Supporting Faculty Lifts up the Entire University

Ying Huang (Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering) holds the Tim Welch and Donna LaQua-Welch Faculty Fellowship, and she considers the position a great honor. Not only is it great for the College of Engineering to have this support, she says, but it’s helpful to the entire university. Part of her fellowship funds go directly into the labs where her students work. With top-of-the-line technology, they can conduct just about any materials research they can think of. But, the effects of Ying’s fellowship don’t stop there. She uses the funds to support outreach activities like workshops and camps for low-income students and after-school engineering programs for middle and high school students.

“When you have a way to recognize faculty, it pushes us all to innovate more. I want to make the fellowship as impactful as possible, not just for the students in my group, but for the university as a whole and the local community.”

Ying Huang, Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Margaret and her husband, Hugh Veit ’79, established the Eleanor S. Fitzgerald Memorial Graduate Student Scholarship to support NDSU students earning advanced degrees in the Department of Health, Nutrition, and Exercise Sciences or the Department of Human Development and Family Science.

Core areas of home economics remain part of current NDSU degree programs such as accounting; apparel, retail merchandising, and design; education; family and consumer science; financial planning; human development and family science; interior design; and nutrition science.

Home economics programs opened doors, particularly for women, to earn college degrees and pursue careers in education, Extension, state and federal government, business and industry, health care, and more. NDAC listed domestic economy as one of its courses in its founding year, 1890.

Established by Dr. Teresa Conner, dean of the NDSU College of Health and Human Sciences, and co-chaired by Dr. Margaret Fitzgerald ’83 and Col. Esther Meyers ’75, the Wisdom Keepers provide support and share their knowledge and expertise with students, faculty, staff, and leadership in the College.

The home management house at NDAC was the first facility built on a college campus specifically for home management practice. In 1954, it was named in honor of Alba Bales, the first female academic dean at NDAC.