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Remembering The Indian Tribe Driven From NC 300 Years Ago — WUNC

Published: March 21, 2013

Credit South Carolina Historical Society / The Colonel James Moore map of Fort Nooherooka.

Remembering the Indian Tribe Driving From NC 300 Years Ago

By Will Michaels, WUNC

Three hundred years ago this week, European colonialists in what is now eastern North Carolina fought a battle that devastated an American Indian tribe. A symposium at East Carolina University marks the anniversary of the 1713 battle, in which European settlers attacked a stronghold of the Tuscarora tribe called Fort Nooherooka. Nearly a thousand Tuscarora Indians were captured or killed, forcing the remaining tribe members to migrate to New York.

“The colonials really wanted the Tuscarora to be gone,” says Larry Tise, a history professor at ECU. Tise also says that North Carolina currently has a larger Indian population than any state east of the Mississippi River. “It has thousands of people who, until recently, did not even identify themselves as Indians.”

Tise says the battle was a turning point in how the culture of North Carolina would develop. Members of today’s Tuscarora tribe will dedicate a monument at the fort this weekend before walking 600 miles to the Tuscarora reservation in New York.

UNC’s next leader has challenges ahead – NewsObserver.com

Published: February 23, 2013

UNC’s next leader has challenges ahead

By Jane Stancill — jstancill@newsobserver.com

After two tumultuous years and the departure of UNC-Chapel Hill’s top administrative team, a new leader chosen this spring will have a big hand in determining whether the university’s path forward is rocky or smooth.

The man or woman chosen to lead the nation’s first public university to admit students will have to heal the damage from athletic, academic and fundraising scandals, while forging ahead with an ambitious to-do list at a time of rapid change in higher education. The next chancellor will have to confront a new political environment in Raleigh and answer questions from an accrediting agency, all while keeping an eye on recent athletic and academic reforms meant to keep trouble at bay.

Also on the radar is a multiyear fundraising campaign, which is expected to be a huge focus for the next chancellor, requiring travel and entertainment to woo donors.

On Friday, a search committee met for hours to discuss the field of candidates vying to succeed Holden Thorp, who said last September he would resign as chancellor at the end of the academic year. Last week, Thorp surprised the campus with the news that instead of returning to the chemistry classroom in Chapel Hill, he would start as provost at Washington University in St. Louis on July 1.

His impending departure has focused attention on who will move into his office in the historic South Building. The search appears to be on schedule, though little else is known about the committee’s deliberations. Early on, members were asked to sign a pledge of secrecy.

Wade Hargrove, trustee chairman and head of the search committee, said the heavy lifting is under way to pare the number of candidates.

“We do have a very deep and impressive pool,” he said, “and I think it speaks favorably about the standing which the university at Chapel Hill has among leaders of higher education.”

It takes a special breed to want to take on the role, Hargrove said.

“It really is a difficult job under the best circumstances. … We’re in a period of scarce resources; the need for accountability by universities has never been greater,” he said. “Hard questions are being asked and there’s certainly a need for extraordinary leadership … not only at Chapel Hill but any university today.”

A push on athletics

Part of the chancellor’s challenge will be to gain momentum as an entire leadership team is hired. The university is also looking for a provost, who runs the day-to-day academic operation, and a chief fundraiser to replace Matt Kupec, who resigned after revelations that he misspent university money on personal travel with his girlfriend, the mother of a former UNC basketball star. The school’s top spokeswoman, Nancy Davis, retired this month after 30 years at the university.

Steven Bachenheimer, a professor of microbiology and immunology, said as the search for a new leader continues, faculty are concerned about the typical issues – funding to recruit and retain faculty, the possible loss of federal research dollars and how to pursue e-learning without sacrificing quality. But there is a difference this time around, he said.

Many faculty want to see the university take a national role in initiating change in Division I athletics, so that academics and athletics can better co-exist, he said.

“I think that’s really an important issue for a lot of people,” said Bachenheimer, one of three professors who conducted a special review of the academic fraud scandal and called for independent experts to review the school’s academic-athletic balance.

That conversation begins next month with the kickoff of a dialogue on campus led by Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association of American Universities, a prestigious national group. Bachenheimer hopes the effort could lead to a larger agreement among university presidents about how to deal with big-time athletics.

“I think we’re seeing more and more instances where presidents or chancellors are worried about the value of Division I athletics, to the extent that when things go wrong, it tarnishes the image,” he said. “A lot of faculty would agree that it’s time for presidents to seize control of Division I athletics from the NCAA. I think the NCAA plays way too big a role in it.”

Survey: Preserve academics

A recent survey of alumni, faculty, staff, students and others showed there is no appetite for compromising the university’s academic reputation following the internal and external investigations into a wide-ranging academic fraud scandal in the African and Afro-American Studies department. The online survey was conducted in November and December by the university for the search committee.

Preserving academic excellence was identified as a top priority for the next leader by 73 percent who answered the survey. Participants were asked to choose five areas from a list of 20 that the next chancellor should focus on. After academic excellence, the top picks were: retaining the best faculty and staff; remaining a leader in national higher education; maintaining affordability; and securing the financial resources necessary to sustain excellence.

Only 22 percent said preserving athletic excellence should be a major goal for the next leader, while 19.5 percent said understanding the role of athletics was among the top five characteristics needed in the next chancellor.

Mimi Chapman, professor of social work at the university, said an academic background is necessary but not enough. It will take someone with a thick skin who can handle the inevitable crises.

“If you took any organization, it’s hard to imagine that there aren’t skeletons to be uncovered everywhere,” she said. “Hopefully, there are no more at UNC. It just seems like it is part of the nature of the beast that we have big complex organizations, that there is no way to know everything that’s going on every place. You have to do your best learning about what kind of systems to put in place to make people accountable, and then you have to solve problems as they come up.”

A question of salary

In a letter, Doug Dibbert, president of UNC-CH’s General Alumni Association, advised the search committee to anticipate the unknown challenges the next chancellor will confront. He said former Chancellor James Moeser had told the last search committee that the main issues for his successor would be enrollment growth, recruiting new faculty, competition for research funding and finding money for new programs.

None of those turned out to be front and center for Thorp, who instead faced an 18 percent state budget cut in 2011-12 and an NCAA investigation into athletics, plus the ensuing academic fraud inquiries.

Dibbert also cautioned the panel not to get caught up in the higher education arms race with leaders who demand big salaries. The university has a special relationship with the state, as evidenced by generous taxpayer support, equivalent to the revenue from a $10 billion endowment, Dibbert reminded.

“Anyone you might wish to consider who insists that Carolina match or better their current $700,000 or more salary should be dismissed from further consideration because that expectation alone confirms that they don’t understand our university,” Dibbert wrote. “They would not be a good fit for our campus. Further, what is viewed by the public as an excessive compensation package would likely jeopardize the generous state support we have enjoyed for many, many years.”

The salary issue will certainly come up.

N.C. State University Chancellor Randy Woodson last month got a 14.6 percent raise, a $112,630 “retention payment” and a retirement savings plan equal to 10 percent of his salary after he was rumored to be a finalist for the University of Florida presidency.

