers career-related topics relevant to today’s competitive market. You will have the opportunity to gain insights, engage in discussion, and get answers to your questions on a different topic each month.

Pirate Career Casts, which are held once a month (generally the first Wednesday) from 12:30-1:30 p.m. ET, are FREE for Alumni Association members. When you register for a session, you will be given a web address to access the webcast on the day of your session. A PowerPoint presentation will be included in your session for reference. Participants are also welcome to attend a Pirate Career Cast in person on ECU’s campus at the Global Classroom in the Science and Technology building.

If there is a career topic you would like to learn more about, please contact Assistant Director of Alumni Programs Shawn Moore ’91, ’98 at [email protected].

Spring Dates and Topics:

Preventing and Resolving Conflicts in the WorkplaceWednesday, January 9Presented by Shawn Condon with theECU Office of Human Resources

A Pirate’s Guide to Life Insurance Wednesday, February 6Presented by Cathy Relvas-Green of Liberty Mutual

Preparing for a Career ChangeWednesday, March 6Presented by Jessie Langley with theECU Career Center

Business Etiquette in the WorkplaceWednesday, April 3Presented by T.D. Gribble with the ECU College of Business

How to be a Millionaire by SavingMoney in Your Retirement PlanWednesday, May 1Presented by David Damm of Carolina Wealth Management

Class of 1963 50th Golden Alumni ReunionCome home and celebrate 50 years of being a Pirate

Calling all members of the Class of 1963! Come back home to Greenville May 9-10, 2013 to reunite with fellow alumni for a special Golden Alumni Reunion weekend.

This reunion includes participation in campus tours; the Senior Salute Dinner, which celebrates the accomplishments of East Carolina graduates past and present; recognition at the Candlelight Induction ceremony where members of the Class of 1962 pass the torch of Pirate Pride to the newest East Carolina alumni, the Class of 2012; and a special reunion dinner.

The highlight of the reunion for class members will be leading the Class of 2013 into Friday’s Commencement ceremony in Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. All reunion participants will wear gold robes and Golden Alumni Reunion medallions to signify their Golden Alumni status. Look for more details soon or contact Shawn Moore at 800-ECU-GRAD or [email protected].

Class of 1963


PIRATE CONNECTIONS

Jim Newman Jr. ’68, ’74, ChairRaleigh, NC

Angela Moss ’97, ’98, Vice ChairRaleigh, NC

Neal Crawford ’85, TreasurerRichmond, VA

Glenda Palmer-Moultrie ’79, SecretaryDerwood, MD

Carl Davis ’73, Immediate Past ChairRaleigh, NC

Paul J. Clifford, President and CEOGreenville, NC

Diane Davis Ashe ’83, ’85Celebration, FL

Dean Browder ’77Winston-Salem, NC

William Burnette ’96Virginia Beach, VA

Tarrick Cox ’96, ’07Greenville, NC

Adrian Cullin ’04Charlotte, NC

Ralph Finch ’67Midlothian, VA

Jeff Foster ’83Winterville, NC

Dave Fussell Jr. ’90Rose Hill, NC

Robin Good ’80Houston, TX

Duane Grooms ’80, ’82Columbia, SC

Melanie Holden ’79Raleigh, NC

John Israel ’82Norfolk, VA

Wesley Johnson ’85Powder Springs, GA

Pat Lane ’67Chocowinity, NC

Charlie Martin Jr. ’68Greenville, NC

Marian McLawhorn ’67, ’88, ’97Grifton, NC

Michael McShane ’66Alexandria, VA

Doug Morgan ’88South Riding, VA

Dan Spuller ’06, ’07Raleigh, NC

Ainee Lynnette Taylor ’97Winterville, NC

Allen Thomas ’92Winterville, NC

Jason Tomasula ’00, ’03, ’10Charlotte, NC

EMERITUS MEMBERS:Virgil Clark ’50

Greenville, NCDave Englert ’75

Norfolk, VA

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Regional Networking and Family-Friendly EventsNetworking and social events coming to a city near you

Looking to make connections in your city or town? The East Carolina Alumni Association will be visiting many cities this spring and summer to host business networking events, where we will feature accomplished alumni in your region, as well as provide you with an opportunity to mingle with fellow alumni. Some of these regions include Raleigh; Southeast Virginia; Washington, D.C. metropolitan area; and more.

Family-friendly events such as visits to amusement parks, zoos, and local attractions will also be planned. Cities with planned events include Baltimore, MD; Charlotte; Williamsburg, VA; Wilmington; and many more. Plan to bring your family members and friends as Pirates take over for a day full of fun. For more information or to register for these events, visit PirateAlumni.com for updates and calendar postings.

Uphold ECU’s mottoServire this AprilApril is Service Month

The University’s motto encourages students, faculty, and staff to get involved with community service. Last year 4,819 students worked with 762 community partners to provide 88,787 hours of volunteerism and service learning.

From the students to alumni like you, service to others and giving back to make a positive difference in the world is what East Carolina is built on. The Alumni Association encourages all alumni and friends to get involved! Plan ahead and get together with fellow alumni to coordinate a service project for fellow alumni in your area or let us know how you plan to contribute on your own this April. To get started, simply contact Shawn Moore ’91, ’98 at [email protected] or 800-ECU-GRAD.

SAVE THE DATE!Pirate Alumni Road Race

and Fun RunSaturday, April 20

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Get InvolvedAlumni support is critical in the coming legislative session; get to know your new legislators!The North Carolina General Assembly will convene in January for its 2013 long session with a host of new leaders who will make critical decisions for the state over the next two years. Based on election data from the University of North Carolina General Administration, as well as the North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation, it is clear that a new political landscape has emerged as a result of the most recent elected cycle.

The 2012 General Election in North Carolina yielded a voter turnout of more than sixty-eight percent with over 4.5 million ballots cast by registered voters. The potential policy outcomes and results of these political races in both the executive and legislative branches will begin to shape the future of public higher education in North Carolina for years to come. Highlights from the 2012 state level elections include:

• Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, who visited East Carolina University’s campus twice on the campaign trail, was elected governor with over fifty-four percent of the vote.

• All incumbents seeking to defend their Council of State seats were victorious in this election cycle.

• The leadership of the state legislature will remain unchanged within both houses over the next biennium.

• Including the thirteen new members elected in November to the NC Senate, approximately thirty of the fifty senators will begin either their first or second terms in January.

• The NC House of Representatives will be home to forty-three new members. Of the 120 members representing this body, approximately sixty-nine will be serving in their first or second term.

In addition to the key points of interest noted above, East Carolina University is fortunate have several alumni representing their respective districts and the University in the North Carolina General Assembly for the next two years. Some of the alumni of the university elected to serve in the state legislature are pictured to the right.

In the coming months, East Carolina University will work collaboratively with

leaders at the University of North Carolina General Administration to begin an outreach process for new and existing members of the North Carolina General Assembly. One of the most critical components of collaborating with new members of the legislature in the coming months will be to integrate them into the ECU community. As we navigate future challenges and opportunities, we will continue to need the support of alumni to tell the university’s story and share with our elected officials the positive impact East Carolina University has on this state.

It is our goal to support the work of the legislature as we ensure a quality academic experience for our students, create jobs for the future workforce, spur economic development, maximize efficiencies, and serve the people of North Carolina. The support of the legislature is critical in order for ECU to deliver on these promises and fulfill our mission. We appreciate the efforts of state government leaders to protect higher education moving forward and we will continue to do our part as a university.

Rep. Larry Bell Duplin, Sampson, and Wayne Counties

Rep. Rayne Brown Davidson County

Sen. Don Davis Greene, Lenoir, Pitt, and Wayne Counties

Rep. Marvin Lucas Cumberland County


A laboratory without walls, created through the generosity of two friends of East Carolina University, might help researchers one day determine causes and possible treatments for Alzheimer’s and other degenerative neurological disorders.

The Harriet and John Wooten Laboratory for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research opened officially in 2008 as not so much a place as a stimulus for interdisciplinary research through the Brody School of Medicine. Dr. Robert M. Lust, chairman of the Department of Physiology, says the laboratory encourages collaborative study into the hows and whys of Alzheimer’s and other similar diseases.

As early as 2003-04, a gift to the ECU Medical and Health Science Foundation helped bring about better coordination for research efforts. The gift came from Drs. John and Harriet Wooten and was intended to promote research into both basic sciences and experimental sciences related to neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. John Wooten was the first orthopedic surgeon east of Interstate 95 in North Carolina when he opened his practice in 1954. He was the son of Dr. W.I. Wooten, a founder of what later became Pitt County Memorial Hospital in Greenville. John Wooten had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease several years before he died in 2004 but was involved in the early planning for the gift to ECU. Dr. Harriet Wooten, who now lives in Greenville, was one of the first female doctors in the region and worked for many years in ECU Student Health Services, working with Dr. Fred Irons.

The foundation formally established the Wooten Laboratory in 2008 as a multidisciplinary effort to encourage research

Laboratory Without Walls

involving faculty members from both the medical and academic campuses of the university. Faculty members in such departments as physiology, anatomy and cell biology, microbiology and immunology, family medicine, physical therapy, and psychology are involved in research at the laboratory.

An advisory board, headed by Lust, also includes members of the medical community outside the University, including Dr. Lamont Wooten of Orthopaedics East in Greenville, son of Harriet and John Wooten. The advisory

board receives applications for grants to finance research;

faculty members become affiliated with the lab in two-year terms as a way to seek and receive grant money and conduct their

research.The Wootens’

generosity, through their initial gift and later

contributions, acts like seed money in financing grants for research. The contributions also help recruit additional researchers, known as investigators, as well as financing student research. In

The late Dr. John Wooten

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ADVANCEMENT UPDATE

conjunction with the East Carolina chapter of the Society of Neuroscience, the lab also cosponsors an annual neurosciences symposium and prizes for top research papers. The 2012 symposium, conducted in early November, brought Dr. Oscar Lopez, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh, to Greenville to talk about prevention and risk factors for dementia in the elderly.

Lust says the work of the laboratory is not based on examining or treating Alzheimer’s patients but does involve animal research while seeking to determine causes of neurodegenerative diseases at the molecular and cellular level.

