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Community Profile

Right: A worker at AMSO performs a quality-control test on the small vehicle motors the Japanese company produces at its Pitt County plant.

Learn more:
Biotech Reaches a Critical Mass
New Convention Center Boosts Travel Industry
Singing the Praises of Greenville Culture

Right Medicine,
Strong Growth


Greenville and Pitt County
use ECU and local smarts
to create a dynamic economic

By Lawrence Bivens

Many believe that prosperity has become a stranger in Eastern North Carolina. And to be sure, there are communities across the region that have been ravaged by the global economy. But Greenville and Pitt County are not among them. The county is a shining example of how a low-tech economy can bootstrap itself into relative prosperity and provides a role model for what all of North Carolina can be.

While some remnants of the old economy survive in Greenville and Pitt County, they are overshadowed by new economy companies engaged in knowledge-based manufacturing, biotechnology development, media and logistics. Entrepreneurial-minded university leaders are spinning off and nurturing small firms marketing cutting-edge products. A growing healthcare community serves patients from across the region and beyond, while making headlines for the new treatments it is pioneering. Diversity is encouraged, not simply tolerated. Newcomers from all corners of the planet are joining with longtime locals in building programs that improve on an already-enviable quality of life.

This is the desired end-game of countless communities. But planning, patience and partnerships have made it a reality in Pitt County and Greenville, the vortex of its government and culture and particularly its commerce.

“Our goals have always been diversification and attracting companies that have real staying power,” explains John Chaffee, executive director of the Pitt County Development Commission. “We’ve never sought quick fixes when it comes to our economy.”

With so much success in recent years have come an influx of new residents. Once a sparsely populated farming community, Pitt County is now a leader in growth. From 1980 to 2001, Greenville’s population surged by 71 percent to more than 61,000. “We’ve been a county of net in-migration for the last three decades,” says Chaffee, who has helped foster much of that growth in his 20 years as lead developer. But along with additional headcount, the flavor of the community also has grown spicier thanks to leaders with a knack for creative solutions. “There’s been a tremendous transformation in the character, quality and diversity of this community,” Chaffee adds.


ECU’s Unmistakable Presence

While diligence and smarts on the part of Chaffee and other local leaders have gone far in shaping Pitt County into a highly competitive business destination, one can’t underestimate the role that East Carolina University continues to play in the community’s vitality on every level. Since its founding in 1907 as East Carolina Teachers Training School, the fortunes of the university and Pitt County always have been entwined.

ECU is now the state’s third-largest university, with nearly 20,000 students seeking degrees across more than 200 programs, including 13 doctoral offerings. The university’s solid academic culture has been recognized by the likes of U.S. News & World Report, Yahoo! Internet Life and other publications. It is also making waves as a hub for research. Last year, for example, ECU faculty and research staff secured more than $40 million in grants and contracts. But when it comes to service, ECU’s reputation is unmatched. “Service has enjoyed a long tradition at ECU,” according to Tom Feldbush, vice chancellor for research, economic development and community engagement.

Since the early 1960s, the university’s Regional Development Services unit has performed a key research and advocacy role for all of Eastern North Carolina. Through its Regional Development Institute, ECU’s leadership is even being felt in the halls of the U.S. Congress, where it is now helping shepherd the passage of legislation that would establish a Southeast Crescent Authority. The idea, modeled along the lines of the Appalachian Regional Commission, is a Marshall Plan of sorts for hard-hit rural communities throughout the coastal South. A host of other service initiatives are based at ECU’s Center for Applied Technology, its Survey Research Lab, the Small Business & Technology Development Center and the ECU Outreach Network, a voluntary network of students and faculty that assists small communities with grantsmanship.

ECU’s activities in economic development were made even more prominent with the arrival in 2001 of William Muse, ECU’s 10th chancellor. Muse made regional development one of the university’s four focus areas, along with human health, performing arts and teacher education. “What that did was put economic development on the front burner,” explains Feldbush. The move has translated into joint strategic planning efforts between the university and local and regional development groups, and it has meant reaching out to businesses with ambitious student internship programs and faculty expertise. “We will not see ourselves as a success until we’ve helped improve the economy of Eastern North Carolina,” says Feldbush, who chairs the Pitt County Development Commission.