Woodson’s annual salary is now $495,000; Thorp’s is $432,600.

Hargrove said the committee’s search consultant, Bill Funk, has told them that it is harder to find leaders who want a university president’s job.

“What we’re hearing is that provosts in many institutions are saying, ‘No, I don’t want to move up. These jobs are too demanding, they’re too complicated, … I don’t need that grief in my life,’ ” Hargrove said.

Gretchen Bataille, senior vice president of the American Council on Education’s division of leadership and lifelong learning, said about 40 percent of college presidents are former provosts. But fewer want the top post now, because they’ve seen the president’s role up close, she said.

The good news is that Thorp has put into place changes meant to prevent and detect future academic fraud, Bataille said. The next leader will have to pay attention and be transparent but can also start anew.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for someone to say, ‘I can sort of put things back right again.’ ”

Stancill: 919-829-4559

- – - – - -

UNC-Chapel Hill

BY THE NUMBERS

$2.4 billion Annual budget

29,000 Students

3,300 Faculty members

8,300 Staff workers

300 Buildings on campus

258 Number of bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral and professional degree programs

9 National ranking in federal research dollars

1 Chancellor sought to run the university

‘Argo’ takes UNC professor back to his days in the Jimmy Carter administration – NewsObserver.com

Published: February 22, 2013

‘Argo’ takes UNC professor back to his days in the Jimmy Carter administration

By Josh Shaffer — jshaffer@newsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL — In the Oscar-nominated movie “Argo,” Hodding Carter III gets only the briefest mention: a secretary shouting his name as a parade of frenzied White House staffers rush down a hallway.

But anyone who lived through the Iran hostage crisis will remember Carter as the public face of the yearlong emergency. As spokesman for the State Department, he fed news to a ravenous pack of Washington journalists, fielding questions so persistent that he once threw a rubber chicken at an irksome reporter.

Carter, now a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, finds himself fielding questions from “Argo” fans who hadn’t been born when militants seized 52 Americans in Tehran, hadn’t heard of the Shah and can’t remember when yellow ribbons hung from every tree. “It’s a terrific movie – reasonable right up to the end,” Carter said, praising “Argo” as mostly accurate. “It actually makes alive, for a moment, something which is ancient history. Some of the students are just surprised by the drama of it all.”

Starring and directed by Ben Affleck, “Argo” follows the improbable CIA mission to rescue six other Americans (not part of the 52), who holed up in the Canadian Embassy. They got out of Iran by posing as the film crew for a fake science-fiction movie being shot in Tehran.

The movie – considered a favorite to win best picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday night – re-creates 1980 in all its chain-smoking, moustache-sporting excess. It portrays the Washington bureaucrats who pulled off the rescue as tough-talking and profane. Nostalgia practically rises from the screen. Ted Koppel has brown hair. Tom Brokaw looks a bit shaggy. At one point, a character watching a 1980 newscast comments, “John Wayne is in the ground six months, and this is what is left of America?”

From his office at UNC, where he teaches public policy, Carter says he knew nothing about the secret operation dubbed “The Movie Option.”

“Hell no,” he said. “I didn’t have any idea. I didn’t even know they were in the Canadian embassy.”

He first heard about the plan from an NBC News correspondent, who came into Carter’s office to talk about his scoop. “He said, ‘Hodding, I’m not going to go with this story because I’m a patriot, and I’m not going to endanger anyone,’ ” Carter recalled. “‘But I want 15 minutes of lead time before the story comes out.’”

The reporter kept mum. But Carter didn’t feed him a tip before the rescue became huge news. “It wasn’t because I didn’t want to,” he said.

A frustrating time

The film shows American outrage and frustration boiling over into an identity crisis. Shouldn’t we, characters in “Argo” ask, simply invade Iran? Would the Soviets sit still for this?

Carter recalled the crisis as a frustrating standstill. The hostages stayed put. Posturing continued on both sides.

When America did act with force, the rescue mission was aborted after a helicopter crash killed eight U.S. servicemen. Carter heard this news, he said, on a flight home from Hawaii when a flight attendant offered condolences.

President Carter – no relation to the press spokesman and award-winning journalist – believed fallout for the botched mission led to his crushing defeat to Ronald Reagan later in 1980.

It took more than 30 years to make a movie about the hostage crisis, Hodding Carter said, because the subject matter remains so difficult to bear.

“We didn’t immediately make movies about Vietnam,” he said. “We were the last great nation that never lost a war. We are still not exactly sure how we’re going to deal with it. Iran was a humiliation to follow a humiliation. Most people – well, some do – don’t make movies to make people feel bad about their country.”

There is some levity to recalling that era. Carter was well-regarded by the press at the time.

He recalled being at a 40th birthday party, late, when he first got the call about the situation in Iran.

He appeared somewhat haggard at a briefing the next morning. A journalist told him it was good to see a press spokesman looking roughened up by bad news. It showed he had heart.

Carter recalled replying, “I’m hung over as a goat.”

But he also has memories of “walking around tired all the time,” and of being stalked and threatened after an interview he gave to People magazine.

The ending to “Argo” has taken some hits for exaggerated drama, particularly a scene with Jeeps chasing after a plane carrying the hostages out of Iran.

A former aide to President Carter, Gerald Rafshoon, also recently told The New York Times that a pivotal scene in the movie, in which the CIA reaches White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan by impersonating the head of his son’s school, was completely untrue. Jordan had no children at the time.

But Hodding Carter called the movie a deserving Oscar candidate.

“I personally would be more likely to go with ‘Lincoln,’” he said. “But I would be perfectly happy.”

Shaffer: 919-829-4818

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/22/2699372/argo-takes-unc-professor-back.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

Drescher: Eve Carson and the Carolina Way – NewsObserver.com

Published: February 22, 2013

Community Journalism student Lucie Shelly (right) mentors high school journalist Anna Aguilar of the Southern Scoop of Southern High School in Durham.

Photo by Jock Lauterer

FROM THE EDITOR

Drescher: Eve Carson and the Carolina Way

By John Drescher — Executive Editor

Jock Lauterer was stunned and angry five years ago when Eve Carson, the student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill, was abducted from her house near campus early March 5 and murdered.

Two young men from Durham, DeMario Atwater and Laurence Lovette, were arrested and eventually pleaded guilty or were convicted.

Lauterer, who teaches community journalism and photography at UNC, grew up in Chapel Hill and considers himself a townie.

He mourned the death of an exceptional young woman who was making a difference and was destined to do much more. He also was angry that violent crime from Durham had trespassed into his Chapel Hill.

He didn’t know what to do about his sadness and anger.

Carson was gone. Lovette and Atwater were in jail and likely headed to prison for the rest of their lives. All he could was shake his fist at the world. Nothing good could emerge from this, he thought.

Still, there lingered in Lauterer a feeling that he – Jock Lauterer, then 62 years old, college teacher, journalist and Chapel Hill resident – should do something, he told me this week.

That same spring, Lauterer had met Mai Nguyen, assistant professor in the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning. They were part of UNC’s first class of Faculty Engaged Scholars.

Nguyen saw that Lauterer, in developing his own response to Carson’s death, was paralyzed.

