North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public research university in the city of Raleigh, in North Carolina.
Together with Duke University in Durham and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC State makes up the third point of Raleigh’s ‘Research Triangle’ – a national high-tech hotspot, with IBM, Cisco Systems and others tech companies on their doorstep.
The university is made up of 12 colleges, which house 65 academic departments and offer over 300 undergraduate and graduate programmes between them.
The university serves more than 34,000 students and has close to 2,500 faculty members.
The main campus, known for its distinctive red brick buildings, is split into three sections. North Campus is the oldest part of the university and houses most of the academic departments. Central Campus consists of halls of residence, cafeterias, gyms and student support centres. South Campus is home to Greek Court, the McKimmon Conference and Training Centre, and student park-and-ride areas.
Other NC State campuses include the Centennial Campus, spanning 1,334 acres, the Centennial Biomedical Campus, and the North Carolina Research Campus.
NC State was founded ‘to create economic, societal and intellectual prosperity for the people of North Carolina and the country.’ To that end, the university can lay claim to 100 start-ups and spinoff businesses that have attracted more than $1.5 billion in venture capital.
The university has an annual budget of almost $1.5 billion, $308 million in sponsored research awards, and an endowment of around $984 million.
NC State is home to 70 intramural and club sports programmes, 23 Division 1 varsity teams, and more than 600 student organisations on campus.
Its athletic teams are known as the Wolfpack and team colours are red and white. Their team mascots come in multiple: Mr and Mrs Wuf, who attend NC State athletic events, and Tuffy, a ‘strutting wolf’, who represents the teams in print.
