Friday, February 22, 2013

In a strictly clinical sense, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control muscle movement, leading to tremors, weakness and ultimately the inability to use the arms, legs and other parts of the body. For those intimately familiar with the disease, seeing a friend or loved one suffer through its debilitating effects is akin to a nightmare.

This community knows all too well the devastation ALS brings to a body having seen former East Carolina University baseball coach Keith LeClair battle the disease for five years before his death in 2006. His quiet grace and remarkable strength remain an inspiration, and this weekend’s baseball tournament intends to celebrate that spirit and highlight the critical need for funding of ALS research.

The surest sign of Spring’s impending arrival here can be found along Charles Boulevard in Greenville. There, year after year, thousands of East Carolina fans gather to celebrate the start of the baseball season. They fill the stands at Clark-LeClair Stadium, populate the often rowdy Jungle beyond the outfield walls and dream of finally capturing a bid to the College World Series, a goal that has thus far eluded the Pirates.

Baseball has always enjoyed a high profile in this community, and is the chosen sport for a great number of area youth each summer. But at East Carolina, it was LeClair’s arrival in 1997 that set the sights higher and bolstered the ambitions of both the team and its supporters.

Winning became routine. Conference titles began to pile up. The Pirates made four consecutive appearances in the NCAA tournament. Omaha looked closer than ever.

In 2001, however, LeClair began to notice uncommon muscle twitching and other symptoms of what would be diagnosed as ALS. The illness forced him to miss games and, ultimately, to resign following the 2002 season. Throughout the difficult years that followed, his optimism, strength and dignity were on full display. Before his death he attended the opening of the stadium that bears his name.

This weekend’s Keith LeClair Classic serves as a reminder that more can and should be done to research and discover more effective treatments and perhaps even a cure for ALS. And just as his jersey number, 23, is given to a player each year and worn with honor, the tournament helps keep alive a remarkable spirit that continues to inspire residents of this community.

via The Daily Reflector.

Published: February 22, 2013 Updated 3 hours ago

By Thomasi McDonald — tmcdonald@newsobserver.com

RALEIGH — Cassandra Deck-Brown was chosen Raleigh’s police chief only three weeks ago, but people are starting to recognize her, even when she’s not in uniform.

On a rainy Saturday last week, Deck-Brown says she was at the grocery store in a pair of blue jeans, a sweatshirt and a rain hat with the bill flipped up when she heard a woman call out, “Hey, Chief!” The woman explained that her husband thought she was the new chief, but she wasn’t sure and decided to ask.

“Yes,” Deck-Brown answered. “I am that lady.”

That lady will be sworn in during a ceremony that begins at 11:30 a.m. Friday in the Fletcher Opera Theater at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh. Deck-Brown is the first African-American woman to serve as police chief of North Carolina’s Capital City.

Deck-Brown stands a shade over 5 feet tall and is known as a soft-spoken woman. Her predecessor, the gregarious Harry Patrick Dolan, who retired in October, stands about 6-foot-9.

“Physically, I am as different from Chief Harry Dolan as one can be in ethnicity, gender and height,” she said. “We are nearly polar opposites.”

Still, she described Dolan as a “strong mentor” whose vision for the police department was very similar to her own.

Deck-Brown served as a major and deputy chief during Dolan’s tenure and was part of a team that helped craft the department’s five-year plan, including a community policing initiative widely credited with reducing violent crime in the city, particularly Southeast Raleigh.

Deck-Brown said she wants to continue the department’s community policing efforts. “We have a bridge that has a significant relationship with the community,” she said. “The question now is, how do we enhance that relationship?”

One example is a planned youth development center in the Mini City area for kids without access to educational and recreational activities – kids who might otherwise get in trouble. The police and other city partners are working on the design of the 2,000-square-foot center, which Deck-Brown said could eventually host after-school and enrichment programs in tandem with parks and recreation. She also sees the center housing English as a Second Language classes and mentoring programs.

“I think the opportunities are vast,” Deck-Brown said. “It affords us the opportunity to be creative and think outside the box.”

Deck-Brown credited much of the police department’s success in recent years to the Community Oriented Government initiative that began in early 2009 in the College Park and South Park neighborhoods, where deadly youth violence was prevalent.

Deck-Brown said a number of city departments, including the parks and recreation, solid waste and public utilities, are COG partners who work with community leaders to solve neighborhood problems and prevent crime from taking root.

Two years ago, city officials decided to expand the COG initiative throughout the city.

The new chief said she’s very concerned by the spike in deadly violence in recent months that has resulted in children not old enough to drive being charged with murder.

“It should be a concern for the community as well,” she said. “But it’s only a small percentage of our youths. That should be known as well.”

Deck-Brown has been with the Raleigh Police Department since entering the city’s academy in 1987. She is the first chief chosen from within the department since 1994 when Mitchell Brown, her brother in-law, was promoted to chief.

She said while working as a very young detective with the department’s assault and sexual assault squad, she learned an important lesson. She was working a sexual assault case and decided early on that she had identified the person who committed the crime.

“A seasoned detective advised me to take a look at everything before me,” she said. “Some things were not obvious. It turned out not to be the person I believed was the suspect. I had to allow the case to evolve and follow all the leads.

“The front end in some things is often not how things will end. You need to know that as an officer, and in life, too.”

McDonald: 919-829-4533

via RALEIGH: Raleigh police chief to be formally sworn in Friday | Crime | NewsObserver.com.