“What you want is ‘early-early,’ an explanation of how you get from normal to abnormal, from mild cognitive impairment, not overt dementia, to more advanced stages. We want to identify progressive characteristics and identify potential therapeutical concepts.”

As Lamont Wooten explains, one of biggest results of his parents’ grant is that it allows the laboratory to finance a “colony” of genetically bred mice, which provides subjects for researchers to study.

“To have an animal model that doesn’t have a very long lifetime gives investigators a good opportunity to see a disease evolve, and maybe even intervene in it,” he says.

“This is unique in some ways for the School of Medicine in that we do not include treatment” of patients, Lust says of the lab’s operation. In 2010 laboratory researchers and organizers decided that seeking a common, collaborative resource encompassing several areas of research

would be the best approach.An example of collaborative research

that already has taken place involved an investigator doing research initially on multiple sclerosis. That investigator later began working with other researchers in the lab after observing links with the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. That researcher, Dr. Mark D. Mannie, continues his work in the Wooten Lab.

Before 2003, researchers might have been “looking at pieces of the neurodegenerative diseases puzzle, but no one had the means to look past their own individual research,” Lust says. “Now, bringing together common-minded faculty members is where things start.”

Dr. Qun Lu, associate professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, is director and principal investigator of the Wooten Lab. He calls the interdisciplinary approach to research into degenerative neurological diseases “something unique. Here, we want investigators to use their expertise in their own areas to work together. The principal investigators’ expertise might not be in the Alzheimer’s disease field, but they are involved in areas that can point in that direction.”

When Lu arrived at ECU in 2008, he said one of his goals “was to answer a call from the Wooten family to promote multidisciplinary research” at ECU. In Lu’s earlier experience at Harvard University, researchers often focused on one or two aspects of a problem—“in a very focused approach”—but the drawback was that “if everything is in one basket, and if it turns out not to be working, then there was a waste of money and time.”

The Wootens financed the lab’s startup as a research process because “they really wanted to know what is going on in the brain. Their passion was a little different” from other Alzheimer’s research projects, which often focus purely on treatment and on training for caregivers, for patients and their families, Lu says.

“Very few actually emphasize support for molecular-cellular research. We want to study causes and the pathological mechanisms as a way to learn how to stop the progression of the disease.”

This kind of research could help the medical community deal with such issues as early-onset Alzheimer’s, as has been diagnosed in famed basketball coach Pat Summitt, for example. It might extend into such areas as cognitive impairment brought on by battle injuries among soldiers, or by head injuries and concussions among athletes, and perhaps even research into autism among children, Lu says.

The ECU laboratory is still in its early stages of development and is not a multi-million-dollar operation, at least not yet. “For us, it doesn’t take a lot of money to make an impact” in this area of research, Lust says.

But since its formal start, the Wooten Lab has “initiated several important programs to promote the regional awareness of neurodegenerative diseases in aging populations,” according to a university description of the lab, and the research being conducted at the lab could help investigators determine how diseases such as Alzheimer’s progress, Lust says.

“We are getting regional visibility so far. We will rise to a national level of prominence as we have more participants funded by (such resources as) the National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense,” he says. Of course, NIH research funds are in danger of decreasing dramatically because of federal budget restrictions.

That’s where private grant sources have become so valuable. Dr. Harriet Wooten “wanted to increase the visibility for this kind of research,” which would help attract other sources of funding for the foundation, Lust says. “Without her, or someone like her, we would not have started. She approached us, wanting to do something in this area. She really was an angel.”

To find a Walk to End Alzheimer’s in your area, visit act.alz.org.


ADVANCEMENT UPDATE

Ever since she was a little girl, Sue Collier wanted to be a nurse. And when she began to investigate where to pursue that goal, she had only one choice: East Carolina University. She earned an undergraduate degree in nursing from 1977-1981, stayed in Greenville to work as a staff nurse and head nurse in the surgery/trauma intensive care unit at Vidant Medical Center (formerly Pitt County Memorial Hospital), then returned to ECU to complete a master’s degree in 1991. Now Collier serves as vice president for patient and family experience at Vidant Health, the parent organization of Vidant Medical Center.

A Rocky Mount native, Collier comes from a family in which service to others was a given. Her mother was a nurse and an active volunteer in the community, her father a treasurer for the local PTA. Other members of her mother’s family also were nurses.

The idea of service to community, as signified by ECU’s slogan, “Servire,” resonated with her growing up and into her college days. She was in the charter group of ECU Ambassadors, she belonged to the Gamma Sigma Sigma service sorority, and she tutored in math and chemistry.

“ECU offered me not just an education, but also a way to give back,” she says, and the opportunity to serve is what attracted Collier to become involved in the ECU Women’s Roundtable.

She attended a program in 2007 at which the Roundtable recognized 100 top women at ECU, “and I was blown away by the level of leadership these women showed,” she said. “It helped connect me with an untapped resource in the community, and it made me realize how women can truly make change happen.”

She was invited to join the Women’s Roundtable in 2010 and was elected to the board in 2011. “It’s inspiring,” she says. “It’s an experience we don’t always get, because we don’t always get the chance to be in an assembly of so many brains and so many hearts of those who represent the epitome of female leadership.”

Collier herself is an example of community involvement and leadership. She rose through the nursing ranks to become a clinical nurse specialist in 1988, before getting her master’s degree. She then became

a project manager at the hospital, specializing in patient-focused care and care management in 1993. In 1996, she became administrator of corporate planning and marketing at Vidant Health (formerly University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina).

In 2006, she was appointed as vice president for planning and strategic development for Vidant Health, and in 2009 she was appointed to her current position, vice president of patient and family experience.

Along the way, she has served on the board and been president of the Carolinas Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development, and an active member of the Institute of Patient-Family Centered Care. In the Greenville area, she has served on the boards of Children’s Hospital of Eastern Carolina, Pitt Community College Foundation, Family Violence Center and Shelter, and most recently United Way of Pitt County, where she co-chairs the Community Impact Cabinet. Among other activities, she also has served as president of the Greenville Community Shelter and past chair of the strategic planning committee of the Greenville-Pitt County Chamber of Commerce.

In her time at ECU and in Greenville, she has seen changes in the way women are active in their communities and take on more leadership roles. “Women have learned how to influence and make change happen, despite any barriers,” she says, and the Women’s Roundtable is an agent for such influence and change. “This is not a women’s club, and it’s not an activist group. We want to harness the talents and resources of women at the university and in the community. We are showing how women can develop a leadership role at ECU and in the community and region.” In some respects, the Roundtable, which started in 2003, is still evolving, “but we have hit our stride. We have power that’s been exercised through our philanthropy, through our scholarships for future leaders.”

Developing future leadership among young women is one area in which she is especially interested. She is involved in the committee that has started a new Roundtable program that links mentors from the community with college students

as a way to help the students develop real-world leadership skills. This should instill confidence and assuredness in young women ready to go into the world, she says.

Despite her many community obligations, Collier says she still is deeply involved in the elements of nursing, even though she no longer is “at the bedside.” Her current role helps create more and better partnerships between the healthcare providers and patients and their families.

“My experiences at ECU and at the College of Nursing instilled a sense of pride in this region, and a sense of passion and commitment to assure patients and their families have the best possible experience,” Collier says.

Going to ECU and now serving on the Women’s Roundtable has provided Collier with what she calls a “trifecta”—three objectives being satisfied at once: the opportunity to serve the university and community, to provide leadership development opportunities for women, and support her alma mater.

“It’s a chance for me to give back, because I appreciate how much ECU has done for me. Why would I not do this kind of service in the community?

“I didn’t believe I would stay in Greenville after completing my undergraduate degree, but I fell in love with the community and the university. Now I am embedded here. There’s something magnetic about this place,” she says.

“ECU matched so many things important to me and my family. It’s not just close to home, but close to heart.”

Women’s Roundtable ProfileSue Collier ’81, ’91

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From Washington, D.C. to California, Holly Smithson ’92 is one Pirate whose career voyage has taken her from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond.

“Everyone out here just assumes that because I’m from North Carolina that I must be a Tar Heel, but I proudly declare ‘no, I’m a Pirate!’” says Smithson, who leads a clean technology trade organization in San Diego.

A North Carolina native, Smithson grew up in Wrightsville Beach. Her older brother Bill also graduated from East Carolina, “and he had nothing but terrific things to say about the Pirates,” Smithson said. “So I decided to join my brother and tap into all the great things he was experiencing on campus.”

Smithson majored in broadcast

journalism, and began her career as a local newscaster before breaking into politics in Raleigh and eventually Capitol Hill, where she lobbied for energy-related policies. When she was ready for a new adventure, she headed west for California’s “green rush” to enter its progressive clean technology industry.

Clean technology is any technology, used in various sectors like transportation or manufacturing, that includes sustainable, renewable or alternative methods and related business models.

This summer Smithson was promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer of CleanTECH San Diego, a non-profit business organization she helped launch in 2008 that brings together clean technology

stakeholders to stimulate innovation and advocate for new sources of capital, workforce development, federal and state research funding, international trade, targeted regulation and sustainable land use planning and development.

“For a small town girl operating in a global economy, if you want to get out and make your mark in the world, you need to understand there are lots of different backgrounds, philosophies, attitudes and approaches,” said Smithson, referencing the lifelong lessons she learned at East Carolina. “I came from a very strict upbringing, so for me, my freshman year was a fantastic opportunity to get out and spread my wings and meet people from all over the country,” she commented.

Painting San Diego Purple Green!Holly Smithson ’92 represents ECU wherever her career takes her, including California’s clean technology field


“Getting away from the range of your parents and getting to stumble and grow up is a really important opportunity that university life affords you,” according to Smithson. “Personally, it was the college experience of having lots of choices with serious consequences, and having to strategically chart my class schedule in ways that would support my ambitions, that best prepared me for the life I lead today.”

Smithson says she made her share of mistakes on campus, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her career.

“I actually liked that you had a wealth of opportunities but you had to exercise discipline,” she says. “I had to strike a healthy balance in terms of what I was there to gain with my sweet mom’s hard-earned money and what I was there to experience as a 17-year-old who couldn’t wait to be a free force living on my own for the first time ever.”

