Presentation of the Hettleman Awards:
Each year we are privileged to confer the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Awards for outstanding scholarly and artistic achievement by young faculty. 1986 was the first year of this award,. Established by the late Philip Hettleman, UNC alumnus and resident of New York State, Philip and Ruth Hettleman. The award recognizes outstanding young faculty who themselves symbolize the aspirations and excellence of the entire faculty in advancing the frontiers of knowledge and understanding across a broad range of disciplines. I am honored to announce the awards as follows - and let me ask you please to come forward when I announce your award.
1. Corey Dauber, Department of Communication Studies [applause]
2. Shannon Kenney, Department of Infectious Diseases [applause]; and
3. Holden Thorp, Department of Chemistry [applause]
Professor Jianqing Fan of the Department of Statistics is out of the country and has already received his award.
Introduction of Dr. Susan T. Kitchen, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs:
It gives me great pleasure to introduce our new Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, who comes to us from the University of Maryland Baltimore campus. [applause] I have worked with Sue in a previous post and I can tell you that she is fantastic.
Remarks:
Let me remind you that tomorrow is University Day and it would be a delight to see all of you. I have been assured that we're going to hear the best University Day talk that's ever been given. Just to turn up the burner a little bit Doris Betts is our University Day speaker, and I know that this will be a labor of love for her and the love that she put into her talk will pour out of it I am sure.
Iím sorry that [Provost] Dick Richardson is not here. He had to at the last minute to represent me at another meeting. I want to thank him for the work that he's done over the past year. Dick has done a superb job, and it's just been a joy to work with him as it is with [Executive Vice Chancellor] Elson [Floyd] and with all the people that I associate with on a daily basis. I can say the same for Jane Brown. It has been a joy to work with her, and it has also been very gratifying to work with your Executive Committee. This is my fourth Faculty Council committee, actually ninth if you count all the ones that I worked with a UMass, and I've never worked with a Faculty Council committee that has given me the degree of sympathetic response that I have from this committee. I think it's fair to say that as regards this University and where we want it to go, we are exactly where we want it to go, we are exactly in sync with each other. And I think that bodes well for us all, and it makes life a lot more fun. So my thanks go to all those people.
Jane has asked me to report to you on a report that I made to the Advisory Budget Commission. This commission initiates the budget process every year with visits to every state agency. They report back to the Governor on the needs of those agencies and that initiates the budget development process from the Governor's perspective. The University budget request was approved by the Board of Governors this morning. So that is already in process. But as regards the Governor's recommendations to the General Assembly, this is the first step of that process.
The first thing that I did was to report to the Commission on the uses that we have made of the enhancement funds that we were given by the Legislature this year. I want to make sure that everybody appreciates the significance of the budget increase that we got in the form of the $9 million academic enhancement funds. This appropriation is the result of an effort that I undertook 364 days ago, University Day last year. We had just been through the tortuous process of passing the tuition increase that had been approved by the Legislature,. The Legislature had given our Board permission to approve an across-the-board tuition increase of $400. And it occurred to me that it would be a show of good faith if the Legislature were to match the money that students and their parents were putting into the University to enhance faculty salaries and to enhance the Library, by giving us a general fund appropriation that would match that amount. And so checking with Representative Brubaker, Speaker of the House, and Senator Basnight, President Pro Tempore of the Senate, I found that the legislative leadership would be supportive of the idea. In my University Day address last year I issued a challenge to the Legislature, and, mirabile dictu, they gave us a budget that matched the revenue that we go from the tuition increase. As we were working to secure this appropriation, I at several points got inquiries from members of the Appropriations Committee and from the leadership about what the University would do with the money. And I wrote them a fairly lengthy letter explaining that we had three priorities. First was faculty and staff salaries. Next was graduate student health insurance if they didn't get funded in the general budget. After that the other two priorities were technology on campus, improving our use of technology and our capacity to use technology by providing more infrastructure for the campus, and then the other priority was outreach to the public schools, recognizing that probably nothing is more important right now in this state than securing our future by improving the quality of our public schools. Those ideas were persuasive and the Legislature gave us the appropriation. So I wanted to report to the Advisory Budget Commission on the uses of the funds.
