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March 31, 2006
Carolina in the News
Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina
people and programs cited recently in the media:The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill appears on numerous lists of newly ranked programs and specialty areas produced by U.S. News and World Report magazine for its 2006 edition of "America's Best Graduate Schools."
U.S. News & World Report: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/rankindex_brief.php
UNC News Fact Sheet: http://www.unc.edu/news/factsheets/usnewsgrad07summary.htmRelated Coverage:
Duke, UNC among top 20 business schools
The Charlotte Business Journal
The UNC-Chapel Hill business school edged upward in the latest graduate-school rankings by U.S. News & World Report. UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School ranks No. 20 on the 2007 list from No. 21 in the 2006. The report ranks schools for the upcoming academic year.
Duke schools do well in rankings
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Duke University's School of Medicine, School of Law and Fuqua School of Business all rank among the top dozen institutions in their disciplines, according to the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of the best graduate and professional schools in the country. ... UNC's School of Information and Library Science was tied for first among programs with accredited master's degrees. Kenan-Flagler Business School was 20th overall for its MBA program and the School of Law was tied for 27th.
Note: No link available.Nine UI colleges, grad programs ranked in U.S. News top 10
The Cedar Rapids Gazette (Iowa)
U.S. News & World Report has ranked nine University of Iowa colleges and graduate programs among the top 10 best in the United States, and an additional 10 in the top 25, when compared with other public universities. ...College of Medicine-Specialty of Rural Medicine in a tie with the Oregon Health and Science University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. (Ranking among all public and private graduate programs: 4, in a tie with the Oregon Health and Science University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.)
National Coverage
Bird-Flu Pandemic, Even Mild, May Overwhelm Hospitals
Bloomberg
In 1957, the University of North Carolina turned a dormitory into a hospital for dozens of students stricken by an Asian flu circling the globe. Eleven years later, Nashville medical centers filled beyond capacity when another worldwide epidemic hit.
Vote early, vote often (Opinion-editorial column)
MarketWatch
You'd think that corporate democracy in this country is based on the principle of one share, one vote. ...The study, titled "Vote Trading and Information Aggregation," has been circulating in academic circles for several months. Its authors are Susan Christoffersen of McGill University; Christopher Geczy and David Musto of the University of Pennsylvania; and Adam Reed of the University of North Carolina.
A Fever in the Blood
The Wall Street Journal
For an image of agonizing pain, you need not reread Dante's "Inferno" or wait for the next Quentin Tarantino bloodfest. . You need only imagine a University of North Carolina basketball fan in Chapel Hill last week, when George Mason University upset the Tar Heels in the NCAA tournament on its way to the Final Four tomorrow. In "Off the Rim," Fred Hobson gives us both a touching memoir and, along the way, a vivid account of North Carolina's intense culture of basketball worship.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/feb06/hobson022206.htmUniversity Names Building After a Local Slave and Poet
"All Things Considered," National Public Radio
The University of North Carolina is naming a building after a slave who worked nearby and used to come to campus to recite poetry. Decades before the Civil War, George Moses Horton was known on campus as a talented speaker and poet, and students often paid him to create poems for them.
Obstetricians Are Urged Not to Use Episiotomy Routinely
The Baltimore Sun
Early in the last century, obstetricians began to make a routine cut just outside a delivering mother’s birth canal to ease the baby’s entry to the outside world and prevent painful tearing of the woman’s tissue. ...“It took an accumulation of data to say that none of our hopes for this procedure were being realized,” said Dr. Katherine Hartmann, director of the University of North Carolina’s Center for Women’s Health Research.
State & Local Coverage
UNC will rename dorm for slave
The Herald-Sun (Durham)/The Chapel Hill Herald
UNC is renaming a campus dormitory to honor George Moses Horton, a slave and a poet from Chatham County who was a significant contributor to the intellectual life of the university. ... "I think it represents an under-recognized and important segment of our history," Dick Richardson, who chairs a university committee for naming facilities and programs, said of the renaming.
Related Link: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/14234021.htmOut in four (Editorial)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Earning an undergraduate college degree traditionally has been a four-year enterprise: young folks enter as freshmen and graduate after a fourth and senior year. ...Trustees at UNC-Chapel Hill have endorsed an ambitious effort to both shorten the length of time students spend as undergraduates and raise the graduation rate, currently 84 percent in six years. Comparatively speaking, that graduation rate stacks up quite well. Still, this is an effort well worth making that should, if successful, generate more graduates in less time and even raise their grades in the process.
