With more than 31,000 students including more than 7,000 graduate students, N.C. State is already the largest school in the University of North Carolina system.

But if numbers keep rising as University and UNC Tomorrow officials project, NCSU should rise to 40,000 in the next decade.

UNC system president Erskine Bowles and members of UNC Tomorrow — a commission that looks at how the system’s schools can best help the state over the next 20 years — met at N.C. State late last month to look toward the future and review NCSU’s goals.

“[UNC Tomorrow officials] were very interested about how N.C. State might grow to help handle the increasing number of students that are going to be coming into the system over the next decade,” Provost Larry Nielsen said.

“If you take the projected growth and enrollment and take the growth in students and divvy them out in proportion to how big the universities are then that would imply we’d grow to around 40,000.”

UNC Tomorrow is a group that will be traveling to each of the system schools over the months to come, according to Nielsen.

“They are going to go out across the state and have a series of meetings with citizens across the state to ask them how they think the university system can best help,” Nielsen said.

The focus from NCSU’s perspective is to serve the state, provided in its status as a land grant institution.

A land grant institution means that teaching, research and extension are at the core of the what the University does, and this example was shown as part of the document titled “100 N.C. State Programs that Impact the State,” that the administration prepared for the UNC Tomorrow commission.

“What the state needs, N.C. State is prepared to serve because we are a comprehensive insitution focused on math, science and engineering we provide the graduates that will serve the important areas in the state,” Nielsen said. “Responding to the needs of the future is not just about graduating students, but also about providing knowledge that can drive our industries and our communities that can become better places to live.”

Other crucial parts of the plan included increased enrollment in distance education courses and graduate school.

According to Keith Nichols, director of news and communications, distance education is up 27 percent for the past school year, of which more than half are “traditional college students.” The majority of the growth of distance education is attributed to the full-time students.

“We’re looking at the hybrid student that takes some classes in the classroom and some over the internet,” Nielsen said. “That means that one more seat is open in the classroom.”

One more seat open in the classroom will be a crucial concern for the University with the increase in students. Facilities was not a major part of the plan presented to UNC Tomorrow, but according to John Gilligan, vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, it is a must for the demands that will be placed on NCSU.

“That is a huge increase in number and there is support required to get the best equipment,” Gilligan, who was part of the presentation to UNC Tomorrow, said. “The faculty will have to fund those graduate positions with the state helping to fund the faculty — we’re tight right now on space.”

According to both Gilligan and Nielsen, research has always been an important part of NCSU’s DNA, because of how it serves the state.

“The state of North Carolina is still importing scientists and engineers from other states to meet the needs of the agencies in this state,” Gilligan said. “But we’re doing our part to educate those groups and stimulate the economy through inventions and innovations that can create jobs.”

Tony Caravano, former student body president and now the deputy director for the UNC Tomorrow Initiative, said the group is not at the stage of offering things for the University to work on.

“Campus visits is the first phase and we’ll spend some time this summer looking at the strengths and what’s to come down the pipeline,” Caravano said. “We’ll move into recommendations later on.”

He said the group was pleased with what NCSU had to offer — especially the 100 programs document.

“They’re involved in every county in North Carolina and that really gets to the core of what we’re doing,” he said.

According to Gilligan, Bowles and the rest of the Commission were impressed with the emphasis on “long-term research with short-term solutions.”