I also took the occasion to say to them what I will say to you - how important it is to have these funds. This appropriation was funded with recurring revenues, which means that it will be a permanent increase in our budget. It was the Legislature's intention, recognizing that the tuition increase was permanent, that these funds should be permanently put into our budget. And so they have been. And for that reason they will be available to us to use on an annual basis for one-time expenditures that will significantly enhance our capacity to improve in various areas where we recognize the need for improvement, and where we recognize the need for investment that will keep us abreast of the changes taking place in the world of higher education, and in the external world. It is, if you calculate it in these terms, and it is accurate to do so, it is the equivalent of a $200 million endowment, because it would take about that much money to generate that level of annual income for discretionary spending. So I told the ABC Commission how grateful we were for that money; that it was my intention to report annually to the Legislature on the use of every penny of that money, so that the Legislature would understand that their investment in the University was returning dividends to the people of North Carolina.
We have decided to use the enhancement appropriation this year in four areas. The first is to add a half a percent increase to the faculty salary increase. We and NC State were left out of the half a percent salary increase funds provided to other campuses in part because we had the benefit of the $400 increase last year and had gotten the enhancement funds this year. So that was the first use of the funds. The second use of the funds, because they did not fund graduate student health insurance in the general budget, will be to provide graduate student health insurance. The exact cost of that remains to be seen, but it is in somewhere in the $2.5 to $4 million dollar range. We will try again to get that into our base budget next year. While that's wonderful for our graduate program, it still leaves us at the bottom of the list of top twenty universities in terms of level of support that we give to graduate students. So it is a beginning, but it is certainly not the end of our effort to improve the level of support for graduate students. The other two areas, then, where we will apply these funds for this year are in building our capacity to use technology on the campus and there we are still working to try to identify the programs to be funded. Aaron Nelson in the Student Government this week send me a list of requests of , I think, about eight areas , all of which are good, all of which would be good investments. And Elson and Dick will work with Aaron to try to fund as many of those as we can, as fully as we can.
We also recognize that many of you are in the position that I was in a couple of years ago. That is, you've got a computer, you use it for word processing, but not for very much else. And you've always thought that it would be nice to enhance your lectures with the use of graphics, but you really don't know how to go about doing that. And the only reason I can say that I was in that situation and I'm not now is because I spent enough time in our Institute for Academic Technology, which is headed by Bill Graves, to now understand how I could build an introductory Philosophy course that would be enhanced or enriched by use of a CD ROM based imagery and computer graphics. So we want everybody to have the experience, if they want it, that I've had over the past year. The Provost is developing a program of grants to faculty members to encourage them to use, to explore the use of technology in your own teaching. And I'm optimistic that that will be a great benefit to us. We recognize that we have a long way to go in bringing ourselves up to the level of Western Carolina, for example, in wiring our residence halls for technology. We don't really have, we didn't get enough money out of the Legislature to do that, but the Board of Trustees has decided to enable us to borrow to accelerate the wiring of the residence halls, so that every student in her residence hall room can sit down at a PC and plug into the Internet. Right now, Old East and Old West are the only residence halls in which students can do that.. We have a number of other residence halls where we have common rooms, computer rooms, but not in students rooms. And just not to embarrass us, but simply to state the truth, most universities now, public and private, have given that level of access to their students in their residence halls. Western Carolina was the first in this state to do so. Wake Forest does and has gotten a lot of good, well deserved publicity this year for that.
The other area that I mentioned to the Advisory Budget Commission was outreach to the public schools. And there we have two projects that are well along this year. The first is something that goes under the acronym LEARN North Carolina. If I can remember it, it's Learners and Educators Assistance Resource Network of North Carolina. What it is is an effort on our part , a partnership of the Institute of Academic Technology and the School of Education to teach public school teachers how to use computers in the classroom.. We have four pilot sites: Chatham County, Johnston County, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and Buncombe County-Asheville. And the project, as I say, is underway now. It will be expanded next year. And, again, I hope that's something the Legislature will see fit to incorporate into our base budget.
