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Submitted by cjarvis on 2012-12-20 12:54

Gov.-elect Pat McCrory announced three cabinet appointments and trio of key staff hires in a news conference Thursday.

He named as his top budget official Art Pope, a conservative political financier and former state legislator. Pope will take a leave from his business interests, his foundation and from all public and nonprofit boards he serves on in order to assume the job, for which he will be a non-paid volunteer, McCrory said.

Dome has learned that Pope has resigned from the board of directors of Americans for Prosperity effective immediately Thursday. He was one of three directors on the board of the national organization.

Pope, who owns Variety Wholesalers, a retail chain that includes Roses and Maxwell stores, has been working as McCrory’s transition co-chairman. His new title will be deputy budget director, but that’s because by law the governor is the budget director. Pope will be the top staffer in developing the governor’s budgets.

In recent years Pope has used his money to bankroll groups that advocate conservative causes, such as the Civitas Institute and the John Locke Foundation. He also has close ties to Americans for Prosperity, another conservative advocacy group.

McCrory also named Kieran Shanahan, a prominent Raleigh attorney and former federal prosecutor, to be the new secretary of the Department of Public Safety. Shanahan is a former Raleigh city councilman and a top GOP fundraiser.

Susan Kluttz, a former mayor of Salisbury and current city council member there, will serve as secretary of the Department of Cultural Resources. Kluttz was recently named to a new statewide group of civic and business leaders who will advance an agenda of economic growth and development.

McCrory selected Lyons Gray to be his secretary of the Department of Revenue. Gray, who lives in Winston-Salem, is a former, six-term state legislator and former chief financial officer with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. He was a senior advisor to UNC system President Tom Ross.

Bob Stephens, a Charlotte attorney, was named as McCrory’s chief legal counsel. Stephens has been a practicing attorney for about 40 years, he said.

Chris Walker, who has been the spokesman for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign and for U.S. Rep. Richard Burr, was named communications director.

There are three more cabinet positions to fill, in the departments of commerce, transportation and administration. Last week McCrory announced the selection of John Skvarla as secretary of the Department of Natural Resources, and Aldona Vos to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Update: The N.C. Democratic Party was quick to respond to the choice of Pope, who has been a lightning rod for criticism by liberal groups because of his high-dollar financing of conservative causes. The party called him an extremist who is buying influence.

Clay Pittman, North Carolina Democratic Party Spokesman, issued the following statement:

“We’d like to be shocked. It should be a surprise that Art Pope, the ringleader of North Carolina’s right wing, has been appointed Deputy Budget Director. It should be unexpected to see that Governor-Elect McCrory, once a moderate, progressive mayor, has cast his lot with the far-right. However, over the course of the 2012 campaign, and in this transition period, Pat McCrory has shown his true colors. It appears that a full-scale Pay-to-Play system has taken hold of the executive branch, where special interests, high-dollar donors, and the leaders of the right wing will have control of the Governor’s Mansion. This is a disappointment, but far from surprising.”

UPDATE: Pope has also resigned from two Civitas boards in North Carolina.

Here’s a statement from AFP President Tim Phillips: “As a founding Board Member, Art has been a wise leader and good friend over the years, and contributed greatly to the growth and success of Americans for Prosperity. We wish him all the best in this new opportunity.”

Also, a statement from Dallas Woodhouse, director of the North Carolina chapter of AFP: “Art has contributed real leadership and wisdom to AFP, and we’re happy to see him being honored with this appointment by Governor Elect-McCrory. While Art’s most important role was that of a broad vision setting member of the organization, not the daily operations of the North Carolina Chapter, his occasional advice and counsel is something that will be deeply missed. It has been the honor of a lifetime to get to know this kind and generous man personally, and I’m confident millions of North Carolina citizens can look forward to bright new days ahead in the state under Governor McCrory and Deputy Budget Director Pope.”

ECU trustee Kieran Shanahan will be secretary of the Department of Public Safety.

via McCrory picks 3 more cabinet members + 3 more staffers: Art Pope, Kieran Shanahan among them | newsobserver.com projects.

Modified Fri, Dec 21, 2012 09:47 AM

By Luke DeCock – staff columnist – ldecock@newsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL — For all the anticipation that accompanied its release Thursday, former Gov. Jim Martin’s report into academic fraud at the University of North Carolina is narrow in scope and limited in utility. It is not the whitewash or cover-up some will surely accuse it of being any more than it is the comprehensive inquiry North Carolina would like it to be. It is merely incomplete, a window into one specific kind of fraud in one specific department.

By placing the blame on former Department of African and Afro-American Studies chairman Julius Nyang’oro and former department administrator Deborah Crowder, the Martin report compartmentalizes the fraud in one department, wrapping it up in a neat tidy bundle, laying the institutional responsibility squarely at the feet of two former employees who both refused to cooperate with the investigation.

“Two people who went sideways,” Board of Trustees chairman Wade Hargrove noted Thursday. “It’s painful but reassuring.”

In that respect, Martin’s investigation resembles the investigation of the football program, which laid the bulk of the institutional responsibility squarely at the feet of John Blake and Jennifer Wiley, two former employees who refused to cooperate with the investigation.

What Martin’s report does well, it does very well: It examines and outlines the academic fraud that took place within the department going back to 1997. The investigation exhaustively searched the rest of the university for patterns that would suggest similar types of fraud. It followed up on potential irregularities in six other departments. It found none.

Martin did not discern any connection to athletics despite considerable anecdotal evidence, but given the methods used, that was unlikely anyway. The investigation, with “unfettered access to University systems, records and personnel,” relied heavily and almost exclusively on statistical analysis and interviews with cooperating parties.

Martin’s calls to Nyang’oro and Crowder went unanswered. They remain silent. Martin rejected the analysis of phone records, dismissed any examination of email correspondence and declined to interview any current or former basketball players.

“My opinion was basketball players wouldn’t tell us anything we didn’t know from other sources,” Martin said.

That’s not exactly leaving no stone unturned.

