North Carolina State University. Dept. of Nuclear Engineering.

The nuclear engineering program at North Carolina State University continues its traditional role in educational leadership and innovation. Over the years, the program has sought to meet the needs of the time and to anticipate future developments. In 1950, Clifford Beck, then of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, obtained support from N. C. 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. New faculty joining Dr. Beck included A. C. Menius, Jr., Raymond Murray, Arthur Waltner, and Newton Underwood. The team successfully met and overcame the challenges of the period after World War II: resistance to an entirely new discipline, the absence of textbooks, and security limitations on information about reactors. Approval was secured to offer the Ph.D.degree, in addition to the M.S. and B.S. degrees.

The early student body consisted of a number of highly qualified U.S. Air Force officers, who set standards of excellence for students to come later. Graduates of nuclear engineering now are leaders in government, industry, and education. A high percentage of the graduates entered university teaching. The nuclear engineering faculty was among the group that presented special training to foreign scientists and engineers in the Atoms for Peace program, an experiment in sharing nuclear technology on an international basis. 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 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.

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