Newsroom

Helping students reach the frontier

News and Observer Jonathan B. Cox, Staff Writer Samuel F. Averitt, as vice provost for information technology at N.C. State University, guides the school through the wilds of gadgets and tech gear. And he's been recognized as an industry visionary for his work. This year, Averitt, 57, was named one of the top 100 information technology leaders by Computerworld magazine. Averitt, who grew up in Tabor City, received a bachelor's degree from N.C. State's College of Engineering in 1969 and a master's in 1974. He made a career at the school. Averitt has spearheaded efforts to improve networks used for research at N.C. State and other area universities and to link computers to boost processing power for complex computations. He recently sat down with Connect's Jonathan B. Cox. Following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Q. You are vice provost of information technology, but what does that mean? What do you do? A. A combination of things really, starting out with strategic planning, both on a national, regional and institutional level. It also involves running the systems for the academic side of the university. ... As a result we are constantly involved in what's new, what's coming. In that sense it's kind of an interesting job. ... It's the struggle to stay on the cutting edge and provide production quality services and resources. Q. The help desk is under you. What's the biggest problem that students have with technology? A. I don't know that there's a No. 1. The one, perhaps, that we are most concerned about is the differentiated skill sets or competencies that our students come in with. Some students come from a more advantaged environment and that shows. Some students come from more disadvantaged environments. It has nothing to do with raw capability, with intellect, IQ, the ability to learn. Trying to equalize those disparities, I think, is our No. 1 challenge. Q. How do you do that? Remedial classes? A. It's a combination. ... You want to identify people who need help, you want to provide them information, access, opportunities to learn more, to acquire those skills. You want to have intervention early on, because if you get lost, you may never catch up. You want to pull students up to their peers as quickly as possible by providing them as many opportunities and as much additional help as we can. In all honesty, it's a struggle. What is required is constantly changing. What we see is that while the base level of competency is rising across the board, the disparity, the differentiation between top and bottom, is still there. The students who are most skilled want to do more, and the students who are least skilled want us to give them more help. Q. Any idea how the numbers break down? A. I think it's pretty clear the significant majority of our students are very advanced in their computing skills and their knowledge and use of technology. We are talking about a minority, but it's a very important minority. ... The real issue is change itself. We are experiencing ever-increasing change and that change is beginning to have consequences and implications that we maybe could have and should have foreseen, but I don't think we did. I don't think most people even today understand the magnitude or the consequences of the changes we're beginning to see. ... In some ways we're at the beginning of the Information Age but we're also at the end of the Industrial Age. If you look at the [information technology] infrastructure, that really has an industrial analogy. Ultimately, the Information Age is not about fixed assets. What we're doing is putting together the building blocks that will become the enabler of the Information Age. ... As we gain critical mass in these underlying building blocks, the way we do everything is fundamentally going to change. The way we do education, the way we do commerce -- you name it, it's going to change. Q. And how should we deal with this change? Should we be scared, excited? A. We had better understand what we're dealing with and what it means. Raw technology has far outstripped our understanding of how to use it or what it means. We need to spend more time thinking about what we want to do with the technology. It's like riding a big wave -- you're not going to change the wave. You can think about what the wave is doing, and you can make it work for you. Q. How do you stay on top of all of this? A. The answer is "barely." I guess what one would say is if you're not surprised every day by something that you learn, you're not paying attention. This is a great environment to work in. There are lots of very knowledgeable people. You learn by communicating with your colleagues and your peers. You learn by going to conferences, by interacting with people. You read. It's a combination of all those things. You live it, that's what you do. Q. What's the best part of your job? A. To people in another time, being in the railroad business was the same excitement. You were on the frontier of what was happening. Certainly, in my lifetime what's been happening is information technology has changed the world. It's been fun to be there, to contribute, to participate, to be involved, to understand what was happening.