Was there academic fraud in Nyang’oro’s department? Of course there was. That was absolutely clear before anyone picked up the phone to give Martin a ring. Martin was able to determine that specific type of fraud was limited to that department and determine the extent of it.

Then, along with the consulting firm Baker Tilly, Martin was able to give the university a blueprint for corrective action and prevention. To the extent that was the goal, mission accomplished.

But there remain real questions with serious implications: Who orchestrated that fraud? Why did it happen? And how did so many athletes end up in the suspect classes?

Those questions remain unanswered. Martin advanced a theory that the fraud was designed to boost enrollment in the nascent department, albeit without any evidence to support that claim.

“You can have a lot of theories and hypotheses about this, but in order to come up with some kind of condemnation you have to have some evidence,” Martin said.

Later, Martin added: “You can speculate. I’m sure the district attorney is speculating. But he has access we don’t have.”

Orange County district attorney Jim Woodall was listed among those interviewed for the report. Perhaps he’ll be able to get to the “who,” “why” and “how” behind what was going on in AFAM. Martin only got to the “what.”

DeCock: ldecock@newsobserver.com, Twitter: @LukeDeCock, (919) 829-8947

via DeCock: Martin report narrow in scope, limited in utility – DeCock – NewsObserver.com.

Modified Thu, Dec 20, 2012 06:52 PM

Former Gov. Jim Martin and a management consulting firm, Baker-Tilly, did their duty, as best they could, no doubt, in issuing a report on academic fraud in the African and Afro-American Studies Department at UNC-Chapel Hill. But there are a couple of considerable gaps in the report, gaps perhaps not the fault of Martin or consultants.

The gaps are named Deborah Crowder and Julius Nyang’oro. Crowder was the administrative assistant of the department and Nyang’oro its chairman. Both are implicated in the report as the ones responsible for various independent study classes, sometimes called “no show” because students got no lectures and submitted a paper at semester’s end.

Crowder and Nyang’oro declined to talk to anyone with Martin’s group. Both are retired. It appears only they could address important questions: How did these courses come to be? How did athletes manage to enroll in substantial numbers? Why did some athletes do well in these classes but not in many others? Did anyone know these no-show classes existed outside the departmental office?

Problems contained?

Martin’s group found the problems were confined to African studies. Its report reached the sweeping but dubious conclusion that the problems represented an academic scandal, but “not an athletic scandal.” Significantly, the report found that problems with the classes went back to 1997, five years after Nyang’oro took over. University officials initially wanted to go back a much shorter period in their own investigation. That changed when suspicions arose that problems might have had a longer history.

The university also says that the reports about the courses shouldn’t cause any further problems with the NCAA, the governing body of college sports, because regular students, not just athletes, were in the classes as well and were treated equally.

That’s a nice piece of rationalization, but the university has other concerns. Martin’s review is one of five investigations related to academic fraud. In one, the State Bureau of Investigation is looking at a 2011 summer school session in which Nyang’oro was paid $12,000 to teach a class that had no lectures and required only a paper. An accreditation agency also is looking at the campus.

The university has an entire law school. Is it not possible for someone in that school to determine a way in which Crowder and Nyang’oro could be compelled to tell what they know about these classes?

And they could tell what they know about the favorable treatment some star football players allegedly received.

It’s not over

Absent full comments from the two people the report puts at the center of the problems,this story cannot be said to be over. It’s had some frustrating and occasionally reassuring moments along the way.

Initially, it seemed the blame was going to fall on a tutor alleged to have helped athletes too much with their work, but it became obvious the problems went beyond that. Other stories began to unfold, with the university reluctantly responding to each one. That pattern was frustrating in many ways, for it appeared that either the university was trying to keep a lid on things or that the administration didn’t know what was going on.

Then there was the moment when Mary Willingham, who had worked in the academic support system but then moved to another job in 2010, stated plainly to The N&O that the no-show classes were used to keep athletes eligible and that the support staff knew it. Willingham had been moved to come forward after attending the memorial services for the late UNC system President Emeritus William Friday, a long-time advocate of pulling the reins on college athletics.

Martin approached his task with the precision of a professor, which he was, and the findings on the numbers of questionable classes are valuable. But this sorry saga, which has wounded a great university, has yet to reach its final chapter.

via A grade for the Martin probe: incomplete – Editorials – NewsObserver.com.

Modified Fri, Dec 21, 2012 07:28 AM

By Dan Kane, Jane Stancill and J. Andrew Curliss – dkane@newsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL — No-show classes and poorly managed independent studies within UNC-Chapel Hill’s African and Afro-American studies department stretch back to 1997, former Gov. Jim Martin said in a report released Thursday.

The review found 216 courses with proven or potential problems, and included up to 560 suspected unauthorized grade changes. But the report did not find that athletics were at the heart of the misconduct.

“This was not an athletic scandal,” Martin said. “It was an academic scandal, which is worse; but an isolated one.”

Martin released his report to university trustees and a special panel of the UNC Board of Governors after he and a national management consulting firm, Baker Tilly, spent more than three months compiling nearly 20 years of enrollment data, reviewing records and interviewing dozens of students, staff and officials connected to an academic fraud scandal that emerged in May.

That’s when UNC officials reported that 54 lecture-style classes within the African studies department over the past four years never actually met and required only a paper turned in at the end of the semester. Their report also found that independent studies in the department, which are designed to require only a paper, were not properly tracked.

Those classes were heavily populated with athletes.

Martin’s report expanded the number of irregular courses substantially, to 216, but didn’t address how many athletes were involved in those classes. It laid the blame on Julius Nyang’oro, the former department chairman, and his assistant, Deborah Crowder.

“No evidence from our review points to anyone else’s involvement beyond Ms. Crowder and Dr. Nyang’oro,” the report said. “While we cannot definitively conclude regarding the degree of Ms. Crowder’s responsibility for the academic anomalies noted in this report, both this review and (an earlier report) found a dramatic reduction in academic anomalies after Summer 2009, which coincided with the time of Ms. Crowder’s retirement.”

The report found no problems beyond the African studies department.

Wade Hargrove, chairman of the Board of Trustees, said Thursday morning that portions of the report were “painful.”