Smithson says college was a time for her to reconcile the independence that she finally had and the responsibility of making the most of a four-year education, but that East Carolina was a rich and supportive environment to do just that.

“I had the added benefit of having my big brother there, which meant the world to me,” she said.

Smithson lived in Jones Hall on College Hill. “That was a blast for me,” she said. “I got to meet some of the most down-to-earth, authentic kids, and came away with lasting and memorable friendships.”

Majoring in broadcast journalism was a clear choice for Smithson.

“I had always known since I was a little girl that I wanted to be a journalist,” she said.

“That desire was born out of a tradition in my family where my mom and Bill prepared dinner as a team, while my dad and I always watched and dissected the nightly news together. I always felt I could do a better job of framing and telling the story.”

She fondly remembers learning from Jim Rees, a longtime public speaking professor at ECU. Smithson was also involved in several theater productions at ECU. She was at East Carolina at the same time as Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock, and even had a broadcasting class with CSI actress Emily Procter ’92.

One of Smithson’s fond memories of her time at ECU was the Peach Bowl following the 1991 season, when ECU defeated rival NC State 37-34 in the 4th quarter.

After being down 17-34 with just over 8 minutes to go, the crowd started chanting, “We Believe, We Believe!”

“We ended up coming back for the Bowl victory, it was a miracle before our eyes,” Smithson said. “I consider that my unwrapped graduation present. It was a true testament to the culture of our student population and its faith in our football team. ECU has a tried and true committed fan base.”

While Smithson loved college at ECU, she loved the idea of entering the workforce and earning a salary even more.

“When I got out of college, I couldn’t wait to go out in the world and make a difference and money. I was a rather ambitious 21-year-old,” she said. “I genuinely saw myself as a co-anchor with Peter Jennings once I had my degree in hand. I was convinced that ABC’s World News Tonight

would just pick up the phone and recruit me shortly after my graduation ceremony.”

When she realized the national networks weren’t going to come knocking down her door, Smithson worked her way up in local news. She started at an ABC affiliate TV station in Wilmington, then as a news director at an all-talk radio station, then became news anchor at a start-up CNN Headline News affiliate in Atlantic Beach.

“It was an exciting experience,” she said. “I had a police scanner by my bed, prepared to hop in the station car. I always had my TV equipment in the back.”

She was covering an election in 1994 when U.S. Congressman Fred Heineman (R-NC) offered her a job on his congressional staff. “I think it was just so I would get the camera out of his face,” she joked.

After working for Rep. Heineman, she worked on several other North Carolina campaigns including Senator Jesse Helms’ re-election in 1996. Later she would go on to help with the 2000 Republican National Convention and the 2004 Bush Cheney presidential campaign in Florida.

After a couple years in Raleigh, she decided she was “ready for the big league” and moved to Washington, D.C. She worked in public policy at various companies and organizations before becoming the lobbyist for the Solid Waste Association of America in 1999, where she worked for almost five years.

Her hard work did not go unnoticed. In 2003, President Bush appointed her to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s congressional team, where she directed the corporate relations program and arbitrated policy consensus between the White House, Congress and the EPA.

“I learned so much, and it was a remarkable time,” she said. “I never looked back nor entered journalism again. I found my calling and remained in politics for a decade. I was in my element up there, reveling in the pace, the intellect, and the history in the making.”

After her ten-year stint on Capitol Hill, Smithson felt she needed a new experience and greater challenge. She took a summer sabbatical in 2007 to live in London.

When she came back to the States, “I just picked San Diego. It was really kind of random,” she said. But she knew she wanted to work in the private sector, and true to her heritage, she didn’t want to be too far from a beach. Smithson, second from left, stands with representatives from the Navy and various companies at a

meeting about renewable energy in the summer of 2012.

PIRATEALUMNI.COM 11

She reached out to a California congressman she knew from her lobbying days. As it turned out, the San Diego mayor had just started a new organization in 2007 called CleanTECH San Diego. They were looking for a vice president to grow the organization and help execute its mission to stimulate the expansion of a clean technology business cluster in the region.

“So that’s exactly what we did,” Smithson said. “We worked hard to get about 110 corporations to come together and to create what is now one of the leading CleanTECH clusters in the world.”

CleanTECH San Diego is broadcasting the opportunities and innovation of over 850 clean technology companies who are producing and selling efficient and environmentally friendly technology in areas such as energy, wastewater treatment, recycling, transportation, air and environment, manufacturing and agriculture.

“It’s a thrilling time and a really humbling experience,” she said. “We’re all looking for ways to better our balance sheet, to be better stewards of our environment and our community. It’s fulfilling to be part of this movement towards solving significant global challenges through innovative clean technology solutions.”

Her favorite part of the job is bringing people together and pursuing a common agenda, something she says is a refreshing change from the divisive and partisan politics on Capitol Hill.

“I enjoy interacting with entrepreneurs and learning about the diverse technologies they’re bringing to market,” she said. “And then figuring out how we as an independent third party market facilitator can accelerate their success.”

One of Smithson’s latest projects is called Smart City San Diego, a public-private partnership between CleanTECH San Diego, the City of San Diego, General Electric, San Diego Gas and Electric, and the University of California at San Diego.

“These partners have come together to execute a bold vision to create a model smart city,” she said. “We want to make San Diego the most energy-efficient example for other cities, states, and countries to try to replicate.”

This collaborative is rolling out what will be the nation’s largest infrastructure of charging stations for electric cars. Just as gasoline-powered cars have a wealth of gas stations available, electric cars will need a network of charging stations as they increase in prevalence.

With the world’s population increasing and migrating to urban centers, “We have to prepare our cities for this influx of population growth, and we need to be more efficient with our energy management.”

When she’s not making the world more sustainable, Smithson likes to spend her own energy running marathons. She says it “empties the junk-mail on her mental hard drive.” Her running has taken her to scenic locales like Hawaii, Italy, and Ireland, in addition to Washington, D.C.

Smithson’s travels aren’t done yet. She is proud of her ability to go to new places and meet new people. “I could pick up and move to Singapore or Madrid if the opportunity came knocking. I’m a big advocate for dancing outside your comfort zone. I’m just living the dream out here in Southern California, and I’m wide open to what lies ahead of me.”

Tomorrow starts here.

Leave a perpetual legacy at ECU:

Avoid two types of taxation with a gift from your IRA, 401(k), and other qualified retirement plans

When you gift a percentage or specific dollar total from your retirement plan to East Carolina University through the East Carolina University Foundation Inc., East Carolina University Medical & Health Sciences Foundation Inc., or the East Carolina University Educational Foundation Inc. (Pirate Club), you can help future students while gaining multiple tax advantages.

By utilizing this specific asset, where often the greatest amount of your wealth resides, you can avoid/reduce both income and estate taxation. This asset is among the most difficult to pass to heirs/beneficiaries based on the fact that it is a deferred tax asset. For these reasons gifting this asset may enable your heirs to avoid income and estate tax while leaving a perpetual legacy at ECU. Best of all this easy process can be done through one simple piece of paperwork (Beneficiary Designation Form) provided by your retirement plan provider.

For more information about this planned gift or joining the Leo W. Jenkins Society, please contact Greg Abeyounis, assistant vice chancellor for development, at 252-328-9573 or e-mail at [email protected]. For examples and more information on planned giving mechanisms, visit our Web site at www.ecu.edu/plannedgiving.


SScott Maxwell ’92 drives a rover on Mars for a living, but he might never have made it to where he is today.

Maxwell is part of a team of engineers based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA who control the Mars rover Curiosity. After landing successfully in early August, this $2.6 billion vehicle has been traversing the surface of the red planet in search of evidence of past life, guided by the expert commands of Maxwell and his team.

Maxwell’s own journey to what he calls his “dream job” is one that may not have happened if things had gone a little differently.

“I try to fully recognize just how lucky I am,” says Maxwell, who earned dual degrees in computer science and English at ECU. “When I was a kid this kind of thing seemed completely out of reach for me. Growing up in rural eastern North Carolina, this seemed like the very farthest thing from what I could be doing with my life.”

Maxwell had to contend with many obstacles on his journey, starting with his own expectations. He grew up loving space but didn’t think he could realistically pursue his dream. He thought he would get a traditional office job, but fortunately “got distracted by computers” at ECU, which came to be his true calling.

During his senior year, he faced an unexpected obstacle: cancer. Since it was caught in its early stages, he was able to have it treated successfully before heading off to graduate school in Illinois. To top everything off, he almost didn’t make it to his job interview at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as there was a snowstorm in the Midwest and an earthquake in California that day.

Luckily, he made it to the interview, and got the job. He started out writing software before eventually using his

programs to command various rovers on their missions. Now at 20 years cancer free, Maxwell says its “a great feeling” to be able to live his dream every day.

“I really feel like I’m living on bonus time,” he said. “Having cancer was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It really changed my outlook on life. I walk around through my life feeling like ‘you know, there’s some legitimate sense where I ought to be dead right now.’” So all the great things that have happened to me in the last 20 years – a great house in a great neighborhood, a wonderful girlfriend, driving a rover on Mars for a living – I’m not supposed to have any of that. It’s like I’m getting away with something all the time, it’s really a great feeling.”

Born in Florida, Maxwell was a few months old when his family moved to North Carolina, where he grew up in Rocky Mount.

“I caught the space bug from my dad, who was a big space nut,” he said. “I was just horribly fascinated by space growing up as a kid. I read bunches of science fiction, I was just mad about the stuff.”

Maxwell credits the Voyager missions of the ’70s, which sent spacecraft to explore the outer planets of the solar system, with igniting his love of space exploration. But a job at NASA seemed as far away as Saturn or Neptune to Maxwell at the time.

“I just sort of imagined it would never work out,” he said. “I was fascinated by it and it just seemed like a cool thing you could do, but I never thought I would be able to do that with my life.”

Later, he realized, “I had this thought in the back of my mind that there was me and there was this gigantic invisible glass wall, and there were people on the other side of that wall who were doing stuff, and then there was me. And it wasn’t until I was on the other side of that wall myself that I realized there was never any such wall, that was only in my imagination.”

