In 1955, NC State’s Wilson College of Textiles professor William Edward Shinn used a necktie-knitting machine to develop the world’s first synthetic aorta, launching the institution into the field of medical care and saving the lives of millions globally.

Some 70 years later, the nation’s only textiles school remains at the forefront of developing cutting-edge tools to diagnose, treat and prevent critical medical conditions.

NC State built the world’s first nuclear reactor on a college campus. This small research reactor, which is still operational at the Burlington Laboratories on main campus, is the centerpiece of the NC State nuclear engineering program that was established by Clifford Beck in the aftermath of World War II.

Beck was a chief contributor to the Tennessee Valley Project that developed the atomic bomb technology that ended the largest military conflict in world history. His experience with the TVA helped spread nuclear power production throughout the country.

NC State’s top-earning patent to date was awarded to Sylvia Blankenship, professor emeritus of horticulture science, and research partner Edward Sisler, a biochemistry professor. In the 1990s, the two professors collaborated to identify the compound 1-methylcyclopropene, which is widely used to preserve fruits and vegetables for longer freshness and longer transport time. To date, 1-MCP has generated more than $25 million in royalty revenues and is licensed in more than 70 countries globally.

NC State’s work in food science became world famous in the 1970s, when CALS microbiologist Marvin Speck and food scientist Stanley Gilliland pioneered a process that used freeze-dried Lactobacillus acidophilus to yield a lactose-friendly, low-fat sweet acidophilus milk that helped those unable to digest lactose by providing a better-tasting and more palatable version of the natural beverage.

It was the beginning of the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences’ research in microbiomes and probiotics that continues today through the pioneering work of Rodolphe Barrangou and his CRISPR genome-editing project. Barrangou, the Todd Klaenhammer Distinguished Professor in Probiotics Research, has won multiple international awards, including the Canada Gairdner International Award, considered a precursor to the Nobel Prize.

The most widely known woman associated with what is now the College of Sciences is Gertrude Cox, the “First Lady of Statistics.” Cox came to NC State in 1940 to establish the Department of Experimental Statistics, becoming NC State’s first female professor and department head. She was instrumental in NC State’s role in founding the Research Triangle Institute.

Cox, namesake of Cox Hall and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, also established the UNC System’s Institute of Statistics.

Working in tandem with UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University, NC State became a founding partner in the Research Triangle Institute, now known as RTI International. With backing from Governor Luther Hodges and support from UNC Consolidated System President William Friday, RTI purchased land in between Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill to create a forward-looking technology-based research park. RTI broke ground in 1958. Supported and promoted by the state of North Carolina, companies like IBM and GlaxoSmithKline, and government organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency, set up shops at the park. RTI brought well-paying jobs and first-class research opportunities to the state, making North Carolina a hub for  high-technology companies.

NC State researchers Craig Yencho and Ken Pecota, after years of field testing, introduced the Covington variety of sweet potatoes in 2005, paving the way for North Carolina to regain its place as the nation’s leading producer of the food tuber. The Covington accounts for about 90% of all sweet potato production in North Carolina, which provides nearly three-quarters of the global export market. Yencho and Pecota have introduced sweet potato varieties in Africa and South America, helping farmers on those continents to produce reliable food sources in difficult growing conditions.

The Nonwovens Institute opened on Centennial Campus, offering the world’s first accredited program for the interdisciplinary field of engineered fabrics. When the world needed N95 respirators and personal protective equipment during the global COVID-19 pandemic, the NWI stepped up to help produce critically needed medical gear and alleviate supply chain pressure during nationwide and global shutdowns.

Three-time NC State graduate Calvin H. Carter Jr. and other former students of professor Robert Davis founded the electronics company Cree, the world’s first manufacturer of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs). 

Five of the company’s six founders were graduates of NC State’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering who had studied in Davis’ lab. Cree technology was based on the untapped potential of silicon carbide. The material had long been used as an abrasive, but Cree’s founders discovered that it could be used to make lighting products. After years of producing blue-light LEDs, Cree transitioned to manufacturing more efficient semiconductors made from silicon carbide and gallium nitride, so-called “wide bandgap” semiconductors that are 10% to 15% more efficient than silicon semiconductors.

