RALEIGH – When it comes to competing for some of the nation’s best engineering professors, Louis Martin-Vega uses a sports analogy.

“We’re there in a major league division – not with the highest payroll,” Martin-Vega, Dean of NC State University’s College of Engineering, says in the accompanying video.

The College of Engineering has been successful at recruiting faculty, but the biggest challenge has been retaining them, he says.

“Quite honestly, I would be very concerned if nobody was trying to recruit our faculty,” he says.  “We’ve been pretty successful retaining, but I have to say we’ve lost some tremendous individuals as well…. So this is a consistent challenge.”

Martin-Vega refers to the state’s budget difficulties – until this year, university faculty had seen one raise from the state in seven years.

“That’s of course made it a bit more difficult at times, but we do have a lot of good things going on here that have helped us keep people,” he says.

Martin-Vega likes to highlight the Triangle’s technology “ecosystem” and quality of life as features that help keep good faculty.

“But I have to say that hardly a day passes that we’re not dealing with some level of retention effort,” he says.