Aileen Devlin/The Daily Reflecto

East Carolina is proposing a new student center to be built in the area closest to 10th Street, which is currently a parking. Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013. (Aileen Devlin/The Daily Reflector)

By Katherine Ayers

Thursday, February 21, 2013

The East Carolina University Board of Trustees will discuss a proposal for two new campus student centers during a lunch meeting today.

According to an executive report published ahead of today’s meeting, one center would be built behind Mendenhall Student Center on the main campus and another constructed between the East Carolina Heart Institute and Laupus Library on the health sciences campus.

The total project is estimated at $162 million and comes from student fees and contributions from groups, including campus dining, the Dowdy Student Store and Parking Services, all of which would have space in the buildings.

In the proposal, the 208,757-square-foot center on main campus would include:

The bookstore (25,000 square feet), which will be moved from the Wright Building.

Food service operations (21,600 square feet), which will feature a 330-person multi-station Dining Marketplace and a Sports Grille.

A ballroom (23,200 square feet), which can accommodate banquets of up to 800 people or lecture-style seating of up to 1,300 people.

The Ledonia Wright Cultural Center, which will be relocated from the Bloxton House to the center.

Retail space to include a convenience store and ATM access.

A 250-seat theater.

A gameroom, which will be relocated from Mendenhall.

Computer and study space.

Conference and meeting space, room for student organizations and university administration.

A 700-space parking garage attached to the center.

Mendenhall will be repurposed according to ECU’s needs, although the bowling alley and Hendrix Theater still will operate, according to an ECU release.

In the proposal, the 67,788-square-foot health sciences campus center would include:

A recreation and wellness center (21,960 square feet) with cardio area, weight and fitness room, and a 6,000-square-foot multipurpose gym.

Food service operations (7,000 square feet), which will include a 100-person multi-station food court.

A convenience store with ATM access.

A wellness center.

A Student Health Services center, which could accommodate two providers.

Administrative offices and event, conference, meeting and student organization spaces.

According to the release, the need for a new student center has been discussed for more than 10 years, and the ECU community has outgrown Mendenhall.

The hope is that the center on main campus will become the “living room” where all members of the ECU community can gather, the release said.

The discussion is part of the board’s two-day quarterly meeting, and it could approve the proposals Friday during its 9 a.m. board meeting in Conference Room A in Mendenhall.

Before construction can begin, ECU would need approval from the N.C. General Administration and the UNC Board of Governors.

Immediately following Friday’s meeting, a dedication of the Student Memorial Garden will take place.

Contact Katherine Ayers at kayers@reflector.com and 252-329-9567. Follow her on Twitter @KatieAyersGDR.

via The Daily Reflector.

By Wesley Brown

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Student commuters who often rely on the Tar River university neighborhood for parking may be forced to find another place to leave their cars during class if a new proposal is approved by the city.

While the details remain unsettled, the focus of the plan, which could go into effect as early as the fall semester, is to reserve all parking in the 200-acre housing community north of East Carolina University exclusively for residents.

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The University Neighborhood Revitalization Workgroup agreed this week at its monthly meeting that the restriction could help lessen trash and vehicles from eroding the appeal and safety of the historic college district.

The only question the committee had difficulty answering was how the city should enforce the standard, debating for more than an hour whether to require residents to purchase a parking permit or to keep licensing voluntary, as ordinances now allow.

“I am ready to do something,” committee member Chris Woelkers, owner of the Fifth Street Manor, said. “We have to get the students’ vehicles off the grass.”

Woelkers recommended the group move forward with an initiative that would extend the city’s controlled-parking plan to all roads between Elm, Fifth and Reade streets to the Tar River.

Other members felt the suggestion was rushed and wanted feedback from staff and the public on how to “perfect” a plan that now regulates residential parking by petition, granting three $5 permits per household upon majority consent of the homeowners on a neighborhood block.

“I just do not want anything rammed down my throat again,” said longtime resident Jim Sullivan of the University Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, legislation approved by the City Council in October.

The ordinance, which, among other things, allows four unrelated people to live together in four-bedroom homes in the Tar River neighborhood, is being contested in court as a violation of the state and U.S. constitutions.

Sullivan called for increased parking fines and more elaborate enforcement laws that ticket not only the car owner but a home’s tenant and landlord when a citation is issued on a property.

“They can afford it; just look at what they are driving,” Sullivan said of students. “They spend as much on beer on a Friday night as they do on a parking ticket now.”

Greenville Police Chief Hassan Aden said his department is comparing local fines — $20 for on-street violations and $25 for front- or rear-yard parking — against other cities to see if fees are at the right level.

The chief said the review is part of a new operational plan for code enforcement that includes revising staff hours for weekend shifts and rearranging districts for the Tar River university neighborhood and parts of west Greenville — areas of high call volume — to each get two full-time officers.

“It’s a huge mountain of work, and we are trying to prioritize a systemic approach to attack the problem and knock it down to a reasonable level,” Aden said.

Last Saturday, code officers reportedly towed 12 vehicles, issued 24 parking citations and left door-hangers at homes to educate people on the city’s ordinances. Aden said a second parking officer — a position which has been vacant for some time — has been hired and is in training.

Workgroup member Michael Saad, owner of two apartment complexes in the area, recommended the city hire a third parking officer and net less revenue to help teach violators “a lesson.”

“I hate to hear the penalties are not working,” said Saad, who wanted a “fair” procedure that accounted for residents’ guests. “I would change my habits quick if I had to pay $25.”

Aden was reluctant to talk revenue over compliance, saying he feared a districtwide parking plan would be “like squeezing a balloon,” creating problems elsewhere, with student commuters taking over other lots.