NC State’s background in researching and developing wide bandgap technology helped the university land the lead role in creating and hosting the National Science Foundation-funded PowerAmerica National Manufacturing Innovation Institute, as announced on campus by President Barack Obama in 2014.

In 1984, outgoing North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt transferred more than 350 acres of undeveloped state land to his alma mater for an innovative public-private research campus. The grant of land — called Centennial Campus in recognition of NC State’s then-approaching 100th birthday — tripled the size of the original campus. Over the 40 years since then, Centennial has become the national and international model for public-private partnerships, leveraging academic research, resources and student participation to drive the state’s economy.

Called “one of the greatest benefactions — if not the greatest — in the university’s nearly 100-year history,” the initial grant and an additional gift of 600 acres by Hunt’s Republican successor, Governor James Martin, was a bipartisan gift for the ages.

Hunt’s initial gift of undeveloped land has been transformed into 50 university buildings housing more than 70 NC State academic units along with more than 75 companies, government agencies and nonprofits, comprising some five million feet of research and educational space. Centennial also includes the College of Engineering, the Wilson College of Textiles, a championship golf course, the school’s alumni center, a privately operated hotel, the chancellor’s residence, private and student housing, and the world’s most advanced university library, named after the NC State alumnus who made the innovative campus possible.

Cementing Centennial Campus’ place as a pioneering research park for private partnerships and government agencies, the National Weather Service became the first government partner on Centennial Campus when it established a Forecast Office in Research Building III in 1993, creating a campus relationship with weather services around the world.

Graduates from NC State’s Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences populate NWS and NOAA offices across the country, including the five degrees earned by the top two administrators of the National Hurricane Center in Miami and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere Neil Jacobs, who earned both his M.S. and his Ph.D. degrees in air-sea interaction and numerical weather prediction at NC State.

Their mission in predictive climate and weather forecasting is to keep people in danger zones informed and updated when weather emergencies arise.

In 2009, the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies — a joint partnership between NC State and NOAA that brings together private-sector companies, nonprofits, community groups and government agencies — opened in Asheville.

A pioneer in semiconductor research, Professor Jayant Baliga of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is best known for his invention of the insulated gate bipolar transistor, a kind of high-efficiency power switch that is now used globally in household appliances, cars, fluorescent lights and other electronic devices. Baliga, a native of India, has been part of NC State’s faculty since 1988. The Inventors Hall of Fame, to which he was elected in 2014, estimates his research has saved some $24 trillion in gas and electric power usage. The creation of Baliga’s Power Semiconductor Research Group was an integral step in NC State becoming the headquarters of the PowerAmerica Institute in 2014 and of the Commercial Leap Ahead for Wide-Bandgap Semiconductors Hub in 2024.

Since its founding more than 100 years ago, heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc. has maintained strong ties with NC State, from its corporate leadership to its new employee recruitment to academic scholarships. The world’s largest maker of construction and mining machines, headquartered in Irving, Texas, has five divisions in North Carolina, including corporate offices in Cary and manufacturing facilities in Sanford, Clayton, Winston-Salem and Goldsboro.

Led from 2004-2010 by CEO and three-time NC State graduate James Owens, who earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1973, Caterpillar offers multiple layers of internships and postgraduate programs for NC State students and alumni. Owens, a native of Elizabeth City, served his alma mater in various capacities during and after his career, serving on the university’s Board of Trustees and as chair of the board.

In 2024, Owens and his wife Kathrine gave the university a $2 million gift in honor of retiring chancellor Randy Woodson.

Beginning in 1998, after a full decade spent reviving college football postseason game the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, chief executive officer Gary Stokan dedicated his career to turning his adopted hometown of Atlanta into the “College Football Capital of the World.” It was an odd passion for a Pittsburgh native who came to NC State to play and eventually to coach basketball under head coach Norman Sloan; but Stokan, a former athletics shoe representative for Converse, put his business management degree to use in a different sports venue. He spearheaded the effort to build the $1.8 billion Mercedes Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta, move the College Football Hall of Fame to Atlanta from South Bend, Indiana, and bring both the Super Bowl and college football’s national championship game to the Georgia capital. Those sporting events alone brought more than $1.1 billion in economic impact and tax revenue to the Peach State.

