Fitts Endowment
A major and momentous milestone
September 23, 2005, was a historic occasion for our department. On that day, in recognition of a generous endowment bestowed by Edward P. Fitts, Distinguished NC State Engineering Alumnus (BSIE, 1961) and founder and former CEO of global packaging company Dopaco, the department was renamed and is now the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
The $10 million gift is the largest ever received by the College of Engineering from an individual donor and the largest endowed gift to academics in NC State’s history.
The endowment will enable us to fund a number of important – and extremely exciting – initiatives that promise to transform the department and its work:
- Undergraduate scholarships
- Graduate fellowships, followed by sponsored research
- Several chaired professorships which will enable us to recruit internally known experts in several industrial and systems engineering fields
- Three new program thrusts – Health Systems Engineering, Logistics Systems Engineering and Bioproduction Systems Engineering – and international recruitment of recognized scholars in each thrust area
We are also proud to report that the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering is the first endowed department in the history of NC State University.