 Elizabeth City State University, a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina System, located just off the waterfront of the Pasquitank River in northeast North Carolina. It is the premier four-year public institution, educationally, culturally, and even economically for this region. Every year, since U.S. News and Reports has had its rankings on colleges, we've moved up the ladder so that in 213, we were number one in one of the categories. For two years on a row, we have been number one in one of Washington's monthly rankings of colleges and universities, and also ranked as number 13 HBCU in the country. Elizabeth City State is a place for students to soar. Literally. Tyler Pryor came to school on a baseball scholarship. He ultimately decided his adventures await him in the air. He's on his way to becoming a pilot in the Aviation Science Program. It's an unbelievable feeling the first time you go up and you're at the controls, and you just feel like you've came to a very big milestone in your life. And it's something I've always dreamed of doing, and I hope to do it as a career one day. ECSU is a place where students find their purpose. It's like Montravias King, a senior who was recently elected a city councilman in Elizabeth City. My professors told me, you know, Montravias, look, you've been put here for a reason. They said, you know, you didn't just come to Elizabeth City State University to receive a degree. I didn't understand then. I had no intention that all the city council wasn't even on my mind, but now I realize what they were saying. That they're not pushing me to continue on. Priscilla Azaglo is the SGA president, a position of leadership she would have never imagined before coming to Elizabeth City State. It wasn't until somebody came to me and said, you know, you're so much more, you should be doing so much more that then I realized, okay, well maybe I should do it. This is my purpose, just me doing things for my campus and fighting for my campus and people having so much faith and hoping me. I know that when they look back on it, this will be the most enjoyable period of time in their lives, but I also want to make sure that they aren't able to compete globally. I want them to get a sense of what they can do with the skills that they learn here to be able to go out and help people. So we will be engaging them to engage others. There's nothing more important than the life skills that you learn here. That's as big a part of education as anything. Graduating from ECSU invokes a sense of pride. Norma James is a grad now serving on the board of trustees and a natural ambassador. Well, I have two sister-in-laws who have graduated with education from here. I have another cousin who has graduated and business administration here. So I've had lots of family members come out here over the years. It's a local university. We're local. We're lucky. You know, I've always had my family support and our family has stayed in the area. We haven't really moved out of the area and maybe that's what's kept us all coming to Elizabeth City State University. Gwendolyn Sanders' journey at Elizabeth City State has come full circle. As a student in the 1970s, she was inspired by professors who were role models. Dr. Caldwell headed up the English department and I knew that after listening to her that I wanted to be just like her and I wanted to be able to do some of the things that she was sharing with us that we could benefit from being in that department. As I journeyed to Washington, D.C. and started to actually build a career in conference and event planning, those skills came in very handy. She's now back home as the Chief of Staff for the Chancellor. It is just awesome to be back at my alma mater. I can't think of a better situation to have come full circle and to be able to give my time, my treasure to my alma mater. Student success is a product of the environment at Elizabeth City State, an intimate campus that cultivates relationships. You get a lot of one-on-one time with your professors and they're very open and willing to make sure that you succeed. You can go to their office, talk to them, you can go to lunch with some professors and it's a strictly business and they really just want to help you financially unstable and might help you with a little work study job, something to better you but at the same time help guide you along the right path to being successful. I know I'm my professors on a fresh name basis and they know me on a fresh name basis. I can go see them. I have my actual advisor's number so if I ever need to go talk about classes, graduate and I can call her weekdays, weeknights, it doesn't matter. She's always willing to answer the phone. The intimate relationships extend all over campus, ensuring students will have a safe and enjoyable experience in and out of the classroom. It's not hard to get to know 2,000, 3,000 people, especially if you're on your feet each and every day in and out of dorms, going through the classroom halls and where the students are actually being taught. You get to learn them and my favorite place to find students is called a cafeteria. If you go to the cafeteria, you will meet all students between level 31, 30 every single day. I don't have any sisters, I just have an older brother, but ever since freshman year I've had some friends and I call them sisters now. And I can say that our school is just so much fun like I'm waiting to come back after the breaks. Come back to school and start the next semester. Come and experience it for yourself. Staff members are ready to set up a tour, help with the financial aid process and welcome you on campus. We want students to recognize that we are here to assist them. There are many students that have extenuating circumstances that cannot be reflected on the FAFSA application and in those scenarios we want them to come in to talk with us to give us a call to let us know those special circumstances so that we can further assist them to be able to assist with financing their educational costs. We have one of the lowest student-teacher ratios in the system. It is also the most affordable school in the system. We can get a good quality education here for little no-cost and leave here without the sort of college debt that we see at many other institutions. For more information visit us at ecsu.edu.