Education advocates set ambitious goal for North Carolina

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PAGE 3 • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Education advocates set ambitious goal for North Carolina

BOZ KALOYANOV/TECHNICIAN My Future NC held an announcement in Talley Student Union on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2019. My Future NC is a commission that works throughout the state to advance educational quality and opportunities for students of all ages.

Alicia Thomas

News Editor &

Boz Kaloyanov

Assistant News Editor

On Wednesday, Feb. 20, the My Future NC education commission announced a bold goal to dramatically increase the number of adults in the state with postsecondary credentials by 2030.

Specifically, My Future NC aims to have 2 million 25-44-year-olds in North Carolina with postsecondary degrees or certificates by 2030. The commission is comprised of leaders from a variety of backgrounds, who work toward this goal via education policy reform.

Chancellor Randy Woodson opened the announcement event, hosted in Talley Student Union, by stating that setting a goal is a great motivator for progress.

“Today, we’re here to mark the start of a comprehensive education strategy for North Carolina,” Woodson said. “The My Future NC commission was created a year ago to convene North Carolina’s leaders in education, business and beyond, from every corner of our great state, to set an attainment goal for all North Carolinians.”

Dale Jenkins, co-chair of the commission and CEO of Medical Mutual Holdings, said My Future NC was created because of changes within the job market.

“Today, fewer than half of North Carolinians between the ages of 25 and 44 hold a high-quality postsecondary degree or credential, but the vast majority of newly created jobs require an education beyond a high school diploma,” Jenkins said. “In fact, a recent national survey indicated that over 99 percent of jobs created since the 2009 recession required a postsecondary credential or certificate.”

Jenkins stated that the commission’s goals does not lie exclusively with four-year degrees, but other options, such as an associate degree, are vital for the state’s success.

“We’re not just talking about increasing the production of four-year degrees,” Jenkins said. “That’s important for sure, but there are many excellent jobs available in our state that require associate degrees or a high-quality certificate. The key is simply not stopping your education once you graduate from high school.”

Gov. Roy Cooper was also in attendance and spoke about his goals regarding the future of higher education in the state, how they related to the commission’s and his ideas of implementing policies to make the goal a reality.

“I want a North Carolina where people are better educated, where they’re healthier, where they have more money in their pockets, where they have opportunities to live more abundant and purposeful lives,” Cooper said. “I think this goal helps us to achieve that goal.”

Communicating these efforts is a critical part of this plan, Jenkins said after the event.

“We’ve hired a public relations firm to help us with this, and they’re here today to help us kick off the event,” Jenkins said. “So, we know that there is work to be done. We’ve got a big communication effort on the way, we’ve got to educate people on the goal; what that means, how they can help and why that will help.”

Peter Hans, another co-chair of the My Future NC commission, and Jenkins both said that this will be something the entire state and its representatives rally around. In terms of finding funds to make the goal a reality, there will be ongoing conversations between the education sector, businesses and the government to obtain or allocate already existing funds.

“It will require investment throughout education continually, but I think you’ve seen here today bipartisan commitment to both meeting the goal and forming the strategies that allow us to achieve it,” Hans said.

Hans further elaborated the importance of this approach not only on a statewide level, but on a local and regional level, as well.

“One of the key components here is to engage communities and regions across the state, so that we’ve got statewide goals, but we’ve got county-by-county and regional goals, as well, so that they’re empowered to make decisions in those areas,” Hans said.

Hans and Jenkins said that specific details of the plan and its implementation are still being worked out. Further information can be found on the My Future NC website.

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PAGE 4 • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Agroecology: Putting produce on your plate

Rachael Davis

Assistant News Editor

Starting as a place for agricultural students to get a hands-on education in 2005, NC State’s Agroecology Education Farm has since expanded to developing its own major and selling produce in a local grocery store.

In 2013, the partnership between the Agroecology Education Farm and NC State Dining began, helping place fresh and local produce in dining halls and extending the education of agriculture to many more students on campus.