Remember when Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos almost went bye-bye? In 2012, Hostess Brands filed bankruptcy and started the process of selling off all its bakeries and trademarks. Thanks to former NC State swimmer Bill Toler, however, the national snackcake catastrophe was averted. Toler, who earned an NC State degree in business management and economics, was named chief executive officer and president of the company’s reorganization. He changed the company’s infrastructure and distribution systems, and he took the formerly private company public with great fanfare on the NASDAQ stock exchange. During a 2014 Red and White Week speech at the Poole College of Management, Toler credited his time at NC State and with his swimming coach Don Easterling for sending him down the path to make a global impact in food manufacturing and production.

O. Max Gardner was part of Cleveland County’s “Shelby Dynasty” that guided North Carolina through the difficult days of the Great Depression. A primary advisor for decades to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Gardner began his education at the North Carolina College for Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, where he participated in football, athletics administration and student theater. He was elected captain of the A&M football team his senior year and as senior class president in 1903. After graduating with a B.S. in chemistry, he enrolled in law school at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he also played football. However, out of a sense of loyalty to his undergraduate alma mater, he vowed never to play for the Tar Heels when they played against NC State.

After being elected North Carolina’s 57th governor in 1929, Gardner is remembered for streamlining state government during the Depression’s lean financial times and consolidating North Carolina’s three state schools: UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State College of Agriculture and Engineering and the North Carolina College for Women in Greensboro. Gardner lived a full life in statewide and national politics until his last breath: He died of a heart attack en route to his newly appointed position by President Harry Truman as ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1946.

Since 1949, the top teaching award in the University of North Carolina System, named for Gardner, has gone to a “member of the faculty … who, during the current scholastic year, has made the greatest contribution to the welfare of the human race.” Since 1951, a total of 33 distinguished faculty members from NC State have won that award, more than any of the other 17 system schools.

Since NC State opened in 1889, North Carolina has elected only one set of father-and-son governors, and both attended NC State. W. Kerr Scott was elected the 61st governor in 1948, while his son Robert Scott was elected the 67th governor in 1968. The elder, who earned a degree in agriculture from NC State, was known as the “Go-Forward Governor” for his dedication to building rural farm-to-market roads and rural electrification; the younger, who earned a degree in animal industry, focused on modernizing the executive branch and guiding the state through public school desegregation.

On North Campus, a dedicated greenspace, called the Governors Scott Courtyard, is located between prominent horticulture buildings.

North Carolina has never had a father-daughter set of governors, though the late Jim Hunt, an NC State graduate and two-time student body president, was elected to a record four terms as governor of his home state, and his daughter, Rachel Hunt, currently serves as the state’s lieutenant governor.

From 1965-1985, governors Robert Scott and Hunt hosted their inaugural balls at Reynolds Coliseum, as did governors James Holshouser, Dan Moore and Jim Martin.

A young baseball and basketball player from the mill town of Dallas, North Carolina, came to NC State to earn a degree in textile engineering just before the start of World War II. William C. Friday got that degree, and several others, as he devoted his professional life to education. He spent 30 years as the president of the University of North Carolina System and served as an advisor to presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter. For more than a half century, he was an internationally respected voice in higher education.

In 2005, the College of Education opened the William C. and Ida Friday Institute of Educational Innovation on Centennial Campus, with the vision of bringing together university faculty, K-12 educators, policymakers, students, educational leaders and researchers. The institute is physically connected to Centennial Middle School, a Wake County public school located on Main Campus Drive. Since 2000, the senior class of the Park Scholars have presented the William C. Friday Award on behalf of the Park Scholarships program to individuals who emulate Friday’s dedication to excellence in scholarship, leadership, service and character. Since 2006, the Friday Institute has given the Friday Medal to educators nationwide who embody the institute’s spirit.

Jim Graham — celebrated as the state’s “Sodfather” — was the most important figure in North Carolina agriculture of the 20th century. From his family farm in Rowan County, Graham came to NC State to earn a degree in agriculture. In 1964, he was appointed North Carolina’s Commissioner of Agriculture and was subsequently elected to the post a record nine times before retiring in 2001. Among his many accomplishments, Graham secured funding for life-changing programs and facilities that allowed North Carolina to become a national leader in agricultural progress. Among them were programs to eradicate the boll weevil in cotton; eliminate pseudo rabies, cholera and tuberculosis in hogs; and to provide free soil samples to all North Carolina residents. He developed a network of five state-owned farmers markets that allowed rural farmers to bring their goods to urban residents and seven animal disease diagnostic laboratories across the state. He developed the “Goodness Grows in North Carolina” marketing campaign, expanded the North Carolina State Fair and set up innovative statewide programs to monitor every gas pump, scale and price scanner for accuracy.