Committee member Philip Rogers, chief of staff to ECU Chancellor Steve Ballard, said the school consistently communicates with its students that it has sufficient commuter parking near Minges Coliseum and the Belk and Willis buildings, with bus stops nearby.

At the group’s next meeting on March 19, city traffic engineers plan to present suggestions to implement the idea with the hope the committee can bring an initiative to council by the summer to put changes into effect before the next school year.

“We have to get the property owners to help clean up the mess,” Sullivan said, “or else we will be dealing with the same problems over and over again.”

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

via The Daily Reflector.

Aileen Devlin/The Daily Reflecto

School of Communication’s Todd Fraley, left, and Anthropology Professor Avenarius Christine, right, held a discussion after the viewing of Miss Representation, a documentary on women in the media at Mendenhall’s Hendrix Theater on Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013. (Aileen Devlin/The Daily Reflector)

By Katherine Ayers

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Mainstream media’s stereotypes of women, the lack of female representation in politics and the boardroom, and what America can do about it were the topics of discussion during a film screening and panel discussion at East Carolina University on Tuesday.

Sponsored by the School of Communication, the 90-minute “Miss Representation” documentary focused on the media’s representation of women and girls as sex objects, mostly to be used for men’s pleasure. According to the film, only 16 percent of women in Hollywood movies are cast as the protagonist. Even then, they are shown in relation to men, incapable of being able to function on their own.

The film also explored how those representations carry over into society.

Although women comprise 51 percent of the U.S. population, they hold only 18.1 percent of seats in Congress, according to the Center for American Women in Politics, up from 17 percent before the last election. Women comprise 7 percent of directors and 13 percent of film writers in the top 250 grossing films. In the boardroom, women represent just 3 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs, according to the film’s website.

To combat the negative influences of television and film, panelist Amanda Klein, coordinator of ECU’s interdisciplinary film studies minor within the English department, said people need to gain “media literacy.”

“We need to learn to read it,” she said. “We need to know who makes images, why they’re making them and for what purpose.”

Klein said women need to stop asking permission.

“We need to take positions of power,” she said. “Stop sitting back because, of course, we have the right to take our place.”

In response to an audience question about how to take the message beyond ECU’s campus, Todd Fraley with the School of Communication said women need to write their own stories and distribute them.

“There’s an audience for these types of stories,” he said.

Although the film focused specifically on women in the media, Fraley reminded students the subject easily could have been people of color; gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people; or a host of other marginalized groups.

A female student asked how to be empowered without seeming too assertive or overly aggressive.

“Don’t worry about it,” Christine Avenarious with the anthropology department said. “You may be surprised that people like when you speak your mind.”

The film made no apologies about coming from a feminist point of view, but during the discussion a female ECU student asked whether feminism still was relevant. She said she felt the feminism of the 1960s and ’70s had become something of a “joke” to people in her generation.

Fraley challenged her to change that perception.

“Redefine what feminism means to your generation,” he said. “More people than you realize are looking for social justice and equality.

“It’s not an easy process,” he said. “But when you start the conversation, there are a lot more people interested in those things than you realize.”

For more information about the film, visit www.missrepresentation.org.

Contact Katherine Ayers at kayers@reflector.com and 252-329-9567. Follow her on Twitter @KatieAyersGDR.

via The Daily Reflector.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

I am the person attacked at a grocery store Jan. 20 and I’m recovering nicely thanks to many good people. Duncan, Annie and Zane of Harris Teeter came to my aid, called 911 and phoned my wife. Our friend Dallas Clark happened to arrive soon after the incident and stayed to prepare and reassure my wife that I was going to be OK. There were the Greenville EMTs, Vidant hospital staff and doctors and surgeons (Jon Workman in particular), who provided great care, and our friend Dr. Marcus Albernaz, who met us at the emergency room to check on my status and again assure us that I was in good hands and all would be fine.

I hold no animosity for my attacker; I can only think he’s a lost soul that did not benefit from loving parents or programs offered by the Boys & Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts, Pitt County Community Schools, STRIVE or the myriad of sports, cultural/arts and other after-school opportunities available in this community. Instead, I choose to focus on the many good people who assisted and cared for me. One bad guy versus dozens of caring people is a pretty good ratio.

Finally, I salute the Greenville Police detectives who tracked and arrested the person believed to be my attacker, to the relief of many in this community. Thanks to all these good people, I have returned to work and should recover fully. My wife and I have been back to the grocery store and will continue to shop there, just like many of my friends who refuse to let this incident stop them from going about their regular routines.

Finally, thanks to all of you who provided well wishes and prayers and to all those working to make this a wonderful community. I especially urge you to keep volunteering and contributing to those organizations dedicated to assisting young people. Investing in children is perhaps the most important thing we can do.

JOHN D. CHAFFEE

Greenville

via The Daily Reflector.

Aileen Devlin/The Daily Reflector

Steven Evans owner of Evan’s Properties located on Evans Street stands with his PeeDee the Pirate statue which was stolen in 2002 and recently returned to him after the ECU police found it. Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013. (Aileen Devlin/The Daily Reflector)

By Katherine Ayers

Thursday, February 21, 2013

After nearly a decade of adventure, PeeDee the Pirate once again will man the second-floor balcony of Evans Properties in Greenville.

According to company owner Steve Evans, he bought the 6-foot-tall fiberglass pirate statue from a local vendor in the early 2000s and placed it in his store at 1128 Evans St. After about a year, it was stolen on June 9, 2002. Evans reported the theft to the Greenville Police Department, but the statue never was located.

Until 2011.

