This year marks NC State’s 131st anniversary and as many aspects of campus have recently changed, such as the four-year graduation rate and the first-year on-campus living requirement, upholding students’ needs and traditions that create communities on campus, is and always has been a priority for the NC State community.

The on-campus living requirement is one of many ways administrators are working to create an engaging environment. Chancellor Randy Woodson spoke about how promoting diversity in spaces throughout campus inherently helps students excel academically.

“The reason we have programs such as multicultural student affairs and diversity officers in every college is because our students need to be inspired by the people that are mentoring them through college,” Woodson said. “Universities are places where people start to envision how they can be effective and happy and have a meaningful life, and we need people that can help them do that.”

Margaux Hapgood, a first-year majoring in exploratory studies, created a community for herself through housing because of the campus living requirement.

“Being able to live in Central Campus has been especially nice,” Hapgood said. “When I look outside my room I see students from Tucker and Owen and the Tri-Towers together on the volleyball court and I feel a sense of community, it’s like the Fourth of July.”

Melissa Thomas, a fourth-year studying biology, discussed how she learned the most from the people she was surrounded by.

“Everyone is so different here,” Thomas said. “They teach you something new about their culture or lifestyle that you might not ever had thought about. It wasn’t just about attending classes, it was attending events and meeting new people.”

According Thomas H. Stafford Jr., former vice chancellor for student affairs, the values of the student body never wavered even while the makeup of the student body became completely different.

“The student body changed dramatically over the 46 years since I first came here,” Stafford said. “They changed in terms of their race, their gender and their sexuality. But, in terms of their other values, their ability to relate to other people, their commitment to the degree program they’re in, their commitment to serve other people, those values, I don’t think really changed as the other characteristics of the student body did change.”

Even as NC State celebrates its 131st birthday, putting student needs first continues to be a priority. In order to do that, Woodson had to initiate changes that would improve the four-year graduation rate for students.

“When I got here, I think we had a goal to be really big, but without a focus on quality,” Woodson said. “Just being big for size isn’t has important as the success of our students. My major vision was improving the success of our students. We tried to improve advising, we tried to improve the transfer process within the university so that students understood, if they wanted to change majors, what the pathway to doing that was. And, we focused more on admitting students that were prepared to succeed here.”

For members of faculty, upholding tradition throughout campus is the way they get students to create a community on campus and Woodson makes that a priority in order to enhance the university.

“I think that’s one of the most important things for a chancellor to do,” Woodson said “To come in and quickly learn the history and culture of a place because you can’t move it forward unless you understand where it’s been and where it comes from and you see all the signs around campus ‘think and do,’ that sort of illustrates the culture of this place from its founding.”

In the almost 50 years Stafford was a member of faculty, the goal of the university has stayed the same.

“It doesn’t matter what your race, gender or sexual orientation is,” Stafford said. “What matters is that we do everything that we can to make everybody feel comfortable and eventually, four or five years later, graduate students who have been well educated and are committed to going out into the world and making a difference.”