“The indiscretions, failures, and irregularities strike at the heart of the core values of the university,” he said. “In facing and correcting these lapses, we honor more than 200 years of commitment by members of the faculty, the staff, and the administration – past and present – to assure that every student who comes here receives a rigorous, challenging and meaningful academic experience. These irregularities must never be allowed to occur again.”

Several on both boards praised Martin for the thoroughness of his report.

“I think we have dug up enough information,” said Hari Nath, a Board of Governors member who sits on the special panel looking into the scandal.

While many bemoaned the mess that had been created and operated quietly for nearly 15 years, they said they believed it was now time to “move forward.”

“It’s a disturbing report. It is astonishing,” said Jan Boxill, chairwoman of the faculty. “But I think the policies we have in place allow us to move forward, but just always to be vigilant. I think that is the key. We’ve got enough faculty who want to do that, so we’re here.”

Numbers rise, then fall

Boxill was satisfied that the report did not find a broader athletic scandal, but others said that’s because Martin and the Baker Tilly staff did not look in the right places. Jay Smith, a university history professor who has been outspoken about the scandal, said Martin should have been scrutinizing how athletes in the big-money sports of basketball and football got into the suspect classes, and how they benefited from them.

“It’s a stunner,” Smith said. “I mean, I just can’t believe that they had such a blind spot for athletics.”

The report made mention of athletes enrolled in the no-show classes and independent studies, but said their enrollments were not an issue because the athletes had similar representation in all the courses offered by the African studies department.

Martin also speculated that since African-Americans have a disproportionate representation on basketball and football teams at UNC-CH and other competitive universities, it stands to reason they would be represented in African studies in higher numbers.

But he was hard-pressed to explain why those numbers plummeted for basketball players in the last five years.

Only one basketball player took an independent study out of the department during that time. A spokesman for the athletic department, Steve Kirschner, has said the players during those years had different interests, but the drop coincides with the disclosure of an independent study scandal at Auburn University, which was discussed by UNC-CH’s Faculty Committee on Athletics.

Martin said the first no-show class in the fall of 1997 coincides with African studies becoming a department. It had operated as a curriculum prior to then. Nyang’oro had been appointed to lead African studies in 1992, and largely got away with the no-show classes because he had poor supervision, Martin said.

The number of no-show classes and suspect independent studies grew slowly for the first five years, but then began to shoot up by the 2002-2003 academic year. The independent studies dropped dramatically by the 2006-2007 academic year, but the no-show classes didn’t drop off significantly until the fall of 2009.

That is when Crowder retired. Martin said he thinks her retirement shows she was heavily involved in setting up the suspect classes. As department manager, Crowder would have had the ability to enroll students and report grades.

Martin said some within the university described Crowder as if she were a living “Statue of Liberty,” willing to help any struggling student. But he said any students she put in suspect classes suffered a loss because they did not receive an education.

Nothing from Nyang’oro

Martin theorized that Nyang’oro, the former chairman, may have used the no-show classes and independent studies to boost his enrollment numbers, and thereby make the case for additional instructors. He said he and Baker Tilly representatives could find no evidence that Nyang’oro or Crowder benefited financially from the suspect classes.

They did find, however, that Crowder had received $100,000 and some Hummel figurines in 2008 from the estate of the father of a long-time academic tutor and adviser for the men’s basketball team. The payment arose from a “close” friendship Crowder had with the adviser, Burgess McSwain, who died in 2004. The money and items were in exchange for taking care of the father’s dogs.

Nyang’oro resigned in August 2011 when the irregularities were first discovered, then was forced into retirement in June. Martin said he tried to reach Nyang’oro and Crowder by phone but was unsuccessful.

Martin defended academic support staff, saying supervisors raised questions about independent studies twice, in 2002 and 2006, to the faculty athletics committee. Both times, no one saw a problem, minutes show. Martin said that may be because the enrollment numbers had not shot up when the academic support officials first went to the committee, but had subsided when they revisited the issue four years later.

“In part,” he said, “the trick had been shifted to … lecture courses that did not meet,” he said.

Silent on Peppers

Chancellor Holden Thorp commissioned Martin’s report after evidence emerged showing the no-show classes stretched back further than the review period of the university’s report.

A UNC-CH graduate provided emails to the News & Observer suggesting a 2005 class was turned into a no-show class, and a transcript for Julius Peppers suggested he had been in no-show classes and suspect independent studies while a student from 1998 to 2002. Peppers, a two-sport star who now plays for the NFL’s Chicago Bears, has denied through his agent taking part in any academic fraud.

Peppers did not graduate, and his transcript shows he scored Bs or better in African studies courses that, when reviewed for the 2007-2011 period, were found to lack academic integrity. Martin said he could not comment on whether Peppers was in any suspect classes because of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which prevents universities from releasing academic records related to specific students.

Much of the scandal in the past several months has centered on how the classes were used by the university’s academic support program for athletes. UNC records show athletes accounted for nearly two-thirds of the enrollments in the 54 no-show classes found between 2007 and 2011, and other documents obtained by the N&O show Nyang’oro worked with the support program to make them available to athletes.

A class Nyang’oro launched four days before the beginning of a summer semester in 2011, for example, was filled by football players and a former player.

Martin’s probe is one of five into the academic fraud that are either under way or soon to begin. The SBI is investigating after the N&O reported that Nyang’oro had received $12,000 in summer pay for the 2011 class. And last week the association that provides the university with its accreditation said it plans to send a special committee in the coming months to look into how the university is cleaning up what the association described as a possible lack of rigor and adequate work by athletes taking African studies courses.

The academic fraud has prompted numerous reforms, and Baker Tilly was also commissioned to determine whether those changes would prevent a similar scandal from happening again. Raina Rose Tagle, a partner with the firm, said the new controls would be a strong deterrent, but she also cautioned that there is no failsafe.