Another hallmark of ECU lies in its willingness to innovate with inter-institutional programs and cross-disciplinary curricula. It partners, for example, with National Defense University in offering a masters of science degree in digital communications technology. ECU works with Craven and Edgecombe community colleges in extending upper-division education courses off-campus so that more students can complete their bachelor’s degree. Its excellent Coastal and Marine Studies program draws in elective coursework from anthropology, biology, geography, planning and other fields.

ECU’s business programs are also noted for their linkages with other disciplines. In addition to their core studies in accounting, finance and marketing, business students are encouraged to pursue elective tracks in areas such as allied health, hospitality management, international affairs, educational administration and planning. “All those programs cater to industries operating in Eastern North Carolina,” says Ernest Uhr, dean of ECU’s School of Business. The 67-year-old school is one of the state’s oldest and largest. Also unique is ECU’s joint MD/MBA program, a five-year curriculum that inserts health economics and business administration coursework into traditional medical studies. The program enrolls about 20 students per year, Uhr says. “We also have business programs designed for practicing physicians from around the region,” he explains.


Left: A doctor performs the latest miracle of modern medicine -- robotics surgery at the Brody School of Medicine.

The Heart of the Matter

It is impossible to overstate the transformative role that ECU’s Brody School of Medicine has played in Greenville and Pitt County. Founded in 1975, the school’s reputation in primary care and rural medicine has risen to the top national tier. Its commitment to upgrading the quality and accessibility of healthcare throughout the region is unmistakable. It admits no out-of-state applicants, for example, because it expects its graduates to remain in North Carolina, preferably practicing in an underserved setting. The school’s work in the burgeoning realm of telemedicine is recognized as one of the nation’s very best, pioneering important treatment delivery technologies that have applications in military medicine, space travel, disaster relief and more.

But it’s the Brody School’s work in robotic surgery that has captured the imagination of the medical world. Surgical teams from around the globe have begun descending on the school’s Heart Center to receive instruction on a system known as daVinci. Developed by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Intuitive Surgical, daVinci enables heart surgeons to operate on patients via a computer console a few yards away. A system of Velcro rings helps translate the movement of the surgeon’s hands into the tiny arms of a robotic probe that has been inserted, along with a miniature three-dimensional video camera, into the patient. Software compensates for differences in dexterity from right hand to left and corrects any manual tremors that a surgeon might have. But most valuable of all, daVinci allows surgeons to repair leaky heart valves without having to saw a foot-long gash through the patient’s breastbone the traditional way, instead relying on three dime-sized incisions between the ribs. Patient recovery time, and thus the total cost of treatment, are dramatically reduced.

“It’s pretty remarkable, really,” says Dr. Wiley Nifong, director of surgical robotics at the Brody School. “Patients spend three and a half days in the hospital compared to a seven-day average with traditional surgery, and they can resume normal activity in about two weeks instead of the usual six.”

ECU physicians were the first to use daVinci just months after the technology was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000. Led by Nifong, the school soon developed a two-day training curriculum around the procedure, and currently Greenville is the only site in the world where such instruction is available. On a recent day, trainees from Holland and Israel were among those looking on as Dr. Randolph Chitwood used daVinci to mend the ailing heart of a 67-year-old Charlotte woman. “Surgeons have gone as far as we can go with our eyes and hands,” says Chitwood, whose prominence in medical circles inside and outside Greenville approaches rock-star status. “Technology has to take us to the next level.”

daVinci, which sells for $1 million, also has obvious significance for distance medicine. Physicians in New York City recently used it to operate via the Internet on a patient in Strasbourg, France, for example. But that’s not really the point, according to Chitwood. He would rather see the technology and the skills required of it dispersed as widely as possible. “This is not about keeping new treatments in the hands of just a few doctors,” he says.

Chitwood, whose boyish exuberance defies his 57 years, was recently invited by Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to join its staff. He declined. “We’ve got a really great team here,” he explains, “and there’s far more I can do in Eastern North Carolina.” The region suffers from alarmingly high rates of heart disease, among other things. And surgical innovation is only part of Chitwood’s grand design for addressing Tar Heel health problems. Along with improvements in tertiary care, he would like to see more innovation from primary care providers on early detection and treatment. There is also much more than can be done through advocacy and education programs to promote heart-healthier behavior on the part of individuals. “That, of course, is something that requires a generation or more to change,” says Chitwood, who appears to be settling in for the long haul.


