October 14, 2003

Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina
people and programs cited recently in the media:

International coverage

Schools broaden social focus
Financial Times (London)
The overall message from the Beyond Grey Pinstripes awards for 2003 is upbeat....
A hundred schools participated in the awards, with six singled out as being on the
cutting edge of practice, having demonstrated commitment to preparing students to
manage complex social and environmental challenges. The six schools are George
Washington; Michigan; Kenan-Flagler at Chapel Hill; North Carolina; Stanford;
Yale and the Schulich school at Toronto. www.beyondgreypinstripes.org

National News Coverage

Best Values in Public Colleges
Kiplinger's Personal Finance
... High-caliber academics and generous financial aid are also keys to UNC's top
ranking. Chapel Hill's ability to meet 100% of the shortfall for students with financial
need sets the school apart from the pack....Chapel Hill's sterling academics and
reasonable cost let it draw top-notch students without having to rely on beefy merit-
based scholarships, saving the money for those with need (the school does offer merit-
based scholarships, but it primarily uses private donations to fund them)....The
nation's best deal for in-state students is, unfortunately, available only to North
Carolina residents. So this year we applied our evaluation to out-of-state total
costs to uncover the best bargains for out-of-state students, too. Backed by its
strong academic and financial aid scores, UNC-Chapel Hill comes out on top again

The 100 best values in public colleges
msn.com
As our database shows, there are still dozens of places where students can get
an excellent education for a reasonable price. The University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill tops our list for a fourth consecutive time, despite a 5% tuition
increase this fall. How? Despite the hike, total costs for in-state ($11,290) and out-
of-state ($23,138) students remain reasonable, especially when judged against
private schools with similar academic reputations.

Severe Obesity Rises Sharply
The Washington Post
As the number of overweight Americans continues to rise sharply, a new study
has found that the fastest growing group is those with the most severe obesity
problem....In related research, Penny Gordon-Larsen of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill reported that more than 2 million U.S. adolescents became
obese and an additional 1.5 million remained obese as they matured into adulthood
from 1996 to 2001.

State and Local Coverage

University Of Michigan President Spells Out Concerns At UNC
WRAL-TV (CBS, Raleigh)
The president of the University of Michigan says American education must do
more to help minorities....Mary Sue Coleman made the observation during the
210th University Day celebration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. It was her school that was a defendant in two lawsuits assailing its use of
race as a factor in college admissions.

Dole blames China for N.C. trade woes
The News & Observer
A man handed a bright blue button Monday to Sen. Elizabeth Dole with one
word on it: "JOBS." He didn't have to say anything else...."I don't think that
protectionism is the proper strategy," said Jim Johnson, a professor at
UNC-Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler School of Business.

NCSU puts new face on diversity
The News & Observer
N.C. State University's new diversity czar got an earful at his first public event
Monday afternoon -- about how some students feel lost in the crowd, how others
feel they must shed their own identities to blend in and how the constant din
about "diversity" always tends to reach the same people around campus....
And he applauded a plan at UNC-Chapel Hill to pay the tuition of low-income
students.

UNC race week looks at self-segregation
The Chapel Hill Herald
Though statistics suggest UNC is an ethnic melting pot, the reality is quite different,
students say.

Ham on wry
The News & Observer
Peter Sagal bills "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me," the current events quiz show that
comes to Durham this week for a pair of live tapings, as the "leather-clad slut" of
public radio....Each week, nearly 1.5 million people tune into the show, broadcast
locally at noon Saturdays on WUNC (91.5 FM). It's one of the station's most popular
weekend shows, averaging 29,400 listeners. Thursday's live show will be broadcast
Saturday.

Universities struggle to stem outbreak of HIV
The News & Observer
When researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill and the N.C. Department of Health and Human
Services first documented the outbreak this summer -- mostly among young, black men --
it was the first time in more than 20 years of research that college campuses were
identified as high-transmission areas for the virus that causes AIDS....An investigation
led by Dr. Lisa Hightow, a fellow in infectious diseases at the UNC School of Medicine,
found that 28 men and one woman -- all of them college students -- were diagnosed with
HIV in Durham, Orange and Wake counties from Jan. 1, 2000, to March 1, 2003.

Limiting trans, saturated fats is important for healthy diet
News 14 (Time Warner, Raleigh)
Not that many years ago, most people thought of fat in foods as just ... fat. Today,
terms such as "sat fat,"omega-3 fatty acids, monounsaturated fats and "trans" fats
are thrown around fast enough to make anyone's head spin....Steven H. Zeisel, MD,
PhD, is chair of the Department of Nutrition in the schools of Medicine and Public
Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the Clinical
Nutrition Research Center.
(Note: This is one of a number of health articles written by UNC Health Care faculty.
Other will appear throughout the week.)

Through a lens (Opinion Editorial Column)
The Charlotte Observer
What would North Carolina be like without Hugh Morton?..."His has already been about
as useful a life in the service of North Carolina as any ever lived, and he just goes on and
on," Charles Kuralt said at a 1996 dinner honoring Morton. "There are ideas that he hasn't
thought of yet. But he will think of them. We will all know it when he does. He will send
us photographs."