Related Links: http://www.newsobserver.com/681/story/424137.html
http://www.newsobserver.com/580/story/424136.htmlSession ponders ID-theft scenario
The Charlotte Observer
A large bank discovers that someone has used an old ID and password to access information for 400,000 customers. For 5,000 of the customers, the perpetrator has obtained name, address and full account information. ...In the case presented at the UNC School of Law's annual Banking Institute, the pretend bank has discovered that an unidentified person has sent the data to anonymous e-mail accounts and post office boxes.
Ancient scribes, modern finds
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
It was the most accidental of gestures. A goat herder looking for a stray goat threw a stone into a cave hoping to scare the animal out. ..."What the scrolls show is that in this period there was no set canon of books," said Jodi Magness, a professor of religion at UNC-Chapel Hill who has written about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and whose voice will be familiar to those touring the exhibit with the audio guide. "There's no standard text of the Hebrew Bible yet."
New rival for local news?
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Raleigh might soon get a new daily newspaper. A want ad appearing on the Web site craigslist.org seeks writers for "a daily news operation publishing Monday through Friday to be opened in Raleigh later this year." ...Jock Lauterer, a journalism lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the book "Community Journalism," said none of the current publishers in the state are obvious candidates. "If it's a North Carolina group that is doing it, it would be out of character," he said.
'Matzoh Ball Gumbo' nominated for Beard
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Professor Marcie Cohen Ferris' examination of the food culture of Southern Jews has been nominated for a James Beard Foundation book award. ...Ferris, who lives in Chapel Hill, is associate director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies and assistant professor of American studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Period instruments give Mozart the sound he sought
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived in stirring times. Born 250 years ago in Salzburg, Austria, he lived only 35 years, yet his lifetime saw both the American and French revolutions, discoveries from uranium to Uranus, and explorations of Australia, Tahiti and Hawaii. ... "You feel like you're back in Salzburg in Mozart's time, experiencing what kings and queens heard," said Emil Kang, executive director of Carolina Performing Arts. "You get to live it, to feel what it was like back then."
Note: No link available.Critic's picks - Theater
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Playwright Jeanmarie Williams offers an original take on anorexia in "Vanishing Marion," a new drama that StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance will unveil in a world premiere Thursday at UNC-Chapel Hill's Swain Hall.
Critic's picks - the best film
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
...If seeing three schlubs brutally damaging themselves with hardware tools isn't your bag, you can also check out a night of experimental film stuff over at UNC-Chapel Hill. Tonight, the ScreenArts Film and Media Series will present "An Evening with Ed Rankus," a quintet of shorts from the Chapel Hill-by-way-of-Chicago independent video artist, whose work -- and this is from the press release I received -- "references such things as the symbolic systems of science-fiction films, behavioral psychology experiments, sub-atomic particle physics, Spanish mysticism, and Zen Buddhism."
Critic's picks - Classical
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
...At UNC's Hill Hall on Wednesday and Thursday, UNC Opera stages free performances of "Chanticleer" by living American composer Seymour Barab, based on the "Canterbury Tales." Details: 962-1039, http://music.unc.edu.
LEGO event set for Saturday
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
The second annual LEGO-palooza festival will be held Saturday at UNC's Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. The event will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and admission is free.
Note: No link available.Issues & Trends
U.S. House Approves Higher-Education Bill With Concessions to Colleges
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to approve a sweeping piece of legislation that would set federal higher-education policy for the next six years. But, to win support for the measure, the leader of the education committee in the House agreed to make significant changes to the bill, including softening provisions that were designed to crack down on colleges that increase their prices too much.
Dropping a Bomb on Accreditation
Inside Higher Ed
In its first six months of operation, the Education Department’s higher education commission has been best known — and most feared in academe — for some off-handed comments from the panel’s chairman about the need for more evidence that college students are actually learning something. Many academic leaders took that to mean that the panel planned a national standardized test for higher education — an idea that the chairman, Charles Miller, has repeatedly insisted is a misinterpretation.
Produced by News Services, Carolina in the News is an e-mail sampling of current news media coverage about Carolina people and programs, as well as issues and trends that affect the university. Stories usually will be online and available free for a limited time - often one to two weeks. Expiration dates before stories move to archives vary by media outlet. Some outlets require free user registration or a subscription.
Carolina in the News is also posted daily to the News Services Web page, http://www.unc.edu/news/clips/index.shtml.
Please share any questions, comments or suggestions at news@unc.edu.