From Manufacturing to Media

Taken together, ECU and Pitt County Memorial Hospital, the Brody School’s practice arm, maintain a workforce that is 8,220 strong. But a long list of corporate residents accounts for the bulk of Pitt County’s eclectic employment base. Operating along the northern edge of Greenville is a diverse array of firms that are holding their own against a sluggish national economy, with some even growing. Chief among them is DSM, a Dutch multinational that counts a 600-acre Greenville campus among its 200 global sites. In late 2000 the firm acquired the two million-square-foot plant, which had been built in the early 1970s by Burroughs-Wellcome. The mammoth operation employs 1,300 in the contract manufacture of everything from pills and tablets to cough syrups and topical ointments, products that are shipped to top pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.

“The biggest thing that Greenville offers us is a very solid workforce,” says Terry Novak, senior vice president for commercial operations at DSM. Novak says the company has benefited from the plant’s access to Greenville’s extensive medical community and from education and training programs provided by ECU and nearby Pitt Community College. “We have nine interns from ECU right now, and we are sponsoring an adjunct professorship there,” Novak says. “That’s been a huge positive for us.”

So pleased with Greenville are DSM executives that they are now building a $100 million facility at their campus that will be part of the company’s high performance materials unit. The plant will make a product called Dyneema, said to be the world’s strongest fiber, which is integral in the bullet-proofing of cockpit doors in commercial airliners. The expansion, which will bring 75 new jobs to Pitt County, is slated to be complete in early 2004. “We expect to be here for a long time,” says Novak.

A few steps from DSM is ASMO Greenville of North Carolina, a Japanese maker of small vehicle motors. As important as the 550 jobs the firm maintains here is the fact that the company’s arrival in 1994 opened the door for other Japanese manufacturers. A year later, North Carolina Asahi, a maker of wiper blades and an ASMO supplier, announced its move to Greenville, as did Nippon Wiperblade in 1997.  Fuji Silysia Chemical, Ltd, a developer of specialized silica gel, brought a $16 million investment to the county in 1999. “We’ve been very fortunate with Japanese companies,” Chaffee says, “and we’re anticipating other ones will join us in the future.”

Nearby, NACCO Materials Handling Group employs 1,100 in the manufacture of forklifts and other gear used to move heavy containers.  The Portland, Ore.-headquartered company also chose Greenville to base its Warehouse Product Development Center. Its presence there, which dates from 1974, has resulted in numerous acknowledgements through the years. “NACCO is an excellent example of the ultimate value of economic development over several decades,” says Chaffee, who also serves as a member of the N.C. Economic Development  Board. “They continuously re-invest in our community and embody the whole notion of corporate citizenship.”

Not far away, Grady-White Boats adds further diversification to the Pitt County manufacturing base. The homegrown firm traces it founding to 1958 and occupies a more than 300,000-square-foot production complex that churns out as many as 2,000 sportfishing boats each year at prices ranging from $34,000 to $225,000. The privately held company and its products have received awards from various publications through the years. In February 2003, Grady-White was honored with a top customer service award by the National Marine Manufacturers Association at the Miami International Boat Show. At the same time, the company’s owner, Eddie Smith, was inducted into the National Marine Hall of Fame.

Nestled nearby amid the pines at Indigreen Corporate Park are the administrative, sales, editorial, and production operations of The Daily Reflector, Greenville’s century-old daily newspaper, along with those of its parent company, Cox NC Publications. The unit of Atlanta-based media titan Cox Communications purchased the Reflector and a handful of other Eastern North Carolina daily and weekly papers in the mid-1990s. The company relocated from downtown Greenville to a 20-acre site at Indigreen shortly after the acquisition, and now maintains a total of 93,000 square feet of space there.

But Pitt County’s industrial activity isn’t limited to the confines of Greenville. Ayden, about 15 minutes south of the city, is home to several firms, including Phoenix Fabrication, which bases its laser-cutting, welding and assembly operations out of two buildings at the town’s Worthington Industrial Park. Ayden is also near a large Weyerhaeuser mill producing hardwood lumber products for domestic and foreign markets. Located at the midway point between Greenville and the Kinston’s Global TransPark, the town’s economic fortunes could easily bloom should the TransPark ultimately gain traction.