The second project we're doing with the public schools is one that I am passionate about, and that is to work to reduce attrition among new school teachers. Probably you've read in the newspaper that if you project in North Carolina the past two years' attrition forward for five years, those attrition rates have us losing more than 50% of our new school teachers within five years. And that's just unacceptable. It is very often the brightest and best who leave the teaching profession simply because they're able to easily get a job elsewhere. In fact I overheard two bank executives talking at a cocktail party in Charlotte a month ago, and they were saying that the best recruiting ground that they have for new young bank executives in their training programs is public school teachers, because they work hard, they're bright, and they make great bank employees. Well, I don't wish ill to the banking industry in North Carolina, but we're eating our seed corn if we take teachers out of public schools and send them into the banking industry. That is shortsighted. So we want to work to reduce attrition among public school teachers. And the thing that we think we can do first is by linking them electronically with each other, that is giving them a computer, a modem, and paying their phone bill, we can enable them to overcome the sense of isolation that they feel. And I have been acutely sensitized to this because my wife's daughter was last year a first year teacher in Charlotte, and I talked with her almost daily about the frustrations that she was experiencing. And the thing that was most hurtful to her was that she felt like she was alone in the Universe, that nobody understood her problem, and nobody had a problem like hers, and it was just terribly daunting. Well, the truth is that virtually every new teacher encounters problems they didnít expect, and that's something that we're going to address. But whatever our success in the future in addressing that, the truth is that now they are not well prepared for a lot of the problems that they encounter, so we're going to link them electronically to each other so that they can talk at the end of the day, via email, about their frustrations, give coaching tips to each other, and we will link them with master teachers in the schools who can give presumably even better coaching tips to them, and with faculty here in the School of Education to monitor and mentor the process. That's something that I think will go a long way to overcoming the sense of isolation and frustration that new teachers feel. By the way, our North Carolina Teachers Fellows Program, which takes the brightest and best from our public high schools who are willing to go into the teaching profession, gives them tuition support here, is a program that has the highest attrition rate, so that our best are the ones who are frustrated most and first and leave soonest. So, we're working with the North Carolina Teaching Fellows, last year's graduating class from Carolina. And they are our pilot project.
Another thing that I talked with the Advisory Budget Commission is something that I have mentioned to you before, and that is the 40,000 student increase that is projected for North Carolina between now and I think the next school year of 2010. Present projections show there'll be 40,000 more high school graduates in the year 2010 than there are this year. That will put an enormous burden on public universities to absorb those students. The Legislature is acutely aware of this phenomenon that is looming on the horizon. They have begun asking us what we are going to do about it. There are campuses in the state that can expand enrollments, UNC-Charlotte, for example, has plans to double its enrollment, UNC-Wilmington can increase substantially its enrollment, and on some other campuses as well. But we can't. We, as you know, are bulging at the seams. Our classrooms are overscheduled as it is. So we are not in a position to do very much to absorb more students, but we can do something. We can make better use of our plant, physical plant, which is underutilized after 5 p.m. in the evenings. And so we have begun working to develop a baccalaureate program, a bachelor of liberal studies that could be offered in the Evening College or in a weekend college and thereby absorb some of this 40,000 increase that's anticipated. But we also can, I think, possibly, develop programs that we teach via digital technology at distant locations in the State of North Carolina. You may have seen an announcement in yesterday's paper that we have agreed to join a project that IBM has created called Global Campus, IBM Global Campus. So far we have only an affirmation to work together. We haven't really agreed to anything beyond that except that we know that IBM has the infrastructure to deliver distance education and we have the capacity to supply content. Wake Forest is also working with IBM, and so is the California State University System. And there are some areas that we know right away will be served by this project. For example, the Board of Governors just this morning appropriated, I think it was $350,000, to the School of Public Health here to do an MPH program for public health practitioners who are out in public health agencies in the State of North Carolina and who want to get their Master's degree, upgrade their skills and knowledge. And that will all be done via distance learning. It will be done via email, CD ROM, interactive video, and IBM can supply the backbone for that program. So that's an example. We know that in continuing medical education, continuing dental education, there will be immediate applications. What we don't know is whether there will be much to offer in the traditional liberal arts disciplines. If you've given any thought to putting liberal arts courses on email or digital technology, taking the live human contact out of it, you see what a challenge it is to sustain the vitality of it, the vibrancy of it, and the essence of it that makes it meaningful education. And I am not convinced yet that it can be done in a way that sustains a level of quality that makes it acceptable. But I suspect it can. I've toyed with doing it, for example, in an introductory Logic course. Thatís probably the only Philosophy course I'm willing to concede that could be digitized and taught as effectively with electronic technology as it can with a professor in a live classroom. But I'm convinced that you could teach Logic that way. And there are probably other liberal arts courses that will work that way as well. But the one thing that we confront is a sea change in the external environment where this digital technology is going to be everywhere with us, and it's going to change all of the rules by which universities interact with the external world. I'm going to say more about that the next time we get together. But I did want to make you aware of it and to say something about the IBM partnership.
