Five Things to Know About East Carolina University

East Carolina Joins BIG EAST as Football Member
East Carolina Quick Facts
 

1. Aggressive Scheduling: East Carolina annually plays one of the nation’s most challenging nonconference schedules. In fact, the Pirates began the 2008 season with wins against nationally ranked Virginia Tech and West Virginia. East Carolina will begin an eight-year series with Virginia Tech in 2013 and have future games scheduled against South Carolina, West Virginia, and BYU among others.

2. A Passionate Fanbase : Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium – the home of East Carolina football – has been renovated and expanded many times since it opened in 1963 to accompany the demand one of college football’s most loyal fanbases. Additions in 1998 and 1999 increased the stadium’s capacity to 43,000 and the university completed a 7,000-seat expansion project in the east end zone to push seating to 50,000 for the 2010 season. A new high-definition score/videoboard accompanied the 2010 expansion.

3. Still Growing: With 28,000 students, East Carolina University is the second-largest university in the state of North Carolina and has been the fastest-growing campus in the University of North Carolina system for six consecutive years. The university began as a 43-acre teacher-training school and has evolved into a 1,600-acre campus that features nine undergraduate colleges, a graduate school and four professional schools.

4. Rank And File: East Carolina is classified by U.S. News & World Report as a National University in its first-tier rankings. The school was rated by Forbes magazine 36th in its America’s Best College Buys story. The 2012 edition of U.S. News & World Report ranked the university’s Brody School of Medicine 10th in the country for primary care physician preparation, 13th in the rural medicine specialty and 14th in family medicine.

5. About Greenville: Greenville is the educational, commercial and meeting hub in the Eastern North Carolina region. Greenville and Pitt County are located in the north central coastal plain region of Eastern North Carolina, approximately 85 miles east of Raleigh, the state’s capital city. Greenville is approximately 87 miles west of the Atlantic Ocean and 265 miles from Washington, D.C..