NC State political science graduate Robert Gibbs stood on the stage at Reynolds Coliseum on May 6, 2008, and took in an unbelievable sight: the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for president. Gibbs, a one-time campaign volunteer for Bill Clinton as a student, had become one of Obama’s most trusted advisors, going back to the politician’s 2006 run for U.S. Senate in Illinois. Obama went on to become the first Black president in United States history, and Gibbs followed him to serve as the nation’s 27th White House press secretary.

“I can’t tell you how amazing [that night] was, to be there in a special place where I had spent so much time during college,” Gibbs said. “It was the perfect setting.” 

Gibbs, a native of Auburn, Alabama, came to NC State to play soccer and was on the team that advanced to the 1990 NCAA semifinals but also developed a burning passion for American politics and communication. Gibbs was named a College of Humanities and Social Sciences Distinguished Alumnus in 2025.

Just three years after the North Carolina College for Agriculture and Mechanic Arts opened its doors in 1889, the school admitted its first international student, Cuban-born Jose Fabio Santos Trigo, who came to study agriculture in 1892. Six years later, the school conferred its first undergraduate degree to Teisaku Sugishita, a native of Japan who traveled across the Pacific to study civil engineering.

Through the years, thousands of international students have come to Raleigh for a world-class STEM education, many of whom returned home to improve their native lands. One of them — Hesham Qandil, who earned a Ph.D. in biological and agricultural engineering with a specialization in water resources in 1993 — was appointed prime minister of Egypt in 2012. Brothers Youssef and Mohamed Mansour came to NC State from Alexandria, Egypt, to learn to run their father’s global cotton manufacturing enterprise. They stayed after the family fortune was lost, but later returned home to restart the multinational company. Mohamed Mansour shared the family’s story, enriched by their time at NC State, at the 2022 spring commencement exercises.

Today, there are more than 6,000 international students from more than 120 countries enrolled at NC State, about 80% of whom are in graduate STEM programs.

NC State also offers dozens of international study-abroad experiences, many of which take place at the NC State European Center in Prague, Czechia.

Modern forestry education in America began in North Carolina when German forester Carl Alwin Schenck founded the Biltmore Forest School near Asheville in 1898, the nation’s first school of forestry. Building on Schenck’s legacy, NC State established its School of Forestry in 1929 and emerged as a national leader under the guidance of Julius V. Hofmann, whose vision helped shape forestry education across the South.

Two of NC State’s three research forests are named for those pioneers, Schenck Forest in Raleigh and Hofmann Forest in Jones and Onslow counties. In all, the College of Natural Resources manages more than 93,000 acres from the Piedmont to the Coastal Plain, which are used for outdoor laboratories, forestry studies, genetics, water quality monitoring and recreation.

NC State remains the state’s only institution offering undergraduate forestry education, producing generations of foresters, forest industry leaders, researchers and natural resource professionals who help manage the state’s nearly 19 million acres of forestland and support a forest products industry that generates more than $41 billion annually in economic impact.

North Carolina has four national forests, spanning the state’s diverse topography: the Croatan on the coast, the Uwharrie in the Piedmont, the Pisgah and the Nantahala in the mountains.

In recent rankings, CNR has the No. 1 forestry program in the country and the No. 26 program in the world.

At the height of World War I, NC State math professor John Harrelson selected about 30 student cadets from his college in Raleigh to command Fort Caswell, which served as a U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps post during the war and was part of the world’s most elaborate coastal defense system.

Harrelson, a native of Cleveland County, rose to the rank of colonel and eventually became the first NC State alumnus to serve as the school’s top administrator when he was named dean of administration in 1932. In 1946, after taking a three-year break from academics to serve again in the Army during World War II, he was named NC State’s first chancellor.

The remnants of Fort Caswell now belong to the North Carolina Baptist Convention, and Camp Caswell serves as a year-round youth retreat.