Just a couple of other things. Let me encourage you, if you haven't done so, to support the bond issue that is before us in the upcoming election. There is a public referendum to approve a school construction bond. This is something that was discussed in including with the higher education bond bill a couple of years ago. It was not - I wasn't around so I'm not sure what the reasoning was. But I know that at that time public school teachers, principals, superintendents, boards of education, were very supportive of higher education's bond bill, and we should now be supportive of theirs, not as tit-for-tat, quid pro quo, but rather because that is our future. Public schools educate the students who come to us, and there is a desperate need right now for school construction funding throughout the State of North Carolina. And so I am lobbying with you to support the bill and to persuade others to support it as well.
There is a resolution on the Agenda regarding privatization, and let me just say something about that. The issue of privatization is one that is vexing for me. And it should be for all of us. It is a significant morale issue for our housekeepers and lately our groundskeepers. I'm not sure how they [the groundskeepers] entered the picture or why their anxieties have been elevated, but they have. We had, yesterday, day before yesterday, a recognition luncheon for a lot of the maintenance workers, police, groundskeepers, and food service workers who worked above and beyond the call of duty during the hurricane to keep students fed and to maintain the safety on the campus. And when I walked around before the lunch the anxiety in the room was palpable, and when I spoke to people, it was palpable. People are afraid of privatization because they are afraid of their jobs. And I deplore that that's the current mood on campus. If I could do it, I would just decree that we're not going to privatize housekeeping, we're not going to privatize groundskeeping, but it's not within my power. This is an issue that's before the Legislature. It's an issue that's before the Board of Governors. And it's a complex issue. We already privatize, I think, about a hundred different services. Some of them, let me just read you a list: vending services, refuse pickup services, dumpster rental, elevator maintenance services, pest control, towing services, international mailing services, bookbinding services, banking, carpet installation, hazardous waste disposal, elevator maintenance, food service, furniture upholstery, travel services, laundry services, microfiche services, child care services, and of course, we have privatized the Lenoir Hall food service and the Carolina Inn. Very often, as in these cases, it makes sense to privatize, and nobody is hurt by our doing so. The Carolina Inn is a good example. The last year we operated the Carolina Inn we lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on the operation of it. We then closed it, refurbished it, and outsourced, privatized the running of it, contracted it out to a hotel company, Doubletree. And this year, after all expenses are paid, including the amortization of the cost of renovation, we will make between $300,000 and $400,000 profit in a profit-sharing plan with Doubletree. Every penny of that will come here to the Library for its use. So that is new money. It will go into the Library budgetósorely needed. And I think it's fair to say that the employees at the Carolina Inn are reasonably happy. While the housekeepers there make less than our housekeepers, they participate in a bonus program, an incentive bonus program, that will result probably in their making as much or maybe more, and they have significant job advancement possibilities. So, I'm satisfied that the contracting out the running of the Carolina Inn was a good idea.