Nguyen and her students were studying and mapping Northeast Central Durham, the area where one of Carson’s killers lived. Lauterer accompanied them on a tour of the troubled area, two square miles known for violent crime.

The next day, Lauterer received an email from Nguyen. One of her Ph.D. students, Hye-Sung Han, had suggested that Northeast Central Durham needed the cohesion that comes from a community newspaper. The email exploded at Lauterer as if its letters were a foot tall.

He thought: That’s it!

Lauterer had been a small-town newspaper editor. He knew how to do community journalism. He could do community journalism in Durham or anyplace else.

And if he could put cameras, pens and notebooks in the hands of urban teenagers, maybe those kids would feel they were a part of something good, that they had a stake in their community.

But where to start? With a commercial newspaper, you start at the bank, he wrote later. With a volunteer newspaper, you need a different kind of capital.

Lauterer established a partnership with two journalism professors at N.C. Central University in Durham – Bruce dePyssler and Lisa Paulin. The three of them would become the publishers of the new newspaper. The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation provided a grant of $25,000.

The university teachers arranged for some UNC journalism students, most of them white, to meet with NCCU journalism students, all of them black. In their first meetings, they didn’t mix much. But then they split into two large vans (with Carolina students and Central students in each van), toured Northeast Central Durham and ended with a picnic lunch. The students bonded. That was a key moment: The college students were united in their effort to create a newspaper.

But they also wanted to involve teenagers from the neighborhood. To do so, they sought the support of local Durham leaders. That support was hard to win. They called a meeting of local pastors. Only one showed up. And he was the host.

“Maybe we were just too white and too Chapel Hill,” Lauterer thought.

Widening involvement

A local high school journalism teacher suggested they involve kids from across Durham, not just from the targeted neighborhood. Good idea.

A session at the Boys and Girls Club on Alston Avenue in central Durham was a turning point. UNC student Carly Brantmeyer, in giving a photo lesson, engaged the teens in a way Lauterer didn’t think possible. Composition. Light. Vantage.

One of Lauterer’s own students had shown him how to reach the teens. When they got their hands on the cameras, they were transformed. Some of those teens became the core of the newspaper staff. Eventually, students from four Durham schools would work at the paper.

It was time to launch. But what would this paper be called? Residents of Northeast Central Durham kept saying their voices were not being heard. The paper would be called the VOICE.

It was published first online in September 2009 at durhamvoice.org. It made barely a ripple. That changed when it began publishing in print in February 2010. Now it is published in print once a month during the school year with 2,000 copies distributed at 60 places.

Community, high schools

The VOICE writes about the people of Northeast Central Durham. It publishes stories about high schools, churches, restaurants, homeless people, volunteers, crime, grocery stores, urban farming, musicians, yard sales, celebrations and just about anything else in its neighborhoods.

The VOICE tells this community that it’s important enough to have its own newspaper. The VOICE is supported by grants and uses no university money. Various groups, including the city of Durham, and businesses have helped. The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at UNC, funded the first year of printing. Scientific Properties donates office space for a newsroom.

VOICE college staffers mentor local high school journalism students and have helped revive the student newspapers at three Durham high schools.

Sharif Ruebin, 17, is a junior at J.D. Clement Early College High School in Durham. He hadn’t thought much about journalism but started working for the VOICE as a sophomore. “They really let me be a part of the program,” he told me Friday. Now he’s the editor of his school paper and wants to be a professional journalist.

Eve Carson spoke of the Carolina Way – not the since-discredited Carolina Way of the sports boosters but a Carolina Way more central to the mission and spirit of the university. She once defined the Carolina Way as “inclusion, involvement, diversity, acceptance, seeking to be great but always remembering that we must be good.”

The VOICE is Eve Carson’s Carolina Way. It is Jock Lauterer’s Carolina Way. It is the true Carolina Way.

As the fifth anniversary of Carson’s death approaches, may the VOICE and its student journalists speak loud, long and clear.

Drescher: 919-829-4515 or jdrescher@newsobserver.com. On Twitter @john_drescher

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/22/2699491/drescher-eve-carson-and-the-carolina.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

He didn’t know what to do about his sadness and anger.

Still, there lingered in Lauterer a feeling that he – Jock Lauterer, then 62 years old, college teacher, journalist and Chapel Hill resident – should do something, he told me this week.

That same spring, Lauterer had met Mai Nguyen, assistant professor in the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning. They were part of UNC’s first class of Faculty Engaged Scholars.

Nguyen saw that Lauterer, in developing his own response to Carson’s death, was paralyzed.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/22/2699491/drescher-eve-carson-and-the-carolina.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

N.C. State’s Riddick Field House will be demolished next month – NewsObserver.com

Published: February 23, 2013

N.C. State’s Riddick Field House will be demolished next month

A football formation on Riddick Field on the NC State campus in 1914. File photo

Riddick Field House due for demolition

By Renee Elder — relder@newsobserver.com

RALEIGH — For 30 years, Riddick Field House was at the center of N.C. State football – the spot where 20,000 pairs of eyes focused as the Wolfpack charged onto Riddick Field to face challengers and win titles.

But the last time that happened was almost 50 years ago, when the team relocated to 54,000-seat Carter-Finley Stadium. Since then, Riddick Field has been paved over and its bleachers dismantled.

Now, the two-story, white masonry field house stands in the way of progress.

“The university has big plans for Riddick Field. It’s a site that has a lot of potential for the university, ” said Abie Harris, an architect at the university for 30 years, before retiring in 1998. “The field house would be just out of scale and a hurdle to other development.”

The structure, built in 1936, will come down in early March to clear the way for future plans and create a safer path for walkers between the north and central sections of campus, Kevin MacNaughton, associate vice chancellor for facilities, said Friday.

A study by the university’s Environmental Health and Public Safety division determined that the old field house creates a safety hazard by obscuring sight lines into the pedestrian tunnel leading under a set of railroad tracks to Reynolds Coliseum, Tally Student Center and residence halls along Cates Avenue. It is one of just three paths allowing walkers to traverse the tracks on central campus, between Pullen Road and Dan Allen Road.

Students concerned about the loss of the field house started a Facebook page on Tuesday to save the field house and received more than 200 “likes” by late Friday.

“I’d be a little upset,” said senior graphic design major Ian Thomas, 21, walking past the building this week. “So much of N.C. State seems to be moving to Centennial Campus, and they’re tearing down some of the best older buildings.”

‘It was great’

Harold “Bud” Deter has fond memories of the field house. Deter played football for State, scoring the last three points in Riddick Field history when he kicked a field goal for a 3-0 Pack win over Florida State in 1965.

“The opposing team had lockers at the field house,” Deter said. “And later there were classrooms on the top floor. I took some classes there.”

Deter said his best memories were of the moments just before kickoff, when the suited-up team would leave Reynolds, walk through the railroad tunnel and come out from the field house to cheering crowds. “You could hear the band playing and fans yelling. It was great,” he said.

Deter said he keeps a piece of the old stadium as a memento of his football career, and he understands it’s time for the old field house to go.

So, apparently, do many others. Bob Hughes grew up near the university and made money selling soft drinks to fans at Riddick Stadium in the 1950s but doesn’t have any particular fondness for the field house.