Six months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, NC State welcomed its first cohort of students into a graduate program in Diesel Engineering, thanks to a $2 million loan of heavy equipment from the United States Navy. The program, which trained more than 1,300 U.S. Navy officers over the course of five years, was one of just two in the nation. It was critically important in the operation and maintenance of diesel-powered vessels, including submarines, destroyer escorts, mine craft, patrol craft and auxiliaries.

Many of the graduates who were commissioned eventually deployed to both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, with a significant number operating the landing craft that delivered Army infantry for the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, on D-Day.

The program was demobilized a few days before the end of 1945, having made a proud contribution to the global victory over fascism.

The Allied airborne invasion of France that began on June 6, 1944, was planned by former NC State football and baseball player Gen. William Carey Lee of Dunn. 

Hours before thousands of American, British and other Allied soldiers landed on the beaches at Normandy, elite paratroopers and thousands of clay decoys dropped behind German lines to take the first steps toward the liberation of Europe from the tyranny of Hitler’s Axis forces.

Lee, recovering from a heart attack he suffered while training to jump with his men into the French countryside, listened to news of the invasion on his home radio, proud of his paratroopers’ performance but disappointed that he wasn’t with them.

A museum in his Harnett County hometown celebrates the brilliant military career of “The Father of the U.S. Airborne,” and Lee Residence Hall on NC State’s main campus is named in his memory.

Of the nearly 10,000 Allied soldiers who died during the D-Day invasion, six NC State alumni are buried near where they fell on the shores of France.

Few places in North Carolina are smaller than the unincorporated Edgecombe County community of Speed (population 70). And few communities have sent a more important leader to study at NC State.

Gen. Henry Hugh Shelton, a 1963 graduate in textile engineering who was commissioned as U.S. Army officer after his four-year ROTC training, rose through the ranks to become a four-star general and the 14th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officer in the country, for presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

His decorated career included the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, four Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart and a Congressional Gold Medal.

His NC State legacy includes the Shelton Leadership Center, which the general founded in retirement “to inspire, educate and develop values-based leaders, both locally and globally, committed to personal integrity, professional ethics and selfless service.”

In 1932, a young girl from the Wake County farming town of Fuquay-Varina met her hero, pioneering pilot Amelia Earhart, at the old Raleigh airport near Tryon Road. She asked Earhart what she needed to do to become a pilot, but the world-famous flyer correctly predicted that the future of aeronautics was in engineering, and she told Stinson to pursue that field of study.

Katharine Stinson applied to school at NC State, which at the time didn’t accept women as freshmen. She went to Meredith instead, completing 48 credit hours in one year and reapplying to NC State, where she became the first woman to enroll in the School of Engineering. She quickly earned a degree in mechanical engineering with an aeronautical option and was the first female engineer ever hired by the Federal Aviation Administration, where she worked for 32 years, developing safety standards for the world’s biggest and fastest airplanes.

The young girl’s dream took flight at NC State.

The most sacred place on NC State’s campus had the eyes of the nation and Europe focused on it on Nov. 11, 2018, when it served as the United States’ primary commemoration site for the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

The school’s Memorial Tower — 115 feet of North Carolina granite with the names of 35 NC State students, faculty and alumni who died in World War I engraved in the shrine room at its base — is the largest memorial to fallen soldiers from that conflict in the U.S.

Although it took 28 years from cornerstone to dedication, the Belltower is now the focal point of on-campus celebrations for the newest generations of NC State students, faculty and staff, thanks in large part to Thomas Stafford, vice chancellor for student affairs emeritus, and his well-attended tours of the tower.

The centennial celebration was a full military ceremony that included a 21-gun salute and a flyover of F-15s from the 4th Fighter Wing stationed at Goldsboro’s Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. NC State professor Bill Fonteno’s horticulture science class spent the previous spring semester growing 1,000 red poppies on the Belltower grounds to commemorate the occasion.

Connie B. Gay grew up on a 17-acre tobacco farm in the eastern Wake County community of Lizard Lick just before World War I. He graduated from NC State with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural education in 1935, with the intent of going back to the family farm. Immediately after college, he went to work as an extension agent in Caswell County, but later he turned a daily agricultural radio show into a national craze. No one — not singers, songwriters, musicians, promoters nor agents — had a bigger impact on the transformation of rural hillbilly entertainment into the modern genre of country music. He began with a half-hour show in Washington, D.C., just after World War II, before he became a promoter of country music stars and the founding president of the Country Music Association. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980, along with genre superstars Johnny Cash and the Sons of the Pioneers.