In Farmville, DIMON International operates a sprawling tobacco processing plant that employs 300. Collins & Aikman, a Michigan-based multinational that produces automobile upholstery, employs another 500 there — more than one-tenth of the town’s total population. In recent years, the town’s economic prospects have received a shot in the arm — and not just due to spillover from neighboring Greenville. Farmville’s proximity to I-95 has made the community an appealing destination for distribution projects such as the $5 million Coastal Beverage distribution center at Farmville Corporate Park. The freshly minted U.S. Highway 265 Bypass around Wilson will likely bring Farmville added attention from logistics firms.

But Farmville also has been smart about the way it organizes its business development operations. In the 1990s, it folded its local chamber of commerce together with its downtown association and economic development council to form a single lead entity known as the Farmville Development Partnership. The unique arrangement has brought an impressive degree of cohesion and focus to the town, which retains stately vestiges of its one-time status as a bustling agribusiness hub. “The organizational arrangement has really allowed us to get some things done,” says Lathan Williams, vice president of the partnership. “It’s given Farmville a real boost.”

Farmville recently completed a 7,100-square-foot small business incubator that was designed to give promising start-ups a helping hand. The site contains two large manufacturing spaces, along with a suite of administrative offices and a conference room. Below market rent and on-site business expertise support the growth of tenants, who later “graduate” to free-standing sites in the community and continue generating jobs. The $206,000 incubator was erected with the help of grants from the federal government and cash raised by the local economic development council. “Our goal for the incubator is to create 50 jobs in five years,” Williams says.


The Best of Many Worlds

Firms large and small find that Pitt County’s enviable quality-of-life adds value to them and their employees. Education, most say, is central to that livability. In addition to its obvious higher education assets, the county also boasts excellent K-12 schools. High expectations on the part of parents and business people are behind an aggressive drive to make local schools the finest they can be. Qualitative targets have been set through a unique “Education Compact” between the county commission and the school board. But business leaders also have extended their own resources. Last year, the Greenville-Pitt County Chamber of Commerce made education a priority, sponsoring an education summit and leading a clarion call to local firms to give whatever they can — cash, volunteer hours or in-kind support — to help area schools meet federal No Child Left Behind Act goals.

“The chamber identified several key areas of focus,” explains Larry Seigler, a retired pharmacist and past chamber chairman who now chairs the county’s Education Cabinet. The cabinet was established in the wake of the summit to provide a permanent venue for dialogue between county education leaders and business people. Seigler, a Greenville resident for the past 31 years, was plant manager at earlier incarnations of what is now the DSM Pharmaceuticals plant. Having firsthand knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the local workforce, as well as watching his three daughters rise through the county’s public schools, Seigler was the ideal choice to chair the cabinet. “People here have a tremendous work ethic and a strong desire to contribute,” he says. But the nature of today’s business has strained the capacity of schools to prepare graduates for the workforce. The burden is thus on business to work with educators in order to guarantee students finish high school with relevant skills, he says. “We’re moving in the right direction now.”

Another chamber program, Organizations/Businesses Assisting Schools in Success (OASIS), offers public recognition to firms and nonprofit groups who support local schools in real ways. Each year, the program acknowledges those groups that give the most of their time, money or in-kind gifts. Last September, local leaders set a goal of recruiting 50 OASIS partners during the following 12 months. By December, it had already brought 35 on board. “Partnership is a key theme in our community,” according to Susanne Sartelle, president of the Greenville-Pitt County Chamber of Commerce. Her organization has reached out to local churches to encourage their involvement in the lives of at-risk youths, and also has worked to bridge the divide between white- and minority-owned businesses. “Inclusiveness is not only the right thing to do. It’s good business,” she says.

Along with other groups, the chamber is pushing hard to revitalize downtown Greenville. With a major enrollment boom expected at ECU in the coming two decades, the city is bracing itself for its own population surge. It plans to improve the business district that sits between ECU’s main campus and the Brody School of Medicine. “We’re in the process of doing a master plan in conjunction with the university,” says Don Parrot, the mayor of Greenville. His vision calls for upgraded transportation thoroughfares for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as a possible monorail connecting the two campuses. “We’re partnering with the university in building new parking lots, a new performing arts center and, hopefully, attracting a major hotel downtown,” Parrot says. He would also like to see a magnet school downtown, as well as highway upgrades along the Greenville’s southern rim.

