Choosing NC State
Governor James Baxter Hunt, Jr. discusses why he chose to attend NC State, as well as his decision to change his major.
Interview on 2012-05-29 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Well I decided to go to NC State
00:00:05.888
primarily because of
00:00:10.039
my background in agriculture.
00:00:14.678
I first planned to
00:00:20.336
major in dairy husbandry.
00:00:25.018
I'd grown up with a little small dairy,
00:00:27.820
we milked about fifteen, twenty cows each day,
00:00:31.521
and I thought, well, I'll be a dairy farmer.
00:00:36.383
So I intended to get my degree in dairy husbandry
00:00:46.279
and I stayed in that for a couple years,
00:00:50.425
took some of those tough courses in chemistry,
00:00:55.452
and then I saw another tough chemistry course coming up.
00:01:02.417
....trying to remember which one it was...
00:01:05.240
...but it was reputed to be the toughest course in the college
00:01:10.258
and I didn't much want to take it.
00:01:13.780
But that wasn't the main reason I changed my major.
00:01:17.871
I changed my major because I decided
00:01:21.306
that becoming an agriculture teacher was something I might rather do,
00:01:26.625
and we had a department of education that offered a degree in agricultural education,
00:01:33.024
leading to becoming a vocational agriculture teacher or to other things you could do.
00:01:37.618
So I switched my major and majored in agricultural education
00:01:46.600
and of course later on I got a master's degree in agricultural economics
00:01:50.681
and my master's thesis was judged one of the three best in America
00:01:55.314
by the American Farm Economic Association.
00:01:58.306
But I went to NC State, I guess, because I
00:02:05.006
identified with the agricultural economy and the farm people
00:02:09.447
and I wanted to try to make things better for them.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.