“It’s just an old building,” Hughes said Thursday at the Players Retreat restaurant, the quintessential Wolfpack hangout. “The action was out on the field.”

Hughes’ friend, Jack Michaels, whose father was defensive line coach for the Wolfpack during the 1950s, said he associates the field house with the campus police, who once had offices in the building.

‘An eyesore’

Students walking past the field house recently on their way to Central Campus had little knowledge of the classically-styled building, some calling it “cool” and others “really old.” An editorial in the student paper, The Technician, on Wednesday called the field house an eyesore, adding “you can’t swing a wrecking ball on main campus without hitting a building we’d like to tear down.”

Its best features include a “nice tripartite window over the tunnel” and decorative cross-gable, according to Raleigh architectural historian Ruth Little. Those items may show up at a Habitat Restore shop soon, as the university plans to donate usable materials when the building comes down, MacNaughton said.

MacNaughton said the university also plans to preserve the large block ‘S,’ N.C. State’s logo that adorned the side of the field house, and has placed a plaque near Stinson Drive outlining the history of the university’s original stadium.

When the field house is gone, the site will be landscaped and tended until money is available to move to the next phase of development. A two-story parking deck is planned in place of the former field, and a road running between Dan Allen and Pullen, parallel to the railroad track, will be built across the field house site to help traffic move better throughout campus.

The long-term goal is to create a more pedestrian-friendly atmosphere, he said. “We’re doing the study now, and will proceed as funds are available,” MacNaughton said. “We’d like to see it come together in the next decade.”

Elder: 919-829-4528

Riddick Stadium

Established: 1907

Capacity: 20,000

Named for: Wallace Carl Riddick, university president 1917-1923

West stands built: 1916

East stands built: 1935

Field house built: 1936

East stands demolished: 1968

West stands demolished: 2005

Field house to be demolished: Next month

No college diploma, no job, even as a file clerk – NewsObserver.com

Published: February 24, 2013

No college diploma, no job, even as a file clerk

By Catherine Rampell — New York Times

ATLANTA — The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one, for getting even the lowest-level job.

Consider the 45-person law firm of Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh here in Atlanta, a place that has seen tremendous growth in the college-educated population. Like other employers across the country, the firm hires only people with bachelor’s degrees, even for jobs that do not require college-level skills.

This prerequisite applies to everyone, including the receptionist, paralegals, administrative assistants and file clerks. Even the office “runner” – the in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and the office – went to a four-year school.

“College graduates are just more career-oriented,” said Adam Slipakoff, the firm’s managing partner. “Going to college means they are making a real commitment to their futures. They’re not just looking for a paycheck.”

Economists have referred to this phenomenon as “degree inflation,” and it has been steadily infiltrating America’s job market. Across industries and geographic areas, many other jobs that once didn’t require diplomas – positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters – are increasingly requiring them, according to Burning Glass, a company that analyzes job ads from more than 20,000 online sources, including major job boards and small- to midsize-employer sites.

This up-credentialing is pushing the less-educated even farther down the food chain, and it helps explain why the unemployment rate for workers with no more than high school diplomas is more than twice that for workers with bachelor’s degrees: 8.1 percent versus 3.7 percent.

Some jobs, like those in supply-chain management and logistics, have become more technical, and so require more advanced skills today than they did in the past. But more broadly, because so many people are going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less capable.

Plus, it’s a buyer’s market for employers.

“When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out somehow,” said Suzanne Manzagol, executive recruiter at Cardinal Recruiting Group, which does headhunting for administrative positions at Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh and other firms in the Atlanta area.

Even if they are not exactly applying the knowledge they gained in their political science, finance and fashion marketing classes, the young graduates employed by Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh say they are grateful for even the rotest of the rote office work that they have been given.

“It sure beats washing cars,” said Landon Crider, 24, the firm’s soft-spoken runner.

He would know: He spent several years, while at Georgia State University and in the months after graduation, scrubbing sedans at Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Before joining the law firm, he was turned down for a promotion to rental agent at Enterprise – a position that also required a bachelor’s degree – because the company said he didn’t have enough sales experience.

‘They expect you to grow’

The risk with hiring college graduates for jobs they are supremely overqualified for is, of course, that they will leave as soon as they find something better, particularly as the economy improves.

Slipakoff said his firm had little turnover, though, largely because of its rapid expansion. The company has grown to more than 30 lawyers from five in 2008, plus a support staff of about 15, and promotions have abounded.

“They expect you to grow, and they want you to grow,” said Ashley Atkinson, who graduated from Georgia Southern University in 2009 with a general studies degree. “You’re not stuck here under some glass ceiling.”

Within a year of being hired as a file clerk, around Halloween 2011, Atkinson was promoted twice to positions in marketing and office management. Crider was given additional work last month, helping with copying and billing claims. He said he was taking the opportunity to learn more about the legal industry since he plans to apply to law school next year.

The firm’s greatest success story is Laura Burnett, who in less than a year went from being a file clerk to being the firm’s paralegal for the litigation group. The partners were so impressed with her filing wizardry that they figured she could handle it.

“They gave me a raise, too,” said Burnett, a 2011 graduate of the University of West Georgia.

Deck-Brown named Raleigh’s first woman African-American police chief – NewsObserver.com

Published: Feb. 1, 2013

Deck-Brown named Raleigh’s first woman African-American police chief

By Thomasi McDonald – tmcdonald@newsobserver.com

RALEIGH — Diminutive, quiet-spoken Cassandra Deck-Brown volunteers as a leader with her church’s Girl Scout troop and mentors at the Raleigh Police Department’s Charm School for teen girls.

The first African-American woman to be named chief of the Raleigh Police Department might seem a polar opposite to the man she’s replacing – the gregarious, 6-foot-9 Harry Patrick Dolan.

Deck-Brown, however, speaks just as strongly as the retired chief about the significance of visiting city neighborhoods to informally chat with residents, the importance of mentoring underserved youngsters, the critical partnering with other city departments to prevent crime, and seeking training for her officers in tough economic times.

“You have to listen to your officers. You have to listen to the community,” she said at a public forum last week. “You have to re-invent yourself every day as an officer and learn new ways. You have to give your best to your officers so your officers can give their best to the community.”

Deck-Brown said that after graduating from college in 1987, the Raleigh Police Department was the only law enforcement agency she applied to and, even then, her goal “was to hold the highest attainable position.”

“Police chief?” she remarked. “Absolutely. The sky is the limit.”

Her lofty goal was fulfilled Thursday when City Manager Russell Allen announced her position as interim police chief was made permanent, effective today.

Deck-Brown is also the first chief chosen from within the department since 1994 when Mitchell Brown, Deck-Brown’s brother in-law, was promoted to chief and served nearly seven years.

The Rev. Jemonde Taylor, priest for the 400-member St. Ambrose Episcopal Church Deck-Brown attends in Southeast Raleigh, said he is “overjoyed and enthusiastic” about her appointment.

“There were members of her Girl Scout troop in the audience the night of the public forum,” Taylor said. “For fifth and sixth grade girls to convince their parents to come out on a school night to hear three adults say why they should be police chief speaks of her effectiveness as a leader and a person.”