Michelle Schroeder-Moreno, director of the Agroecology Education Farm, said that NC State has about 34,000 students, and dining halls produce around 52,000 meals a day. The maximum yield the farm has produced is about 10,000 pounds, which is less than the amount of food the dining halls use per growing season.

According to Alison Reeves, the Agroecology Education Farm manager, the farm typically refrains from producing food that will go to waste. This is achieved through a working relationship between Reeves and the university chefs.

“The chefs in dining are really great in using what we bring them,” Reeves said. “They have really highlighted the use of the ‘ugly vegetables,’ the produce that doesn’t look so great but is still very tasty.”

Schroeder-Moreno said that since the produce in American grocery stores must meet a certain size and or width, many of these “ugly vegetables” do not make it to the shelves for consumer purchase. The unconventional vegetables are typically thrown away, contributing to the 40 percent of food that is wasted in the U.S. To avoid wasting any produce from the farm, Reeves and the university chefs have in-depth discussions, analyzing what produce is useful for them and what’s popular in the dining halls.

“Usually around this time over the winter, I am planning out for the year and ordering seeds,” Reeves said. “After, I will email the university chefs with all the produce I have and when I could possibly bring it into dining. The chefs have the ability to pick and choose from the ordering form, and it usually is all gone by the end.”

Besides NC State dining halls, the Agroecology Education Farm also partners with the NC State Alumni Club, the golf course and The Oval on Centennial Campus, according to Reeves. However, since Fountain Dining Hall has a high volume of consumers, Fountain uses most of the farm’s produce.

According to Schroeder-Moreno, the farm’s relationship with NC State Dining is very productive and offers support for many projects and technological needs, like the hoop house, which helps the farm produce earlier and later in the semester. The resource is vital, controlling the height of production over the summer when many students are not on campus to consume the produce.

In addition, two summers ago, NC State Dining sponsored the development of a post-harvest teaching pavilion where produce is washed and refrigerated before it goes to the dining halls. Schroeder-Moreno said the pavilion is very special to the farm, because it was designed and built by architecture students in the summer Design + Build Studio.

According to Reeves, the Agroecology Education Farm also produces food for big dining events on campus, like All Carolinas and Farm Feast, which stress the consumption of local food. Over 3,000 students attend these events each year.

Schroeder-Moreno expressed how valuable and important it is that NC State Dining works with and buys from local North Carolina farms.

“Not a lot of other land-grant universities are doing something like this, and it makes the most sense,” SchroederMoreno said. “We are a great university. Our mission is to educate, discover and support our community, so supporting our farming community is a win-win.”

© ROGER W WINSTEAD; CONTRIBUTED BY ALISON REEVES/CROP AND SOIL SCIENCES A soil sciences student weeds his section of garden at the Agroecology Education Farm.

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PAGE 5 • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Official list of Student Government candidates revealed

Staff Report

An official list of the students eligible to be candidates in the Spring General Election was released on the Student Government website, prior to the beginning of campaigning on Friday.

There are four individuals running on two joint tickets for the positions of student body president and student body vice president.

Alex Obiol, a fourth-year studying textile engineering, is currently the director of University Affairs for the executive branch of Student Government and is a candidate for student body president. Obiol’s running mate is Lexie Malico, a third-year Ph.D. student in chemistry, who is currently a senator for Graduate and Lifelong Education.

Emma Carter, a third-year majoring in criminology and international studies, is also running for student body president with her running mate Nicole Teague, a third-year studying business administration. Both Carter and Teague currently serve in the Senate. Previously, Carter was the delegate for the UNC System’s Association of Student Governments.

Two student body officer positions are uncontested races. Mitchell Moravec, a first-year graduate student in public administration, is running for student senate president, and Kiera Jonson, a fourth-year studying microbiology, is running for student body chief justice.

Moravec is currently the director of Student Wellness for Student Government and additionally served as student senate president during the 2017-2018 academic year.

Jonson is currently a member of the student conduct board.

