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Welcome to What Aggies Do: A newsletter highlighting developments here at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University - and everywhere Aggies are - from the Division of Academic Affairs.

I’m glad you’re here and look forward to engaging with you about the academic development of this singular university, an institution with unparalleled impact on African American representation in the knowledge economy.

These are exciting times at A&T. As we continue to grow our student body, campus environment, academic programs and research initiatives, we are also expanding our community of colleagues and thought leaders who help make our world a better place, advancing the human condition through outstanding teaching, research and scholarship.

We have created something special here at America’s largest historically Black university, one of our state’s top three public research universities and the most affordable doctoral research university in America. Read along every other month as we share what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

As fall semesters draw to a close and the winter holidays unfold before us, I wish you a safe, joyous time with colleagues, friends and family and ample opportunities to rest and recharge.

White circles indicate institutions collaborating with N.C. A&T

Our world becomes more interconnected by the hour. Globalization is increasingly part of the shared vocabulary for higher education, critical to building the academic experience that students and families expect.

North Carolina A&T’s growing interests in educational experiences, research and scholarship that take place beyond the borders of the United States are changing the context of our university, expanding our own borders to encompass more of our world.

That international dimension manifests in A&T’s student body of 14,311, which includes representation from 104 foreign nations. One-fourth of those nations are on the African continent, and more than 400 students from those 28 countries are enrolled at A&T this school year.

This summer, a team of A&T faculty and administrators spent 11 action-packed days in Africa, meeting with potential university partners and community and research-centered organizations, looking for ways to elevate global experiential learning opportunities, foster research collaborations and develop partnership platforms.

For the A&T delegation, it was an experience like no other with multiple opportunities ripe for harvest.

A&T faculty have been conducting teaching and research activities in Africa for decades, but our efforts were not well organized for impact. A&T partnered with GEAfrica in 2016 on a Learning Advisory Board to explore partnerships with select African countries with a focus on health and health technologies: South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria. One of our alumni brokered the GEAfrica partnership. It became clear then that we could develop teaching and research initiatives that would enable our students to participate in more study-abroad activities on the continent.

“For our university, students and faculty, better organizing our efforts could translate into more opportunities to make a difference in people’s lives domestically and around the world,” said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Tonya Smith-Jackson. “We wanted to get as much out of it as possible and to lay groundwork for future expansion.”

The following Q&A with Smith-Jackson details the thinking behind this trip – “A lot goes into an endeavor like this” – and what the university hopes to create through a more comprehensive approach to the African continent.

What was the impetus for this visit?
“In 2022, we committed to globalizing our online programs with the understanding that online learning would be one of the main contributors to enrollment growth, and that sub-Saharan Africa would be a priority. I think the primary motivator, however, was Dr. Judy Rashid, an A&T Class of 1974 alumna. Once we learned about the Judy Rashid Education and Leadership Centre in Vanderbijlpark, South Africa, we recognized we already had a level of impact and a reputation that we could build on.

"Being there really reinforced the depth of the impact because of a partnership between Dr. Rashid and Center Director Thabo Dithane '96, '02. When we saw so many children and their parents who traveled on a Saturday to learn about engineering and drone technologies, I was deeply moved. That moment centered us in the present regarding A&T's impact and opened the door to imagine a future of far-reaching possibilities for A&T Global."

Where did you go and why? “We have a strong academic leadership team, and several of our vice provosts and associate vice provosts had partnerships in South Africa. We decided to begin with those institutions. We visited Witswatersrand University (Johannesburg), University of South Africa (Johannesburg), Sol Plaatje University (Kimberley) and Cape Peninsula University of Technology (Cape Town). We also visited the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (Johannesburg), BirdLife South Africa, a conservation NGO (Johannesburg) and the McGregor Museum (Kimberley).

A&T is experiencing phenomenal growth in its student body, including those from nations outside of the United States. How does the university ensure their academic experience is fulfilling, positive and successful? “It is essential that all students have a sense of belonging at A&T, including our international students. Aggies from abroad have on-boarding sessions organized by the Office of International Affairs (in partnership with the Graduate College and others) that focus on topics such as overcoming culture shock, how to get a driver’s license, counseling services and campus resources. In partnership with the International Students Society, students attend coffee and tea conversations and informational sessions. We hold the Aggie International Festival in April each year.”