Mission to Mars

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Maxwell came to East Carolina to major in theatre, drawn by the university’s strong theatre arts program. But he never wound up taking any theatre classes. He placed out of first-year English, so he had room in his schedule to try some computer classes. He liked both so much that he decided to double-major, which administrators had to approve. As Maxwell remembers, he was the first person who ever double-majored in computer science and English. He also worked at the student newspaper, The East Carolinian, all four years, as well as helping fix computers in the campus computer lab.

“I was pretty active,” he said. “At one time I had as many as three jobs.” He was able to graduate with no student loan debt.

When Maxwell felt really sick in the late fall of his senior year, he never thought it was cancer. But his lymph nodes in his neck remained swollen even after he started feeling better, so after a while he went to the campus health center.

“When you’re 20 years old, and something is going on with your body, you don’t think ‘oh of course this is cancer,’ so it took me a while to go in and see someone,” he said. “Before getting cancer, you know, I’m 20 years old, you don’t think about these things. You don’t really think about your own mortality or being faced with any of this stuff.”

The campus health center sent him to a specialist at Pitt County Memorial Hospital, where he underwent a biopsy. He was diagnosed with Stage II Hodgkin’s Lymphoma a couple months before graduation. He underwent nine weeks of radiation treatment that summer, but did not have to undergo chemotherapy. He did endure some hair loss and burns from the radiation.

“For me that was the most difficult time, because I wore my hair in a long ponytail at the time, and my hair was just coming out in big clumps in the shower,” he said. “It was a bad

experience, one of the worst things I’ve ever been through, but honestly compared to what a lot of people go though when they have cancer, I got off really kind of light.”

Beating cancer has given Maxwell “a really different perspective on my life,” he says. “I realize just how lucky we all are just to be here for a few years and to experience the things that we experience. I’ve been really fortunate that these really great things have happened to me. I feel much better poised to appreciate them having nearly lost everything.”

Mission to MarsScott Maxwell ’92 beat the odds

to drive a rover for NASA

Maxwell controls the rover via computer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.


After finishing radiation on a Thursday, he left for graduate school on Saturday, heading to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study computer science.

Though he had no job and no place to live, he said, “I’m not going to let cancer stop me. Amazingly, within a week, I had lined up a place to stay and a job as an engineer for the Army that allowed me to pay for grad school.”

When it came time to look for jobs, Maxwell saw some openings at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“I thought, ‘wow, the JPL, these are the guys that did Voyager! They’d never want me.’ I had to get pushed to go to the interview,” he recalled. “I had no expectation of getting the job, I just thought it would be cool to talk to people who work in the space program.”

After an initial talk, Maxwell landed an on-site interview and flew out to the Lab in California during one of the worst winter storms the Midwest had seen in twenty years. After several flight delays, he finally arrived at his hotel in Pasadena around 2:00 a.m. At 4:30 in the morning, Maxwell awoke to his room shaking in what turned out to be the 6.7 Northridge earthquake of January 1994.

The Lab called to ask if he still wanted to do the interview that morning if he could get there, which he did. Freeways had cracked and fallen apart and some buildings were still smoldering, but he made it, against all odds.

Maxwell’s passion and enthusiasm for space – as well as a willingness to brave natural hazards on earth like snowstorms and earthquakes – impressed the Lab administrators, who gave him the job. He has worked at the JPL for 18 years, carrying with him the lessons he learned at East Carolina.

“I am often amazed at the successes of the alumni from the College of Technology and Computer Science,” Dean David White remarked. “We are truly fortunate to have Scott Maxwell as one of these outstanding graduates. Not only has he achieved exceptional success in his work with NASA and Curiosity, but he has overcome some significant personal challenges to get where he is today. His story serves as an inspiration to all our faculty and students in the college.”

Maxwell’s achievement of his childhood dream is a surprise even to him.

“I was surprised to realize one day while I was working at JPL that I was doing the kind of stuff I grew up dreaming about doing,” he said.

About the size of an SUV, the Curiosity moves on six wheels and is equipped with a battery, a camera, a mechanical scoop and various scanning instruments. The Curiosity’s goal is to find evidence of past habitable environments on Mars.

“The great thing about this is whether the answer is yes or no, the answer is really profound,” Maxwell said. “If yes, what happened? If no, why didn’t life form there? You’re asking one of the most profound questions that is possible to ask.”

Maxwell guides the rover’s search around the surface of the red planet, but he doesn’t use a steering wheel or joystick because of time delays.

“I wish they would just hand me a playstation controller, that would make my life so much simpler,” he joked.

The rover can’t be driven in real time because of how long it takes for the signal to transmit between Earth and Mars, which are over 100 million miles apart. Depending on where they are in their orbits, it takes anywhere from three to twenty-two light-minutes for the signal to be transmitted.

“Just imagine trying to drive your car with that kind of delay,” Maxwell points out. “We just can’t drive the rovers interactively like that. Instead, we take advantage of the fact that the rovers need to shut down for the Martian night anyway because it’s so cold.”

At the end of each Martian day or “sol,” the rover sends a package of all the data it collected back to the Lab via an orbiting satellite before shutting down. Then Maxwell and his team spend the Martian night reviewing the data and programming and testing commands for the next day. After the rover wakes up, it spends its day carrying out the commands it received.

“We’re basically working the Martian night shift,” Maxwell said. He and his team synchronize their schedules to align with the Martian “sol,” which is about an hour longer than a day on Earth.

There’s only one downside – no emergency brake. “If something goes wrong, you’re not going to know until the next day. You’ve got to have good pre-programmed responses to all this stuff that can happen,” Maxwell says. “But that’s part of what makes it an exciting challenge every day.”

The Curiosity landed in an ancient streambed, and found rounded pebbles that demonstrate that water once flowed over the surface of the red planet. Previous rovers found an intact meteorite that indicates Mars had a thicker atmosphere at one time, which slowed the meteorite and prevented it from shattering or leaving a big crater. In October, Curiosity found rocks and soil made of volcanic material similar to that in Hawaii.

The long-term plan is to drive to a previously identified mountain and analyze its composition, Maxwell said. “Every one of those stratigraphic layers is like a page in a Martian history book. Our plan is to drive to that mountain and read that history book, and read more about Martian history than we’ve ever been able to read before.”

Things like rocks and pebbles that seem ordinary at first glance hold the key to discovering what life was like on Mars.

“It’s like you’ve landed in the middle of this gigantic jigsaw puzzle and there’s no picture,” he said. “So with no picture you

Parts of the rover Curiosity. Photo courtesy of NASA.

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Mark your Calendar:Dowdy Holiday Sale

Tues., Dec 4th

have to take these thousands of pieces and put them together to form a coherent picture yourself so you can learn something about what Mars used to look like in the past.”

At the time of Maxwell’s interview, the Curiosity had gone about 500 meters or half a kilometer, with plans to drive up to 20 kilometers.

“We’ve got a lot of driving to go,” Maxwell said. “We’ll be racking up the odometer as we go.”

This is not Maxwell’s first time driving a rover. He was also a lead driver for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which launched in the summer of 2003.

While scientists lost contact with the Spirit a couple years ago, the Opportunity is still going more than nine years after its original mission.

Maxwell hopes the Curiosity will last at least as long. He also hopes this will not be his only trip to Mars, as he wishes to visit in person someday.

“I’d love to find Spirit and put a blanket over her and just sit with my old friend for a while,” he said.

Anyone interested can follow the Curiosity’s progress at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov.

“Anyone who wants to be a backseat driver and follow along on the mission can do that,” Maxwell said. “We love to have people come along, the more the merrier.”

Romantic dates for all occasions

Relative & in-lawguest stays

Business travel

Stay in updated classic style of the 1920s Located on Historic E. 5th Street

Directly across from the main campus of ECU and performing arts venues


TASTE OF SUCCESS

Dave Fussell ’90 has made success come to fruition at Duplin Winery

PIRATEALUMNI.COM 17

TASTE OF SUCCESS

Dave Fussell ’90 has made success come to fruition at Duplin Winery


“Grapes are just like people,” says Dave Fussell ’90, owner of Duplin Winery.

Different grapes are suited to different environments, Fussell says. He should know, as he is well-suited to his own environment of family wine-making in eastern North Carolina. After graduating from East Carolina University with a degree in economics, he has flourished in the family business the same way native Muscadine grapes have thrived in this region.

“For three generations, our winery has remained family-owned and family-run, built on the core principles of hard work, integrity, and the uncompromising desire to make America’s best and favorite Muscadine wines,” Fussell says on the winery website.

Muscadine grapes are a sweet variety native to the Southeast that do particularly well in the warm and humid conditions of eastern North Carolina, unlike European varieties that do better in cool and mild temperatures.

“We concentrate on sweet and fruity wines that taste like you’re right under the grapevine eating the grapes,” Fussell said. “Muscadine grapes are good right off the bat, very different than many other wine grapes, which can be bitter to begin with. That’s why you age some of these other wines, and you don’t age ours.”

This grape has provided Duplin Winery with a unique product that has allowed them to weather the ups and down of the business.

Fussell’s father and mother started the winery in the early 1970s, along with help from his grandfather. Both his parents went to ECU to become educators; his

father was a principal and his mother taught fourth grade. They started farming on the side by growing grapes for a big wine company from New York because they could sell the grapes at a high price.

While waiting for the newly planted grapes to mature over four years, the price fell so sharply that they would lose money just trying to harvest the grapes.

“My parents said, ‘What in the world are we going to do with 20 acres of grapes?’ So they decided to make the wine themselves.”

After Fussell’s grandfather retired from construction, he loaned them an old building where they could turn the grapes into wine. The first batch of 20 cases came out in 1975.

“We licked the very first labels we stuck on the bottles, and stomped the first grapes with our feet,” Fussell said. “Somehow or another it was drinkable, and they sold it.”

The next year, they made three different kinds of wine. Then the state Department of Commerce said any wine made from grapes grown in North Carolina would get a tax break. So in 1977-78, they started making fortified wines in addition to traditional wine, selling both at reduced prices.

“All of a sudden, we started selling wine like crazy,” Fussell said.

By the 1980s, they had outgrown their original plot, buying more land in 1982 and building a new winery building in 1983. Production was up to 44,000 cases.

