summer 2008
East The Magazine of East Carolina University
F EATURES
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NO. 1 IN NURSES By Marion Blackburn The College of Nursing has grown rapidly to become the biggest in the state. But growth hasn’t changed the expectation that an East Carolina nurse be smart, savvy and dedicated to improving health care in the rural east.
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OFF CAMPUS GOES UPSCALE By Bethany Bradsher Remember the year you lived off campus and what your apartment usually looked liked? The old dump’s main charm was you could walk to class in five minutes. Today’s trend in off-campus housing is more upscale. Way more.
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B IG STAR OF T HE SMALL PART By Steve Row You would think that an actor who has appeared in more than 70 feature films, dozens of plays and hundreds of television shows, as Beth Grant has, would have been quite the leading lady as a drama major in college. And you would be wrong.
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MY SUMMER J OB? WORK UP A SWEAT By Bethany Bradsher With spring exams over, East Carolina athletes can lay down their books for three months. But most will have some required summer reading, a booklet with chapters on “Hill sprints X 20” and “Twisting Stack Crunches 3 X 20.”
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T EACHING T HE T RUT H ABOUT FICTION By Sally F. Lawrence Introducing students to North Carolina authors is especially satisfying for English professor Margaret Bauer, because “many students don’t realize that Jill McCorkle is from Lumberton or that Allan Gurganus is from Rocky Mount.”
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FROM OUR READERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 THE ECU REPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 SUMMER ARTS CALENDAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 PIRATE NATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 CLASS NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 UPON THE PAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56