As you know, lately the public has come to expect that government can do everything better, faster, cheaper, just like private industry. Corporations discovered that they could save money and improve quality if they focused on their core competencies, to use the jargon of the day, and contracted out everything else. That's what led to the Legislature's looking at this issue. It's something that's in virtually every legislature in the country. It's not unique to North Carolina, certainly. And they are asking of universities and other state agencies how you do what you do better, faster, cheaper. We cannot escape from addressing that question. But in answering it we have to work assiduously to make sure that there is another consideration, and that is that in the changes that we makeóand change we must if we're to survive and thriveóin the changes that we make we are attentive to the human aspect of the consequences of change. And it's for that reason, that I say that if I had it within my power I'd just say with respect to housekeeping, we're not going to privatize it. Because the human cost of doing so, in anxiety and disruption is greater than the value that can be realized. Now I may be proved wrong on that, but I'm convinced, in talking with housekeepers that the human cost of doing this, of creating the anxiety we've already created, [is not what we should be doing] in a community that values community, that values the human interactions, relationships that are established, and where the strength of the Institution comes largely from our feeling in a sense of a community. What makes academic communities strong is a sense of common purpose, common interests, common mission. Anything we do that undercuts or damages that sense of community ultimately affects the quality of what we do, the quality of education, the quality of academic research. And so, this is a perplexing, challenging, and troublesome issue for me, and I just wanted to give you some perspective on the things that I think about it.
Finally, you also have a report from the Intellectual Climate Task Force today, and I want to acknowledge especially Pamela Conover and her subcommittee chairs for the enormous amount of energy and enthusiasm. I've never seen anything quite like it. I am convinced that it's going to be self generating, that as they get moving on the substance of their work, the commitment, the quality, the enthusiasm will only grow. And I hope that they will focus on one issue that arises when you think about the IBM partnership and the digitization of liberal arts education, or baccalaureate education, and that is that even if you and I both know, that even if you could put our courses into digital format, and enable the student in Kansas to get a degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill without ever setting foot on campus, you would have lost something that is at the very essence of liberal arts education, and that is what goes on outside the classroom in the context of an academic community. John Dewey observed that most of the skills that we employ in life are not ratiocinative skills. They're rather the kinds of skills that you acquire, that you learn by doing, I think was Dewey's locutionóthat you acquire in the course of interacting with other people, being in a residential campus setting. So we recognize that a very great deal of the education that takes place here takes place outside the classroom. It takes place in interaction between faculty member and student, student and student, dormitory roommates, athletics, intramural athletics, student government activities, The Daily Tar Heel, the things that students are involved in. So that a very great deal of education here for which we are responsible happens outside the classroom, and I don't think we pay enough attention to it. I don't think we spend enough time asking ourselves, how could we make it better, are there parts of it that need to be improved, and it's in that regard that I trouble and am troubled so over the issue of student drinking. Because I know we are failing our students and we are failing to meet the expectations of their parents and society if we don't address that question. And I don't pretend that it's easy. Sometimes I get very pessimistic about my ability to do anything about that issue. But I know that we have a moral imperative to address the issue. And so [the Task Force needs to] address all of the issues associated with education takes place in a residential setting that goes on outside course content. It doesn't necessarily go on outside the classroom, but it goes on outside course content. So I hope the Task Force will look at that. I know that they will, and I look forward to engaging with them in discussion of those issues and with you as well as their work moves along. Let me stop there and apologize for being a little wordyóI didn't intend to go on this longóand address questions.
Questions:
Professor Carole Crumley (Anthropology): Chancellor Hooker, there is lots of anticipation and great interest in the rumor that there will be a new environmental program. Can you let us know when we might know something more about that?