On Aug. 18 of that year, an employee with East Carolina University’s Facilities Services called the ECU Police Department about a discovery he had made in the wooded area between Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium and 14th Street in front of the Murphy Center, according to Detective Chester Jones with the ECU police.

Officer Nathan Downs was dispatched to the call and located the missing PeeDee.

“Whoever stole it wanted to get rid of it,” Jones said. “There was no camera footage around the site, so there’s no way to know who stole it.”

Jones said his department shared with Greenville police the fact that the statue had been found and asked if there were any open missing pirate cases.

Detective Christopher Burack with the Greenville police did a records search and found out that Evans had reported his pirate missing in 2002.

Jones said police contacted Evans and, after he made a positive identification of the pirate, Evans came by and picked up his booty on Wednesday.

“Evans has known (PeeDee’s) been here; he just didn’t get it until today,” Jones said.

Evans said he is grateful for the work of the two departments.

“I was totally surprised and shocked, and it had been so long,” he said. “This is pretty impressive that they still had the case in their system.”

Evans said PeeDee’s looking a bit weather-beaten, so the plan is to get him repaired and then place him back on the balcony.

“But this time we’re going to bolt him down.” he said.

Contact Katherine Ayers at kayers@reflector.com and 252-329-9567. Follow her on Twitter @KatieAyersGDR.

via The Daily Reflector.

Blue clusters show decreased brain volumes in newborns with the Alzheimer’s risk variant. Similar decreases in this brain area, which is involved in memory, are seen in adults with the same variant. Yellow/orange clusters show increased brain volumes in newborns with the risk variant. These changes may be unique to infants and young children and could represent beneficial effects.

Courtesy of UNC-Chapel Hill

Published: February 20, 2013 Updated 3 hours ago

By Renee Elder — relder@newsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL — Brain images from newborns are giving scientists a glimpse of the future – not just into the lives of their tiny subjects but also paths to treatment for adult patients with schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers from UNC-Chapel Hill found degeneration in the brains of 2-week-old infants, a result considered a “game changer” for the field of brain research, said Jay Giedd, a brain imaging specialist for the National Institute of Mental Health.

“Our original model was that the brain was fine until someone got the illness,” Giedd said. “This work shows that these changes are there probably from conception. It also suggests that while these traits don’t cause brain damage, they set up the brain to be slightly different.”

The researchers examined scans of 272 newborns. About 15 percent were found to have smaller medial temporal lobe sections.

“The medial temporal lobe plays an important role in memory,” said Rebecca Knickmeyer, a UNC assistant professor of psychiatry and co-author of the research, published last month in Cerebral Cortex, an online journal. “The idea is that this is an anatomical vulnerability. If you start out with less, you might hit active symptoms earlier in life.”

The researchers also found specific gene traits associated with Alzheimer’s in babies with the smaller media temporal lobes.

“We were interested because it was generally known that people’s genes contribute to psychiatric conditions later in life, but pretty much all the existing studies were in adults,” Knickmeyer said. “Our question was ‘When were these genes exerting their effect?’ Now we know it’s much earlier than previously thought, perhaps before birth.”

Research such as this would benefit from the Brain Activity Map under development through the National Institutes of Health. The project’s 10-year goal is to create a map of the brain’s nearly 30,000 genes as well as the circuitry system that transmits information via brain waves.

President Obama mentioned the project in his State of the Union address and is expected to include funding for the project in the upcoming federal budget. Foundations and some private companies have also expressed interest in assisting in the project, which is expected to push brain research to a higher level.

“As brain scientists, we were giddy to hear this,” Giedd said. “Motivation is sky high. If they fund this, we believe our work will really take off.”

Giedd, who is familiar with but did not participate in the infant brain study, said the search for treatments or cures for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, autism, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease have been stymied by the many mysteries that remain regarding how the brain functions.

“If we understood more about the mechanisms that cause these diseases, we could step in and do something about it,” Giedd said. “The brain is so complicated. Most diseases don’t just involve one or two or even three genes. It might be 60 or 100 genes, along with upbringing, diet and environment. There are so many parameters to the equation.”

Knickmeyer said her research team plans to follow up with the newborns as they grow into adulthood to see whether the traits displayed by infants change over time or remain stable throughout their lives.

Daniel Kaufer, cognitive neurology and memory disorders chief for UNC’s Department of Neurology, said he thinks the time is right for great advances in brain research.

“We are at the crossroads of two important events: the realization that brain disorders may occur long before symptoms begin, and the development of brain imaging technology to record brain processes,” Kaufer said.

Learning more about the brain’s functions through gene mapping may be the third piece of the puzzle.

“Right now, there is no map of the human brain,” said Murali Doraiswamy, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine.

Doraiswamy said the brain carries thousands of genes that influence thought, perception, emotion, memory and other mental activities.

“We want to find out how much is nature and how much is nurture,” he added. “I think we are at the forefront of something very insightful, but also a little frightening.”

Elder: 919-829-4528

via CHAPEL HILL: UNC researchers say baby brains could presage Alzheimer’s or other adulthood diseases | Local/State | NewsObserver.com.

Published: February 21, 2013

By Jane Stancill — jstancill@newsobserver.com

UNC-Chapel Hill will join a mass movement in higher education when it begins offering free online courses to the public, officials will announce Thursday.

Beginning in the fall, the university will offer the classes under an agreement with Coursera, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company that has signed dozens of universities to provide online courses on the company’s platform.

With the addition of 29 universities on Thursday, including UNC-CH, Coursera’s worldwide partners have jumped to 62. Duke University joined Coursera in 2012.