In addition to the church’s scout ministry, Deck-Brown is a member of the church’s stewardship ministry and the congregation’s senior warden – the highest non-ordained position that a person can hold in the Episcopal Church.

“She is a model parishioner. One who lives out her faith,” Taylor said.

A ringing endorsement

Deck-Brown began serving as interim chief when Dolan retired in October, while a national search fielded 48 applicants for his job. That number was whittled to three finalists: Deck-Brown; Malik Aziz, the deputy chief of police in Dallas; and Bryan Norwood, the chief of police in Richmond, Va.

“All three finalists were just great and brought a lot to the table,” City Manager Russell Allen said Thursday afternoon. “But I think she is the best match for the job. She really stepped up at every step of the process. She’s a known entity. When I first came here she was a sergeant.”

Allen said Deck-Brown has considerable knowledge about the inner workings of the police department and is aware of the “continuum” of what the police department is trying to accomplish.

“She’s a good listener, and she’s fair,” Allen said.

Allen said an integral part of her selection was the feedback he received from Raleigh police officers and from the community.

“They all seem to have a great level of trust in her,” he said.

Rick Armstrong, a former Raleigh police sergeant who is now a business agent with the Raleigh Police Protective Association and the local Teamsters Union 391, agreed with Allen.

Armstrong said the union’s 550 members who are sworn officers with the Raleigh Police Department “overwhelmingly” endorsed Deck-Brown this week. From the rank-and-file officers’ perspective, Deck-Brown is “without a doubt the best person for the job,” he said, because she won the respect of her peers as she worked her way up through their ranks.

“Everyone already trusts her and knows of her integrity,” he said. “Everyone thinks she’s a great leader.”

Octavia Rainey, chairwoman of the North Central Citizens Advisory Council, worked closely with Dolan when he implemented a community policing plan in Southeast Raleigh. She described Deck-Brown as “the perfect choice.”

“She has proven that she can run all operations of the police department, and she knows the city. She brings all that to the table,” Rainey said. “She knows all of the neighborhoods, and she understands community policing very well.”

A determined path

Deck-Brown grew up in Franklin County but spent summers with her mother’s relatives in Philadelphia. It was there that she saw a female police officer on the street one day. The sight of a woman in uniform and in control inspired her, she said in 2006.

Deck-Brown graduated from East Carolina University with a degree in criminal justice, then entered Raleigh’s police academy to join the city force. She worked as a patrol officer, a crime prevention-community relations officer and a detective, before earning a master’s degree in public administration from N.C. State University in 1995.

Promoted to captain in 2003, she became commander of what is now the city’s North District. She later headed the department’s Administrative Services Division and was promoted to deputy chief in 2011.

News researcher Peggy Neal contributed to this report.

McDonald: 919-829-4533

Cassandra Deck-Brown

Age: 49

Early life: Grew up in Franklin County but spent summers with her mother’s relatives in Philadelphia

Education: East Carolina University, bachelor’s degree in criminal justice; N.C. State University, master’s degree in public administration

Career: Entered the Raleigh Police Academy and was hired by the Raleigh Police Department in 1987; Promoted to captain in 2003, she became commander of what is now the North District; later headed the department’s Administrative Services Division; promoted to deputy chief in 2011

Community activities: Member of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, where she serves as senior warden, Girl Scout troop leader, and as a member of the church’s Stewardship Ministry; helped coordinate Charm School, a summer program organized by the police department to keep teen girls from tough neighborhoods out of trouble

Editorial: Not adding up – NewsObserver.com

Published: Feb. 1, 2013

Editorial: Not adding up

UNC-Chapel Hill’s credibility is not helped by a new report on academic scandal.

Another report from Baker Tilly, the management consulting firm that aided former Gov. Jim Martin in the probe of academic scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, doesn’t help the case that the bogus classes in African studies did not constitute an athletics as well as an academic scandal.

Nearly half of the students in 172 phony classes in African studies were athletes. And of the 512 suspect grade changes found during that period, nearly half involved athletes. But Baker Tilly says that’s not evidence of an athletic scandal.

So what is it then? An incredible coincidence?

Gov. Martin reached that same finding in his overall report, which was much touted when announced, but decidedly uninspiring when released. It appeared that the scope of the investigation was limited, which has prompted suspicion that the university did not want it to go too deeply.

No scandal?

A report by The News & Observer’s Dan Kane and J. Andrew Curliss included Baker Tilly’s explanation for the conclusion that no athletic scandal existed. Raina Rose Tagle, a Baker Tilly partner, said the fact that that nonathletes in the classes also got suspect grade changes shows this was purely an academic scandal involving one department.

The problem with that logic is that athletes enrolled in the university account for 5 percent of the undergraduate student population but made up 45 percent of the students enrolled in the classes. Tagle says they might have been heavily enrolled in African studies because a large number of athletes were African-American.

There’s some logic there, but then there are the problems, already reported by The News & Observer, with prominent athletes being given extraordinary help with grades far outside the rules, and the presence of an academic advising system for athletes that is alleged to have steered many of them to certain courses. One former adviser transferred out of the academic advising office because of issues like that.

The latest report, Kane and Curliss wrote, did not disclose how many football and men’s basketball players were in the suspect classes, nor did it say how many of those classes were taken by each athlete compared to nonathletes. And it didn’t explain how some freshman football players got into classes normally reserve for upperclassmen.

The UNC Board of Governors, which received the report, may seek and get more information next month.

Staying eligible

Of concern to UNC-Chapel Hill is the possibility that it could be shown that athletes were given breaks in order to help them stay academically eligible to play sports. If that’s found to be the case, the NCAA, the governing body of college athletics, might open a new investigation of its own. The report didn’t say whether, for example, grade changes helped to preserve athletics eligibility.

At this point, an NCAA probe would seem to be a prudent step.

Consider the comment of Gerald Gurney, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, who is a past president of the National Association of Academic Advisers. Gurney told The N&O that the way the new report was written “is obviously a smokescreen.”

It is long since time that this two-year embarrassment was answered with an explanation that doesn’t insult the intelligence of alums and supporters of UNC-Chapel Hill and the taxpayers of North Carolina. The university seems to believe that this will all go away somehow, and that the disclosure already made are no big deal.

But this is a big deal. This has been a university that boasted often of the “Carolina way,” of being an example of a “big time” athletics program that worked in tandem as part of an institution dedicated first to academic excellence.

But the “way” was not working as well as top officials believed. Now the Board of Governors, with its many new appointees, has a chance to demand a tough, thorough, candid and complete explanation of what happened.

Gov. Pat McCrory’s comments on liberal arts elicit firestorm of debate – NewsObserver.com

Published: Feb. 1, 2013

Gov. Pat McCrory’s comments on liberal arts elict firestorm of debate

By John Frank – jfrank@newsobserver.com

ROCKY MOUNT — Gov. Pat McCrory appeared to temper his stance on the state’s higher education system Thursday, two days after his criticism of “educational elite” and gender studies touched off a national firestorm.

The Republican told Rocky Mount business leaders that he wants a combination approach to funding the state’s universities and colleges that considers student enrollment numbers and how many graduates get jobs.