“You are doing what you can do,” she said.

via Martin report: Suspect UNC classes stretched back to 1997 – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

ECU’s Vintavious Cooper (21) runs the ball in for a touchdown against Houston Saturday afternoon at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. (Scott Davis/The Daily Reflctor)

Friday, December 21, 2012

Like so many other traditions associated with college football pushed aside in the rush to maximize profits, bowl games — once a definitive reward for an exceptional season — no longer reflect a remarkable achievement for a team. This season will see some 35 games involving 70 universities, including several programs seeking to avoid ending the year with a losing record.

For East Carolina University, which plays the University of Louisiana Lafayette in Saturday’s New Orleans Bowl, the low profile of the game fails to reflect the season players and coaches delivered on the field. This was a year of transition, one that saw the Pirates compete for a Conference USA division title, and all involved should be proud of what the team achieved over the past four months.

One year after limping to a 5-7 regular season that saw the Pirates left out of bowl play, East Carolina can be proud to watch the team compete in the 12th New Orleans Bowl beginning at noon on Saturday. After completing an 8-4 regular season, including a 7-1 record in conference, the Pirates look to knock off the Ragin’ Cajuns of Louisiana-Layfette, which finished second in the Sun Belt Conference.

This was an uncommon year for East Carolina. High-profile out-of-conference match-ups against South Carolina and North Carolina gave fans a thrill, though the Pirates fell short in both games. A bizarre game against the University of Texas El Paso in Greenville saw Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium evacuated due to severe weather, and only an October loss to the University of Central Florida kept the team from playing in the conference title game.

The ups and downs on the field were matched by those away from the gridiron. Many fans will remember this season for the Pirates earning an invite to the Big East Conference, itself not entirely stable for the long term, and the architect of that move, Athletics Director Terry Holland, announcing his intention to retire when his replacement is named. Those are enormous changes that could alter the future of Pirate football.

For now, however, players, coaches and support staff should take pride in their achievements and a season of strong performances. Even though a saturated bowl season diminishes the importance of being selected for a game, the purple and gold faithful knows what this year’s squad has done and will be cheering on Saturday in celebration and support.

via The Daily Reflector.

Friday, December 21, 2012

In case NASA is totally wrong and the world does end sometime today a reporter from The Daily Reflector asked local officials what song they would add to an “End of the World” playlist:

Greenville Mayor Allen Thomas — “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” Steam

Pitt County Sheriff Neil Elks — “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” R.E.M. or “There You Are,” Lonestar

Pitt County Schools Superintendant Beverly Emory — “Amazing Grace,” sung by Elvis Presley

East Carolina University’s Chief of Staff Phillip Rogers — “I Will Rise,” Chris Tomlin

ECU’s Brody School of Medicine Dean Paul Cunningham — “Every Little Thing Gonna Be All Right,”
Bob Marley or “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,”
Bobby McFerrin;

Pitt County District Attorney Clark Everett — “Anything by Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj or Justin Bieber. Compared to that, the end of the world wouldn’t be so bad.”

via The Daily Reflector.

By: Katie Banks | 9 On Your Side

Updated: December 19, 2012 – 6:58 PM

BETHEL, N.C. – Six months ago, the people of Bethel felt like they had nowhere to turn.

News spread quickly that the only healthcare clinic in town would close by September 1st.

It was a decision ECU’s medical school said would save them money, but residents argued it would cost lives.

When fall arrived, the clinic doors closed as planned, but the town never gave up.

After several meetings, ECU offered to transfer ownership of the clinic to the town for just $1.

And now, there’s new life within its walls.

A team from the Greenville Health Care Center moved in on December 3rd, and runs the clinic like a family practice.

“I remember when Bethel was our thriving town,” says Lee Quinn, a physician assistant who now works at the clinic. “So, my hope is that this can rejuvenate, or be a part of rejuvenating, the town of Bethel so that more people will come here.”

And for long-time patient Ola Perry, seeing the clinic reopen was the answer to her prayers.

“It was a good feeling,” she says, “a good feeling. It was like a Christmas present – a really big, Christmas present.”

via Bethel clinic reopens, new health care provider already seeing patients | 9 On Your Side.

Published Wed, Dec 19, 2012 05:19 PM

By Mark Schultz – mschultz@newsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL –

UNC is seeking state approval to modify and resume using its wastewater treatment system at the Bingham Facility, three buildings west of Carrboro that currently house about 150 dogs used to study hemophilia and other blood disorders.

Last month the Orange County Board of Adjustment denied neighbors’ request for a public hearing on a new permit when it determined the university’s plans fell outside the county’s jurisdiction and required only state approval.

In a Dec. 6 letter, however, the state Division of Water Quality asked the university for much more information about its plans.

The state wants to know what pollutants are in the wastewater, the effectiveness of proposed treatment of any carcinogens and isotopes, and a list of surfactants (detergents) used in washing down cages and throughout the facility.

The letter from environmental engineer Nathaniel Thornburg also asks UNC to reconsider how much wastewater it expects to generate and possibly scale back the irrigation field where it plans to spray the treated wastewater.

“It’s more than what we would usually ask an applicant to provide,” Thornburg said. “We want to address the public’s concern and get the information on the record.”

The state’s request, especially its suggestion that UNC consider downsizing its spray field, addresses neighbors’ major fear. They worry that a bigger field, plus the university’s purchase of three nearby properties, signals plans for a bigger facility.

Associate Vice Chancellor Bob Lowman, however, has stressed that the university has no plans to expand at Bingham

“We are very pleased,” said Laura Streitfeld , director of the grassroots watchdog group Preserve Rural Orange. “I consider it great progress and a victory for all of the neighbors who expressed the concerns. I think it’s terrific.”

The state has given UNC a Jan. 5 deadline to respond but says the university can request an extension.

The university has been spending about $3,500 a month pumping and hauling the Bingham Facility’s waste to the Orange Water and Sewer Authority treatment plant since it shut its system down two and half years ago, Associate Vice Chancellor Bob Lowman said. A three-month delay could cost about $10,000.

Schultz: 919-932-2003

via State seeks more information about UNC animal research wastewater plan – Orange County – NewsObserver.com.

