Listen carefully and you can hear them: Tar Heel mamas imploring their young'uns to please, please, pretty please not grow up with any idea of making a living in the textile industry.

We're here to tell you -- having been enlightened by someone who should know -- that the outlook in textiles is nowhere near that bleak. In fact, unmistakable shadows notwithstanding, the industry in some ways can be said to shape up as a zone of bright promise.

At least that's how the dean of this country's largest university-level center of textile education sees it. And as is usually the case, to the well-educated will go the spoils.

Is the College of Textiles at N.C. State University suffering amid the industry's well-publicized woes of late -- bankruptcies, shutdowns, layoffs, communities like Kannapolis thrown for monstrous loops?

Not hardly. "Placements have just been through the roof," Dean Blanton Godfrey told me the other day when I inquired, referring to students' success at landing jobs. "For college graduates there's an incredible amount of opportunity, for all the same reasons that it's tough these days for companies. They need new processes, new strategies. They've got to improve supply chain management. They can't compete with old technology and old ideas. They're just lapping up people who can hit the ground running."

The college, operating out of spiffy quarters on NCSU's Centennial Campus, anticipates a 40 percent increase in freshman enrollment (to 165 or so) when classes resume this week.

Those who stay the course towards a diploma -- delving into fields such as textile technology, engineering, chemistry and management -- will join an alumni corps whose members include Senator Edwards; Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Bill Friday, president emeritus of the UNC system. And of course, the college also is a hotbed of professional research.

NCSU surely is a prime spot for such an endeavor. The textile industry remains North Carolina's largest manufacturing sector, both in terms of output and employment. And similarly, our textile sector is the largest of any state's.

Since we're conveniently located here at Ground Zero for American textiles, there's no doubt we're vulnerable to the kind of shocks that have made headlines recently, with big, established operations going belly-up.

The pressure is greatest on operations that are labor-intensive, says Godfrey: "If you can't figure out how to do it without humans, you go where humans work for 60 cents an hour." It's the apparel companies that rely on a lot of cutting and sewing that especially have been jolted, he says .

But Godfrey -- a management expert whose doctorate is in statistics -- waxes enthusiastic about how the industry, as it evolves, can continue to be a vital cog in the state's economy.

For one thing, he says, it's important to remember all the workers in the industry's "logistics chain": people who sell, haul, package and store . Beyond that, there seems to be plenty of room for North Carolina-based textile outfits to exploit new processes, products and markets.

One innovative segment of the industry already has established a beachhead here -- "nonwovens," which are used in an array of products including disposable diapers and various linings. Freudenberg, a global leader, has a manufacturing complex in Durham, and NCSU boasts a nonwovens research center.

As Godfrey acknowledges, nonwovens plants typically don't require many workers. Still, with their logistics chain, they generate jobs. And other segments lacking much of a Tar Heel presence are ripe for the picking, in the dean's view.

He sees industrial textiles as a huge potential growth area. "A third of all textiles are basically invisible" in industrial uses, he notes, mentioning all sorts of roles for carbon fiber in the automotive and aircraft industries, for example.

Then there is the fertile field of medical (for use outside the body) and biologic (inside the body) textile products -- a field now dominated by companies in the Northeast. "North Carolina has a very small amount of that business," says Godfrey. Like industrial, he adds, medical-related textile operations have the advantage of requiring lots of people with high-level skills.

The dean talks eagerly about how his college is well-positioned to help lead the way in the industry's evolution. Still, he's mindful of the pain felt by workers whose jobs have evaporated. Some of that evaporation can't be avoided, given productivity gains and labor cost gaps.

Job losses could be minimized, he suggests, with a smarter approach to overseas competition. "I think we've done a horrible job at managing trade," he says. "The Chinese subsidize exports. I don't know why we're not jumping up and down on them."

Textile troubles are only one reason that North Carolina's economy these days is a bit wilted around the edges. But there's encouragement to be had from Blanton Godfrey's take on the situation. Textile manufacturing may be changing, but it's not about to disappear. So come on, you aspiring textile whizzes -- let 'em show you the ropes over at N.C. State, and then go out and help shore up an industry that could continue to provide good livings for thousands of your fellow citizens.

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