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November 22, 2004
Carolina in the News
Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina
people and programs cited recently in the media:New Rhodes Scholar
On Saturday (Nov. 20), Carolina alumna Rachel Mazyck was chosen as a Rhodes Scholar. She brings to 38 the number of Rhodes Scholars from UNC since the program began in 1902. Carolina ranks second among public universities in numbers of Rhodes Scholars produced. Last November, senior Elizabeth Kistin of New Mexico was chosen for a Rhodes Scholarship, becoming the 14th UNC winner since 1980.
2 Md. Students Are Among New Rhodes Scholars
The Washington Post
Two college students from Maryland were among 32 Americans selected this weekend as Rhodes scholars for 2005, the scholarship trust announced yesterday....Mazyck, of Laurel, graduated at 16 from the National Cathedral School in Washington. She was 19 when she graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked as a fourth-grade teacher in the Mississippi Delta region for two years.
UNC news release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/nov04/rhodes112104.htmlFormer Mississippi teacher named Rhodes Scholar
The Associated Press (National)
A daughter of missionaries who helped improve medical practices in her home country of Kenya and an education student who graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill at 19 and taught for two years in an impoverished Mississippi town were named Rhodes Scholars on Sunday.
Related link: The Winston-Salem JournalList of American Rhodes Scholars for 2005
The Associated Press (National)
The 32 American students chosen as Rhodes Scholars for 2005...Rachel Y. Mazyck, Laurel, Md., University of North Carolina and Harvard University.
Other National Coverage
Number of needy students drops at top universities
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Carnegie Mellon University once taught blacksmithing and drafting to laborers' sons. It fit the technical school's vision of giving Pittsburgh's mill workers a leg up on life...."You do these students no favors if you bring them in, and then don't help them achieve their dreams," said Shirley Ort, director of scholarships and student aid at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, that state's public flagship, where 13 percent of undergraduates hold Pell grants....That said, her school has overhauled financial aid policy to ensure that more low-income students can afford to enroll. Under its "Carolina Covenant," qualified needy students are guaranteed a debt-free education if they work 10 to 12 hours weekly on campus.
The Dan Brown Code
The New York Times
Dan Brown's art-historical thriller "The Da Vinci Code" has been a best seller for 20 months. Christian groups have denounced it; Lebanon has banned it; and now Bart D. Ehram, chairman of the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has written an entire book disputing the novel's claims of historical veracity.
Incentive Program Is Putting Doctors Where the Need Is
The New York Times
After finishing her medical residency four years ago, Dr. Teresa Chan headed straight for the job she had always wanted: working as a family doctor serving a poor immigrant population at a Lower East Side health clinic....A 2000 study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that the overall retention rate among corps doctors was 53 percent, 15 years after their obligations ended.
Does a Free Download Equal a Lost Sale?
The New York Times
Record industry executives hold it as an article of faith that the advent of file-sharing Web sites like Napster and Kazaa was largely responsible for a stunning decline in the sales of recorded music....In a paper he wrote with Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he examined the correlation between popular downloads and popular CD's in the fall of 2002.
Green chemistry takes root
USA Today
A new kind of chemical revolution is brewing, 150 years after the first one transformed modern life with a host of conveniences....But by re-thinking the fundamental way that the molecules making up Teflon are put together, Joseph DeSimone and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill instead found a way to do it in carbon dioxide, the stuff you'd find in tanks at McDonald's to put the fizz in soda.
GOP Plants Flag on New Voting Frontier
Los Angeles Times
The center of the Republican presidential coalition is moving toward the distant edges of suburbia...."There's no sign whatsoever that the popularity of these places is decreasing," said demographer John D. Kasarda, director of the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina.