“We were growing leaps and bounds,” Fussell commented.

Then in 1984, “some fancy lawyers from New York showed up in little skinny ties,” Fussell recalled. The lawyers said the tax break was unconstitutional because it

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was not offered to all states. That drove the price back up.

“We couldn’t compete with the big wineries,” Fussell said. Production at the winery went down to 15,000 cases in one year and eventually to 4,000 cases.

“Things went all to pieces. Dad actually lost our house trying to keep the business,” Fussell said. “My dad went back to teaching school, while mom sold off the old wine.”

After he graduated, Fussell’s parents wanted him to be a teacher, but that wasn’t something he wanted to do. He took his mom’s place behind the counter at the winery so she could go back to teaching.

“They fought and fought to keep the place open. It was a struggle,” Fussell said.

Things took a turn for the better in 1995, when 60 Minutes issued a report that drinking a glass of red wine was healthy. People took notice, Fussell said. “People really started migrating down to our wines because the others were too dry for them.”

Campbell and Tufts universities decided to test Duplin’s Muscadine grapes to see if they were as healthy as the European varieties. In fact, the sweet grapes turned out to have seven times the healthy ingredients.

Like people, grapes produce antibodies and antioxidants to fight off diseases, Fussell says. The heat and moisture that make Muscadine grapes so sweet is also a perfect breeding ground for fungus and bacteria, but this hardy grape developed to produce more resistant compounds. Unlike European grapes, where these compounds are mostly found in the skin, Muscadine grapes have them in the seeds and pulp as well.

“The Good Lord had to put extra antioxidants in our grapes to fight off those sicknesses, and that’s what made our grapes so much better for you,” Fussell commented.

In August of 1996, Duplin Winery landed on the front page of the Raleigh News and Observer. The coverage was a major turning point for the business, and growth has been in the double digits each year up to now, Fussell says.

This past year Duplin Winery greeted 92,000 visitors and sold 360,000 cases of

wine. The original winery building given by Fussell’s grandfather is now a gift shop and bistro where customers can enjoy samples and tastings. The new fermenting facility has a capacity of 1.6 million gallons.

Duplin Winery makes around forty different varieties of wine, which are sold in up to fourteen states. Grapes are grown on a total of 1,200 acres in North Carolina and other southeastern states like Florida, Mississippi and Georgia, including the original sixty acres in Duplin County. There are about ninety employees at the winery, with forty-eight growers who cultivate the grapes in several states.

“We have been mighty lucky,” Fussell said. “We’ve got a great team. Together

we’ve been able to become the 24th largest wine company in the US”

While Fussell says Duplin Winery is still small compared to the number one companies, they’ve made it pretty high on the list; there are over 6,000 wineries in the US, more than one hundred in North Carolina, according to Fussell.

Eighty percent of Duplin Winery grapes are grown in North Carolina.

“We still grow the grapes ourselves, but we focus on the making and selling end here,” Fussell said.

Duplin Winery’s hard work has paid off. The Magnolia variety has been featured in Martha Stewart Living. In 2009, Duplin Winery earned Impact’s Hot Brand Award and Beverage Information Group’s Fast Track Award, given to small wineries that show rapid growth. Duplin Wine is the 20th best selling wine in all Wal-Mart stores, even though it’s only available at Wal-Marts in four states.

Fussell always knew he would return to the winery after college. “It really wasn’t a choice,” he laughed. “I just assumed I’d be coming back here.”

He was about six years old when the winery started. There wasn’t too much playing in the vineyards for the young Dave. Even family TV nights were productive, spent sticking labels on bottles. But Fussell says the hard work was a good lesson that served him well.

“Kids don’t have that opportunity now, it taught me that hard work is good,” he said.

He didn’t always know he wanted to go to ECU. He applied to four different schools, but wanted to go somewhere with friends. He loved going to see the Pirates play in Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.

“It was thrilling for a little country boy to go to a football game that at the time had 30,000 people,” he remembered.

He fondly recalled his Spanish teacher, Seniorita Buck. “I hated Spanish, but I enjoyed her. She was so nice and patient.”

He lived in Belk dorm for two years before he moved to Kappa Alpha fraternity.

“I have a lot of good memories of the friendships that were made,” he said.

Fussell’s grandfather with grandson at the Duplin Winery groundbreaking.

The number one thing I learned in college, being from a really small town, was how not to be afraid, to have confidence to talk to people out of my

element. I really learned how to communicate. I learned how to learn.

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“That’s why I enjoy going back to the football games. I try to go to all the games.”

Fussell’s time at East Carolina was full of valuable lessons.

“The number one thing I learned in college, being from a really small town, was how not to be afraid, to have confidence to talk to people out of my element,” he said. “I really learned how to communicate. I learned how to learn. Some classes were very difficult, especially economics classes, figuring out supply and demand models… and some of that has applied here, but not just what I learned, but how I learned to figure things out.”

“What’s great about coming back to East Carolina is meeting folks in other businesses… we have the same issues, only I make wine and they sell gas. There are a lot of hard-working people that graduated from East Carolina, and grown businesses here.”

Fussell serves on the Alumni Association Board of Directors, as well as the board for the College of Human Ecology. He would like to do more, but the wine-making business does not allow for much time away.

Fussell spends a lot of time on the road, meeting with merchants and distributors, as well as designing wine

labels. He is working on plans to build a wedding chapel in the vineyard, as well as developing more varieties of wine. Future projects include making sangria and brandy varieties, as well as wines with strawberry, peach, pomegranate, or blueberry flavor.

“We’re really looking into how we can grow within the market,” he said. “I like seeing growth, that’s what energizes me, trying to build something.”

Fussell is most proud of paying everything off as he goes, growing his business small steps at a time. He is also proud of the hard-working team he has built.

“Everybody’s got to sweep the floor when they come in,” Fussell said. “You don’t come in here to get paid the big bucks. We have people that have made the place their place. I’m fortunate to work with so many good people. Together we’ve done things I never would have dreamed of. My wife Angie, my brother Jonathan, and our associates have more to do with our successes than I. It’s them and the ones before, who deserve the credit. I’m proud to be a part of their team and I sincerely appreciate those who support our efforts.”

Fussell’s favorite part of the job is

“working with people,” he said. “Working with the folks we have here, the folks who are out in the markets, and hugging customers necks and telling them I appreciate their business. It’s so neat to be in Miami, Florida sitting on an airplane and they see your shirt and say that’s my favorite wine!”

Duplin Winery’s original building has been converted to a bistro and tasting area for guests.

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Sometimes, you don’t need to see to find your way.

Though Elexis “Lex” Gillette ’07 is blind, his vision of success led him to the medal podium in track and field at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

“It was truly an amazing experience,” says Gillette. “To be able to walk inside of the stadium, and for me, only being able to hear everything going on, it was crazy. The crowd was loud, the atmosphere was electric.”

Competing in his third Paralympics, Gillette felt right at home in London, with the crowd clapping and cheering him on.

“It felt like home even though I wasn’t in the United States,” he said.

He won silver in the long jump, his primary event. In the triple jump, he finished fourth, just outside the medals.

“That just leaves me something to work for in the future,” Gillette said. He also competed in the 4x100 meter relay with his teammates as well as the 100 meter and 200 meter sprints. “I really didn’t do as well as I wanted to in those, but it is what it is. It was still an amazing Games,” he commented.

In athletics, “it’s all about whoever has the best performance on that particular day,” Gillette says. “And a gentleman from Ukraine had a better jump than I did that day. So kudos to him for being able to get that done, but I was able to get another silver. It was amazing to be able to compete, so I’m happy with that.”

This was Gillette’s third silver in long jump after competing in Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008. But no matter what color the medal was in London, the feeling of standing on the podium in front of a sold-out crowd of 80,000 people is hard for Gillette to describe.

“You walk up there, you’re totally exposed, everyone is looking at you… and at that moment, you realize everything you’ve done for the past four years has paid off,” he said. “To know that you’re standing on top of the podium and your flag is being raised, you know that all the people back at home that you’ve done it for, you just know that you’ve made them proud. That was definitely a satisfying moment for me.”

Gillette lost his sight in childhood due to detached retinas. It started in his left eye when he was three years old, when his mom noticed that he was standing too close to the TV. He doesn’t really remember it happening because he was so young. But with sight in the other eye, he was able to grow up playing outside and riding his bike like any other children.

Four years later, when he was seven, he noticed complications with his right eye.

“By this time I can remember all of this,” he said. “I remember jumping on the bathroom counter and it was difficult for me to see my reflection.”

“They did everything that they could to try to stabilize my vision, but after the

ten operations, the doctors didn’t know anything else they could do,” he said. “My mom had to tell me there was a really high possibility that I would never be able to see again. That was pretty devastating. It shakes your world up.”

“At that age, the only thing you know is that you can’t see. It was more difficult for me socially. To not have an explanation, for me at that time, I couldn’t really deal with it. I was so shy, because I seemed so different from the rest of my friends. It took me a long time to get to that point to have enough confidence to start trying things again. I had to adapt to the situation. I had to learn how to read braille and learn how to use a cane so I could get around by myself.”

Gillette has learned to do more than just get around. He holds the current world record in the long jump at 6.73 meters or 22 feet, which he landed at the Desert Challenge Games in Mesa, AZ in May 2011. The previous record had stood for more than twenty years. In the 2010 US Paralympic Track and Field National Championships, he was a four-time gold medalist in all his main events: long jump, triple jump, 100 meter and 200 meter.

When Gillette is on the track, he moves with the help of a guide-runner.

“Basically the guide runner is there to assist the athlete on the track,” Gillette said. “He’s running side-by-side with me, letting me know exactly where I am. In

A Winning Vision Elexis Gillette ’07 sees his way

to silver at his third Paralympics

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Paralympic competition, they designate two lanes for us. You just treat those two lanes as one big lane. Once the gun is shot, he’s communicating the entire way, to help me see it in my mind.”

In field events, guides have to remain stationary. In Gillette’s jumping events, his guide runner stands at the takeoff board.

“We do everything by sound, so he’s down there clapping and yelling. It gives me a location so I know where to run. My approach from the back of the runway to the takeoff board is about 35 meters. It’s a lot of practice of running in a straight line. It sounds pretty easy but when you’re speeding down this runway, you just have to be spot on all the time, any slight mishap, you could go off.”