In the past year, universities have raced to create massive open online courses, or MOOCs. The free classes are open to anyone who registers; a single course can attract tens of thousands of students from around the globe.

Participation has been stunning. Coursera, the for-profit company started last year by two Stanford University professors, already has 2.8 million registered users, company officials say.

But the long-term impact of the MOOC movement is unclear. Most MOOCs do not give academic credit toward a degree, but that is likely to change. Universities and companies are exploring how to award credit, how to prevent cheating and how to make money from a venture that offers education from top professors for free.

Though these questions remain unresolved, the hype has spurred many universities into action. The phenomenon is exciting to those who see it as a way to extend education to the masses who wouldn’t be able to get it otherwise.

UNC-CH’s involvement with Coursera will start modestly, with four courses in public health, music, law and library science.

The university reviewed 10 proposals from faculty members who wanted to teach MOOCs for the first round. More will be offered in the future, and the courses do not necessarily follow a semester in length or start time.

Duke has already offered courses on such subjects as neuroscience, English composition, health care innovation, philosophy and human physiology.

180,000 registered

Two philosophy professors, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong from Duke and Ram Neta from UNC-CH, co-taught a Duke logic class on Coursera from November through last week. At one point, about 180,000 people had registered for the course, called “Think Again: How to Reason and Argue.”

By the end of the 12-week course, Sinnott-Armstrong said, there had been 3.6 million views or downloads of course videos. About 17,000 students were still active and about 3,000 were expected to receive a completion certificate for finishing all the quizzes and assignments.

Despite the number of dropouts, Sinnott-Armstrong said he had reached more people through “Think Again” than in his 30-year career in academia.

Starting small

Carol Tresolini, UNC-CH’s vice provost for academic initiatives, said university leaders consulted Duke about its experience with Coursera as it considered the venture.

There is no cost estimate for UNC-CH’s future online courses, Tresolini said, but already many faculty and staff hours have been logged. That’s why only four courses will be offered at the start, she said.

“This is something we’re going to be tracking,” she said Wednesday. “Given the budget situation the past several years, we don’t have unlimited resources, obviously.”

The investment is likely to pay off in the classroom in Chapel Hill, Tresolini said. Professors will gain valuable knowledge about how to improve large enrollment courses and how to use technology to improve teaching and learning.

Plus, she said, it benefits people who want to boost their learning without a tuition bill.

“It’s another way for us to extend the intellectual resources of the university to the public,” she said. “I think this is a core part of our mission and who we are as a university.”

Stancill: 919-829-4559

via UNC-CH joins effort to open some classes to the masses | Education | NewsObserver.com.

Published: February 20, 2013 Updated 18 hours ago

From staff reports

PITTSBORO — Charles Hitlin, former head of information technology at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Public Health, has been charged in Orange County with second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.

Hitlin, 42, of Old Oaks Lane in Pittsboro, was charged Monday and released Tuesday on a $250,000 bond pending an appearance Wednesday in court in Hillsborough.

Hitlin and his wife, Amy, 44, were the focus of an investigation in November into what search warrants obtained by university police said was suspected child pornography offenses and other crimes involving minors.

No charges about pornography were filed at the time, though Hitlin was arrested on a felony charge of possession of a firearm on campus after police found a loaded 9 mm handgun in his office.

Police searched Amy Hitlin’s offices at the university, too, but filed no charges against her. She is an assistant senior director of career services in the school’s University Career Services department.

UNC police and the FBI began an investigation after a Morrisville police officer working with a child pornography task force, chatted online with someone using an Internet address that was traced back to Hitlin.

At the time, the Hitlins’ attorney, Meredith Nicholson of Durham, emailed a statement that said the Hitlins were confident the investigation would find no illegal material.

“Mr. Hitlin is not a predator, not a pedophile, and not a pornographer,” the Hitlins said in the statement. “He is not a danger to his community. He is a good and decent man who has found himself subject to the far-reaching arm of a government which persists in spying on the web communications of its citizens.”

via PITTSBORO: Former IT boss at UNC-CH faces child sexual exploitation charge in Orange | Crime | NewsObserver.com.

Updated February 18, 2013, 8:21 p.m. ET

By RUTH SIMON And ROB BARRY

Most people assume a degree in the arts is no guarantee of riches. Now there is evidence that such graduates also rack up the most student-loan debt.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of new Department of Education data shows that median debt loads at schools specializing in art, music and design average $21,576, which works out to a loan payment of about $248 a month. That is a heavy burden, considering that salaries for graduates of such schools with five or fewer years’ experience cluster around $40,000, according to PayScale.com.n

The data also show that graduates of research universities tend to carry less debt than those of liberal-arts colleges. Median debt loads average $19,445 for liberal-arts schools, versus $18,100 for research universities.

The figures are based on the amount of federal education loans in 2010-11; they include those taken out by students and their parents, but consist of only students for whom there is borrowing. That group is growing. Almost 67% of college students who graduated in 2012 had loans, up from 63% a decade ago, estimates Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.com, a financial-aid website.

President Obama called for colleges to rein in their costs during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. But new data show those who attend schools with lower tuition often end up paying in other ways. MarketWatch’s Rex Crum reports. (Photo: AP)

The “College Scorecard” released by the government last week offers prospective students a new way to help gauge the financial return on a college education. Families can search by school to see how much money students owe on federal student loans when they leave college, as well as estimated monthly loan payments. About 10 states, including Virginia, Florida and California, already publish salary information by school and program or are expected to do so this year.

The scorecard also includes information on graduation rates, loan defaults and average costs after grants and scholarships, all of which was previously available on a Department of Education website. That earlier site also shows the average amount students at different schools borrow in a year, but it doesn’t spell out how that debt can add up or what it will take to repay it.