Retaining his city’s parochial charms while embracing economic opportunity and an increasingly cosmopolitan vibe is the key to Greenville’s future, Parrot says. “We’re growing at a faster clip than anywhere in the state,” he notes, “but we still have a small-town atmosphere.”

It was Pitt County’s quality of life — anchored by its high quality medical care, strong education, pleasant climate and manageable pace — that drew DSM’s Terry Novak here two years ago from his previous life in northern New Jersey. Sure, he’d like to see more restaurants and better local air service. But all in all, the county is an ideal fit for the needs of  his family and his company. “I used to commute an hour and forty-five minutes each way to work,” he recalls. “Here, it takes me all of eight minutes to get home from the office.”



Above: The centerpiece of Greenville is the rapidly growing -- both in size and reputation -- East Carolina University

Biotech Teaches a Critical Mass

Biotechnology is the latest Holy Grail for communities aiming to grow good jobs in the 21st Century. But in Greenville it’s no pipe dream. It helps when you have a university and medical school ranked No. 2 nationally for technology transfer by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Add to that the headquarters of University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina and a growing outpost of DSM Pharmaceuticals, two of the county’s largest employers, and you’ve already hit critical mass.

The city’s Technology Enterprise Center appears to be where the most exciting new biotech operations are taking root. Opened in late 1997, the incubator sits in the renovated 59,000-square-foot site of a defunct shirt mill. The center is a partnership between the county development commission and ECU’s Center for Applied Technology, though it pulls in resources from Pitt Community College, the Small Business & Technology Development Center and N.C. State University’s Industrial Extension Service. Firms are expected to meet certain guidelines in order to reside there. But once inside, they benefit from submarket rent, shared security, conferencing facilities and clerical support, and considerable on-site business expertise.

The center’s tenants include Encelle, a life sciences firm developing revolutionary tissue regeneration treatments, and PhytoMico, which is exploring therapeutic applications based on the extracts of plant life gathered from around the world. Both companies base their business operations in Raleigh, while conducting their lab work at the Enterprise Center. “Wet lab space here rents for about half of what they would have to pay in the Triangle,” says John Chaffee, executive director of the Pitt County Development Commission.

Elsewhere at the center, Janus Development Group, a more recent tenant, is developing groundbreaking devices that eliminate stuttering. “We started out here with little more than a desk in the corner,” recalls Darwin Richards, Janus’ CEO. Gradually, the firm grew into an office suite and a lab area. Janus Development, which employs four at the center, was spun off from faculty at ECU’s Department of Communication Science and Disorders.

Down the hall, Ideations LLC, which relocated to Greenville from Syracuse, N.Y., is developing a bedside tool for communications, education and entertainment known as Dreamstation, which it hopes will benefit ill and disabled children. “We’re here because the ECU Telemedicine Center is the best in the country,” says Matt Carbone, the company’s owner. A comfortable climate, low cost of living and access to top-notch business and technical resources were among the assets that attracted Carbone and his company to Greenville. “People have been nothing but supportive of us,” he says. “It just made sense and felt right to be here.”   — Lawrence Bivins



New Convention Center Boosts Travel Industry

If you haven’t visited Greenville in recent years, it’s high time for a road trip. What was once a placid college town has grown into a dynamic city alive with stimulating culture, shopping and recreation. Overall, some $134 million is generated each year by visitors to Pitt County, according to an estimate by the U.S. Travel Data Center. That’s not bad considering the county contains neither a beach nor a mountain.

ECU’s football program alone brings in 150,000 visitors each season, which translates into about $2 million in economic impact on each fall day that Pirate fans file into 43,000-seat Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. “Beyond ECU athletics, Greenville has become a popular site for numerous sporting events,” says Debbie Vargas, executive director of the Greenville-Pitt County Convention & Visitors Bureau. In recent years, the city has hosted NCAA regional tournaments, the Babe Ruth Girls softball playoffs, the Special Olympics and the Senior Games.