Based on the design of NC State-educated architect Phil Freelon, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture opened its doors in September 2016 as the newest national monument in Washington, D.C., the culmination of a nine-year journey that began when Freelon was hired to lead the museum’s 32-consultant design team in 2007. Located just three blocks from the White House, the NMAAHC showcases the history, heritage and enduring cultural impact of African Americans — telling the story of the country as they have known and lived it.

Instead of the usual white marble of the National Mall, Freelon and the design team chose to clad the $540 million NMAAHC in a striking bronze lattice, angled to match the capstone on the Washington Monument. Freelon graduated from NC State’s College of Design in 1975. His career was dedicated to shaping the public-facing architecture of the Triangle, including the Partners III building on Centennial Campus and the renovated Gregg Museum of Art & Design. Freelon, who died in 2019, left an indelible mark through his cultural, civic and collegiate works, which include the District of Columbia Public Library, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta and the Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte.

In 2011, a 16-year-old grocery store bagger from a small town outside of Raleigh shook the entertainment world with his participation in the 10th season of the top-rated reality television show “American Idol.” While still in high school, deep-voiced Scotty McCreery went on to win the national competition, earning a recording contract and participation in a national tour. When he returned home, he enrolled as a freshman at NC State to study communications before pursuing his country music dreams full time. He filmed the music video for his 2013 hit song “See You Tonight” at University Plaza and Pullen Park. In 2024, he became the 227th member inducted into country music’s Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.

During weekly meetups at the southern entrance of the Free Expression Tunnel, freshman Marlanna Evans, a student from the Greene County town of Snow Hill, joined a collection of other musical students to share her interpretation of rap music. Performing under the stage name Rapsody, Evans signed several national recording contracts, working with both Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z to produce critically acclaimed works. She has been nominated for three Grammy Awards for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song.

The world’s largest natural habitat zoo is located in Asheboro, about 75 miles west of NC State’s Raleigh campus, and has strong historical ties to the College of Veterinary Medicine, not only in the treatment and care of the 1,700 animals, but as a teaching laboratory for students interested in the field of large and exotic animal care.

Every year, in addition to the 850,000 paying visitors and members, the zoo hosts numerous CVM students as well as playing an integral role in the teaching of zoological medicine residents, a field virtually created at CVM.

The zoo, one of only two-state supported zoos in the United States, got its start in August 1967 at NC State’s newly opened Carter Stadium, where the Raleigh Junior Chamber hosted a fundraising NFL exhibition game between the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants. It and three more exhibition games in subsequent years raised the money for a feasibility study for creating a statewide zoo.

In the half century since it opened with great fanfare on Aug. 2, 1974, the animals have never been out of the hands of an NC State-affiliated veterinarian, since initial caretaker Jim Wright and the first fulltime vet Mike Loomis held adjunct positions at NC State.

The current director of animal care, Jb Minter, is a 2008 CVM graduate who is a mentor to current CVM students, recent graduates and those interested in the growing field of zoological medicine.

NC State computer science professor Don Bitzer, NC State’s first member of the National Academy of Engineering and an elected member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, won an Emmy Award for Scientific Development and Technological Achievement in 2002 for his team’s invention of a groundbreaking plasma screen television. The forerunner of the modern flat-panel television screen has led to televisions becoming bigger and flatter ever since.

NC State English professor Guy Owen, born in the Bladen County community of Elkton, was a prolific fiction writer whose second novel, Journey for Joedel, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His first novel, The Ballad of the Flim-Flam Man, was turned into a major Hollywood film directed by Irvin Kershner and starred George C. Scott. Owen, a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, joined NC State’s English faculty in 1962 to teach creative writing and American literature. He was frequently awarded best-teacher honors.

NC State creative writing instructor Sam Ragan, known as North Carolina’s Literary Godfather, published eight works of poetry and was a decorated member of both the North Carolina Journalism and the North Carolina Literary halls of fame.

