Working to bring North Carolina together, North Carolina State University faculty and administration visited Beaufort County on Thursday.

The Connecting in North Carolina (CINC) mini tour’s plan is to introduce the residents of Beaufort County to the administrators of NC State. The administrators of the university want to see land-grant initiatives in the state.

Thursday, the group toured several local businesses, including JP Davenport & Son Farm Supply, Flanders Filters Corporation, Carver Machine Works, Beaufort County Cooperative Extension and the North Carolina Estuarium.  The idea behind the tour is to introduce new NC State employees to different areas of North Carolina.

“Most major universities have something similar to the CINC Tour and a lot of the funding has been cut,” said Paige Harris, chair of Beaufort County NC State Alumni Association. “It used to be a week-long tour, but now they take one day and pick an area of North Carolina.”

“For them to choose Beaufort County is a huge success for our area because what we are hoping, is they come back on their own,” Harris said. “We want the industry we are showing them today to make a connection with NC State.”

During the visit to JP Davenport & Son Farm Supply, the tour group from NC State learned how important the facility is to local economy.

At the next stop to Flanders Filters, an administrator was flabbergasted when he learned they produced nearly 60 percent of the household filters in retail, Harris said.

“They (NC administrators and faculty) don’t know what’s going on in Beaufort County and there are great things here,” Harris said.

On the last stop of the tour, the North Carolina Estuarium provided fall incoming first-year NC State students from Beaufort County a chance to meet professors and administrators.