Quote of the Day: Coach Kellie Harper

Quotes of Note34

“This is a great university. I didn’t realize how good it was until I got here.”

– NC State Women’s Basketball Coach, Kellie Harper

Link to Ken Tysiac’s blog entry

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Quotes of Note

34 Responses to Quote of the Day: Coach Kellie Harper

  1. Texpack 05/21/2010 at 1:54 PM #

    First of all, this is the kind of thread that makes this site a cut above.

    As a ChemE/PPT double major who “went to the dark side” and got an MBA, I have at least experienced both sides of the tech vs. liberal arts “war”. I can honestly say that I spent my first year of graduate school, after being out of school for 10 years, in disbelief that I was actually able to earn college credit for the work I was doing. Having said that, I do have to agree that the biggest flaw I have found in the engineering profession during my 27 years in industry is the inability to write effectively. I spend lots of hours trying to understand reports written by PhD’s, who are truly bright people and know their subject matter cold. Their ability to organize their thoughts and commit them to the page in a way that others can reach the same logical conclusions they have reached makes it very difficult for them to get things done.

    My second major thought on this topic is that NC State should be ok with being a land grant university that specializes in academic areas that are technical and scientific in nature. Unfortunately, the ranks of academia are dominated by those who think that the liberal arts are intellectually superior to the sciences and engineering. They don’t assign as much value to an ag researcher who learns how to breed a superior variety of soybeans as they do to someone who understands the mind of Plato. This naturally drives them to evaluate the academic excellence of a university on the basis of it’s liberal arts programs. Both are unquestionably important to the complete education of a human. I don’t agree with the idea that we have to back fill the voids left by the demise of the textile and paper industries with liberal arts programs. Biomedical engineering didn’t even exist when I was at State and from what I read it has developed into quite a program.

    As for Coach Harper’s comment, I think she absolutely nails the way many of us feel about NC State. It is an institution whose reputation seriously lags what it really is as a university.

  2. durhamwolf19 05/21/2010 at 2:24 PM #

    That’s why we are very fortunate to have Woodson as our new Chancellor. Being from Purdue he has seen the challenges a land grant university has in promoting its positive points. His previous situation in Indiana is very similar to ours in that there was a big private school (Notre Dame vs. Duke) and a nationally known university that attracts a lot of the locals (Indiana vs. UNC). I believe that experience in a similar situation will pay dividends for us.

  3. packplantpath 05/21/2010 at 2:33 PM #

    “The issue with State on academics is this: we WERE an ag, textile and engineering school. We are still a good engineering school…not MIT, but near GT/VT on many disciplines. But, Ag is gone and textiles is shipped over seas.”

    Wolfmanmat, yes textiles manufacturing is largely gone from North Carolina, but Ag? Really? CALS is still one of the larger colleges and Ag research is huge here and many of the programs are more competitive than you would think. Several graduate programs within CALS are consistently near the top of their field.

    Ag may be gone in Wake county, but elsewhere in NC, and the US in general, it is far from gone.

    Heck, it is my understanding that even the college of textiles has adapted and is more relevant than one would think based on domestic textile manufacturing.

  4. McCallum 05/21/2010 at 6:00 PM #

    PlantPath,

    You beat me to it.

    No offense to CHASS but how does CHASS at State get ahead of like programs at Duke, unc or wake forest? This is especially troubling when one looks at the endowment and alumni who endow specific professorships in certain programs at those places. It is not going to happen.

    Most of the major land grants in the southeast have scaled back on their agriculture sciences (food science, animal science, poultry science, crop science, botany, biology, etc) programs except State. The same goes for their forestry programs, State continues to fund and support its CORE programs. There was a big push in the early 90’s to pull money from the CORE programs to fund the desire to increase admissions for CHASS.

    One wonders why State is denying entrance for someone wanting to major in botany with a 1000 SAT so that they can admit someone with a 1250 or 1300 SAT who wants to study sociology.

    McCallum

  5. packalum44 05/21/2010 at 11:29 PM #

    I didn’t realize how good sex was until I tried it. From eastern NC you see, no one talks about it. Its faux pas. Kind of like NC State. Keep it quiet. NC State is the devil.

  6. wolfmanmat 05/22/2010 at 8:06 AM #

    I didn’t mean Ag was gone from NC State. I meant Ag jobs have changed over the last 20 years and are getting fewer and fewer. Textiles is the same. Fewer jobs; our placement rates are high in textiles, but the school is only 700 students. These programs are just not as attractive to prospective students as they once were.

  7. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 05/22/2010 at 3:01 PM #

    I’m going to enjoy all the positives NC State has going for it in the future. The last 20 years have been difficult but the foundation is strong, the alumni passionate, and the new leaders are dynamic and looking forward.

    Every college at NC State has many alumni that do exceptional work, recognized on a national level. Each college with even more grads that are leaders in their chosen career. With over 20K applicants for about 4,500 spots for the incoming class, the largest university in the state only admits an exclusive group of young adults.

  8. blpack 05/22/2010 at 10:05 PM #

    Coach Harper gets it. She was the only coach at the Raleigh WPC meeting to talk about winning a national championship. She may be our best coach not named Geiger. That said we do a horrible job of self promotion and it goes for athletics and the university as a whole. The winds of change need to sweep through west Raleigh and fortunately a storm is coming. Here’s to gale force winds vs. a brief shower.

  9. WolftownVA81 05/24/2010 at 12:06 PM #

    I like what I see so far from Coach Harper and hope she keeps her target of a National Championship in focus. She is very good for NCSU.

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