Navigating East Carolina University: A Comprehensive Guide to its Campuses and Resources

East Carolina University (ECU), whose motto is "To serve," has a rich history dating back to its establishment on March 8, 1907, as East Carolina Teachers Training School (ECTTS). Founded by Thomas J. Jarvis, the "Father of ECU," the university has evolved from its original 43 acres (17 ha) to almost 1,600 acres (647 ha) today. This guide provides a detailed overview of ECU's campuses, facilities, and resources, offering valuable insights for students, faculty, staff, and visitors.

A Brief Overview of East Carolina University

Originally chartered to stimulate high school instruction and teacher training, ECTTS opened its doors on October 5, 1909, in Greenville, North Carolina. Over the years, the institution underwent several name changes, reflecting its expanding mission: East Carolina Teachers College (1920), East Carolina College (1951), and finally, East Carolina University (1967). Today, ECU is a public research university comprising nine undergraduate colleges, a graduate school, and four professional schools.

ECU's Diverse Campuses

East Carolina University is separated into three distinct campuses: Main Campus, Health Sciences Campus, and West Research Campus. In addition, it owns two sports complexes: Blount Recreational Sports Complex and North Recreational Complex (NRC), located on a 129-acre (522,044.5 m2) parcel of land north of East Carolina University's main campus. Furthermore, the university's academic facilities are located on six properties: Main Campus; Health Sciences Campus; West Research Campus; the Field Station for Coastal Studies in New Holland, North Carolina; the Millennial Research Innovation Campus in Greenville's warehouse district; and an overseas campus in Certaldo Alto, Italy.

Main Campus: The Heart of ECU

The main campus, also known as the east campus, spans approximately 530 acres (2 km2) in an urban residential area of downtown Greenville. With 158 buildings comprising more than 4.6 million square feet (430,000 m2) of academic, research, and residential space, it serves as the central hub for most university activities. All of the non-health sciences majors are located on the main campus.

Architectural Style

Many of the Main Campus buildings feature the Spanish-Mission style architecture; inspiration drawn from Thomas Jarvis' time as an ambassador to Brazil. He wanted to bring the unique architecture to eastern North Carolina.

Districts within Main Campus

The main campus is further divided into five districts:

Campus Core: The historic center of the university.
Downtown District: Connecting the university with the city of Greenville.
Warehouse District: Home to the Millennial Research Innovation Campus.
Athletic Fields: Dedicated to varsity athletics.
South Academic District: Focuses on academic buildings and resources.

Key Athletic Facilities

The varsity athletics fields are located south of the College Hill residential neighborhood. Fourteenth Street divides College Hill to the north, with the athletic fields to the south. Charles Boulevard borders the fields to the west and Greenville Boulevard borders it to the south. A residential neighborhood and Elmhurst Elementary School are the eastern borders. The northern portion of the area sits Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium, Minges Coliseum, and Minges Natatorium, along with parking. The Murphy Center, which is the primary strength and conditioning, and banquet building, is located between Dowdy-Ficklen and Minges Coliseum. The Ward Sports Medicine Building, Scales Field House, and the Pirate Club Building also surround Dowdy-Ficklen. The Ward Sports Medicine Building houses offices for football, Pirate Club, and athletic administration. The Scales Field House provides locker rooms, additional athletic department offices for marketing and event operations, and classroom space for ECU's athletic training program. South of those facilities is the Cliff Moore Practice Facility which has a pair of natural grass fields and one FieldTurf field designed exclusively for the football team. On the southern border of the practice facility is Clark-LeClair Stadium, which is the men's baseball stadium. It opened in 2005 and seats 3,000 in permanent seating with another 2,000 located in the outfield. At the southern end of the fields is the Olympic Sports Complex, which include women's soccer stadium, softball stadium, track and field facility, and Olympic Sports Team building. The Olympic Sports Complex was completed in 2011 with a price of $23.4 million. The Smith-Williams Center is a $17 million basketball development and practice facility, opened in 2013. The football stadium is planning for a $40 million upgrade. The upgrades will include a new press, club, and suite areas, and upper deck, all located on the south side. East Carolina has spent $92 million on athletic projects from 1998 to 2011.

Health Sciences Campus: Advancing Healthcare Education

The Health Sciences campus is situated beside ECU Health Medical Center. ECU Health Medical Center was originally Pitt County Memorial Hospital and Vidant Medical Center (VMC). After becoming a private non-profit hospital, the renaming occurred. ECU Health Medical Center, an 861-bed flagship Level I Trauma Center, serves as the academic medical center for The Brody School of Medicine. ECU Health owns ECU Health Medical Center, leases or owns six and manages one. Located about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Main Campus, the Health Sciences Campus spans 206 acres (0.8 km2) with nearly 1,300,000 square feet (121,000 m2) of academic and research space in 62 buildings. It houses the College of Nursing, College of Allied Health Sciences, The Brody School of Medicine, and School of Dental Medicine.

Key Facilities

Other buildings besides VMC include Brody Medicine Science Building, the East Carolina Heart Institute, Leo Jenkins Cancer Center, and the Allied Health building composed of the College of Nursing, Laupus Medical Library and College of Allied Health Sciences. The 117,000 square feet (11,000 m2) Family Medicine Center opened in the fall of 2011.