“Instead of just having the legislative (funding) formula for schools be based upon the number of people that go to those schools, it should also include a formula that looks at the results of what the schools are doing,” he told a Rocky Mount Area Chamber event.

Earlier this week, McCrory used bolder language on a national radio talk show, saying that he is drafting legislation to give money to colleges “not based on how many butts in seats but how many of those butts can get jobs.

“If you want to take gender studies that’s fine, go to a private school and take it,” McCrory told host Bill Bennett, a former U.S. Secretary of Education. “But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.

The sharp language elicited a fierce outcry from students and faculty at UNC and across the country. But McCrory stayed away from such comments Thursday. At an event earlier in the day, he bristled when asked about his gender studies remark.

“I never mentioned liberal arts in a negative way,” McCrory told reporters.

“I believe education is for two purposes,” he continued. “One is to help exercise the brain and get good critical-thinking and problem-solving skills and understand our past and our future. And the second reason is to teach us skills that will also help us get jobs.

“That’s clearly what I said, and I stick with it.”

In the radio interview McCrory said: “I do believe in a liberal arts education. I got one. I think there are two reasons for education. One is, as my dad used to say, is to exercise the brain. But the second is to get a skill.”

But those comments came after he had questioned the value of a doctorate in philosophy and Swahili language courses and the role of women in community colleges.

UNC crowd defends liberal arts

McCrory’s remarks continue to draw cutting responses.

Joe DeSimone, a chemistry professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and chemical engineering professor, started a chain of Tweets by saying he wanted to work with the governor to “realize the role that liberal arts (education) plays in society” and how it affected him as a person and entrepreneur.

DeSimone, director of UNC-CH’s Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, said he felt compelled to write about the value of liberal arts education after McCrory’s mixed messages on the topic.

“When we talk about the liberal arts and the value it brings, I think it’s the essence of our success in job creation,” said DeSimone, who launched several spinoff businesses based on his chemistry research.

DeSimone said he spent about an hour with McCrory when he was candidate for governor. He said the governor understands the role of the universities in North Carolina’s economic development.

“I’m just going to look at this as a little hiccup,” DeSimone said.

UNC system President Tom Ross issued a statement critical of McCrory’s initial comments, but a spokeswoman said the two subsequently spoke by phone and called the discussion “cordial.”

McCrory’s latest remarks didn’t satisfy Jennifer Job, an English major who taught in North Carolina schools before returning to UNC-Chapel Hill for a doctorate in education.

“I don’t believe him until I see a whole legislative session go by without him trying to make any cuts to the liberal arts,” said Job, who started an online petition to protect liberal arts classes in the UNC system. “In a perfect world I would like him to not only apologize … but also give some recognition for the good those programs are doing in North Carolina.”

Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis said Thursday that lawmakers continue to look at different ways to fund higher education. He referenced Virginia, where lawmakers linked state funding to research output and degree completion, particularly in science and math fields.

Tillis spoke to the governor after the radio show and contends McCrory is committed to “a well-balanced approach to education in our university systems” and just misspoke.

“What we are really just trying to do,” Tillis said, “is make sure in the areas where we can make some adjustments, we make people more likely to get a job. That’s really what he intended to say.”

Staff writer Jane Stancill contributed.

Frank: 919-829-4698

Preparing minds for evolving jobs – Other Views – NewsObserver.com

Published: Feb. 1, 2013

Point of View: Preparing minds for evolving work

By Chuck Tryon

In a radio interview with former U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, Gov. Pat McCrory spelled out his attitude toward humanities education, stating that he sees little value in “subsidizing” courses that he believes contribute to North Carolina’s high unemployment rate.

But McCrory’s comments overlook the true value of a humanities education, not just for our students but for our communities. In fact, having a degree in philosophy, English or gender studies – to name fields McCrory dismissed – may prove to be one of the best paths toward getting and keeping a rewarding, high-paying job.

McCrory’s remarks aren’t just idle comments where he was playing to a sympathetic radio audience. Instead, the governor is working to draft legislation that would fund universities based on how many students get jobs rather than on the usual formula of “butts in seats,” as he bluntly put it.

McCrory’s idea is flawed, however, given that students struggle to get jobs for reasons that have little to do with training. Even fields such as nursing have become intensely competitive. In addition, in just a few years, many students will be working in jobs that do not currently exist, which means that graduates need more than training for specific tasks. Instead, they need to develop vital skills that will be applicable in a variety of jobs.

His depiction of what happens in most liberal arts classrooms also is dated and ignores current trends in many humanities fields toward 21st century skills, including collaboration, communication, problem-solving and technological literacy.

At Fayetteville State, for example, the English Department has begun emphasizing coursework in professional writing. N.C. State has developed an advanced degree program in communication, rhetoric and digital media, a field that looks at cutting-edge technologies and how they change our communication patterns.

No matter what, there is clear evidence that degrees in the humanities help prepare students for the workplace. Research cited in Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s “Academically Adrift” shows that humanities classes have been incredibly effective in providing students with the close reading and critical thinking skills that many employers crave.

I share the governor’s concern about the costs and benefits of going to college. Tuition costs are rising rapidly, for a variety of reasons, which has resulted in trillions of dollars in student loan debt. As a college professor, one of my biggest concerns is whether I am doing enough to prepare my students for an increasingly competitive workplace.

I also share McCrory’s desire to support vocational training, as well as majors in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. North Carolina has benefited immensely from the work being done in the Research Triangle. And students who choose to attend a community college or to get other forms of training can fill jobs – technicians, welders, mechanics and medical staff – that are difficult to outsource or import to new locations.

But placing emphasis solely on STEM majors and vocational training neglects the importance and value of a well-rounded liberal arts education and the often highly flexible skills that humanities graduates develop during their college years.

No matter what, students who complete college degrees are far more likely to find high-paying jobs than those with high school diplomas. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for college graduates is 4.5 percent, while people with diplomas face an 8.3 percent unemployment rate. Those with bachelor’s degrees can expect to earn a median weekly wage of $1,066; those with diplomas make about $652 per week.

Students who demonstrate outstanding critical thinking skills do even better when it comes to finding jobs. These numbers strongly suggest that we should be investing more in our college and universities, not less, if we hope to maintain North Carolina’s status an attractive place to work and live.

UNC has long been one of the most respected university systems in the United States, a community of scholars and students who have furthered our understanding of the world. Thousands of talented students graduate from our universities every year.

Rather than weakening the state’s reputation by reducing the role of the humanities, why not embrace its strengths and focus on celebrating the accomplishments of the professors and students working in all areas of academic study?

Chuck Tryon is an assistant professor of English at Fayetteville State University.

Point of View – Martinez: McCrory’s correct comments bring overdue look at relevance -NewsObserver.com

Published: Feb. 1, 2013

Point of View: A long overdue look at relevance

By Rick Martinez

Gov. Pat McCrory got it right when he questioned the value of certain liberal arts fields of study as practiced and subsidized today in North Carolina.

