From freshman to doctor
February 2, 1987 Technician article detailing Dr. Winston’s career at NC State
Hubert Winston became the first African-American to start out at NC State as a freshman and finish as a doctor.  Winston first enrolled in Chemical Engineering as a freshman in 1966, earned his bachelor's degree in 1970, his master's in 1973, and then finished by earning his doctorate in 1975.  Dr. Winston recently retired as an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering.

Katharine Stinson ('41)[Photograph from 1941 Agromeck] was taking flying lessons at the old Raleigh Airport on US-401 when Amelia Earhart flew in for a visit in the early 1930's. When she told her hero that she wanted to be a pilot, Earhart advised her to become an engineer, a career Stinson pursued in spite of the obstacles that prevented most young women from striving for non-traditional degrees. Stinson was told she must enter as a junior, so she completed 48 semester hours in a year at Meredith (including two summer sessions) in order to attain her goal. Besides being the first woman engineer to graduate from NC State University (in Mechanical Engineering, with an Aeronautical option in 1941), Stinson was also the first woman engineer hired by the Civil Aeronautics Administration, now the Federal Aviation Administration. By the time she retired from the FAA, as Technical Assistant Chief of the Engineering and Manufacturing Division, she had served as the third president of the Society of Woman Engineers and on a presidential advisory committee for aviation safety under Lyndon Johnson.

“I just wanted to be a good engineer...I just did my job and most of the men accepted me.”

October 1921 Alumni News announces the arrival of Lucille Thompson as NC State's first “Co-ed” and 1,000th student to register [Alumni News, Vol. IV, no. 12, October 1921]

In 1921, Lucille Thompson of Wilmington was the first woman to enroll as a “regular” student. She entered the Electrical Engineering department, but in 1923, her senior year, she married and did not graduate.

Photograph from 1923 Agromeck

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In 1961, Anna Clyde Fraker became the first woman to receive an advanced degree in engineering, when she was awarded her MS in Metallurgical Engineering. She was also the first woman to receive a doctorate in Ceramic Engineering in 1968.

Title pages from Ms. Fraker’s thesis and dissertation from the Special Collections Research Center 

Schematic Diagram of Reactor from Clifford K. Beck’s July 5, 1949, “Proposal of a Nuclear Reactor at North Carolina State College” [North Carolina State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering Records, 1950-1980, UA 105.016.003]

In 1950, Clifford Beck, then of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, obtained support from NC State's Dean of Engineering, Harold Lampe, for the idea of building the nation's first university nuclear reactor and establishing the first university nuclear engineering educational curriculum.  Dr. Beck and his team of new faculty successfully met and overcame the challenges of the period after World War II: resistance to an entirely new discipline, the nonexistence of textbooks, and security limitations on information about reactors. Approval was secured to offer the Ph.D. degree, in addition to the MS and BS degrees.

The early student body consisted of a number of highly qualified U.S. Air Force officers North Carolina State's pioneering experiment in nuclear education became the center of attention of the United States and the world. In the early days of nuclear reactor research and development, the curricula were highly science oriented.  More recently, greater emphasis has been placed on engineering applications. Research by the faculty and graduate students in basic subjects such as nuclear physics and reactor theory has been supplemented by studies of many engineering topics and radiation applications.
-- Excerpts from Raymond L. Murray’s “A Brief History of NC State University Nuclear Engineering"
 

Pictorial Plan of the Raleigh Research Reactor Building taken from the “Further Design Features of the Nuclear Reactor Program at North Carolina State College” report prepared by Dr. Clifford Beck, et al in January, 1952.

  Nuclear Historic Landmark 

Undergraduate Curriculum in Nuclear Engineering
1950 [North Carolina State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering Records, 1950-1980, UA 105.016.002]

1995