Everything else, however, is the same as any other athlete.

“My coach teaches me the same way he would coach anyone else,” Gillette said. “The only difference is, they can see when they’re about to hit the ground; for me it’s more of a timing thing.”

Gillette had never been involved in track and field before he lost his sight. He had to do a physical fitness test in high school in Raleigh, and one of the events was standing long jump. He wound up being one of the best in the school, which sparked a lot of attention.

The school’s track coach introduced him to the sport and sent him to a weeklong camp to help him learn the basics, “and everything evolved from there,” Gillette said.

“When I was first introduced to it, I was terrified, because I didn’t know my surroundings and it was something I had never done before.”

It takes a lot of trust, Gillette says, in both coaches and guide-runners.

“It’s hard to place 100 percent of your trust into someone else’s hands that you’re going to be safe and sound in this event.”

However, Gillette is pretty confident

now, though he still has butterflies before big events. “But that’s normal for me,” he said.

While Gillette did not compete in track and field for ECU, he chose to come to East Carolina because of its programs and because he knew many of his friends enjoyed being here.

“I knew ECU had a really good disability support services program, because I had visited a friend at ECU before,” he said.

He decided to go straight into Paralympic competition after a call from the US Paralympic Committee during his freshman year in 2003.

“I can remember walking from Brewster back to my dorm room and I got this phone call,” he said. “This lady basically said, ‘We’ve been seeing your results and wanted to let you know that you meet requirements for being on the national team.’ I was pretty shocked. That was the official start of my Paralympic career.”

In the process of learning about the sport in high school, Gillette’s coach had told him about the Paralympics, but he hadn’t thought about entering until he got the phone call.

In addition to competing for his high school, Gillette competed in the US Association of Blind Athletes (USABA) and the International Blind Sports Federation (known as IBSA). In 2002, he was a gold medalist in the long jump at the USABA National Championships and was honored as the USABA Male Athlete of the Year. In 2003, he took fifth place in the IBSA World Championships in Quebec.

While at ECU, Gillette worked out at the recreation center and made use of the resources at the university to have a well-rounded college experience.

“I loved ECU. My time there was amazing. I met so many people and had a lot of friends,” he said. “In high school, you basically had everything laid out for you, but once I got to ECU, I had to make that transition from my parents and everybody

creating this outline for me to me creating that outline myself.”

He completed his degree in recreation facilities management in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies in the College of Health and Human Performance.

“I was always in Minges Coliseum,” Gillette joked.

During his time on campus, Gillette worked for Campus Living. While staying in Slay Hall, he recalled walking up and down Tenth Street to get Wendy’s or a late night Krispy Kreme run. He liked being able to check out all the performances going on in Wright Auditorium, and of course, going to the football games. He was even recognized at halftime at one of the games after he got back from Athens in 2004.

“There are so many memories,” he said. “It was home for four years. It’s an amazing place.”

After graduating from ECU and competing in the Paralympics and around the world, Gillette says his proudest accomplishment is helping and inspiring other people. But Gillette is not done competing yet. He plans to go for the gold at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After competing, he plans to stay in the recreation field.

“I’m always going to be a recreation person, I’ll always be an athlete,” he said. Even after competing, “I’ll still be involved in it somehow. It’s about building teams. The whole teamwork aspect is a big part of recreation.”

That passion for teamwork and helping others allows Gillette to work as a motivational speaker, inspiring other people to find their way just as he found his.

“I’ve spoken to a range of people,” he said. “It’s definitely rewarding to hear people say after I make a speech that they feel inspired to try to be better at something. It feels good to be able to inspire.”


Where Pirate Memories Continue...“The physical proximity of ECU and Cypress Glen makes working together just a fact of life. ECU shares their intellectual expertise, as well as great cultural offerings, and our bus takes us to their front door.”

Official Partner

Katheryn Lewis began teaching in Eastern North Carolina in 1945. She received her master’s degree in counseling and education administration from East Carolina in 1962. Katheryn was appointed Assistant Superintendent for Pitt County Schools in 1978, one of the few women at the time to hold that position.

Upon “retirement,” Katheryn organized and administered the Clinical Teaching Intern Program at ECU. She also established the Rural Education Institute and later supervised teaching interns. She remains a supporter of the ECU School of Education, holding the titles of Professor Emeritus, Visiting Lecturer, and Distinguished Educator.

Katheryn served on the Board of Trustees of Pitt Community College, Board of Trustees for the then Pitt Memorial Hospital, and the Pitt County Board of Education. Until recently, she was an active member of the Patient-Faculty Experience Committee at the hospital.

Katheryn is a co-founder of the ECU Club of Cypress Glen.

Katheryn LewisCypress Glen Resident since 2005

www.cypressglen.org

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Recently, the Career Center at East Carolina University unveiled a new online career database called ECU CareerNET. This system will be used to promote internship, part-time and full-time employment opportunities that are available throughout North Carolina and the United States. This database is exclusive to current ECU students and alumni and is used to announce upcoming events, including employer visits to ECU. Additionally CareerNET gives users the ability to upload their résumés for employers to view.

One advantage to using an exclusive database is that unlike well-known job posting sites such as Monster, Yahoo Jobs, and CareerBuilder, CareerNET is only accessible to students and alumni of ECU. By using CareerNET as a job search resource, the number of people that have access to that job announcement is significantly reduced. Employers listing within the CareerNET database are also screened by professional career center staff members, ensuring that these are legitimate companies and organizations with real employment opportunities.

Another distinction between other well-known job posting sites and CareerNET

is that the employers listed within this database have identified ECU as a place to target their employment needs. These employers post career opportunities with ECU for a variety of reasons including the reputation of academic programs, quality of students, and regional location. In addition, ECU alumni often list employment opportunities as a way to connect with fellow Pirates.

Finally, ECU CareerNET contains not only hundreds of internship and job postings that are updated daily, but also holds thousands of employer contacts. These contacts can be used to identify possible employment opportunities and can serve as a networking tool for someone attempting to build professional contacts within an industry.

To set up an account in CareerNET please call our main office and a staff member will create your profile, username, and password. For more information on ECU CareerNET, please visit www.ecu.edu/career. For any questions regarding general career planning please contact the Career Center at 252-328-6050 and set up an appointment with one of our skilled Career Counselors.


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Jamie Kruse Named 2012 THCAS Distinguished Professor

This fall, ECU’s Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences named Dr. Jamie Kruse, professor of economics and director of the Center for Natural Hazards Research, the 2012 THCAS Distinguished Professor. The professorship is one of the most prestigious at ECU and is conferred upon a professor whose career exemplifies a commitment to and a love for knowledge and academic life, as demonstrated by outstanding teaching and advising, research and creative productivity, and professional service.

Kruse joined the faculty of ECU in 2004. She has taught many courses at ECU and has mentored numerous students, exhibiting her love for knowledge and academic life.

A colleague writes, “Dr. Kruse is a demanding and engaged teacher who pushes her students to achieve beyond their initial expectations, and a wonderful mentor to graduate students and junior colleagues both inside and beyond the economics department.”

Contributing to the professional realm, Kruse currently serves on the Board of Editors for two journals; the International Journal of Information and Operations Management Education, and the Journal of Business Valuation and Economic Loss Analysis. She has published thoroughly within her field of research and has received grants totaling nearly $20 million, $2.5 million while at ECU.

“Her entire career exemplifies outstanding achievement in service to her University and society, in mentoring student achievement, and in both research contribution and in leadership of multidisciplinary research efforts in her areas of scientific interest and work,” writes a colleague who nominated Kruse for the award.

“Dr. Kruse promotes an atmosphere of creativity and scholarship that brings national and international attention to East Carolina University. She is a world class scholar and represents East Carolina University in a world-class manner.”

Most recently, Kruse was awarded ECU’s 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award for Research, and in 2011, she was selected as an ECU Women of Distinction Honoree. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Arizona, her master’s degree in agricultural economics from Colorado State University and her bachelor’s degree with distinction in ag honors from the University of Nebraska.

ALLIED HEALTHFood Lion Donation Will Endow Scholarship

Approximately one-hundred faculty, staff, and alumni attended the ECU College of Allied Health Sciences 45th Anniversary Homecoming celebration on Friday, October 12, 2012 at Rock Springs Equestrian Center in Greenville, sponsored by the ECU Medical & Health Sciences Foundation.

The highlight of the celebration was the announcement of Food Lion’s donation of $25,000 to endow the Freedom Scholarship in Occupational Therapy.

The Freedom Scholarship was originally established by Nathan Black, a 2003 graduate of the occupational therapy program who passed away in 2011. It provides support to ECU OT students who are military members, veterans, spouses or children of a military

Dr. Jamie Kruse

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member or veteran of the armed forces of the United States. It also includes students who are working with Wounded Warrior Battalion initiatives.

Food Lion’s involvement with the scholarship came in September 2010 after they, along with ECU, were selected to receive the Secretary of Defense Freedom Award for employer support of the National Guard and Reserve. Food Lion and ECU partnered to find projects that would have a lasting impact in helping our nation’s returning service members. The partnership resulted in a $100,000 gift to the university that will provide university-wide doctoral fellowships under Operation Re-Entry North Carolina, as well as the funding for the endowment of the Freedom Scholarship in Occupational Therapy.

Occupational Therapy Students Inducted Into Honor Society

Eleven students were inducted into the Delta Beta chapter of Pi Theta Epsilon (PTE) honor society for occupational therapy students and alumni at a ceremony conducted on Monday, October 29 at the Health Sciences building.

The induction marked the beginning of the very first chapter of PTE in North Carolina. There are currently over eighty active chapters nationwide.

Pi Theta Epsilon recognizes scholastic excellence of occupational therapy students, contributes to the advancement of the field of OT, and provides a vehicle for OT students to exchange information and collaborate regarding scholarly activities.

Dr. Denise Donica is the faculty advisor for the ECU chapter.