Two people are candidates for student body treasurer: Ryan Dunn, a third-year studying political science, and Garrison Seitz, a secondyear studying engineering. Dunn is currently chief of staff for the executive branch.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is the only college with more people running for Senate positions than there are seats available.

The number of eligible students that have filed for candidacy in their colleges are: • College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: six students running for six available seats • College of Sciences: three students running for five available seats • College of Design: zero candidates filed for three available seats • College of Education: zero candidates filed for three available seats • College of Engineering: eight students running for nine available seats • College of Natural Resources: three students running for four available seats • College of Humanities and Social Sciences: 11 students running for seven available seats • Poole College of Management: two candidates running for five available seats • Wilson College of Textiles: three candidates running for three available seats • Graduate and Lifelong Education: eight candidates running for 13 available seats

At this point, no additional candidate will be added to the race, unless candidates that were deemed ineligible to run appeal the process.

A list of each individual running for Student Government, as well as the spring election timeline, can be found on the Student Government website.

COURTESY OF NC STATE STUDENT GOVERNMENT INSTAGRAM

The impact of social media on climate change

Austin Dunlow

Correspondent

In an era increasingly reliant on social media and increasingly more concerned with the effects of climate change, NC State Assistant Professor Bill Rand set out to see if there is a connection between extreme weather events and how they are discussed on social media.

Rand, an assistant professor of marketing in the Poole College of Management, published a paper discussing how extreme weather events affect the discussion of climate change on social media.

Along with an international team of collaborators, Rand assessed Twitter data about three recent extreme weather events: Hurricane Irene (2011), Hurricane Sandy (2012) and Winter Storm Jonas (2016).

Rand began collecting data for the project in 2011 during Hurricane Irene. Rand said he was approached by Nicholas Roxburgh, who at the time was a student at the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, and was asked to join the project for his expertise in social media conversations. He worked providing data for both Hurricane Irene and Winter Storm Jonas. Roxburgh received a grant to purchase the data for Hurricane Sandy.

“I’ve been studying social media conversations for 10 years and pretty much since the advent of Twitter,” Rand said. “Because of this, I worked with [Roxburgh] through the perspective of tracing how climate change conversations happen on social media.”

Rand’s findings showed that discussions of climate change on Twitter depended on two major aspects, the first being the timing of the event. He found that social and political occurrences at the time of the weather event influenced the surrounding conversations.

“Hurricane Sandy, for instance, happened right during the 2012 presidential elections,” Rand said. “This meant that a lot of the climate change discussion on Twitter had a political twinge to it.”

Rand found that the type of weather event occurring was also influential in the discussion of climate change.

“When Snowstorm Jonas happened, a lot of people didn’t think of it as something that was related to climate change,” Rand said. “For some reason, people don’t think of snow as being related to climate change and are more likely to acknowledge hurricanes as a product of climate change, rather than a severe snowstorm.”

Rand said that his aim is to give scientists more insight into strategies of circulating scientific research to the public. From this research, he hopes that scientists learn that they must alter how they discuss climate change depending on weather events in order for the public to listen.

“I’m hoping that people will understand from looking at this paper that because of the different descriptions we have over time, you can’t really use the exact same framing of a conversation to disseminate knowledge every time,” Rand said. “If a climate change scientist is interested in getting their knowledge out on social media, they need to adapt to the way conversations about climate change are happening at that time.”

Jean Goodwin, a professor of communication in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, agreed that social media has become a large platform for the circulation of scientific knowledge to the public. She discussed her belief that tailoring a message to the framework of the time is the most effective way of expanding a message.

“There’s a lot of evidence that social media is the way that people are getting information of all kinds, not just science information,” Goodwin said. “That’s probably going to expand. I think it’s worthwhile to remember that we are better able to promote progress if we understand that everybody looks at the issue from their own personal framework.”

Rand is hopeful for the future of social media and its ability to act as an area for the distribution of knowledge. He hopes that future research in this area will lead to more effective conversations about a diversity of topics.

“I really am a firm believer that we’re in kind of a first stage of understanding social media conversations,” Rand said. “We need to understand how people are having those conversations.”