Among the 4,000 colleges and universities in the federal database, the Creative Center in Omaha, Neb., a for-profit school that offers a three-year bachelor’s in fine arts, had the highest average debt load, at $52,035. Median pay for graduates of the school with five or fewer years’ experience is $31,400, according to PayScale.com.

“Salaries can be pretty darn high or pretty low” for the school’s graduates, who typically get jobs in graphic arts or advertising, said Creative Center President Ray Dotzler. “We have graduates making six figures, which we think is really good,” he adds, though “a lot of them start in the twenties.”

New York’s Manhattan School of Music had the second-highest median debt load, at $47,000. Graduates with up to five years’ experience earn an average of $42,700, according to PayScale.

“Manhattan School of Music offers world-class musical education at a reasonable price,” said interim President Marjorie Merryman. She called the government figures “misleading,” noting that typically 30% to 50% of the class borrows and class size is small, typically 65 to 90 students, meaning year-to-year figures can turn on the actions of a handful of students. Many students work abroad and take years to realize their full earnings potential, she added.

The federal data aren’t complete. Families can’t compare schools side by side or use the tool to see what kind of money people can expect to earn after graduation. Graduation rates include only first-time, full-time students. And loan figures also measure debt at the time students enter loan repayment, meaning they don’t take into account whether or not students complete college. That could understate debt loads for graduates of schools with high dropout rates.

Department of Education officials said they plan to add a comparison tool and make other revisions. The government expects to make salary information available later this year and is looking at ways to use Social Security data, Labor Department records or other information.

New York University, with a median debt of $29,260, had the highest borrowing among schools with more than 10,000 students.

“Excellence in higher education is costly,” particularly in a big city like New York, an NYU spokesman said in a statement, adding that NYU doesn’t benefit from a large per student endowment or state funding and is “upfront” about costs. The federal data “seems to be dated” and doesn’t take into account a recent decline in median borrowing, he added.

Sara Moe, a junior majoring in political science and public policy, figured she would have to take on substantial debt at NYU. “But I was hoping for five digits, not six,” said Ms. Moe, who expects to rack up more than $100,000 in loans by the time she graduates. Said Ms. Moe: “It’s important to know what you are getting yourself into.

via Arts-Focused Colleges Rack Up Most Student Debt – WSJ.com.

By Jane Stancill — jstancill@newsobserver.com

February 19, 2013

Gone was the Carolina blue tie, replaced with a green one, when UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp posed for a picture with his next boss, Mark Wrighton, the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis.

It’s a standard touch of school spirit in the world of higher education – a newly hired college administrator wearing the campus colors.

But it was a bit of an unusual twist for the Tar Heel born-and-bred Thorp, who spent 25 years at his alma mater, to be going somewhere else. And Thorp, the CEO of a large public university, is taking a step down to the second-in-command role of provost at Washington, a medium-sized private university.

Still, those who know Thorp say the move likely suits him at this point in his career.

He will manage the academic side of a university, without having to navigate a difficult political landscape, constant media scrutiny and the burden of fundraising. And though he will technically oversee the administrators who manage Washington University’s Division III athletics program, he’s unlikely to have to deal with scandals such as the ones that have dogged him for two years in Chapel Hill.

“When I think about what he truly loves to do, I think he really does like to work more hands-on in the internal workings of the university with faculty, staff and students,” said Will Leimenstoll, UNC-CH student body president, who has served alongside Thorp.

Leimenstoll said he doesn’t blame Thorp for leaving to take a job where he can focus his energy on his passion – academics – without “having to put up with difficulties and conflicts that are outside of his control.”

For two years, Thorp was consumed with several scandals that began with improper benefits and tutoring for football players. Then UNC-CH made national news when an academic fraud scandal was uncovered in the African and Afro-American Studies department, where investigations found no-show classes, poorly supervised independent study courses and unauthorized grade changes. And the university’s chief fundraiser resigned following revelations that he and his girlfriend, the mother of a former UNC-CH basketball player, charged the university for personal travel.

When he announced his decision to step down in September, he said it would be best for his family and for the university. Trustees, faculty and students asked him to reconsider and stay in the job, but he declined. At the time, Thorp said he wanted to return to the chemistry lab and classroom, where he had spent the bulk of his career

On Monday, as the campus absorbed the news of his departure in several months from Chapel Hill, Thorp was in St. Louis, meeting with his new colleagues. He did not respond to a request for an interview.

His new boss, Wrighton, 63, who has led Washington for 18 years, has said he will remain in the chancellor’s position until 2018, when the university’s $2.2 billion fundraising campaign is wrapped up.

In interviews with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the two tried to dispel the notion that Thorp had a deal to succeed Wrighton in the top job.

“I’m coming here to be the provost, and I hope it’s a long time before that conversation takes place,” Thorp told the newspaper.

But it’s clear that Wrighton is comfortable entrusting the day-to-day management of the campus to Thorp.

“If I’m in the air on a 15-hour trip to India and something unforeseen occurs, it’s good to know that it’s probably something he has already seen before,” Wrighton told the Post-Dispatch.

Public school pressure

Public university presidents operate in a pressure cooker, with tenures growing shorter and leaders often opting to move into private education or the private sector. A former provost at UNC-CH, Robert Shelton, went on to become the president at the University of Arizona, only to resign and take a position as head of the Fiesta Bowl.

Meanwhile, provosts seem to be satisfied with their role running the academic enterprise. Inside Higher Ed and Gallup conducted a survey of provosts and found that only 22 percent said they wanted to be a college president someday.