The backlash he has received over his comments to talk show host Bill Bennett has only served to underscore the need for a serious reassessment. Specifically, the governor and others want to tie education funding to performance-based formulas that include graduation rates (which are embarrassingly low at some state institutions) and the success of those graduates in finding jobs. That would be a big change to the status quo, which is to shovel money toward the universities based primarily on enrollment.

So why is the academy so upset? McCrory didn’t say he wants to defund the liberal arts and turn the university system into UNC-Tech. In fact, he cited the benefits of his own liberal arts education and the view of nearly all business leaders about the economic value of a well-rounded university education. It was the new governor’s audacity to publicly question the value of some liberal arts courses – specifically gender and ethnic studies – and to wonder aloud to what degree they deserve taxpayer subsidies that kicked off the firestorm.

I have the same questions as the governor. For example, what do these programs produce beyond instructors, counselors and support staff for the next generation of ethnic and gender study departments? Has the scholarship in these fields progressed beyond the perpetuation of victimhood?

Asking such questions isn’t sexist, racist or anti-liberal arts. This is about examining relevance and value. This is common practice in nearly every field except – or so it seems – public higher education.

One would think that defenders of the liberal arts would embrace rather than condemn critical examination and qualitative measurement.

For too long we’ve measured “education governors” simply by the amount of money they’ve steered to the education bureaucracy. McCrory’s push for performance-based funding champions the end-users of education: students, taxpayers and the people who pay the tuition bills.

More troubling than anything the governor said are suggestions made to this newspaper by liberal arts champions, including some faculty members, that teaching college students skills would produce a generation of nonthinkers. That attitude is more than intellectual arrogance. It’s intellectual isolationism.

As anyone who works in a skills-based occupation can readily attest, things rarely go as planned. Getting the job done often requires creative thinking, communication and problem-solving on a daily basis. To insinuate that students who graduate with specific skills are nonthinkers is akin to saying that those in basic research have superior intellect over those in the applied sciences. There are first-class thinkers in every walk of life.

Not only do I hope McCrory keeps talking about this, I also hope he delves into the tougher philosophical question of who should be responsible for paying for higher education. For generations, the mission was to educate the elite based on the premise that these educated (primarily) men would be equipped to contribute to the greater good of society. The theory was that their contributions justified the significant public subsidy of their education.

But that model is on the wane. Today, higher education is more accessible to women, minorities and lower-income students, and their priority is a degree, a marketable skill, as well as an appreciation for the liberal arts.

I have no problem with this new model. But it’s only fair that if the acquisition of skills provides primarily personal, economic and professional benefits, then these students should pick up a larger share of the cost of their personal education. In other words, I don’t think it’s right to ask the 74 percent of North Carolinians who do not have bachelor’s degrees or higher to subsidize the educations of the 26 percent of state residents who do.

Like it or not, higher education is at a crossroads. McCrory’s challenge about the relationship between relevance and funding is not only welcome, it’s long overdue.

Contributing columnist Rick Martinez (rickjmartinez2@gmail.com) is news director at WPTF, NC News Network and SGRToday.com

County in running for ECU community dental facility – The News Reporter

The News Reporter, Whiteville

Published: Wednesday, January 9, 2013 3:00 am

By NICOLE CARTRETTE Staff Writer

Columbus County has a chance to become home to one of 10 East Carolina School of Dental Medicine Community Service Learning Centers (CSLC).

The facilities will serve as extensions of the school, with dental faculty, dental residents, dental students and other professionals living within the communities they serve via the CSLCs.

Kim Smith, county health department director, will ask commissioners Monday night to support a potential partnership with the dental school and assist with securing potential land donation prospects.

“It’s a win-win situation for our area,” Smith said of the jobs, nice facility and services the CSLC would bring to the county. “It would be really nice to have this at our back door.”

Smith said funding for the buildings is provided to the dental school but land donation is required.

“It is just very critical because the need is so great in this county,” Smith said.

The dental services provide via the Columbus County Health Department are limited typically to children, Smith said.

“We get calls from desperate adults a lot,” Smith said. “All we can do for them is a simple tooth pull. “Dental issues if not corrected can create a whole new set of health issues. It is so important.”

Untreated problems often result in emergency room visits, officials say.

Dental emergencies accounted for more than 69,000 ER visits in North Carolina in 2009.

The legislature backed the ECU concept in 2006, as the number of dentists per capita dropped in the state.

Smith said the state is 47th in the nation today with the number of dentists per capita.

Needs in Columbus County – ranked as the least healthy county in the state for the third year in a row – are great, Smith said.

Four of the centers will provide oral heath services to vulnerable populations in rural communities with populations that do not have access to regular dental care.

Each center will serve as a regional resource and to serve not only the local community but also to surrounding counties.

“Educating dental students and residents in community-based settings while providing much-needed patient care is vital to achieving the mission of the School of Dental Medicine and East Carolina University,” according to the official written description of the project.

East Carolina University and UNC Chapel Hill were equally committed to the plan to promote more dentistry and grow the ECU Dental School. The plan was viewed as a potential nationwide model by the UNC-appointed review team and drew on the strengths of ECU’s focus on primary care and UNC Chapel Hill’s prominence as a premier research university, according to the ECU School of Dentistry publication “A Joint Plan for Dentistry with UNC Chapel Hill.

At the time, more than a fourth of all counties in the state were served by just two dentists or fewer than one for every 10,000 people. Some counties had no dentist and as many as 40 had dentists who did not accept Medicaid patients.

In 85 of the state’s rural counties, there is an average of three dentists per 10,000 people compared to an average of six dentists per 10,000 people nationally.

The item is one of several on the Jan. 7 Columbus County commissioner meeting agenda. The board meets at 6:30 p.m. today with other items to include a retirement presentation to Cleo Skipper, a former Social Services employee.

A Centennial Celebration of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority proclamation, and N.C. Catalyst grant document approval, plus a local school board member recognition month resolution are on the agenda.

Columbus County schools are requesting additional resource officers for the schools. Aging is seeking a 10 percent ($4,000) grant match for base heath promotion funds. The airport is seeking approval of a safety and maintenance projects plan.

Cooperative Extension is seeking approval of a marketing ordinance for Down East Connect Farmers Fresh Market and a grant application, among other items on the agenda including a closed session for undisclosed economic development and contract negotiations.

Editorial: Bidding bon voyage to the sealab Aquarius — StarNewsOnline.com

The Wilmington Star News

Published: Jan. 10, 2013

NASA scientist Emma Hwang, an aquanaut on the NEEMO 5 team aboard the Aquarius research habitat beneath waters off the Florida Keys, watches a school of marine fish on the other side of the habitat’s viewing port. The NEEMO 5 mission was headed toward the final 24 hours of underwater research and evaluation. The crew spent 14 days June 16-29, 2003, in the undersea habitat owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, testing its fidelity as an analog for long-duration space flight.

Editorial: Bidding bon voyage to the sealab Aquarius

UNCW has lost a piece of its marine science program, but research will go on

“UNCW does lose a little of what makes it unique by losing this program.”

– Tom Potts, director,

Aquarius project

And that, quite simply, is a shame.

The marine science programs at the University of North Carolina Wilmington are among the best in the nation, merging cutting-edge research with practical applications. As research tools go, Aquarius is one of a kind, the world’s only undersea lab. But the loss of federal funding has forced UNCW to give up the ship, so to speak.