Owen and Ragan helped establish a literary legacy that has filtered through the faculty of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, including novelists Lee Smith, Charles Frazier and Jill McCorkle, award-winning science fiction novelist John Kessel, video producer Jim Clark, essayist Belle Boggs, New York Times bestselling nonfiction author Cat Warren and poets Gerald Barrax, Meg Day and Dorianne Laux.

Kessel, now a professor emeritus, helped establish NC State’s creative writing program in 1982 and was a champion of the school’s Master of Fine Arts program that began in 2003. For a deeper look, read more about successful Wolfpack alumni and faculty writers.

All Vivian Howard wanted to be was a food writer. As an NC State English student, she waited tables at a Mission Valley restaurant and did an internship at WRAL-TV, with the hopes of pursuing a career in culinary journalism. That didn’t work out.

She moved to New York to embark on a marketing career, but despite being successful in that field, she decided to return to her roots: food service. She began waiting tables again, enrolled in a culinary arts program and began working for some of the city’s trendiest restaurants. At her parents’ behest, she moved back to her hometown of Deep Run in Lenoir County to raise her two children with husband Ben Knight and to open a modern Southern cuisine restaurant called Chef & the Farmer.

She began diving into the stories about the farmers who sourced her food and called upon a documentary-maker friend to develop a show for PBS called A Chef’s Life. The success of her show and restaurant made her one of the nation’s top chefs, and she won more than a dozen James Beard Awards, not to mention two daytime Emmys.

She did become a food writer — of recipes and Southern farmer stories. Her 2016 debut cookbook, the 500-page Deep Run Roots: Stories and Recipes from My Corner of the South, became a New York Times bestseller.

John Tesh came from Long Island, New York, to NC State to study chemistry and physics. A walk-on member of both the varsity soccer and lacrosse teams, Tesh also spent his time on and around the Brickyard playing various forms of music and working at local radio station WRAL. He eventually earned a degree in communications with a minor in music and began a 50-year broadcasting career. Tesh reached his peak as a co-host for 11 years of the syndicated television magazine show Entertainment Tonight. The eight-time Emmy Award winner was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2018 and the National Radio Hall of Fame the following year.

Comedian, actor and writer Zach Galifianakis, a native of North Wilkesboro with familial ties to NC State, paid tribute to his alma mater in his wildly successful trilogy of Hangover movies by naming the traveling crew featured in the plots “the Wolfpack.” The three movies have earned $1.41 billion globally since the first installment was released in 2009, against a total production cost of $218 million. Galifianakis befriended comedy writer A.D. Miles when they were both students at NC State. Miles, who earned a degree in communications from NC State, was the head writer for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon from 2014-17.

Durham native Irwin Holmes was one of the first four African American students who enrolled at NC State in the fall of 1956. He not only became NC State’s first Black student to earn an undergraduate degree, receiving a diploma in electrical engineering in the spring of 1960. He also helped break racial barriers in the Atlantic Coast Conference and the South. He and teammate Manuel Crockett became the first Black athletes to compete in an ACC-sponsored athletic event, at a track meet against the University of North Carolina. Holmes later joined the tennis team and became the first Black captain of a varsity sport at a southern institution, with recognition in the New York Times and Sports Illustrated. In 2018, Holmes Hall on main campus was named in his honor.

As multipurpose facilities go, North Carolina has never had a state-constructed building as important as Reynolds Coliseum, a well-used venue for sports, concerts and special events since the day it opened on Dec. 2, 1949.

Built as an indoor arena, armory and fallout shelter after World War II, Reynolds became the most visited on-campus facility in the country by hosting every kind of event imaginable for a community starved for competition and entertainment amid the postwar economic boom.

Based on similar plans for Duke (now Cameron) Indoor Stadium and designed by NC State architectural engineering professors Milton Small and Ross Edward Shumaker, the building named for tobacco-industry magnate William Neal Reynolds has anchored the student-services side of campus since it opened more than three-quarters of a century ago. Because it used federal funds to begin construction, it was mandated to be the permanent home for the school’s ROTC programs and military science classes.

The ice-making equipment needed to turn the main floor into the South’s first ice rink inspired Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and other cities in the South to also have ice-skating events and hockey exhibitions. The NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes — who share Raleigh’s Lenovo Center with NC State men’s basketball — have won two NHL Stanley Cup Championships (2006 and 2026) since moving to North Carolina in 1997.