Published Thu, Dec 20, 2012 12:03 AM

Caulton Tudor – staff columnist – ctudor@newsobserver.com

Game site aside, one of the reasons why Louisiana-Lafayette is such a solid favorite to beat East Carolina in Saturday’s New Orleans R+L Carriers Bowl can be traced to a loss by the Ragin’ Cajuns.

Florida’s 27-20 win on Nov. 20 in Gainesville did more to elevate Louisiana-Lafayette’s football profile than any of the Cajuns’ eight wins or 6-2 record in the deceptively potent Sun Belt Conference.

ULL was 5-3 overall and a 28-point underdog against the then-7th-ranked Gators, who finished 11-1 and will face Louisville in the Jan. 2 Sugar Bowl.

The Cajuns outplayed Florida the entire game, leading 17-13 in the third quarter and 20-13 in the fourth. The Associated Press game account said a loss would have rated as the biggest upset loss in Florida history.

But the Gators scored with 1:42 left to tie the game and then won on the next-to-last play when Jelani Jenkins returned a blocked punt 36 yards for a touchdown with 2 seconds remaining.

Florida fans rushed the field in the sort of celebration normally reserved for big SEC wins.

“Anytime you see the seventh-ranked team in the country storm the field like they won the Super Bowl to beat you, you know you’re doing some good things,” second-year Cajuns coach Mark Hudspeth said in his postgame remarks.

Hudspeth’s team won its final three games, averaging almost 40 points and are favored by seven over the Conference USA Pirates (8-4, 7-1) in the noon bowl in the Superdome. ULL won the same bowl last year, 32-20 over San Diego State.

Ruffin McNeill’s third ECU team is also on a three-game win streak but narrowly so, having outscored Houston, Tulane and Marshall by a collective 141-110 after absorbing a 56-28 loss to Navy on Oct. 27.

The bowl will double as the latest referendum on the Pirates’ defense. Until a 42-35 escape at Alabama-Birmingham – one week before the wipeout against Navy – McNeill and his defensive staff were confident progress was being made.

But a double-overtime 65-59 win in Greenville over Marshall on Nov. 23 was perplexing.

Marshall scored 17 points in the fourth quarter and finished with a stunning 633 yards of offense even though lightly used freshman quarterback Blake Frohnapfel had to play much of the second half after all-star candidate Rakeem Cato was injured.

Against Cajuns quarterback Terrance Broadway, the Pirate defense will face a player with much the same skill set as Cato.

Broadway, a 6-foot-2, 205-pound transfer from Houston, completed 16 of 23 passes for 171 yards and was sacked only once in the game at Florida. In a 52-30 regular-season ending win over South Alabama, Broadway threw for 305 yards on 19 attempts and rushed for 65 yards.

It’s not a must-win game for McNeill or his program, but some degree of defensive improvement would go far in setting an upbeat mood for spring practice.

ECU’s offense – led by sophomore quarterback Shane Carden, junior running back Vin Cooper, sophomore receiver Justin Hardy and freshman receiver Jabril Solomon – could be the best in Conference USA next season.

But for the third straight season, defense remains the Pirates’ X factor.

Tudor: 919-829-8946

via Tudor: ECU bowl foe turned stinging loss into late gain – Tudor – NewsObserver.com.

Modified Thu, Dec 20, 2012 05:44 AM

By Dan Kane – dkane@newsobserver.com

Three months ago, after the disclosure of former UNC-Chapel Hill two-sport star Julius Peppers’ academic transcript, Chancellor Holden Thorp tapped a former governor to dig deeper into an academic fraud scandal that suddenly appeared to reach into three decades.

Jim Martin, a two-term Republican who began his career as a chemistry professor at Davidson College, is expected to deliver his findings Thursday in meetings with the university’s Board of Trustees and a UNC Board of Governors special panel that is looking into the scandal. He, Thorp and a representative from a national management consulting firm assisting Martin are also expected to take questions from the media.

Expectations are high for this report, largely because Thorp has given numerous indications that Martin would have the authority and access to tackle anything he sees fit. Thorp has sent Martin, for example, records obtained by The News & Observer that reflect the internal workings of the academic support program for student athletes, as well as information The N&O received from the university that showed athletes had packed into a Naval Weapons Systems class.

But the charge given to Martin was relatively narrow. An internal review released in May found 54 lecture-style classes that never met in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies over the past four years, plus a lack of accountability in the department for hundreds of independent studies offered over the years.

Peppers, who left the university in 2002 without graduating, had a transcript that showed Bs or better in classes that had been identified in the report as suspect, while performing poorly in many of his remaining classes.

Martin was required to “examine academic years before 2007 for similar patterns indicating additional irregularity or aberrantly taught classes, if any.”

It also says that the university’s and its board of trustees’ “primary concern is that all students receive a high-quality Carolina education. We are concerned about our student-athletes and our non-athlete students. We ask that you review and identify patterns of concern regarding all students.”

As a result, some fear that Martin’s report will not get to the heart of what caused the no-show classes and questionable independent studies, and how they were used by athletes and their counselors in the academic support program. Martin has suggested he will take on broader issues such as grade inflation and clustering around easy classes by athletes and non-athletes.

That information would be useful to the university but could also obscure the academic issues that may have started out with the goal of aiding athletes struggling to stay eligible, or wound up that way over time.

“My sense is they are looking at statistics, enrollment statistics, and maybe grade changes and the clustering phenomenon,” said Jay Smith, a UNC history professor who has been outspoken about the scandal. “I seriously doubt that they are going to pinpoint the problems. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I’m not very hopeful.”

Kane: 919-829-4861

via Martin’s report could shed new light on UNC scandal – UNC scandal – NewsObserver.com.

By Nathan Summers

Thursday, December 20, 2012

METAIRIE, La. — After Wednesday’s late afternoon practice inside the New Orleans Saints training facility, East Carolina head football coach Ruffin McNeill reiterated his firm stance on player behavior in the days leading up to Saturday’s New Orleans Bowl.

In short, it is a zero tolerance plan, which means a majority of the city’s traditional tourist activities are not available to players who visited the city just a few weeks ago when they played Tulane but had precious little free time.

With the better part of week to spend in the Crescent City this time, however, Pirate players can still get some of the best flavors in town.

