The Literacy and Community Initiative (LCI) is designed to empower youth voices through student-created publications, advocacy, and leadership. The LCI works primarily with community-based organizations which serve historically and currently underserved students. These students write and publish literature which enables them to become leaders in their communities through public discourse and activism. As of 2022, the LCI has published 7 books and 375+ student-written products including essays and poetry. Their motto is "Write, Educate, and Lead". 

Social Innovation Fellows (SIF) is the anchor program of NC State Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This year-long, team-based learning experience creates opportunities for students and the broader community to build the skills, self awareness, cultural competence, and connections to understand and solve complex social problems. Each team of fellows focuses on one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). 

Team Zero Hunger works with their mentor, Andrew DiMeo, and community partner, Catholic Parish Outreach Food Pantry, to analyze their sustainable development goal within the context of North Carolina families. The group employed systems thinking and stakeholder mapping to attempt to understand why food insecurity happens. Moving forward, the group plans to tour Sankofa Farms to further understand the systemic issues behind hunger. The team wants to employ human-centered design to address both indirect and direct solutions for food insecurity in North Carolina.

Fork to Farmer is a state-level initiative that celebrates small farmers through the production of short films. These films highlight the work of the small farmers and provide a marketing tool which helps increase farm sales and tourism. Fork to Farmer collaborates with local tourism offices, local food providers and restaurants, and NC Extension partners to produce the videos. Many celebrated chefs are also involved to promote farm experiences and local products. Fork to Farmer offers training programs for small farmers and builds marketing coalitions to elevate their sales.

The Fork to Farmer initiative in Brunswick County highlights local artisan fishing and produce from small local farms which can be found in many Brunswick county restaurants. The initiative also promotes a group of small farmers in the area which offers produce bags that vacationers can pre-order. The Fork to Farmer website provides information on where to buy farm products at local farmers and artisans markets.

Fruit and Vegetable Image, August 14 2019, Copyright NC State/Marc Hall

Students in a Special Topics Design Course (ID 492) use their design skills to make an impact in the local community by working in teams led by IBM professionals. Students work with local non-profits to understand and solve problems the non-profits face. Utilizing design thinking, the students re-envision the experiences and value the non-profits provide for the communities they serve. Throughout the semester, students present their ideas to nonprofit stakeholders, professional designers, and peers to receive feedback in order to develop the most effective solutions. The final presentation takes place at an end-of-semester gala.

In the Spring of 2022, students partnered with an Interfaith Prison Ministry for Women, Foster Families Alliance of North Carolina, and are collaborating with the North Carolina Judicial Branch on an initiative to promote virtual court hearings.

Design students and faculty working in the studio spaces in Leazer, 26 July 2019, Copyright NC State University

Each semester, the Nonprofit Leadership and Development course provides students with opportunities to gain hands-on experience by providing necessary services, fundraising, and professional development with numerous organizations representing myriad causes across the sector. Lecturer Melinda ("Miss Mindy") Sopher collaborates with dozens of nonprofit agencies in the Greater Triangle Area and undergraduate students at NC State. Every student dedicates over 30 hours per semester, building connections between academic content and real-world skills and issues. In the 12 years that Professor Sopher has offered the course, her students have demonstrated the power of NC State's motto "Think and Do" while raising over $3 million for local organizations in need!

During Spring Semester 2022, students partnered with:

• Dementia Alliance of North Carolina
• Kay Yow Cancer Fund
• KidzNotes
• Live It Up Hillsborough
• Marbles Kids Museum
• Our Wave
• Rotary Youth Exchange
• Rusty's Rescue Ranch
• Student Basic Needs Coalition
• Team Drea
• United Arts Council

Michelle Jewell, the Applied Ecology Department's Chief Science Communicator, co-teaches an Applied Science Communications course for undergradaute and graduate students at NC State. Each semester, students develop projects focused on communicating important research projects and findings with the general public. Students devote approximately 10 hours per semester on work that culminates in public health brochures, online videos, and digital campaigns. Past projects include brochures on testing water quality, reporting algea blooms, and more. 

Image by Flickr is licensed by CC BY-NC 2.0

Dr. Walt Wolfram produced the documentary series "Talking Black in America," through the North Carolina Language and Life Program. This series explores the unique circumstances of the descendants of American slaves and their impact on American life and language. It traces language traditions throughout the United States and showcases how language has functioned as resilience and legacy in oppressed communities. The first documentary on African American Sign Language, "Signing Black in America," debuted in this series and was supported by graduate student Kees Koopman. The North Carolina Language and Life Program developed companionate discussion guides for each film, to foster deeper engagement with the issues they examine. Dr. Wolfram's work addresses public misunderstanding and bias related to dialect differences. 

The NC State Libraries have participated in promoting and facilitating screenings of films in this series. Hundreds of both campus and community members have attended viewing events for Dr. Wolfram's films. 

Dr. Knollenberg and an all-female team including professors, a science writer, a coastal economics specialist, and an undergraduate intern identified shellfish mariculture and tourism synergies and used this information to propose a mariculture tourism development process to aid in developing the North Carolina Oyster Trail (NCOT). The NCOT offers interactive expriences related to oyster consumption and production which participants can view in an online map. 