Wade Hargrove, chairman of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, said in a statement Monday that Washington University’s gain is Carolina’s loss. He praised Thorp for guiding the university through a difficult time that included an 18 percent state budget cut and a $50 million annual reduction in university spending.

And despite a stream of headlines about problems, Hargrove said Thorp has set UNC-CH on a better course for the future.

“Chancellor Thorp has put in long-needed academic reforms to assure greater accountability for the university’s academic performance, and he has provided invaluable leadership for the university in achieving an appropriate balance between athletics and academics,” Hargrove said.

No lame duck

Observers say Thorp won’t be a lame duck at UNC-CH. There is plenty on his plate before he starts in St. Louis on July 1. Next month, Hunter Rawlings, head of the Association of American Universities, will come to Chapel Hill to lead a panel on academics/athletics balance. Thorp called for that discussion.

In April, Thorp will have to convince an accrediting team that the reforms and policy changes put in place will prevent future occurrences of academic fraud and problems related to athletics. That may be his biggest chore ahead.

He has pledged a seamless transition when the new chancellor is chosen sometime this spring.

Leimenstoll, for one, doesn’t expect to see Thorp, 48, in a No. 2 job for long.

“It would be a loss for higher education if he didn’t become a president again at some point in the future,” he said.

Stancill: 919-829-4559

via In moving on, Holden Thorp will leave athletic headaches behind | UNC scandal | NewsObserver.com.

Published: February 18, 2013 Updated 10 hours ago

In his new job as the chief academic officer of Washington University in St. Louis, Holden Thorp still will have a role in oversight of an athletics program, but one on a much smaller scale than the behemoth he leaves behind in Chapel Hill. Washington doesn’t play “big-time” college sports and doesn’t worry about it.

Doubtless the role of Washington University provost will be a welcome change for Thorp, a top scientist and teacher before his fateful appointment as chancellor of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill five years ago. James Moeser, his predecessor, said of Thorp at the time that he was a “supernova.” That reference was meant to convey Thorp as a “stellar explosion,” or to use a more pedestrian term, superstar in the world of academia.

And certainly by any academic measure that was true. Thorp held multiple patents, was widely published, had been a dean, and had engaged in entrepreneurship related to his scientific research. He was 43 when named.

Refreshingly, the choice of Thorp was not a case of an unknown being brought in on the recommendation of a search committee. This was a native North Carolinian, a Carolina man true blue. He played rock ‘n’ roll guitar with students, was at home in academia’s thickest groves and knew the university from the ground up.

Not his doing

With all that promise, what Thorp didn’t have was experience as the head of a massive institution such as Chapel Hill, or much life and professional experience outside the cloistered world of “the academy.” He also didn’t have a crystal ball that could have seen the devastating scandal that was about to hit the university, one that would rightly dethrone a popular football coach and later reveal an embarrassing scandal in the African studies department where phony courses allegedly taught by the department dean were well-known to athletes.

To be sure, the scandals that resulted in Thorp’s resignation last September (effective in June) were not of his making. But his handling of the scandals as they unfolded, from the assistant football coach with the connection to an agent to the players’ contacts with agents to the existence of phony courses in African studies, showed a naïveté and a faith in people below him who didn’t deserve it. When another scandal broke, of a fund-raising vice chancellor who traveled with the mother of a former basketball star on university planes, Thorp’s judgment (he approved the woman’s hiring by another office) was rightly questioned.

Thorp’s watch saw the university’s first serious sanctions regarding athletics in half a century. The legend of the “Carolina way,” that mantra of playing by the rules with success, was blown to bits. The “way,” it seemed, was to create a athletics program with millions of dollars that operated as if it answered to no one. For a while, it seemed it didn’t.

A sad departure

Unfortunately, Thorp’s response to these scandals was anemic, even when he called in former Gov. Jim Martin and a consulting firm to review the problems in academics. The review was unimpressive. It must also be said that Tom Ross, president of the UNC system, left the handling of the problems to Thorp. In hindsight, Ross should have been more active. But in his career in the court system, as the head of a foundation and as president of Davidson College, he’d never seen anything like this, either.

It is regrettable that Holden Thorp, the native son with so many friends and admirers on campus, has to be yet another example of a university administrator who held the reins on athletics too loosely, or was overly influenced by boosters who define their institution by its athletics success and not its academic reputation. This should be a valuable lesson to those who are choosing Thorp’s successor that a chancellor must be broadly experienced, tough and not enamored by anything except his or her university’s core mission of educating young people.

Holden Thorp wanted to be true to that mission. He is a person of character, an honorable person. His absence on the faculty will be felt by colleagues and students. But his move to St. Louis will enable him to carry on his life’s calling in an environment he finds supportive and rewarding.

via Fresh start for Thorp | Editorials | NewsObserver.com.

Published: February 18, 2013 Updated 4 hours ago

By Joe Giglio — jgiglio@newsobserver.com

RALEIGH — Former N.C. State basketball coach Sidney Lowe was arrested Monday in Wake County and charged with failure to file and pay state income tax in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Bail was set at $10,000 but Lowe, 53, was released on Monday, according to court documents, on a written promise to appear in court. He has a court date in Wake County scheduled for March 19. The charge is a misdemeanor.

Lowe was the point guard on N.C. State’s national championship team in 1983 and returned to his alma mater in 2006 to be the head coach.

He resigned in March 2011 after compiling an 86-78 record, and just 25-55 in the ACC, in five seasons with the Wolfpack. A longtime NBA coach and assistant, he returned to the pro game as an assistant with the Utah Jazz last season.