“I went out to Acme Oyster House and had some fresh oysters, and a little shrimp and oyster po’boy,” said ECU quarterback Shane Carden, who noted that he drove through New Orleans on the way to a football camp as a high school freshman but had never experienced the city until now. “Delicious food. It’s different, man. It’s really different down here.”

Carden wasn’t the only one chowing down in one of the world’s hubs of great cuisine on the Pirates’ first night in town.

Plenty of others converged on various well-known New Orleans eateries, and the overwhelming majority of them were tasting New Orleans for the first time.

“We had a wide variety of food, and I know the jambalaya was good,” said defensive end Lee Pegues, who stayed close to the team hotel and ate at the Harrah’s Casino along with line mate Chrishon Rose. “It was my first time having that, and the seafood was awesome too.”

After their lengthy practice, the players bussed back into New Orleans proper to go bowling at the city’s well-known Rock ’N Bowl on Wednesday, more proof that bowl weeks are a reward for players even though they have serious business at week’s end.

“It’s a very historic place, and we’ve been able to walk around and tour the French Quarter a little bit, and saw the old cathedral and Jackson Square, and it’s been a great experience in an area I’ve never been before,” punter Trent Tignor said. “With this bowl experience, it’s given us a little free time to go out and see what the local restaurants have to offer. I had some Cajun shrimp last night at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., and it’s been fun.”

Like any great place, there is more to do in New Orleans than one could ever accomplish in a week, and even for football players, it’s not all about the food.

“I’ve never been to a place like this, with a hotel right by the Mississippi River,“ said Pegues, a South Carolina native who said he has also gotten some Christmas shopping out of the way this week. “I’m a person that likes to fish, so I’ve been wanting to go out there every morning and go fishing.”

Who dat?

Although they are strangers to New Orleans, ECU players were understandably excited to ply their trade at an NFL training compound on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Saints’ indoor practice field is adorned in mural-sized game photographs and a huge photo of head coach Sean Payton with the words “DO YOUR JOB” stenciled across it.

“It’s really cool just to be down here, practicing in an indoor facility,” Carden said. “I’ve never really had an opportunity to practice in something like this so it’s very cool. Just being around here, obviously a lot of great players have been in these facilities and it’s cool to practice where they have.”

Contact Nathan Summers at nsummers@reflector.com or 252-329-9595.

via The Daily Reflector.

By Wesley Brown

Thursday, December 20, 2012

A civilian study group appointed to revive the Tar River university area spent much of its first meeting on Wednesday discussing parking, a time-sensitive issue the committee said it had a “thousand questions” about, but few answers on how to fix.

The board said it plans to launch an expansive review on parking in the newly formed University Overlay District, a 200-acre community of homes along East Fifth Street that the Greenville City Council decried in October as a “troubled” neighborhood in need of rebuilding.

The six-member group, organized to guide the implementation of the University Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, will begin its assessment on parking with a walkthrough of the Tar River area — weather permitting — on Jan. 15 at 2 p.m.

The committee plans to meet at the old City Market to take a 45-minute tour of the neighborhood to get a better visual of the community’s needs and its parking and code -enforcement problems.

“I have a thousand questions when it comes to parking,” said James C. Sullivan, who agreed to serve on the committee as a member of the Tar River University Neighborhood Association.

Seeking spaces

The way the council wrote the University Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, parking looks to be central to its success, Sullivan said.

The initiative requires all landlords between Elm and Reade streets who wish to lease a four-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot rental home to a fourth unrelated person must provide at least three off-street parking spaces for their tenants.

Greenville Zoning Administrator Mike Dail said on Thursday that in the two months since the initiative passed, only one landlord — Allison Faulkner — has complied with the initiative’s other requirements, which includes a crime-free rental addendum. Faulker was approved for a permit at a home at 117 N. Harding St., records show.

“Many places do not have space for parking,” fellow committee member Joanne Kollar, the secretary and communications chairwoman of TRUNA, said. “We need to address parking first, before allowing a fourth person into a home.”

Chris Woelkers, the vice chairman of the Pitt-Greenville Convention and Visitors Authority, agreed that it was important to settle on a policy early and not “change the game” late in the process for potential applicants.

Among the charges of the study group by the council is to draft a parking permit plan for all licensed residents and employees in the initiative’s defined district, with a select number of permits available for purchase for East Carolina University students, staff and faculty.

Funds generated from the program are expected to be dedicated to increased code enforcement, trash collection, lighting and security in the neighborhood.

Lt. Richard Allsbrook, commander of Greenville Code Enforcement Division, said his staff is short one parking officer until late January.

Program in place

Stacey Pigford, assistant traffic engineer for the city of Greenville, said the city already has a controlled residential parking program in place.

Pigford said the program is a petition process. On a block-by-block basis, if 51 percent of residents agree, the city can issue three $5 permits per household to assure a resident has a spot to park.

Only about half of the neighborhood is taking advantage of the plan, a zoning map showed.

Greenville Community Development Director Merrill Flood said that after the board’s walkthrough, staff will provide information on Greenville’s existing parking ordinances and the revenue the city generates from parking tickets and permits.

Improved surface

Flood gave a brief overview of additional parking standards. One notable change: parking must be on an improved surface — asphalt, concrete, gravel — and no more than 30 percent of a front yard can be covered. Unlimited, stacked parking is allowed in backyards.

Sullivan, a 45-year resident of the university neighborhood, said he wants to know how the city enforces and permits all parking in the neighborhood, including both marked and unmarked spaces on the street, in driveways, yards and apartment lots.

The group agreed to meet the second Tuesday of each month at 2 p.m. at City Hall.

At its next meeting, the board plans to decide whether to name a chairperson to lead the group or have Flood act as facilitator. Early discussions showed the group preferred a facilitator, a request city attorney Dave Holec said was “unusual,” but not illegal.

“I think of this as a working group and I do not want to break down the leadership,” Woelkers said. “I would like to keep us as equals.”

Contact Wesley Brown at 252-329-9579 or wbrown@reflector.com. Follow him on Twitter @CityWatchdog.

via The Daily Reflector.