BUSINESS‘Computer Man’ Awarded Order of the Long Leaf Pine

Dr. Richard Kerns has been awarded the prestigious Order of the Long Leaf Pine, a certificate presented to outstanding North Carolinians who have a proven record of service to the state. Kerns, the former associate dean for computer services in the College of Business and professor in the Department of Management Information Systems at East Carolina University, recently retired after a career spanning nearly 40 years.

The NC Governor’s Office bestowed the award to Kerns at his retirement reception on Oct. 11. The Order of the Long Leaf Pine is considered the state’s highest civilian honor, and it has been given to notable North Carolinians such as Andy Griffith, Michael Jordan, and Charles Kuralt.

“I am deeply humbled, surprised, and appreciative to receive such a high honor from the state of North Carolina,” Kerns said. “Serving at East Carolina University for four decades has been extremely rewarding on both personal and professional levels. I’m truly honored by this recognition.”

Kerns first joined ECU in 1973, when he was hired to teach and manage information technology in the School of Business. Under his leadership, the computer services department grew from himself and a few hand-picked student assistants to a unit that now serves the technology needs of more than 150 faculty and staff and almost 4,000 students. Throughout his tenure at ECU, Kerns’ unofficial title across campus became “the computer man” since he helped everyone from the provost to library leaders to the School of Medicine. Kerns even helped ECU’s Information Technology and Computing Services (ITCS) department and its predecessors get established.

“Nothing makes me feel better than to have a former colleague or student come by or see me somewhere and talk about how they are doing and tell me something that I did that helped them,” Kerns concluded. “I am very thankful for the opportunities that have been given to me for so many years, and I hope that others feel I have contributed to their success.”

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The family of Nathan Black along with representatives of Food Lion; Dr. Leonard Trujillo, chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy; Dr. Stephen Thomas, dean of the College of Allied Health Sciences; and Pat Frede, director of development for the College of Allied Health Sciences.

Front Row, L-R: Chelsey McKeel, Stacia Pomeroy, Alana Justice, Brittany Robertson. Back Row, L-R: Monica Powell, Caitlin Zawistowicz, Kelly Pippin, Erin Schofield, Farrell Wiggins, Keli McColl, Sarah Timmons, Dr. Denise Donica (faculty advisor)

Dr. Richard Kerns


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DENTAL MEDICINESchool of Dental Medicine Opens Ross Hall

More than 600 people attended the official opening of the ECU School of Dental Medicine’s Ledyard E. Ross Hall on the ECU Health Science campus on October 12. A ribbon cutting was followed by student-led tours of the building.

The 188,000-square-foot building includes 133 operatories, large “smart classroom” learning halls, teleconference rooms, a simulation lab, and administrative offices. Specialty clinics include pediatric dentistry, orthodontics, special needs, and clinical research area.

“Ross Hall not only provides a world-class learning facility for our students, it represents the completion of our promise to build a unique dental school that serves areas of North Carolina that are currently without sufficient oral health care,” said Chancellor Steve Ballard. “It is also symbolic of ECU’s historic mission to make a difference for North Carolina.”

Ballard praised Dr. Ledyard E. Ross’ commitment to the community, calling him a “great friend of ECU.” Ross, a 1951 graduate and retired Greenville orthodontist, donated $4 million to the school.

Officials expect the school to help ease the statewide shortage of dentists, especially in eastern North Carolina.

“Our new dental school and Ross Hall symbolize the state’s commitment and East Carolina University’s commitment to improving the quality of life of North Carolinians,” said Dr. Greg Chadwick, dean of the dental school. “We look forward to not only educating future practitioners but to providing care across the state.”

The school welcomed its first class of 52 students in the fall of 2011 and its second class of 52 this fall. All enrolled students are residents of North Carolina, representing 50 counties.

Outside Greenville, the school plans to open ten community service learning centers across the state where students, residents, and supervising dentists will provide oral care to children and adults.

There are many ways to support the School of Dental Medicine, including Ross Hall naming opportunities, student scholarships, and faculty research and development. For information on how you can make a difference, please contact Kristen Ward, director of development for the ECU School of Dental Medicine at [email protected] or (252) 744-2239.

EDUCATIONEducators Hall of Fame Honors Twenty-One

The College of Education held its annual Educators Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Saturday, October 20 in Fletcher Recital Hall. The ceremony was followed by a reception and the opportunity for inductees to view their plaques on the Educators Hall of Fame wall in the Speight Building. Twenty-one educators and education advocates were inducted. Each inductee was sponsored and a monetary gift of $1,000 or more was contributed to the College of Education’s Educators Hall of Fame Scholarship endowment on their behalf. Annual interest from the Educators Hall of Fame endowment is used to fund merit-based scholarships for College of Education students.

This year’s inductees are Joanne Ambrose, Dr. Betty Beacham, Rebecca Brittle, Adelia Congleton, William Fowler, William Frazier, Dr. Genevieve Gay, Robert Gotwals, Daphne Hardee, Ann Jones, Dr. Bryan Latham, Annette MacRae, Mildred Moore, Rebecca Osborne, David Parke, Amy Renfrow, Dr. Howard Sosne, Dr. Katye Sowell, Dr. Hazel Tripp, Margaret Wirth, and Frances Young.

College of Education Alumna Receives Order of the Long Leaf Pine

State Representative Edith Warren ’60, ’73 received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine for her years of service as a teacher. She was the first woman to serve as a principal in Pitt County, the first woman elected as a Pitt County commissioner, and served seven terms in the NC House of Representatives.

National Recognition for the College of Education

The College of Education was selected as one of ten institutions nationwide for participating in a national study to craft “case studies of practice.” The study, funded by the Spencer Foundation, is being conducted by researchers at the University of Washington to identify data use practices in teacher education programs that inform the field of teacher education. The college was chosen for its “relatively advanced organizational commitments and well developed practices related to using program outcome data for decision making.”

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HONORS COLLEGEHonors College Students Engage in Coursework Centered on Leadership and Service

Students who entered the Honors College this fall are discovering new ways to define themselves and their roles in society through their coursework. All 110 freshmen, members of the third entering class of the college, are currently taking an honors leadership and service colloquium, an interdisciplinary class being taught by Honors College Faculty Fellow, Dr. Todd Fraley. Through readings, discussions, and group projects, students are examining the social impact of poverty and their obligation as leaders to help find solutions. Said Fraley: “Activities are designed to encourage awareness and competence in ethical leadership and service. This is a wonderful group of motivated, curious, and energetic young people. The opportunity to work with them as they embark on their college careers has been exciting.”

Honoring Our Past

In 1978, an interdisciplinary Honors Program was formally established at ECU, directed by Dr. David Sanders. Dr. Michael Bassman—now the Distinguished Honors Professor—became the director in 1999; and the program transformed into the Honors College in 2010. To create a fuller picture of its collective history, the Honors College is seeking to gather memories from alumni and faculty. If you have an honors memory or photograph you would like to share, please contact Dr. Richard Eakin, Interim Dean of the Honors College, at [email protected] or call 252-737-3004. All photographs and documents will become the property of ECU and will be archived in Joyner Library.

HUMAN ECOLOGYLittle Tikes Partnership Brings New Child Development Playground

Plastic shovels plunged into the sand on a playground at East Carolina University as a film crew documented a dinosaur discovery.

Children attending the Nancy W. Darden Child Development Center excavated toy dinosaurs, hidden by ECU’s Department of Child Development and Family Relations professor Linda Crane Mitchell.

The “Dino Dig” is one activity in an educational curriculum Mitchell created in collaboration with playground manufacturer Little Tikes Commercial, in exchange for new, fully-accessible playground at the center.

Mitchell’s curriculum, for children ages two through five, is

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FINE ARTS & COMMUNICATION

Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival Introduces Next Gen on the Road

The Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival presented its newest outreach initiative, Next Gen on the Road, in November in Norfolk, VA and Winston-Salem. The concerts featured world-renowned guest artist Raman Ramakrishnan, cello; ECU alumna Meredith Harris ’04, viola; and ECU faculty artists Christopher Buddo, double bass; Ara Gregorian, violin; Emanuel Gruber, cello; Hye-Jin Kim, violin; Melissa Reardon, viola; and Keiko Sekino, piano, alongside current ECU students.

During a two-day residency in Norfolk, VA, the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival collaborated with the Virginia Governor’s School of the Arts to have master classes for students, a side-by-side rehearsal, an interactive discussion and a concert for the public. The second stop of the tour took guest artists, faculty, and students to the North Carolina Music Educators Association conference in Winston-Salem. In February of 2013, a second Next Gen on the Road tour will take place, working with local schools in Greensboro and Hickory to present concerts, open rehearsals, and master classes.

Four Seasons currently hosts two Next Generation residencies and concerts each year in Greenville. Through this program, ECU students work in collaboration with internationally-renowned guest musicians to prepare, rehearse, and present public concerts. Next Gen on the Road is a new component of the festival’s Next Generation residencies and takes Next Generation concerts on tour throughout North Carolina and beyond, providing students the opportunity to experience all aspects of a professional tour.

“Our Next Generation residencies and Next Gen on the Road concerts are essential to the festival’s role as an innovative educational resource and professional springboard for our ECU music students, and they also provide great concerts for the public,” said Gregorian. “It is a thrill for our guest artists, ECU faculty and current and former students to work side-by-side in the preparation for and performance of these concerts.”

In residence at the ECU School of Music under the College of Fine Arts and Communications, the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival brings world-class chamber musicians to eastern North Carolina and beyond for concerts, master classes, interactive community outreach, Next Generation residencies, Next Gen on the Road tours, a children’s residency, and the Four Seasons Family Night.

Honors College students in Dr. Fraley’s first-year colloquium serve the local community by working with homeless veterans.

Meredith Harris ’04

Ara Gregorian


a guide for incorporating project-based activities into everyday learning. In exchange for the curriculum design, Little Tikes transformed the development center’s playground into a fully accessible area for all children. The equipment was installed in August 2010. This spring, Mitchell delivered her Clever Activities curriculum.

The College of Human Ecology’s collaboration with Little Tikes Commercial reflects an emergence of private-public partnerships in higher education. With increased budget cuts across public institutions like ECU, these types of partnerships help ensure faculty that have the resources needed to carry out research and other academic-related initiatives.

“This curriculum development was one way to provide the new playground equipment that we desperately needed,” said Mitchell.