Chancellor: Now I'm sorry Dick is at the other meeting. We fully intend to enable the creation of an environmental program that will have a strong undergraduate student component. The problem is, as you might have guessed, is one of resources. We don't have an appropriation that would enable us to fund that program. But I believe that if there was ever an example of a need that argued for a reallocation of resources, this is it. The challenge is to work with deans and chairs and to identify resources that can be reallocated. One of the challenges of environmental studies, as you appreciate, is that it cuts across a number of schools. In fact, it's hard to think of a school here that doesn't have some potential involvement with environmental studies. So, you're talking about providing the resources, the money, for something that is not housed in one school. If it was housed just in Public Health, then you could reallocate resources within Public Health and the Dean presumably would know how to do that. But we're talking about reallocation across the campus that is much more difficult to do. And, so that's where we are stuck right now, but I'm convinced that we have to do it. And that it is a test of adequacy for our ability to manage our own activities whether we can do this successfully.
Professor Miles Fletcher (History): Last year on several occasions the issue of the state of our classrooms came up, and, of course the issue of classrooms relates to issues of intellectual climate and pedagogical use computer technology. I've heard informally about various projects underway to renovate classrooms and to upgrade them technologically. I wonder if you could tell us what's been done, what's being done, and what's planned in the near future.
Professor Jane Brown: There's a handout over here from Joe Schuch that outlines what's been going on,
Chancellor Hooker: Right. I knew that we had prepared one; I didn't know that it was here. That was the very first question that I got in my very first meeting of the Faculty Council last year. And as a result of being sensitized, I went over to Venable, looked at my old chemistry classroom, and then went around and looked at all my old classrooms, and I agree that there is a crying need. We have greatly accelerated renovations. We will accelerate it again if the Legislature appropriates roughly the same amount of money this next year for classroom renovation as we had last year, which is really a blessing that the State Legislature is appropriating this much money. I know that per square foot the University of North Carolina System is getting more than any other public university in the country for renovation and repair right now. And so we'll move again quickly. With respect to retrofitting classrooms for technology, we're focusing first on the new buildings to make sure that we don't miss the opportunity to wire them the first time correctly. And we're going back and looking at plans to do that. And then the Technology Task Force will identify other classrooms. And this may require some reshuffling of the uses of classrooms and the designation of classrooms or the priority designation for some departments. Because what you want to do is to do some "smart classrooms," in the jargon of the day that could be used by every department. That's what we're trying to do.
Professor Fletcher: How much money is allocated for renovations?
Chancellor Hooker: It's $125 million system-wide. Elson, do you remember what our appropriation was?
Vice Chancellor Elson Floyd: Approximately $7 million that can be put in this effort.
Professor Fletcher: For this year?
Chancellor Hooker: Yes. Anything else? Well, again, I apologize for going on so long. Thank you.
[The following exchange actually occurred later in the proceedings but is reported here instead.]
Professor George Rabinowitz (Political Science): This is really moving backward a little bit, but in all the talk about classrooms, I assumed there was going to be massive renovations in classrooms aside from any technological improvements in the classrooms. I know several faculty in the Department this year who have been dismayed by their classroom assignments because the seating has been very antiquatedófixed chairs, not allowing students to interact with each other. Blackboards that were no longer capable of sustaining chalk. And other unusual irregularities that make for, really, problems when you wanted make your classes what they should have been. It's just environments where students can interact and do serious things. And I agree that with this massive infusion of money óand I'm not anti-technological at allóthat we need to really upgrade our classrooms so we could use computers effectively. But it is almost a prior condition that our classrooms can be used for everyday efforts. And I can vouch that a lot of the classrooms don't serve that purpose now.
Professor Brown: I agree. [To Chancellor Hooker:] Do you want to comment on that?
Chancellor Hooker: You're obviously correct. We are a 200 year old campus, and some of our buildings show it. Probably every classroom that was built before the last ten years needs renovating. We are moving as quickly as the Legislature appropriates money to enable us to do so, and we have a priority list. And probably the classrooms that you referred to, as bad as they are, are not very high on the priority list, because there are others that are more crying out for renovation. We're moving as rapidly as we can. As I say, I was very frustrated this summer, because I thought the day after classes ended, the workmen would swarm over campus and we would be well underway, and it took six weeks. But we are cognizant of the problem. We're moving as quickly as we can. And we have accelerated this classroom renovation to the highest priority for use of renovation funds. And we did that directly as a result of this meeting last year.
To UNC-CH Home
Page