The good news is that Aquarius’ work will go on, this time under the supervision of Florida International University in Miami.

Last year Aquarius’ owner, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, eliminated its undersea research programs in the face of budget cuts. A scramble to keep the program afloat ensued, but UNCW – which also has taken a big hit in state funding – decided it couldn’t afford to continue operating the yellow submarine, which costs about $3 million a year if money for research projects is included.

Enter FIU, which is in an excellent position geographically to take over the duties of Aquarius and which managed to assemble the funding necessary.

Aquarius has allowed scientists to study changes in the coral reefs off Florida up close. The Navy and NASA also have used the vessel for research. UNCW operated the program for more than 20 years. Now a different university will have the honor of continuing its important underwater research.

Even minus Aquarius, the UNCW marine sciences program will continue to turn out bright, skilled graduates and conduct important research. But it is sad to lose what had become a signature piece of that program.

As difficult as it is to say goodbye, it would have been an even greater loss had the Aquarius program been allowed to die.

UNC-CH needs to fix flaws in ECSU pharmacy school — The Daily Advance

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.

Mental health scars common after cardiac arrest – Reuters

Published: Thu Dec 13, 2012

Mental health scars common after cardiac arrest

By Trevor Stokes

Reuters Health – A quarter of cardiac arrest survivors suffer long-term psychological problems such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, a new review of research estimates.

This additional stress on recovering patients is under-diagnosed, researchers say, and doctors have few standard methods for identifying who is at risk.

“Anxiety, depression and PTSD are major concerns after cardiac arrest,” said lead author Kathryn Wilder Schaaf, a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University. “We have the tools to treat this, (so) it’s important to make sure that it’s identified,” she added.

Many long-term care issues for survivors are unknown, experts said, largely because only 10 percent of the 382,800 Americans who suffer cardiac arrest each year survive.

And that rate is higher than in the past. Cardiac arrest – when the heart stops beating suddenly and completely – is distinct from conditions often labeled as “heart attacks.” In cardiac arrest, if the heart is not re-started quickly, brain damage or death usually results.

Cold therapy, which can protect the brain for a time, and implanted defibrillator devices, which can re-start an arrested heart, have helped to lower the death toll from cardiac arrest, but little is known about what mental and emotional scars may linger among survivors.

Wilder Schaaf and colleagues reviewed 11 studies published between 1993 and 2011 that looked at mental health issues following cardiac arrests experienced outside of a hospital and found problems plaguing anywhere from 15 percent to 50 percent or more of patients.

Months to years after surviving cardiac arrest, about one-third of patients were depressed and nearly two-thirds were experiencing anxiety. Even PTSD symptoms were surprisingly common, afflicting 19 percent to 27 percent of survivors, the medical literature showed.

In reality, however, the long-term mental health state of many cardiac arrest survivors is not typically considered or assessed, the researchers write in their report, which appears in the journal Resuscitation.

But treating mental illnesses in other types of heart patients has been shown to increase long-term survival while decreasing costs, according to independent research.

In a study published in November, for example, researchers found that a depressed patient recovering from a heart attack treated with psychotherapy and antidepressants during a six-month trial incurred – on average – $1,857 in medical costs, whereas a depressed patient who received no psychological treatments cost an average of $2,797 over the same time period.

Other research suggests that mental health issues impact physical recovery, too. Over a five-year period, survivors of cardiac arrest and similar events who did not show signs of PTSD lived three and a half times longer than those with ongoing trauma, according to a 2008 study by Dr. Karl-Heinz Ladwig, an epidemiologist at the Helmholtz Zentrum München in Germany.

Stress can affect the nervous system and impact heart rates, as well as worsening chronic inflammation, which also hurts the heart Ladwig told Reuters Health.

“We have problems convincing cardiologists to understand that depression is a very relevant part of their clinical work,” Ladwig said.

Ladwig suggested that doctors can gauge trauma through screening questions that are, “easy to put in a normal discussion.”

“This is a brand new area that is going to require thoughtful scientists, vigilant family members and an awareness from patients,” said Dr. Karina Davidson, director of the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, who was not involved in the new study.

Nightmares plus an avoidance of doctors, medications or follow-up appointments are all signs that a recovering heart patient should seek mental health help, Davidson said.

Psychological recovery includes the patient developing feelings of safety and believing the future will be prosperous, said Samuel Sears, a professor at East Carolina University who studies the psychological effects of cardiac trauma.

A range of tools can help patients achieve that goal, including peer support groups such as the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Survivors Association and smart-phone apps such as ICD Coach (in which Sears has a financial interest), he noted.

Sears said he is optimistic that an understanding of the connection between head and heart will eventually reach the doctor’s office.

Nude photos in ECU student magazine raise eyebrows – WRAL.com

Published: December 13, 2012

Nude photos in ECU student magazine raise eyebrows

Greenville, N.C. — A student-run arts magazine at East Carolina University is raising eyebrows over its decision to publish nude photos in its latest issue.

The student-fee-funded Expressions printed six full-page photos, some of full-frontal nudity, as part of its Dec. 6 issue of stories, essays artwork and poems exploring the theme “Hidden in Plain Sight.”

“The goal of this project was to expose the societal fear of vulnerability hiding in plain sight,” an explanation accompanying the photos reads. “People in American society cover their natural appearance with clothes, accessories and make-up. By removing those items, complete and natural beauty remains.”

The magazine’s general manager, sophomore Micah Lockhart, said the decision to include the images in the latest issue was the result of exhaustive discussion with faculty advisors.

“We wanted to create this sort-of molded element that all attributed to one idea,” he said. “If you disagree with me, let’s have a conversation. I didn’t do this for any – there was no mal-intent. I did this for an artistic purpose to show something to illustrate an idea.”

Virginia Hardy, vice chancellor of student affairs, said in a statement Thursday that ECU supports “the intellectual freedom of our students” and says measures were taken in the magazine to alert readers about the nature of the photos.

“In this instance, our Expressions staff and advisors went through a broad, rigorous and clearly defined decision process,” Hardy said. “They used specific criteria to make an informed decision. As part of that process, students and staff decided to place multiple warnings in the publication to alert readers about the content.”

“We understand people view material including human nudity in widely varied ways, and that might be the case with this issue of Expressions,” she continued. “Some will view the content in the context of art, and others may not.”

Student opinion is mixed, and it’s ignited a debate over freedom of speech.

“It’s like pornography, pretty much,” first-year student Kayleigh Fadero said.

“I think students should be able to publish whatever they want to publish,” sophomore Blake Osborn said.

Nudity in student-run publications isn’t new.

Last November, the university’s newspaper, “The East Carolinian” ran on its front page an uncensored photo of a streaker at a Pirates football game.

The university fired its student media faculty adviser two months later.

While not addressing the newspaper photo, the university said Thursday that the photos in Expressions are different, because of the subject matter.

“The Expressions staff believes when this section is viewed in context of theme and with the written supporting pieces that this is tastefully and artfully presented,” the university said in a statement.

Reporter: Cullen Browder
Photographer: Terry Cantrell
Web Editor: Kelly Gardner