Their objectives inlcuded qualitatively measuring shellfish mariculture tourism, quantitatively measuring demand for shellfish mariculture tourism experiences, and comparing shellfish mariculture tourism supply and demand. After these measurements were taken, they identified, promoted, and evaluated preliminary shellfish mariculture tourism experiences based on this supply and demand comparism. Next, they refined strategies for shellfish mariculture tourism experience development using additional demand data and evaluation of preliminary experiences. In the final step of their research process, they established reousrces to support recommended shellfish mariculture tourism experience development strategies.

Photo credit: Justin Case

The Center for Community and Family Engagement (CFACE) collaborates with, and receives funding from, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to provide training and program implementation support for child welfare services workers and their partners toward improving services to families and communities around child safety issues. During the month of February 2022, the center hosted a training event focused on providing information, skills, and practice opportunities to agency workers responsible for providing parenting skills, resources, family counseling services, youth focused programs, etc. to parents and children across the state.  

This training event titled, Connecting Families: Family Support in Practice, covered a six day period near the end of the month. Thirty workers were enrolled, representing 16 different agencies and over 10 counties from across the state.  Workers actively participated in training online using the Zoom platform, printed workbooks, homework, and self reflective exercises. 

There will be another offering of this training held between July and December 2022.

The NC State Steering Committee on Student Health and Housing Insecurity is a volunteer-based group of concerned citizens including NC State faculty, staff, students, and state and local community members who work to combat food and housing insecurity. Dr. Mary Haskett and Sarah Wright co-chair the committee.

With the committee's guidance, Dr. Haskett administered surveys in 2017 and 2020 to understand the scale of food and housing insecurity among NC State students. The results have led to many increased direct services, including moving Feed the Pack pantry to a central location on campus and offering a wider range of foods, developing an emergency fund, and making a policy change to keep campus open over breaks.

The Steering Committee is now focusing more on systemic and policy changes that need to be made to create an expansive and sustainable impact. The Call To Action, published in 2019, outlines specific steps that the University could take to achieve the committee’s vision. The Call to Action includes specific goals along with systems-level recommendations to meet the desired outcomes. These goals and recommendations were based on Dr. Haskett’s research as well as the lived experiences of students and the professional expertise of steering committee members. 

The Community Steering Committee is an important part of the larger NC State Steering Committee on Student Housing and Food Insecurity. The Community Steering Committee is chaired by Sarah Wright and convenes nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and community members to inform and provide services for NC State students. 

Dr. Rob Dunn and Lauren Nichols of the Department of Applied Ecology collaborate with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to investigate future impacts of climate change on culturally significant plant and animal species. This project aims to develop climate action plans with and for Indigenous peoples. As such, the partnerships with Indigenous Tribal Nations in the Southeastern United States provide an essential avenue for understanding the cultural significance and potential issues faced by Indigenous peoples. The Seminole Tribe of Florida (STOF) and other Tribal Nations participated in ongoing Indigenous-led listening sessions, meetings, interviews, and focus groups with NC State's Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center (SE CASC). This preliminary relationship-building and report contributed ongoing opportunities for collaboration that will culminate into climate action plans that bolster tribal resiliency. 

Students worked in groups of four to conduct evaluations of parks, recreation, tourism, golf, and sport (PRTM) services at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) and Dorthea Dix Park. In this course, students learned how to apply the processes required for evaluating PRTM services including: development of evaluation criteria, data collection, analysis, synthesis of findings, and communication of results. 

Students collected data by conducting surveys at the NCMA which asked how the museum's outdoor facilities are utilized by the public. Students also collected data about museum membership, age, gender, population numbers, and other demographic identifiers. This information was collected for and provided to the NCMA which in turn used this data for grant funding proposals and other internal objectives. A primary learning objective of this exercise was to develop observation methods for evaluation.

Students also developed an online survey using Qualtrics to evaluate attitudes and awareness of Dorthea Dix Park and its facilities. Questions included determining how often individuals go to the park, what transportation they use to access it, what facilities were used, etc. Students were divided into 15 groups and each group developed four questions to include in the survey. The surveys included 16 questions total and were sent via email to other NC State students. The results were evaluated by the students and the information was translated into data to be utilized by Dorthea Dix Park.

"Henry Moore - Large Spindle Piece (1974, from the model of 1968-69) - North Carolina Museum of Art" by UGArdener is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.

Dr. Jeffrey Reaser and Dr. Walt Wolfram developed Voices of North Carolina, an 8th-grade dialect-awareness curriculum. Created in 2005, this state-approved social studies curriculum uses mutli-media lessons that teachers across the state can use to teach students the importance of dialect diversity and the relationship between language, history, and culture. Dr. Reaser and Dr. Wolfram designed the curriculum as a free, readily available set of lessons and activites that 8th-grade teachers can implement without any prior experience with sociolinguistics. The curriculum contains over 450 minutes of instruction activities aimed at reducing dialect discrimination and cultivating a respect for all ways of speaking. 

NC State staff provide health and safety training for farmworkers on a variety of topics including COVID-19 and vaccine education, pesticide safety, heat stress, and green tobacco illness. Trainings take place at farms, Extension offices, and community settings in Blade, Beaufort, Catawba, Duplin, Edgecombe, Henderson, Johnston, Moore, Nash, Pender, Sampson, Wayne, and Wilson counties.

The farmworker health and safety trainings are an important part of NC State Extension's Farmworkers Health and Safety Comprehensive Education Program. The Farmworkers Health and Safety Comprehensive Education Program improves workforce health and safety and promotes preventative behaviors among farmworkers, farmworkers' employers, and their families.