NC State Magazine

Free Minds

As a graduate student, Sheila Smith McKoy ’89 taught literature to women in a maximum-security prison. “The first time you walk in,” she says, “you don’t know what to expect.” But it doesn’t take long, she says, before you understand that people in prison are “human beings just like you, with feelings just like you.” Smith McKoy’s students included pregnant women and women serving life sentences. “So many of them were gifted writers,” she says. “It would break your heart to know that there’s a t...

NC State Magazine

Field Work

WUNC reporter Aaron Sánchez-Guerra ’18 was hired at North Carolina Public Radio in April 2024 to cover topics of race, class and communities. But he admits, “that’s a very vague and broad beat.” More specifically, he loves to talk to people and cover issues that he relates to. He is a native of the Rio Grande Valley, and he sees journalism as “a way to highlight issues that [are] underreported, that [are] marginalized, that are overlooked.”


As a student journalist Sánchez-Guerra interned with...

The Sun Magazine

Falling Behind: Ruth Milkman on the Growing Job Insecurity in America

Not that long ago it was possible, even typical, for someone to support a family on a single income. Most jobs paid the bills, offered health insurance, funded retirement, and gave employees a sense of stability. But many households now depend on multiple incomes — sometimes from three jobs or more — and some people over sixty-five are forced to pick up second careers or gig-economy work instead of retiring.

NC State Magazine

Pollution Solution

Beaches and lakeshores rimmed with plastic bottles and bags are a fairly common sight. But such visible pollution reveals only a portion of the problem. Too small to see with the naked eye, microplastics are bits of degraded plastic that are found in natural bodies of water, the air, the atmosphere and even ice-covered areas like the Arctic. Eventually, microplastics can make their way into the food supply. They are not immediately toxic, but “long-term accumulation in the human body is definite...

NC State Magazine

Pathways to Possibilities

Darris Means ’14 PHD has always believed in the power of education. As a dean’s fellow for rural education and a professor of educational leadership at Clemson University, Means wants to ensure that students can choose the right pathway for themselves.

NC State Magazine

With an Open Heart

When Suzanne Boots Knighton ’00 had heart-attack symptoms on a mountain-bike ride in 2020, she ignored them. “Who wants to have a heart attack at 42?” she asks. But heart disease can happen at any age. It’s the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States, accounting for 1 in 5 deaths in 2022.


Admitting to herself that some­thing was wrong turned out to be easier than convincing doctors. Even after her cardiologist found three congenital heart defects, he still attributed Kni...

NC State Magazine

All Funds and Games

NC State Ph.D. student and Wake County, N.C., high school teacher Michael Prelaske is helping students through game-based learning and scholarships. He is the founder of 1347 Games, a nonprofit focused on creating standards-based, multiplayer, digital simulations for the classroom. “Learning takes place through stories and play,” says Prelaske, who has taught at Middle Creek High School in Apex, N.C., since 2014. “There’s very little play incorporated into the modern social studies curriculum, b...

The Sun Magazine

Become A Friend Of The Sun

Several years ago I discovered The Sun on the shelves of a small bookstore in Raleigh, North Carolina. I was in the habit of wandering around bookstores and libraries, searching other people’s writing for answers to questions like Who am I? and How should I live my life? I would optimistically bring home books, but they always ended up decorating my nightstand, unread beyond the first few pages.

At that time I was worn a little thin. My family and I had moved nine hundred mile...

NC State Magazine

Indoor Species

Vanessa Woods, a PhD student in NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, spends a lot of time with puppies. As director of the Puppy Kindergarten at Duke University, Woods helps train young dogs to become service animals. Included in the puppies’ training are outings to improve mental health throughout the campus community, much like the Pause for Paws program at NC State. Seeing how people responded to the dogs’ visits got Woods thinking: “Puppies make people happy, but not everybod...

NC State Magazine

Desk Set: Rob Dunn

Who: Rob Dunn is a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Applied Ecology and the Senior Vice Provost for University Interdisciplinary Programs. He has been an NC State faculty member since 2005 and has written eight books, including his most recent: The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us About How to Live Well With the Rest of Life.


Office: David Clark Labs 231 is a vestige of Dunn’s early days at NC State. He describes his office not as a solitary space, but as part of...

NC State Magazine

Branching Out

Raleigh’s NeighborWoods program used to give free trees to homeowners to plant in their yards, but it was discontinued in 2017. When that happened, Dave Klemp ’15, who had worked for the program, felt the area needed a dedicated tree-planting program. So, he says with a laugh, “I decided to start my own, with no nonprofit experience.” Just months after NeighborWoods shut down, Klemp’s Trees for the Triangle sprouted. It’s been a huge learning curve, he says, but with the tree knowledge he gained...

NC State Magazine

A Single Stone

For more than forty years, members of the NC State community have gathered in February for the Sisterhood Dinner, a celebration of Wolfpack women’s accomplishments. Originally known as the Susan B. Anthony Dinner (and held near her February 15th birthday), the evening tees up Women’s History Month in March with a dinner for 600 in the Talley Student Union Ballroom, keynote and guest speakers, and a silent auction benefiting the Women’s Center.