Reynolds still serves as the regional model for multipurpose venues from New York to Atlanta.

A young basketball player who grew up in a small house in Cleveland County’s Boiling Springs had to contend with 11 older brothers and sisters. He learned how to jump by racing through their house and jumping out a backdoor that had no steps and no porch. He learned footwork and speed by running through a cemetery between the main road and his driveway. He kept jumping and jumping and jumping until one day when he was a student at NC State, on the floor of Reynolds Coliseum, the Guinness Book of World Records verified his vertical leap at 44 inches — the highest standing jump of any person on the planet. David Thompson wore No. 44 on his jersey while becoming a three-time All-American, a two-time ACC Player of the Year and the top scorer on the 1974 basketball team that won the school’s first NCAA championship. He’s still the greatest basketball player in Atlantic Coast Conference history.

One afternoon in practice at Reynolds Coliseum, guard Monte Towe threw an errant pass to his high-flying teammate that everyone believed was going to land harmlessly out of bounds. Instead, Thompson leaped high above the basket, caught the ball and gently laid it in for two points. The play, which avoided the NCAA rule at the time that banned dunking, was artistic and allowed the Wolfpack to use a weapon that no other team had. “You know, I like that play,” said head coach Norman Sloan. “Let’s put that in the playbook.” Thus was born the basketball play called the “alley oop,” which became a fundamental offensive play, even after the NCAA lifted its ban on dunking — largely because it prevented fans from seeing Thompson, college basketball’s first above-the-rim player, display his leaping talents. 

NC State gave college football the first player who was a native of Japan (Teisaku Sugishita) and its first Asian American All-American (Roman Gabriel); the state of North Carolina its first football All-American (John “Gus” Ripple); the Atlantic Coast Conference its first African American athletes (Irwin Holmes and Manuel Crockett); and the NFL its second Super Bowl-winning Black quarterback (Russell Wilson).

Sandra Kay Yow never had the opportunity to play college basketball, but she opened the door to athletics for untold numbers of women who followed in her footsteps. The native of Gibsonville, North Carolina, graduated with a degree in English from East Carolina, which did not offer women’s basketball as a varsity sport during her time as a student. However, she eventually gained experience as a high school coach, was hired to be the first full-time female coach at a North Carolina university and selected to coach the gold-medal-winning U.S. women’s basketball team at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. The latter achievement came just months after Yow was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy.

She remained cancer-free for nearly 20 years afterward and was recognized as a basketball pioneer when she was inducted into the James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, joining the Harlem Globetrotters, among others, in the class of 2002. When her cancer returned in 2006, she began an outreach and education program with her Wolfpack team to raise research money for women’s cancers through the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. Starting with a single game called Hoops4Hope in 2007, she launched the movement now called Play4Kay, in which junior high, high school and college teams around the country raise money by sponsoring annual Pink Games on their campuses. Since 2007, the fund started by Yow and carried on by her former staff and players has awarded more than $11 million in cancer research funds and support funds for women who are cancer patients. 

In 2026, more than 1,000 girls’, boys’, women’s and men’s teams have hosted games to benefit the cancer fund started by a North Carolina hoops diehard who never played college basketball but left a lasting legacy in her sport and in cancer research.

Before Yow arrived in Raleigh in 1974, the state of North Carolina had no full-time women’s college coaches, no female athletics administrators and practically no marketing of the sports made possible by the passage of Title IX of the 1972 Educational Acts.

Yow hired Nora Lynn Finch, the Atlantic Coast Conference’s first athletics administrator, and inspired a new generation of women to help the sport. More recently, former Wolfpack player Trudi Lacey and Yow’s younger sister Susan Yow helped grow the WNBA as coaches and administrators. Lacey is now the athletics director at Queens College.

Yow’s other sister, Debbie Yow, was NC State’s first female athletics director and a national leader in both men’s and women’s sports.

Former player Debbie Mulligan Antonelli was an early leader in sports marketing for women’s sports at Ohio State before advancing in the field of broadcasting for women’s and men’s televised sports.

In 2022, former volleyball player Charece Williams Gee became a trailblazer in marketing for PepsiCo and clothing brand UnderArmour. Sports Illustrated named Gee one of the Top 100 Black Women in Sports.