A spokesman for the Jazz said the team was aware of Lowe’s arrest but had no further comment. Utah is scheduled to play at home Tuesday night. The team spokesman did not say whether Lowe was expected to be at the game in Salt Lake City.

Lowe’s base salary with N.C. State was about $210,000 and his total compensation was about $900,000 annually. He was owed another $900,000 from N.C. State when he resigned after the 2010-11 season.

Lowe still owns a home in Wake Forest, where he was arrested Monday. It is unclear how much he owes the state of North Carolina in taxes. It is also unknown whether Lowe, who couldn’t be reached Monday, has tax issues with the federal government.

Giglio: 919-829-8938

via RALEIGH: Former NC State basketball coach Lowe arrested on tax charges | NC State | NewsObserver.com.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

One of the more astounding aspects of the scandal that has enveloped the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its athletics program is how willing the powers-that-be have been to throw academics under the proverbial bus.

Whether Chancellor Holden Thorp, former Gov. Jim Martin and his alleged independent investigation, or the UNC Board of Governors, pretty much every one in a position of authority appears willing to put the blame on an academic department rather than point fingers at the athletics department.

Tarnishing the university’s academic reputation apparently is a price to be paid if it means keeping critical eyes off of athletics.

Just recently, Board of Governors member Louis Bissette, who headed yet another panel looking into the scandal, called it “terrible,” “embarrassing” and “inexcusable.”

Then he concluded that there was no evidence to support a conspiracy between the university’s athletics department and African and Afro-American Studies Department, which offered dozens of bogus courses over several years. He went on to say that no one may ever know whether athletes were steered to classes.

Actually, Mr. Bissette, anyone with a brain knows that athletes were steered to the courses.

Eighteen football players did not discover one of these classes on their own, by osmosis, within three days of the course being created.

A star incoming freshman football player was not led to a bogus course during his first summer on campus by a woodland fairy.

Bissette noted that the panel he led was not “an investigative body.”

He stated the obvious there.

He, and no one else in a position of authority, cared to ask hard questions.

No one apparently asked who, within the athletic department, tracked athletes academic eligibility status.

What did they do when players’ grade-point-averages fell to levels that put them in jeopardy of being ruled ineligible?

Did the people charged with this task ever talk to Julius Nyang’oro, the person whom Bissette and Martin and Thorp would have everyone believe concocted this scheme?

Perhaps the good folks on the Board of Governors and within the UNC administration believed there would be no fallout from putting the blame on an academic department.

They may have miscalculated.

The school’s accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, says it needs to ensure the legitimacy of degrees awarded to graduates in the African and Afro-American Studies program.

The group’s head suggests that the school may want to bring students back and have them make up for the classes.

Can you imagine receiving that letter in the mail?

To this suggestion, Thorp responded that “none of this was the students’ fault.”

He is right, at least for those who sought a legitimate education in what was sanctioned as a legitimate degree program.

So, here is a suggestion for those students: Your reply to the university ought to come from a lawyer, perhaps one who attended a school like Wake Forest or Duke, whose academics have not been put into question by its administrators.

Scott Mooneyham writes about North Carolina government and politics for the Capitol Press Association.

via The Daily Reflector.

Editorial

Published: February 18, 2013 97 Comments

Stanford University ratcheted up interest in online education when a pair of celebrity professors attracted more than 150,000 students from around the world to a noncredit, open enrollment course on artificial intelligence. This development, though, says very little about what role online courses could have as part of standard college instruction. College administrators who dream of emulating this strategy for classes like freshman English would be irresponsible not to consider two serious issues.

First, student attrition rates — around 90 percent for some huge online courses — appear to be a problem even in small-scale online courses when compared with traditional face-to-face classes. Second, courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close contact with instructors to succeed.

Online classes are already common in colleges, and, on the whole, the record is not encouraging. According to Columbia University’s Community College Research Center, for example, about seven million students — about a third of all those enrolled in college — are enrolled in what the center describes as traditional online courses. These typically have about 25 students and are run by professors who often have little interaction with students. Over all, the center has produced nine studies covering hundreds of thousands of classes in two states, Washington and Virginia. The picture the studies offer of the online revolution is distressing.

The research has shown over and over again that community college students who enroll in online courses are significantly more likely to fail or withdraw than those in traditional classes, which means that they spend hard-earned tuition dollars and get nothing in return. Worse still, low-performing students who may be just barely hanging on in traditional classes tend to fall even further behind in online courses.

A five-year study, issued in 2011, tracked 51,000 students enrolled in Washington State community and technical colleges. It found that those who took higher proportions of online courses were less likely to earn degrees or transfer to four-year colleges. The reasons for such failures are well known. Many students, for example, show up at college (or junior college) unprepared to learn, unable to manage time and having failed to master basics like math and English.

Lacking confidence as well as competence, these students need engagement with their teachers to feel comfortable and to succeed. What they often get online is estrangement from the instructor who rarely can get to know them directly. Colleges need to improve online courses before they deploy them widely. Moreover, schools with high numbers of students needing remedial education should consider requiring at least some students to demonstrate success in traditional classes before allowing them to take online courses.

Interestingly, the center found that students in hybrid classes — those that blended online instruction with a face-to-face component — performed as well academically as those in traditional classes. But hybrid courses are rare, and teaching professors how to manage them is costly and time-consuming.

The online revolution offers intriguing opportunities for broadening access to education. But, so far, the evidence shows that poorly designed courses can seriously shortchange the most vulnerable students.

via The Trouble With Online College – NYTimes.com.