Members of the ECU basketball team visit with Jourian Moore, 12, at Vidant Medical Center on Wednesday morning. (Rhett Butler)

By Tony Castleberry

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Of all the people on a college campus who can lose perspective, athletes on the school’s sports teams rank pretty high on the list.

Many of them have their education paid for through scholarships. If they are members of the more popular football and basketball teams, they can attain a certain level of fame, acquiring exalted status among their peers.

In case any East Carolina men’s basketball players were starting to get settled on their high horses, Wednesday’s visit to the children’s hospital at Vidant Medical Center almost assuredly humbled them. For the third time during Pirate coach Jeff Lebo’s tenure, ECU’s players spent time with some young patients who, instead of getting ready for Christmas break, are, in some cases, fighting a daily life-and-death battle.

“You see something like this, it (makes) you realize how blessed you are,” Shamarr Bowden, a senior guard from Greensboro, said. “I realized that no matter what you’re going through, it could always be worse.

“It kind of puts you in someone else’s shoes,” Bowden said. “It shows you some things that you may have that they may not have and it makes you appreciative of them. … You think, ‘Man, I’m blessed to be alive and to be healthy and to be walking.’”

All 16 members of East Carolina’s team as well as Lebo, assistant coach Tim Craft and director of basketball operations Kyle Robinson were on hand.

They split up into three different groups — each group visiting children’s rooms — giving them signed team posters and even getting into the holiday spirit by singing a Christmas carol.

Bowden said he has family members who are dealing with medical issues and that Wednesday’s visit further hammered home the point that there is much more to life than basketball.

“I feel like all the years I’ve been playing, not to take away from basketball, but I feel like I’ve shifted my focus too much on basketball,” Bowden said. “Coming here, and in a couple of situations I’ve been going through recently, I’ve learned over the course of time that family, health, being alive … There’s no comparison between that and basketball.”

Lebo said taking time to help brighten a young person’s day is even more important now in the wake of last week’s school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 elementary school students dead.

While acknowledging the effect his team can have on children’s lives, the third-year Pirate skipper encouraged others to reach out as well.

“I think it’s important for everybody to do it,” Lebo said. “Our guys are really fortunate in a lot of ways. They’re healthy and they’re strong and they get a chance to play a game that they love.

“To get a chance to see some kids who are going through some tough times is good for them, to put things in perspective.”

Contact Tony Castleberry at tcastleberry@reflector.com, 252-329-9591 or follow @tcastleberrygdr on Twitter.

via The Daily Reflector.

Takaaki Iwabu – tiwabu@newsobserver.com The Hunt Library will be a signature building at N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus. It is scheduled to open Jan. 2.

By Jay Price – jprice@newsobserver.com

RALEIGH — N.C. State University’s new library is such a leap forward that it took an information technology whiz to help lead a media preview Tuesday.

The James B. Hunt Jr. Library, a startling digital re-boot of what it means to be a university library and the new heart of NCSU’s fast-growing Centennial Campus, opens Jan. 2.

The public is welcome, and among the early visitors are expected to be architects eager to see the work of the cutting-edge Oslo firm Snohetta and library professionals from around the country curious – and perhaps apprehensive – about where their vocation is heading.

“For the first time in my career, I just fielded a call from Architectural Digest,” David Hiscoe, director of communications for NCSU libraries, said during the tour. “Some people are already calling it the face of N.C. State University in this century.”

It may well be the most advanced library in the world, and is one of the most unusual buildings in the nation by any measure.

And it’s such a thorough rethinking of the functions performed by libraries that at one point in the tour Hiscoe felt compelled reassure visitors that they would actually get to see books.

Not many, though. The vast majority, about 1.5 million volumes, are packed into dense storage that is accessible only by the robots that retrieve them. The system takes up about one-ninth the volume the books would require if stored on traditional shelves.

Since most people now consume and create information on video screens, screens are the real stars inside Hunt, hundreds of millions of pixels’ worth of them.

Seemingly every wall has large screens or smaller ones, or large ones built of small ones. Some are embedded in table surfaces. Nearly all respond to touch, and many offer startlingly high definition and ranges of color far beyond normal computers.

High tech spaces

There still are large, light-filled spaces for reading; one glass wall is more than 300 feet long and 50 feet high, and some of the best space offers views of Lake Raleigh and the woodsy part of the campus surrounding it.

But there are a host of technology-enhanced spaces for large-scale visualization research, videoconferencing and multimedia production.

One room is dedicated to high-end gaming, which is becoming vital not just for entertainment but for a host of more serious applications.

There is a reconfigurable Creativity Studio with sliding and rotating walls, and a Teaching and Visualization Lab set up to easily allow creation of, for example, an immersive environment such as a virtual bridge of a warship.

A key feature is the nearly 100 rooms that students can reserve to work together on projects, with screens to display work from their laptops and OK-to-write-on walls that can be treated as giant whiteboards.

NCSU students are taught to work collaboratively, and are accustomed to it, but they’ve had few suitable places for that in campus libraries until now, Hiscoe said

The library is so digital-centric that it has a supercomputer deep in its bowels to handle all the functions. It also will take advantage of the digital cloud, allowing students and faculty to work on their projects wherever they are, be it the library, their offices, dorm rooms or labs, said Maurice York, the head of IT for NCSU libraries.

During construction, a representative of one of the technology companies that worked with the university on the library once said that it probably shouldn’t even be called a library, York said.

Hard to explain

But after getting a look around, he changed his mind and said it actually was transforming libraries into what they needed to be.

“It’s really difficult for people to understand until they actually come and see it,” York said.

The library was meant to create a kind of heart on the public-private campus, which has been successful at attracting companies interested in working at and with NCSU but was slower to get places aimed mainly at students.

That’s changing quickly, with the library and new engineering school buildings in place, and a massive dorm complex under construction to help form a more typical campus quadrangle.

via NCSU’s hyper-modern James B. Hunt Jr. Library poised to open – Education – NewsObserver.com.