Greenville’s medical care and retail assets draw many in from elsewhere in Eastern North Carolina, as do the nightly entertainment attractions at local music clubs. “Entertainment does bring a lot of people here,” says John Chaffee, executive director of the Pitt County Development Commission. “But we’re also a convenient hub for family reunions.”

Festivals account for much of the county’s tourism product. Farmville’s Main Street decks out in Kelly green for its annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Each September, Ayden hosts a well-attended Collard Festival. “This will be the festival’s 29th year,” according to Don Russell, Ayden’s town manager. “It is our biggest event of the year.”

Business and convention travel to the county got a boost last year with the completion of the 32-acre Greenville Convention Center. The complex contains 74,000 square feet of meeting space, along with a 40,000-square-foot exhibit area. Hilton Hotels, which operates adjacent to the new hall, partnered with the city and the CVB in making the $12 million project a reality. The hotel invested $2.5 million in upgrading and expanding its ballroom and overnight accommodations.

Thus far, sizable trade groups such as the N.C. Pork Council and the N. C. Association of CPAs have held major meetings there, as have several large church groups. “We’re able to accommodate up to 2,800 people,” says the CVB’s Vargas, which means Greenville could well play host to regional or even national organizations.

In recent years, the youth-oriented city has quietly become a destination for retirees. “It’s a great place to live for people at any stage of life,” according to Larry Seigler, a retired pharmaceutical industry executive. “You’re 20 minutes from Pamlico Sound, close to the beach and right next to the state’s third largest university.” A plethora of low-cost cultural and educational options, along with its high-quality medical care infrastructure, have put Greenville on the map as a haven for active retirees, says the 56-year-old Seigler.   — Lawrence Bivins


Grady-White Boats is a homegrown firm that traces its founding to 1958

Singing the Praises of Greenville Culture

Most people know that music means big business in Nashville and Branson. If you live outside of Pitt County, however, you might not know that there is similar evidence in Greenville.

While not nearly as large as that of the other cities, Greenville’s music scene is nothing if not eclectic. On any given night listeners can attend performances ranging from the Brandenburg Concerto to a Jimmy Buffet cover band, and most increments in between.

Like many things in Greenville, the trend is fueled by East Carolina University, which established the town’s musical roots when it began building an outstanding music education curriculum in the early 1960s, lessening its reputation at that point of being little more than a teacher training college. Three decades later, those early faculty members began retiring, and in their place the School of Music began beefing up its ranks with concert virtuosi. “As a result we now have a full complement of performance faculty — all of whom are astoundingly good,” explains Ed Jacobs, an associate professor of music composition at ECU. “It’s kind of ironic because we’re not in the top tier of funding, nor do we have the cultural history of other communities.”

Each March, Jacobs, who could easily pass for Greenville’s version of Billy Crystal, organizes a festival known as New Music@ECU, which utilizes faculty, student and guest artists in the performance of late 20th Century works. The festival routinely features world premiere performances, often with their composers seated in the audience. Founded three years ago with funding from local and out-of-state foundations, New Music@ECU has become a highly popular draw, filling nearly every seat at the university’s A.J. Fletcher Recital Hall. “There’s a lot of excitement from both the students and the community,” Jacobs says.

The campus also hosts the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival and an annual Jazz Festival named for the legendary Billy Taylor, a Greenville native. A nominal charge, if any at all, is charged for admission to most concerts. “We have over 400 free concerts per year here,” says Jacobs, a Boston native who came to ECU five years ago.

And just what does any of this have to do with business?

“Quality of life is a very important consideration for any business community,” explains Tom Feldbush, ECU’s vice chancellor for research, economic development and community engagement and chairman of the Pitt County Development Commission. Knowledge Age firms want to be sure they can recruit talented workers to their community, he says, and a vibrant music scene ranked highly on a recent national survey of technology workers. “It helps provide the ambiance people require in their lives,” adds Feldbush. “I’d put it right up there with the quality of our schools.”

As for Jacobs, he hopes the reputation of ECU’s music school as one of the finest in the southeastern U.S. soon translates into additional funding and new graduate programs. Additional classroom and performance space is already on its way, courtesy of ECU’s share of the state’s $3.1 billion bond package. “It’s really a very exciting time to be here,” Jacobs says. “It’s like getting in on the ground floor of a promising new business.”  -- Lawrence Bivins

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