Dr. Judy Siguaw, dean of the College of Human Ecology, said the partnership between ECU and Little Tikes Commercial benefits the University. “As state dollars to fund university-operated expenses continue to decline, it will be critical to fund public-private partnerships so that universities can acquire much needed equipment and other resources,” Sigauw said.

“This is a curriculum that makes learning fun for children, while promoting mental and physical development,” said Mitchell. “I think a lot of people are going to be excited about it.”

The commercial playground package that includes a detailed teaching manual will launch on November 8 at the 2012 National Association for Education of Young Children annual conference in Atlanta, GA. The launch will include an interview with Mitchell and video highlights from the “Dino Dig” activity.

MEDICINEBench Dedicated in Memory of Slain MedicalStudent

Ten years after an ECU medical student was killed by her boyfriend, a scholarship in her name in the Brody School of Medicine continues to help medical students prevent situations of domestic violence.

The memory of Tiana Nicole Williams was honored in October with the dedication of a stone bench bearing her name near the Brody Medical Sciences building.

After Williams’ death, four of her classmates—Charlene Davenport, Tana Hall, Amy Howell, and Andrew Southerland—worked to raise money to endow a fund to provide stipends to

medical students to develop and participate in research and community service projects for the prevention of domestic violence.

Their classmates voted unanimously to establish the Tiana Nicole Williams Memorial Endowment. This year, second-year medical student Jenni Hoffman is the endowment scholar and is working on a project to identify new methods for screening victims of domestic violence.

Dr. Peggy Goodman, an associate professor of emergency medicine at ECU, has served on the NC Domestic Violence Commission and spoke at the dedication. “There’s no justice that brings back a murdered family member,” she said. “Her community lost a doctor, (her mother) lost a daughter, her siblings lost a sister. Nothing brings that back.”

“Tiana didn’t just touch me. She touched a lot of people in her life,” Williams’ mother Cynthia Foxx said at the dedication. “Tiana wanted to save lives. She didn’t deserve this.”

Howell said domestic violence is often ignored or overlooked by society as well as the victims and their friends and families.

“I think people when they’re in domestic situations their power has been taken from them,” said Howell, a pediatrician who practices in Goldsboro. “They are being controlled and are ashamed of that.”

The dedication was part of a day-long event at the Brody School of Medicine dedicated to Williams’ memory and to raise awareness of identifying and protecting victims of domestic violence.

More information about the endowment is online at http://www.ecu.edu/tnwe/Endowment/Endowment.html.

NURSINGCollege of Nursing Receives $1 Million Grant for Virtual Clinic

Students in nurse-midwifery, medicine and other health-related disciplines at East Carolina University will team up to expand a virtual clinic to improve women’s health through a $1.098 million federal grant awarded to the College of Nursing. The three-year grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services is the largest in the College of Nursing’s history.

Dr. Pamela Reis, assistant professor of nurse-midwifery education, is project director. The project aims to improve primary care of women through their lifespan by expanding an existing web-based Virtual Community Clinic Learning Environment, a format similar to the popular Second Life virtual world.

The college has operated the virtual clinic for six years for nurse

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The “Dino Dig” hosted by the Nancy W. Darden Child Development Center at ECU.

Cynthia Foxx, mother of the late Tiana Nicole Williams, sits on the bench dedicated to her daughter’s memory in front of the Brody Medical Sciences Building. Photo by Cliff Hollis.

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practitioner students, and will expand its reach by creating case-based, health care scenarios for nurse-midwifery and third-year medical students to work together to solve, Reis said.

“Much like a simulation laboratory, this model presents students with decision-making opportunities to develop their clinical skills in a safe environment,” said Dr. Sylvia Brown, dean of the College of Nursing. “This project addresses our goals to use technology to enhance education.”

The College of Nursing has been a leader in distance education on campus, and since 2004 has been recognized by US News & World Report as one of the largest distance education programs in the country.

A new online course will be developed about issues in women’s health in rural communities to incorporate the virtual clinic learning experiences for health sciences students.

Finally, the grant will help expand a Mini Business Institute that teaches skills that students need to build a successful health care practice.

The institute, a joint effort between the ECU College of Nursing and College of Business since 2005, will be offered for the first time to ECU obstetrics/gynecology and family medicine resident physicians, and interested students and faculty in the health sciences division.

ECU offers the only nurse midwifery curriculum in North Carolina. A special intent is for graduates to assume care provider roles in rural areas to meet the needs of underserved women and infants.

STUDENT AFFAIRSFall Career Fairs a Great Success; Spring Career Fair Set for March

The Career Center has experienced tremendous success this fall. ECU CareerNet rolled out this summer replacing Pirate Jobs. POP Thursdays (Pirates on the Porch) has brought more than a half dozen recruiters to meet with students at the Career Center. Also, the two career fairs had amazing turnout, with ECU alumni making up more than ten percent of the attendees.

The Health Career Fair, held October 4 at the Heart Institute, had forty-four organizations in attendance ranging from hospitals and health care agencies from North Carolina and throughout the US and Caribbean.

Approximately 200 students attended from majors that included: athletic training, biochemistry, business, exercise physiology, finance, health information management, molecular biology, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, psychology, recreation and recreation therapy.

The Career and Graduate Fair, held October 11 at the Greenville Convention Center, had 142 companies and graduate schools represented. Approximately 650 students attended from seventy-two academic majors throughout ECU. Employers came to identify candidates that could potentially intern or be considered for full time career opportunities.

A great cross section of organizations that ranged from technology, manufacturing, banking, retail, construction, consulting, hospitality, insurance, health care and travel and tourism participated in the event.

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“ECU continues to host one of the state’s largest career fairs with consistent support from many corporations where ECU alumni are currently working,” said Karen Thompson, director of the ECU Career Center. “ECU alumni participation and support at our Career Fairs makes a positive impact in the internship and full time career opportunities for our current students.”

The Spring Career and Education Fair will be March 20, 2013 and will hosted in Minges Coliseum and the Murphy Center.

For alumni wishing to connect with the Career Center for participation in career fairs or to utilize the career search services, please call 252-328-6050 or visit online at www.ecu.edu/career.

TECHNOLOGY& COMPUTER SCIENCE

Old Dominion Freight Line Sponsors Laboratory

A gift from a national shipping corporation will ensure that more East Carolina University students studying industrial distribution and logistics enter the workforce with experience using a common software package.

Students in this program in the College of Technology and Computer Science are trained in this lab on SAP software – a workflow management tool used at major corporations across the US. An endowment from Old Dominion Freight Line will go toward purchasing more computers and other materials for this lab.

Old Dominion Freight Line Inc., based in Thomasville, provided the one-time endowment to enhance the existing lab. Administrators and faculty will use the funding to purchase computers and other equipment needed to train more students in SAP.

Leslie Pagliari, associate dean for academic affairs for the college, described SAP as the software most often used at Fortune 500 companies to manage everything from human resource allocation to purchasing to the supply chain and transportation.

“Old Dominion’s thoughtful donation will give students a hands-on opportunity to learn software that is vital to the transportation and logistics industries,” said Dean David White. “Ultimately, this experience will better prepare our students to become leaders in the software business.”

“Old Dominion and East Carolina University have a longstanding partnership,” said Ken Erdner, Old Dominion’s vice president of information system and technology. “The talented students studying technology and computer science at East Carolina University today are the next generation of stars in our industry, and we welcome the opportunity to help them excel in their studies.”

ECU’s industrial distribution and logistics program is the only one of its kind that offers SAP training to graduates. Within a year, program administrators plan to offer a SAP Certificate of Completion.


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KIn 1962, Laura Marie Leary of Vanceboro stepped on East Carolina’s campus and became the first black student to attend what was then East Carolina College. With strong support from Chancellor Leo Jenkins and Dr. Andrew Best, the first African American family physician in the community, she paved the way toward the integration and eventual desegregation of East Carolina.

Now Laura Elliott, she graduated in 1966, earning a degree in business administration. Elliott said that there wasn’t much fanfare or positive attention in the early 1960s for those involved in the desegregation of higher education. In fact, Elliott didn’t have a single photo from her college years except for the photo in the yearbook. After leaving East Carolina, she married, and made her home in Baltimore, MD, where she later retired after working many years with the federal government.

The 2012-13 academic year marks the 50th anniversary of Elliott’s now famous first steps at East Carolina. Her courage and tenacity led to incredible gains at ECU including an increasingly diverse student body. By 2011, fifteen percent of the student population was African American.

In September, the ECU Board of Trustees passed a resolution to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the campus’ desegregation and to recognize Elliott and those who followed in her footsteps. The anniversary of desegregation at ECU will be recognized with events throughout this academic year.

A Real HomecomingECU welcomed Elliott back to campus to be a major part of Homecoming 2012. Elliott attended the Alumni Awards Ceremony and Dinner hosted by the East Carolina Alumni Association on Friday, October 12. Following a ride in Saturday’s parade, the Ledonia Wright Cultural Center hosted a special ceremony to commemorate Elliott and her journey from ECU to today. Later in the afternoon, Elliott experienced another special first - her first ECU football game.

During halftime, Chancellor Steve Ballard and Bob Lucas, chair of the ECU

Board of Trustees, presented Elliott with a framed copy of the 50th anniversary resolution. She received a standing ovation from the capacity crowd at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.

Later that day, with tears in her eyes, she said since she wasn’t really welcomed back in 1962, she was adopting our current students, chancellor, and everyone in the Pirate Nation as her ECU class.

Five Decades of Desegregation at ECUIn November, ECU held its first official celebration event called the History, Legacy and Celebration of Desegregation in Higher Education. Justice Henry Frye, the first African American to serve on the North Carolina Supreme Court and later appointed as Chief Justice of the state’s highest court, was the keynote speaker.

Following the keynote address, Justice Frye participated in a panel discussion about desegregation at East Carolina University. The panelists included ECU alumni, students and administrators spanning the last five decades.

The 50th Anniversary celebration will continue throughout the spring 2013 semester. Please visit www.ecu.edu/cs-admin/mktg/50years_desegregation.cfm for event information, a timeline spanning ECU’s history with desegregation and more.

ECU Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Desegregation

Laura Leary Elliott ’66

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