NC State Magazine

Coloring Outside the Lines

When Amanda Solliday, a horticultural science Ph.D. student, had the idea for a cut-flower garden on campus, she envisioned growing exclusively red and white flowers to display at university events. She saw the garden as a way to promote sustainability through local flower cultivation, offer students volunteer and leadership opportunities, and foster real-world skills. As the garden has progressed from idea to reality, it has accomplished nearly all of those goals.

NC State Magazine

Trial Run

Tucked in the southeast corner of the JC Raulston Arboretum is a living laboratory, where over 700 varieties of perennial, annual and edible plants grow in trial beds. Some of these plants will eventually be available for purchase, but the only way to see them now is to visit a testing garden.

NC State Magazine

Around the World in Seven Marathons

Within 12 months of his 70th birthday, Bryan Benton ’77 ran a marathon on each of the seven continents. While he’s always been active, participating in tennis, racquetball and football through the years, it wasn’t until he made an offhand comment about his wife’s running that he picked up the sport. She’d just completed her first marathon in Raleigh, when, as Benton tells the story, he “mistakenly made the comment, ‘Well, you walked some.’” He laughs about it now and says, “That didn’t go over s...

The Sun Magazine

Where the Hunger Leads

The Sun has published three short stories by Kate Osterloh: “Believers,” which focuses on faith and religious doubt, and “Maryam and Yeshua” and “The Bleeding Woman,” which both reimagine Bible stories. Her writing is warm and rich, and her characters feel real and complex. But after reading each of her pieces, I found myself increasingly curious about Kate’s life and experiences. I knew little about her, except that she is a former US foreign diplomat, which only made her seem more mythical....

NC State Magazine

First Edition

Brennan Selcz spent the summer reading novels about the end of the world. He’s researching how post-World War II literature reflects people’s anxieties about atomic fallout. Though he started his time at NC State in STEM fields, Selcz, now beginning his senior year, is majoring in English and political science and applying both a scientific and humanist mindset to his research. “Science needs to be viewed as a humanistic endeavor,” he says. “We need to remember that what it’s doing is for the be...

The Sun Magazine

Nature and Nurture

I have always loved January—not for the weather (I’m originally from the Midwest) but for the sense of new beginning that it brings. It’s like an unmarked notebook, untrod snow, a fresh stick of butter. I can make my life whatever I want it to be, I always think. Of course, this both is and isn’t true. I’m not sure which has a larger influence over my life: my will or my surroundings.


Our January 2024 issue looks at how our environments and circumstances shape us and how we are shaping our...

NC State Magazine

From Campus to Company

For the past 10 years, the Entrepreneurship Clinic has guided more than 900 students through high-impact, experiential learning. “We’re asking [students] to apply and create real value for a company partner who’s struggling with something,” says clinic director Haley Huie ’06. The clinic uses what Huie calls the “hospital teaching model” to achieve this, pairing students with a company to diagnose and treat the company’s pain point. An instructor guides students, just like an attending physician...

NC State Magazine

Unpacking the Unthinkable

When Helene hit western North Carolina on September 26, 2024, it had weakened from a Category 4 hurricane to a tropical storm. But the damage it caused was immense. Between eight and 24 inches of rain fell over three days in parts of the mountains, saturating the land and teeing up one of the worst natural disasters western North Carolina has experienced. Raging rivers and mudslides washed away roads and homes, and at least 98 people lost their lives in North Carolina. Many mountain communities...

NC State Magazine

Seamless Transition

In recent years, Art2Wear has been known primarily as a fashion show. But since its debut in 2001, it has taken many forms and venues. It has been in the Court of North Carolina, Reynolds Coliseum and Stewart Theatre in Talley Student Union. But until this year, it had never been a living museum exhibition.


This year’s Art2Wear was held at the Gregg Museum of Art & Design in April and featured a live show and an exhibit of Art2Wear history. The change in format aligned with the show’s theme,...

The Sun Magazine

Rachel J. Elliott on Twenty-Five Years with The Sun

Rachel Elliott started at The Sun as an editorial office assistant in 1997, processing the mail and fulfilling book orders. Now, as editorial associate and photo editor, there is not much of the magazine production process that Rachel isn’t involved in. She helps select photos, manuscripts, and Readers Write pieces for publication. She corresponds with photographers, authors, and readers. She assists with page layout and juggles behind-t...

The Sun Magazine

A Game We Play

By her own admission, Leona Sevick is a latecomer to poetry. She was trained as an American literature scholar and never took a creative-writing class. Twelve years ago, eighteen years into her teaching career, she wrote her first poem on a napkin while sitting at a bar. “It sounds so cliché,” she says, “but that’s what happened.” At the urging of a colleague, she submitted the poem to the Split This Rock contest and the poet Naomi Shihab Nye chose it as the winner. “Then there was no turning ba...

NC State Magazine

Writing Development

Amy Rossi is NC State’s director of development communications, but outside her day job, she does another kind of storytelling. On Aug. 5, a longtime goal of hers will be realized when her debut novel, The Cover Girl, is published.