WALK THE WALK
Kristen Powell dreams of becoming an orthopedic surgeon, so there was only one obvious choice for a major when she chose Campbell.
Engineering.
She knows that understanding how machines work give her a better understanding of how bones in the human body move and function.
“I want to enter medical school from a different perspective,” says Powell, of Mebane. “Not only will [engineering] give me an understanding of the body and motion, but maybe one day I will come up with better ways to replace a shoulder or an elbow. If I can help design something using machines and my engineering education, I can contribute to the medical field.”
Powell enrolled at Campbell last fall and remained undeclared on her major knowing engineering was a year away. That’s putting a lot of trust in a new, unproven program, but Powell says Campbell’s reputation in launching other new programs — most recently the School of Osteopathic Medicine and School of Nursing — was all she needed to know Buies Creek was the right choice.
“We portray engineers as lonely nerds in white lab coats working on boring theoretical projects in labs. [But] research shows girls and all millennial students are far more interested in helping and doing good than they are building a bigger, better faster rocket ship. The opportunities for doing good in engineering and science have never been greater.”
“I knew they’d do the School of Engineering right,” she says. “I like that it’s going to start small, that there will be a lot of one-on-one interaction with professors. I wanted a hands- on experience here, and I’m excited about what’s to come.”
When it enrolls its first students this fall, Campbell will become the second private university in North Carolina with an engineering school. It’s attracting students like Powell by presenting itself as a program with an “innovative hands-on, project-based freshman curriculum and a high degree of student-faculty interaction.”
To begin, the school will offer general engineering degrees, with concentrations in mechanical or chemical engineering. It aims to distinguish itself with a diverse student body. When your founding dean is a leading national expert on the need for more diversity in STEM fields, this is a necessity for the program’s success.
Carpenter compared Campbell’s accepted students for fall 2016 who have declared engineering and compared the demographics to 2014 data from the National Science Foundation. Currently, the School of Engineering is at or above the national average in every category and subcategory of race, gender and ethnicity for its charter class. In one category, the school is 6.6 percent over the national average.
“It’s just accepted students, so certainly these numbers can shift,” Carpenter says. “But it’s a good snapshot. At least we’re getting attention from a diverse group of students.”
Campbell’s incoming class will come nowhere near the 50/50 male/female split she’d love to see one day, but that takes time. Carpenter says a diverse class does more for Campbell than meeting a goal or a quota. Students learn better in a diverse setting, and employees work better in a diverse setting.”
In mid-March, the School of Engineering partnered with the National Center for Women & Information Technology to host a regional event recognizing 12 young women in high school for their computing achievements. The students traveled to Buies Creek from Durham, Raleigh and other parts of the Triangle and had a chance to meet with professionals from Red Hat, a world-leader in open-source software products, and Fidelity Investments. This event, in addition to the FIRST Robotics competition on campus, are helping Carpenter and the school spread its message of diversity in STEM education.
Engineering’s success at Campbell will raise the tide for other schools and departments. Engineering majors will need 15 total hours of calculus in their first two years, and a similar workload in either chemistry or physics, meaning more professors for several programs in the College of Arts & Sciences.
“Our program’s excited. I’m definitely excited,” says Meredith Williams, associate professor of math and chair of Campbell’s Department of Mathematics/ITS. “We’ll be teaching more students, and it’s likely these will be stronger math students. We’ll see more enrollment in our upper-level classes like Calculus III and Linear Algebra as well. This is big for our department.”
Like the schools of osteopathic medicine and nursing and the physician assistant and physical therapy programs before it, engineering will
get its start in Carrie Rich Hall before its new home — to be built in the Saylor Park area of campus (near the mud volleyball courts) — is ready, possibly as early as fall 2018. The temporary home will include two large classrooms, tons of “flexible space,” student study areas, whiteboards, a plethora of printers (including 3D), vinyl cutters, and space for metal and woodworking.
“We can make it here for the first two years,” Carpenter says. “But by the time these students become juniors, we’ll need bigger lab spaces, larger machines and a chemical process lab. The whole building may not be done by 2018, but we’re hoping at least pieces are ready.”
The big selling point for incoming students is what will happen when their Campbell experience comes to an end. Job placement for those with degrees in engineering is near 100 percent, Carpenter says. Especially for those students with internship experience (another focus of Campbell’s program).
“We’re in the Research Triangle area, the Silicon Valley of engineering,” she says. “Engineering is more than just planes, trains and automobiles … not that those aren’t awesome. Back in Louisiana, people thought oil and gas when they heard engineering. But it’s much broader than that. We want to help students see the variety in engineering and how their education can help make a difference in the world.”