Same goes for faculty. The university is fortunate to have broad international representation in the faculty and in leadership. How does this set A&T apart from other universities or HBCUs? “Many HBCUs have been engaged internationally, and some quite significantly. The work of our amazing faculty (and students) has had positive impacts in various African countries. Agriculture, science, engineering, social work, visual arts and education have been heavily engaged most recently. I think what sets us apart is the sheer number of faculty-led trips abroad and the commitment to global partnerships in our strategic plan. In addition, due to our visible engagement abroad, we have been designated as a Fulbright HBCU Institutional Leader by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. We have had many Fulbright Scholars.”

A&T recently welcomed a new chancellor who is passionate about its future as an exponential university. How do potential partnerships such as those you seek to build factor into this approach? “This new area of focus is very exciting to all of us. Chancellor James R. Martin II finds it logical and potentially transformative to expand our reach to the African continent, as well as select other countries around the globe. We cannot stop at the borders of our own country. Our African American identity has always been expansive, seeing ‘place’ as broader than the North American geographic boundaries. We have always had a diasporic view of where we belong and where we aspire to be.”

What’s next for A&T regarding its global footprint? “We are jointly designing the next steps with the institutions we visited in South Africa, including creating MOUs and exchange programs. We are focused on five specific areas: faculty exchanges; student exchanges through study abroad, internships abroad and other international experiences; research partnerships; online learning; and new platforms to engage multinational corporations. The Office of International Affairs has inventoried international partnerships across the university. We will use this information to build strategy and structure further around our global presence and impact. We will also develop more active communities of practice for faculty, professional staff and students who are already engaging or wish to engage in globalization experiences.”

Flooding is one of the most catastrophic and frequently occurring natural disasters, causing extensive damage to life, infrastructure, and the environment. The severity and frequency of floods have increased in recent years due to extreme weather events such as hurricanes and the expansion of urbanization.

A&T’s Leila Hashemi-Beni, Ph.D., an expert in remote sensing and geospatial data science, and an inter-institutional team of researchers are working to “harness data science for flood monitoring and management,” an effort supported by a grant from NASA.

“We want to help better prepare North Carolinians for flood events and provide timely and accurate information to decision makers to improve flood response and preparedness,” she said.

“We may not be able to prevent devastation like that from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, but we can develop machine-learning based approaches to better detect flood extent and its impact to built and non-built environments.”

Hashemi-Beni is an associate professor in geomatics and director of the Remote Sensing and Geospatial Science Research Laboratory in the College of Science and Technology's Department of Built Environment.

Her extensive research and collaborative projects span areas like drone and satellite remote sensing and multimodal data fusion for applications in natural disaster monitoring (such as floods, landslides, and earthquakes), environmental management (including water quality assessment and wetlands mapping using AI), transportation, and smart and precision agriculture. These research projects are supported by agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, N.C. Collaboratory, Microsoft and partner universities.

Hashemi-Beni serves on the N.C. Flood Resiliency Blueprint: Vulnerability/Risk/Impact Technical Advisory Group, a statewide initiative to develop an online decision support tool and associated planning to address flooding for communities in North Carolina’s river basins. She is the co-chair of LiDAR, Laser Altimetry and Sensor Integration Working Group, International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS).

She was recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant of nearly $1 million to support an innovative approach to mapping and assessing flood damage. The award is part of NSF’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities – Excellence in Research program.

A&T Wins Approval for B.S. in Artificial Intelligence

The University of North Carolina System Board of Governors approved a bachelor’s degree in Artificial intelligence at N.C. A&T. It is the only degree of its kind in this state and one of only a handful nationally.

While some other North Carolina universities offer an artificial intelligence concentration within a computer science degree, A&T will be the only institution with a stand-alone bachelor’s degree. And it’s not stopping there: discussions are already underway to develop graduate degrees in the same field.

Beginning in Fall 2025, students will be able to enroll in one of two interdisciplinary concentrations that will uniquely prepare them for a highly technical work force.

Our Blues Make Us Gold

A comprehensive documentary feature on the students, alumni and legendary culture of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, America’s largest historically Black university, has debuted on Comcast Xfinity streaming platforms, just in time for widespread viewing as families gather to celebrate the Holidays.

Watch the trailer here

December 2024

Provost Tonya Smith-Jackson

Expanding Our Horizons in Africa

Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Leila Hashemi-Beni

N.C. A&T in the News

AI Momentum

About N.C. A&T