Dr. Cammie Hunt to lead UNCP’s Distance Education, Outreach

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Dr. Cammie Hunt has been named associate vice chancellor for Engaged Outreach at UNC Pembroke effective July 1. She leaves the post of acting dean of the School of Business.

A 14-year UNCP employee, Dr. Hunt will lead the Office of Distance Education and the Regional Center for Economic, Community and Professional Development at COMtech. She will report to Dr. Ken Kitts, provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs.

“I am delighted that Cammie Hunt has accepted this position,” said Dr. Kitts.  “She is uniquely well-positioned to help UNCP reach out to students, groups and businesses in our service area, and I know that she will make her presence felt across the region.”   Dr. Hunt’s career has been marked by positions of increasing responsibility, and she is excited about her newest opportunity. “There is no better job than teaching and working for the success of UNC Pembroke and its students,” she said. “I am thrilled to be taking on a new challenge in a unit with an important mission and dedicated staff.”

The scope of Dr. Hunt’s outreach responsibilities is broad. UNCP is the third largest provider of online courses among the UNC universities. In addition, Distance Education operates four satellite campuses at Richmond, Sandhills and Cape Fear community colleges and on Fort Bragg.

“Building enrollment and providing good service to our students is always important on satellite campuses,” Dr. Hunt said. “With troops returning home and transitioning to new careers, there is a real opportunity to serve the military community in and around Fort Bragg.”

Online education will also be a primary focus for Dr. Hunt. “UNCP is a remarkable success story with online education,” she said. “I would like to see our office continue to work with the academic units to produce even more online classes and entire programs, especially graduate programs.”

Providing student services is always an issue with students who are not  on UNCP’s campus. “We must continue to work on building seamless pathways for these students, from admissions through graduation,” Dr. Hunt said. “I am fortunate to inherit experienced and talented staff at these offices.”

Outreach into the community, through grants and other programs, is the Regional Center’s mission, and Dr. Hunt’s new office will be located there. The potential of the center is wide open, she said.

“I started my career at UNCP with the Small Business and Technology Development Center (SBTDC), which is in the Regional Center,” Dr. Hunt said. “I would like to develop more partnerships between programs like this at the Regional Center and the academic community.

“For example, SBTDC and the Thomas Family Center for Entrepreneurship may be able to work more closely with graduate and undergraduate business programs to provide even more expertise to new and growing businesses as well as increase opportunities for our students to gain hand-on business experience.

“The linkage between our outreach programs and the academic community is the reason the new title of my job says ‘engaged’ outreach,” Dr. Hunt continued. “I hope to build on my relationships on campus to that end.”

Dr. Hunt, who will continue to teach, is an assistant professor in the School of Business. She has taught courses in entrepreneurship, management, communications and economics. Dr. Hunt was named assistant dean for student enrichment and success in 2007 and acting dean in 2008.

A Robeson County native, Dr. Hunt is a 1990 UNCP graduate and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the university in 1997. She completed requirements for a Ph.D. in organization and management from Capella University in 2009.

As part of her university service, Dr. Hunt served on the recent provost search committee, the student success steering committee and the student retention task force, as well as two community college business advisory boards. As faculty advisor for Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), she took UNCP teams to five national competitions.

For more information about distance education programs, please call 910.521.6367 or email distance@uncp.edu. For more information about Regional Center programs, please call 910.775.4000 or email rc@uncp.edu.