Sniper investigator to give talk at UNC
The Chapel Hill Herald
Former Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief Charles Moose, the UNC graduate who
gained international attention last October during the sniper shootings in and around the
nation's capital, will speak Nov. 6 at Carolina.

Student, Habitat partnership honored
The Chapel Hill Herald
Students giving up their weekends and spring breaks to work as volunteers. That's what
Peter DeSaix says it's all about....DeSaix, who chairs the Chapel Of The Cross-UNC
Student Habitat Partnership, was referring to the selection of the partnership as one of the
winners of the prestigious "North Carolina Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service." It beat
out 17 other Orange County nominees to get the award, which was given during a special
ceremony held in Raleigh last month.

Art with a strong pulse
The Chapel Hill News
There's a temptation, whenever John Saito mentions to someone that he is both a doctor
and an artist, to focus on the differences between those two pursuits....Saito, a pediatric
pulmonologist at UNC Hospitals, sees it a little differently

Issues and Trends

Boston College Called a 'Double Agent' for Leaving Big East Athletics Conference
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Syracuse University officials sharply criticized Boston College on Monday for defecting to
the Atlantic Coast Conference, and speculation turned to how the Big East Conference would
fill the void left by the loss of three teams in four months....ACC members favoring expansion
had worked to persuade the three colleges that had voted against Boston College in June --
Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- of the advantages of a bigger league.

Flying high now
The News & Observer
With one fling of his right arm, Doug Flutie changed Boston College forever. An epochal
football victory let slip the dogs of change on a school founded to educate the children of
Irish immigrants, accelerating its transformation from Boston's Catholic university to an
institution of higher learning of national scope.
(Note: There are a number of links to related stories in this article.)

Welcome to the ACC (Editorial)
Winston Salem Journal
In for a dime, in for a dollar....When the Atlantic Coast Conference added Miami University
and Virginia Tech to its membership four months ago, the signal about what motivates
expansion became pretty clear. Money is the main thing.

Odd or even, it's all about money (Editorial)
The Herald-Sun
And then there were 12. Unlike the Atlantic Coast Conference's recent move to 11
schools, which ignited uproars up and down the eastern seaboard, this weekend's
announcement that Boston College is the even man in caused barely a ripple. So
now the Greensboro-based ACC has what it wanted to begin with, an even number
of schools that can be split into two divisions for a championship football game....As
UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser put it in a cool display of logic, "We had
opposed expansion, but once we became a conference of 11, the arguments for
adding a 12th member became persuasive."

Out of state and out of luck? (Editorial)
The Wilmington Star-News
North Carolina might benefit if UNC-Chapel Hill and other campuses in the university
system could admit a few more out-of-state students with superior academic credentials.

Here's why others want to come (Editorial)
The Wilmington Star-News
If the UNC system could admit a few more bright out-of-state students to its 16 campuses,
it would get them, no doubt about that.

State job slippage (Editorial)
The News & Observer
If the old rule of thumb that you get what you pay for still applies, then North Carolinians
who depend on a skilled and dedicated state employee work force to provide many
essential services have something to worry about. As The N&O's Amy Gardner reported
in a Sunday article, workers have been leaving state jobs in record numbers in recent
years -- a period in which pay raises have been tiny or non-existent. State government
is plagued by high levels of vacancies and resulting overwork among the employees who
have stayed.

In college, good sports from all over (Opinion and Editorial Column)
The News & Observer
It was inevitable. As North Carolina's leaders in public higher education push more
aggressively for an increase in the percentage of out-of-state students enrolling in the
university system, some members of the legislature have started to weigh in. Predictably,
they raise the specter of unhappy voters (and taxpayers) whose children might be
displaced by an increase in out-of-state representation. Proponents counter that the
change is part of the never-ending quest to achieve excellence, and would only improve
a state system seen by some as losing ground in the rankings. They argue that it would
strengthen the academic culture, making the UNC system even more attractive to the
state's own "best and brightest" and thus slowing a brain drain that has become an
increasing concern.

Parking deck, plant figure in council race
The Herald-Sun
The debate about UNC's planned parking deck and chilled-water plant technically is over,
but it continues to be an issue in the Town Council race.....UNC Chancellor James Moeser
said that wasn't the case, when asked for a response Friday. "The university takes very
seriously the concerns of our campus neighbors," moeser said in a written reply. "We
demonstrated that commitment through the joint process recently completed with the
town to consider the modification of the university's development plan."
Related story: Candidate forum focuses on UNC ties (The Herald-Sun)

Workshop seeks vision for housing
The Herald-Sun
About 80 residents gathered Saturday morning at Carol Woods Retirement Community to
plan a nearby low-cost housing subdivision. Habitat for Humanity turned to a charrette, a
deadline-driven open design workshop, to get a vision for its 17-acre property on Sunshine
Road...."It's a problematic site but a charrette is a problem-solving exercise," said leader
David Godschalk, a well-known professor of City & Regional Planning at UNC. "Be creative, have fun and generate something that will be worthwhile to the community," Godschalk told participants.

Note: If you have any questions about Carolina in the News, please call Russell Campbell at News Services, (919) 962-2091, russell_campbell@unc.edu, or Mike McFarland in University Communications, mike_mcfarland@unc.edu

Note: Web links on this page are time-sensitive, so stories might not be available after the day they first appeared.