State & Local Coverage
Moeser touts debt-free learning
The News & Observer
UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser is hoping to exert a little peer pressure on his colleagues at leading research universities to copy the Carolina Covenant, which guarantees a debt-free education to low-income students....In a letter last month to 62 presidents of the Association of American Universities, Moeser urged them to make their own investments in need-based financial aid...."It is the right thing to do, particularly when there is so much pressure to increase merit-based aid," he wrote in an Oct. 14 letter. The AAU is a coalition of the nation's most prestigious universities.
Note: This article is not available online and is reprinted here in full.UNC rings Duke's bell
The News & Observer
Game ball in hand, Dawn Bunting darted onto the field and jumped into the arms of her husband, John....After the Heels' fourth win in six games, Bunting also got good news from his boss. UNC chancellor James Moeser announced the coach had received a two-year contract extension.
Related link: http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/college/unc/football/story/1849003p-8175779c.htmlDrunken rats offer insight
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Inside the UNC research building, white rats stumble inside clear plastic cartons....On the surface the scene looks comical. But at its core it is dead serious. Drunken rats at UNC-Chapel Hill are teaching the world startling facts about alcohol's toll on brains.
Note: A similar story aired on WUNC-FM this morning.Children a low priority in today's America (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The Charlotte Observer
Like many of you, I followed the recent election closely. I'm up on it. I watched four debates -- three presidential debates and one vice presidential sit-down....Gene R. Nichol is dean of the law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Pope Money (Editorial)
The Winston-Salem Journal
Students and faculty opposed to a Pope Foundation grant to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill should breathe deeply and put the proposal in perspective. They are behaving as if the conservative Popes were trying to buy the university with dirty money.
UNC should accept the Pope donation (Editorial)
The Chapel Hill Herald
The fuss over the John William Pope Foundation's potential donation to fund a new Western cultures curriculum at UNC is much ado about nothing. Campus officials should accept the donation, launch the program, and get on with other business.
Related Letters to the Editor:
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
http://www.newsobserver.com/print/saturday/opinion/story/1845912p-8170889c.html
http://www.newsobserver.com/print/saturday/opinion/story/1845913p-8170862c.html
http://www.newsobserver.com/print/saturday/opinion/story/1845914p-8170661c.html
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/index.html#546224
The Chapel Hill Herald
http://www.herald-sun.com/opinion/chhletters/index.html#546317'Contextual' issue requires two sides to compromise
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Context is everything. And on religious questions, maybe more than everything. That is what makes deciding whether religious displays on public property are unconstitutional so complicated, according to Bill Marshall, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and a First Amendment scholar. He says the issue requires an intricate balance of history, faith and protection of minority viewpoints.
Group pulls support of WUNC
The News & Observer
An international women's health organization has stopped giving money to WUNC-FM after the public radio station said it could no longer describe the group on-air as working for reproductive "rights."
Routine dig uncovers treasures from past
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
This old well does not have a landmark dome like the historic one on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus that sets nostalgic yarns aflow. Nevertheless, all kinds of stories gush these days from the recently unearthed water pit in the back yard of the historic James Lee Love House.
My boss is a *%$!
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Few employees have a union to turn to when concerns arise in the workplace....Executives who believe their company has been slandered in an online chat group could take action, warned Ben Rosen, a management professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert on conflict resolution.
Issues & Trends
Universities Record Drop In Black Admissions
The Washington Post
Despite winning a marathon Supreme Court struggle last year to continue using race as a factor in admitting students, the University of Michigan is reporting the smallest class of African American freshmen in 15 years....In addition to Michigan, other colleges that have reported significant drops in the number of black freshmen include many campuses in the University of California system, Penn State University, the University of Minnesota and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as the private University of Pennsylvania.
Mayor admonishes advisory group
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
A downtown advisory group's decision to privately discuss spending taxpayer money has sparked calls for reform from town leaders and could shake up the nonprofit group's membership....The town pays $140,000 of the nonprofit's $210,000 budget, with the remaining $70,000 coming from UNC-Chapel Hill.
Related link: http://www.chapelhillnews.com/opinion/story/1846372p-8171297c.html
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/newsserv/clipsindex.htm.
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