With professional profiles, alumni help students navigate career pathways * Tailgate set for Sept. 11 * Chain of distinction: Well-honored alumnus honors mentor * College alumnus wins prestigious Watauga Medal

With professional profiles, alumni help
students navigate career pathways

Often, undergraduates have enough of an idea about what they like or are good at to choose a major, but that may be as far as their career vision goes. They may not realize the diversity of jobs available after graduation or the range of other opportunities to use the knowledge gained while earning their degrees.

But now, thanks to a new resource developed by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Office of Career Services, students can get the scoop on their career possibilities and realities well before they don a mortarboard.

It’s a set of professional profiles of College alumni on the College’s World Wide Web home page.

Marcy Bullock, the College’s director of Career Services, said the professional profiles provide advice and information, such as “what courses a former student in the major would recommend or what career options would be available after graduation. We thought students would benefit from having contact with successful people who had sat in the same seats and taken the same courses as they.”

Apparently Bullock and her cohorts were right; students who have used the professional profiles since they became available last August have responded very positively, she said.

As for the profiled alumni, their contact information is protected, so only current N.C. State students can contact them. Each alumnus decides how much contact information to provide.

Adding a profile to the database is easy. Alumni who have Internet access can submit a profile directly on-line at http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/career/majors/profiles/alumni_profiles.html.

For alumni who do not have Internet access, a quick telephone interview will do the trick at (919) 515-3249.

Alumni can give advice, offer suggestions, tell about their own careers. The profiles are divided by college major into 20 sections. Before using the profiles, students must read a set of instructions (including not to ask for a job).

If you’re an alumnus who has helpful information for current students, Career Services invites you to add your professional profile and help students answer that age-old question, “What can I do with my major?”

— Alexandra Mordecai

return to Noteworthy Alumni contents

Save the date: Tailgate '99 will be held Sept. 11. College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumni, faculty, staff and students are invited.

This year's event will take place before the N.C. State vs. William and Mary football game. The event will feature food, fellowship and the Fantastic Shakers. Complete information will be mailed in July.

For more information, call the CALS Alumni Society at 919.515.7222.

return to Noteworthy Alumni contents

The mentorship chain can be a long and strong one, with each link providing many effective dividends.

An example: In 1997 Dr. T. Ming Chu, prominent College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumnus, established the Aurand Scholarship at N.C. State University to honor his mentor, Dr. Leonard W. Aurand.

Chu, today an internationally recognized authority in cancer immuno-diagnosis and tumor immunology, arrived at N.C. State from Taiwan in 1963 as a graduate student of Aurand, now an N.C. State professor emeritus in the department of food science.

After Chu completed his master’s degree in 1965, Aurand recommended Chu to his own mentor, Dr. Howard Triebold at Pennsylvania State University, where Chu received his doctorate in biochemistry in 1967.

Aurand, a distinguished scholar and investigator in enzymes, lipids and flavor biochemistry, had himself earned a biochemistry doctorate from Pennsylvania State. He spent from 1949 to 1988, his entire academic career, at N.C. State.

Chu is chair emeritus of diagnostic immunology research at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, the nation’s first cancer center. He is best known for his leading role in the discovery of prostate specific antigen (PSA) and the development of the PSA test, the blood test commonly used in prostate cancer screening today.

In recognition of his contributions to cancer research, especially in prostate cancer, Chu has received numerous awards. Among them are the Presidential Citation Award of the American Urological Association, the American Foundation for Urological Disease’s Dornier Innovative Research Award, the Abbott Award of the International Society for Oncodevelopmental Biology and Medicine and the Schoellkopf Medal of the American Chemical Society.

Now, the well-honored scientist honors his mentor. The renewable, merit-based Leonard W. Aurand Scholarship pays a biochemistry student’s annual tuition and fees in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

And perhaps, if the mentorship chain holds, future Aurand Scholarship recipients might see fit to set up scholarships of their own.

—Art Latham

return to Noteworthy Alumni contents

Wendell H. Murphy of Rose Hill received the Watauga Medal, the highest nonacademic award bestowed by the university, on March 8. He was among three alumni so honored by Chancellor Marye Anne Fox at the 1999 Founders’ Day Dinner.

Also recognized for distinguished service to the university were William L. Burns of Durham, chairman emeritus of Central Carolina Bank and a 1960 textiles graduate, and M.A. “Patches” Meares of Raleigh, long-time president of A.E. Finley and Associates and a 1947 mechanical engineering graduate.

The medal was presented to Murphy in recognition of his enthusiastic and generous support of the university and his contributions to its role as a land-grant institution.

Murphy, a 1960 N.C. State graduate, received his bachelor of science degree in agricultural education. He taught vocational agriculture in Duplin County until 1962, when he and his father started a feed mill. They soon expanded their business to raising hogs.

Since then, Murphy Family Farms Inc. has become one of the world’s largest pork producers. Murphy is a former vice president and director of the North Carolina Pork Producers Association, and he was named North Carolina Outstanding Pork Producer in 1980.

Murphy’s leadership in support of the university includes his endowment of scholarships in the Agricultural Institute, as well as support for numerous programs and research and teaching laboratories in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He was an early champion for the establishment of the College of Veterinary Medicine at N.C. State.

He has also served the university through membership in the university Board of Trustees, the N.C. State Alumni Association, the Student Aid Association, the N.C. State Atheltics Council and the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Foundation.

He served North Carolina as a member of the state House of Representatives from 1983 to 1988 and the state Senate from 1989 to 1993. For service to the state, he was named to the Order of the Longleaf Pine in 1988.

return to Noteworthy Alumni contents.