The Daily Advance, Elizabeth City

Published Dec. 15, 2012

Our View: UNC-CH needs to fix flaws in ECSU pharmacy school

The two-year-old pharmacy school at Elizabeth City State University has a lot going for it, but is falling short of meeting its goals.

That’s according to a 13-page report by a seven-member fact-finding group that included two members of the UNC Board of Governors and representatives from St. Louis College of Pharmacy, John Hopkins Hospital, East Carolina University, the University of Maryland and St. John’s University.

In short, the panel concluded that the 52,000-square-foot building at the western end of ECSU’s campus is being under-utilized, that enrollment of pharmacy students is below expectations and that resources that could improve the school are not being tapped.

The panel recommends the pharmacy program at UNC-Chapel Hill take control of ECSU’s operations, as it has done at UNC-Asheville. The report cites the Asheville pharmacy program, which opened in the fall of 2011, as a model of how a satellite of the UNC program should operate.

“The (ECSU) program’s business model is flawed,” the study concluded. “Unlike the UNC-Asheville model, ECSU receives general operating funding, including faculty salaries, and UNC-Chapel Hill collects the tuition, manages financial aid and coordinates recruitment. It’s not clear which campus is responsible for advocating for additional resources for the partnership and how needed resources, if available, would be divided.”

Located at UNC-CH, the highly touted UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, founded in 1897, was ranked second among pharmacy schools in the country this year by U.S. News and World Report. The school educates some 550 professional students and 100 graduate students, post-docs, residents and fellows each year.

ECSU’s program started in 2004 with 14 students. In 2005, the school teamed up with UNC-CH to launch the UNC/ECSU doctor of pharmacy partnership program, with the twin goals of increasing the number of pharmacists in under-served northeastern North Carolina, and boosting the number of black students earning doctorates in pharmacy at UNC-CH.

In the fall  of 2010, a $25 million pharmacy building on the ECSU campus opened, complete with classrooms, science labs, a library, research and computer labs, meeting rooms. Despite the grand building, ECSU had only seven students enroll in the pharmacy program a year ago. The number grew to 12 this year, but it’s nowhere close to the 20 a year ECSU had first hoped it would attract.

That’s not to take anything away from the success of those taking part in the program.

ECSU Chancellor Willie Gilchrist said the bachelor’s degree program in pharmaceutical sciences has grown from 26 students in 2009 to 103 this year, and that the passing rate for students earning a doctorate in pharmacy is 100 percent.

The report noted, however, that one of the objectives — putting more pharmacists in northeastern North Carolina — is not being met. Of the 32 students who graduated from the program between 2009 and 2011, just six began practice in the 21-county region. Fourteen began practice in other parts of the state and nine left the state.

Meanwhile, the need for pharmacists in eastern North Carolina is still high, the report said. One indicator is the area’s high premature mortality rate, which measures the number of people who die before age 75.

“If the 29 counties in eastern North Carolina were a state by itself, it would rank 48th (premature mortality rate) in the nation after Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama,” the report said.

The original agreement between UNC and ECSU is flawed, in part, because the sharing of faculty between the two campuses has not developed in the eight years of the program — “in fact, it may have worsened,” the report said.

“Should the partnership continue,” the report said, “the panel would strongly support a different model, where all programmatic resources be managed under the auspices of UNC Chapel Hill and the Eshelman School of Pharmacy as is the case for the UNC-Asheville satellite program.”

The report noted that the economic downturn was responsible in part for fewer pharmacies opening. The report also said the increase in patients receiving their medications through the mails also had had an effect on the growth of pharmacies. Even so, the need for pharmacists, particularly in rural areas, will continue, the report said.

That means the ECSU program needs to continue — only in a way that is better run and makes better use of its facilities.

To his credit, Chancellor Gilchrist recognizes this and is open to better utilization of the pharmacy building. One option being discussed is a partnership with the Greenville-based Eastern Area Education Center. The pharmacy building could serve as a satellite site for the EAEC.

Abdul Rasheed, chairman of the ECSU Board of Trustees, also acknowledged ECSU should do more to partner with private industry — as UNC-Asheville has done — to produce pharmacists who will practice locally.

The UNC Board of Governors is expected to make a decision on the panel’s report in February. Here’s hoping the UNC governors will continue to see the value of having a pharmacy program — albeit one better managed — based at ECSU.

Posted: 12/17/2012 1:53 pm EST | Updated: 12/17/2012 2:24 pm EST

A group of former Newtown Public Schools students, calling themselves Santas for Sandy Hook, returned home this weekend to raise money for the families of those killed in Friday’s school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

The group set up tables outside local businesses and restaurants, and students used the hashtag #santasforsandyhook to spread the word on Twitter and other social media outlets. According to dispatches on Twitter, the group of about 20 college students have raised $10,000 already.

The Republican reports:

Sarah Feinstein, 21, a member of the group and a student at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., said she made the long drive home on Saturday. “It was brutal,” she said. Her mother, Laura Feinstein, a special education and reading teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School, was at the school on Friday and survived the attack, but six of her colleagues and some of her pupils were not so lucky. “She lost three of her students,” Feinstein said of her mother. “She’s just traumatized by it all.”

Students told the Newtown Patch one table collected $1,000 within just four hours.

The money will go to an account established at Newtown Savings Bank. The money will then be distributed to local families, Mark Scheunemann, 21, told the Republican.

Cole Depuy, a member of Santas for Sandy Hook and a senior at the University of Vermont, told the Philadelphia Inquirer he attended kindergarten at Sandy Hook Elementary, where 20 children were killed by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.

“It’s absolutely unbearable,” Depuy said. “I’ve cried a million times. It’s something else to turn on the radio and hear your town’s tragedy.”

Several memorial funds have been set up, including the Newtown Memorial Fund, which will help students in town pay for college, as well as provide financial support to families for funeral services college, ABC News reports.

“I just want them to know that we care and we’re here, and we’ll do anything that we can (to) help,” Zoe Walter, one of the students involved told NBC News, as she broke down in tears. “I just want them to know that we’re thinking about them.”

via Santas For Sandy Hook: Newtown High School Alumni Return From College To Help Hometown.