West Research Campus: A Hub for Scientific Exploration

West Research Campus lies on approximately 600 acres (2.4 km2) 4 miles (6.4 km) west of the Health Sciences Campus. It consists of four buildings with 36,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) on the former Voice of America site. Approximately 367 acres (1.49 km2) are designated wetlands and large areas of biology, botany and other sciences field study sites. It has an environmental health onsite wastewater demonstration facility which is open to the public and all educators.

Read also: Pirates Football Roster

Community Service Learning Centers

The School of Dental Medicine built 8 community service learning centers located in rural and underserved areas throughout the state of North Carolina. The fourth-year students learn and provide care for the community for one year in these community centers. All 8 community centers are currently active.

Field Station for Coastal Studies

The field station is located in New Holland, North Carolina.

Academic Colleges and Schools

ECU is home to nine undergraduate colleges, a graduate school, and four professional schools.

Colleges

College of Allied Health Sciences
College of Business
College of Education
College of Engineering and Technology
College of Fine Arts and Communication
College of Health and Human Performance
College of Nursing

Professional Schools

Brody School of Medicine
School of Dental Medicine

Graduate School

The Graduate School consist of 85 master's degree, 21 doctoral programs and 62 certificates. It coordinates the graduate offerings of all departments in the nine colleges. The School also runs the non-professional degree programs of the professional School of Medicine. The school offers 17 master's degree in Accounting, Arts, Business Administration, Construction Management, Education, Environmental Health, Fine Arts, Library Science, Music, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Public Administration, Public Health, School AdministrationScience, Social Work and Teaching.

Libraries

ECU boasts an extensive library system to support its academic and research endeavors.

Read also: Nursing at ECU

J.Y. Joyner Library

J.Y. Joyner Library is the main library located beside the Mall on the main campus. It holds nearly 1.9 million bound volumes, 2.1 million pieces of microform, 532,000 government documents, and more than 24,000 journal subscriptions. The library, which houses the East Carolina manuscript collection, is the largest library east of Raleigh. It is one of the leading repositories in the nation for modern naval and maritime history. It also holds materials related to North Carolina, the tobacco industry, worldwide missionary activities, and American military history. The library is the official repository of the records of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary. The J. Edgar Hoover Collection on International Communism contains many items dealing with communism worldwide.

Music Library

The Music Library is a branch of Joyner Library located on the first floor of A.J. Fletcher Music Center. It houses approximately 93,000 items, including the entire audio recording collection. It is the largest music collection east of Raleigh. The primary users of the library are faculty and students within the School of Music and the School of Theatre and Dance, but anyone can use its resources. It began in the 1958-59 academic year when a small library was created.

William E. Laupus Library

The William E. Laupus Library is the medical and health library for East Carolina. It is the primary library for the Brody School of …

Additional Resources for Navigation and Information

Campus Maps and Branding

Our firm prides itself on delivering artwork that will immediately be functional for use in print, signage and web-based projects. This is very important to us, as we view the maps that we develop as needing to support the overall branding and identity efforts of our clients. We also firmly believe that having consistent imagery across print, signage and web-based presentations will reduce confusion experienced by individuals as they attempt to navigate their way to a destination. The key piece of information needed from our clients to effectively complete a 3D perspective campus mapping project are good, high-resolution (and reasonably current) oblique aerial photographs depicting at least 85-90+ percent of the property to be mapped from the same elevation and direction that our clients wish to see depicted in their finished campus maps. If our clients do not have access to reasonably-current oblique aerial photographs of their property, we can also arrange for these services with our aerial photography partners on their behalf. Costs will depend upon location and the amount of urgency required in completing a photo shoot. However, we have generally seen photography fees of between $750 and $1,000 US for a majority of the aerial photography work we have had done in the United States. In addition to oblique aerial photography, we also generally like to receive copies of a property's site plan, along with any previous examples of campus maps for the property that we can obtain, as that provides us access to a very efficient method of ensuring a very accurate finished-product. Site plans are usually available from an institution's Physical Plant, Facilities Department or Campus Architect.

Map Maintenance

That decision that is completely up to our clients. They can maintain the images themselves. They can hire mapformation to maintain the imagery for them. They can even hire a third party to maintain the maps for them if they so choose (though we hope that is not the case)! Our firm is obviously hoping that we will be able to develop long-term, fruitful relationships with all of our clients, and we enjoy having the opportunity to maintain the maps we have created in perpetuity! However, this is a decision that is completely up to our clients. Roughly half of our clients choose to have us maintain all aspects of the imagery we have developed, while 80-85 percent of our clients will have us perform at least "major" updates as changes occur. Our firm will typically deliver finished artwork in SketchUp (.skp) format, as well as a variety of "2D" output formats that clients might desire, including .jpg, .tif, .eps, .pdf, .bmp, .png, .dxf and .dwg. The editable .skp file format would require that our clients have a copy of SketchUp in order to edit the map in three-dimensional form. Clients could, however, overlay information on top of any "static" views that are generated in 360-degrees by importing .tif, .bmp, .jpg or .png graphics into any raster software program, such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint.

Parking and Transportation

A parking pass is needed to park in the WC-8, WC-23 or other campus lot to which you are assigned. Parking for large events such as Open House and Pirates Aboard is in the Gold Lot at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. Shuttle transportation to campus is provided. The closest intersection is Cotanche Street and Library Drive. After you pass McDonald’s on Cotanche, take your first right onto Library Drive. From the WC-23 lot, please cross at the crosswalk of 9th Street and Library Drive. Follow the sidewalk continuing on Library Drive. You will pass the International House on the right.

tags: #east #carolina #university #map