October 8, 2003

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

National News Coverage

U. of N. Carolina Opts for Grants Over Loans
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced plans last week to replace loans with grants for needy students, making it the first public university in the country to follow a strategy that several elite private institutions, including Harvard and Princeton Universities, have adopted in the last few years.

UNC providing students with extensive financial aid
The Badger Herald (University of Wisconsin)
In fall of 2004, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill joins the ranks of Harvard and Princeton Universities as it becomes the first public university in the country to implement an innovative student financial-aid program.

Hopkins researcher wins Nobel Prize
National Associated Press
Peter Agre of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine won the Nobel Prize in
chemistry today for his studies of tiny transportation tunnels in cell walls, work that illuminates diseases of the heart, kidneys and nervous system....The younger Agre went on to receive his medical degree from Johns Hopkins, the Web site said. After completing a medical residency at Case Western University and a clinical fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he returned to Johns Hopkins for a research fellowship in the cell biology department.
(Note: Dr. Agre was a postdoctoral fellow at UNC in hematology and oncology from 1978 to 1980 in the School of Medicine, working with Dr. Harold Roberts, now Kenan professor of medicine. Some of the work Agre was honored for today can be traced back to his tenure at UNC, says Roberts. Agre served as a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Carolina from 1980 to 1981.)

B-Schools with a Broader Bottom Line
Business Week
In 2003, the Pinstripes study's authors contacted 560 schools in an effort to analyze the
teaching, research, and extracurricular activities they had sponsored on responsible social
and environmental management between the fall of 2001 and this past summer. North
Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) offers 20 elective courses on the social and environmental
impact of business. Professors published 20 articles on those subjects in the past two years.

AIDS vaccine still elusive, but optimism creeps in
CNN.com
What was in the syringe, though, was anything but typical: a genetically engineered
Venezuela equine encephalitis bug laden with pieces of HIV, the virus that causes
AIDS....As nasty as that shot sounds, the biotechnology brew injected into the
volunteer's body that July day was not infectious -- it was designed to save lives.
In fact, (Robert) Johnston's research at the University of North Carolina is just one of the latest AIDS vaccine experiments that are moving from the laboratory to human tests.
(Note: This story was distributed by the National Associated Press.)

Metro votes still growing
The Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana)
Difficult as it is to believe, in the midst of the 2003 Louisiana election, people are
starting to get interested in the election of 2004....The South is one of the key
battlegrounds, and it is changing rapidly, according to an analysis of 2000 returns
in the Southern states by Ferrel Guillory and John Quinterno of the University of
North Carolina's Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life.

Despite Yankee incursion, Southerners retain identity (Opinion Editorial Column)
The Virginian-Pilot
A Northerner is in Atlanta looking at a house with his real estate agent. He asks her,
``What about the neighborhood?'' She replies, ``Oh you'll love it here. There's not a
Southerner around for three miles.''...They examined polls taken by the University of
North Carolina over an 11-year period and found that the number of people across
the South who identify themselves as Southerners has declined from 77 percent in
1991 to 70 percent today.

National News Note

The November issue of The Atlantic Monthly, just out, mentions the Robertson
Scholars Program, joining UNC and Duke University, in one of several stories touching
on college admissions issues. The UNC reference, part of a section of the story
on merit-based scholarships, comes in a piece titled "The New College Chaos,"
written by James Fallows, national correspondent. No online link available.
(Note: For a related story on this issue of The Atlantic Monthly and new college
rankings, see today's New York Times This story is available by registration only.)

State and Local Coverage

Roses & raspberries (Commentary)
The Chapel Hill News
Roses to UNC for launching the Carolina Covenant to help low-income students go
to Carolina and graduate debt-free. Students who qualify (family is at or below 150
percent of the federal poverty level) would work on campus 10 to 12 hours a week
in a federal work-study job throughout their four years.

Pay for poor students (Editorial)
The Technician (NC State)
Last week, UNC-CH announced a program wherein the university would pay for
the education of accepted students that come from families that live below the poverty
line. This ambitious program, called "Carolina Covenant" would provide low-income
students with a free ride to Carolina, provided they work on campus for at least 10
hours a week. The program, once implemented, will cost UNC-CH $1.38 million
a year, to be paid from state and federal grants and from university scholarships.

UNC steps up on downtown issues (Editorial)
The Chapel Hill Herald
The old saying, "be careful what you wish for," comes to mind when considering the
UNC administration's stated wish to play more of a role in the debate about the future
of Chapel Hill's downtown business district.

UNC wants to help downtown 'renaissance'
The Herald Sun
UNC says it intends to play a central role in bringing a "renaissance" to the downtown
business district along Franklin and Rosemary streets.

Pressure cooks up an appetite
The News & Observer
Doughnuts. Ice cream. Chocolate. Macaroni and cheese. Buttery mashed potatoes. We
call them comfort foods because when we're feeling bad, they make us feel better...."The
saber tooth tiger of yesterday is the boss of today," says nutritionist Claudia Fernandez,
director of certificate programs, N.C. Institute for Public Health in the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public Health. "Those fight-or-flight responses did require a lot of energy to defend ourselves. Now we get those stress responses in a meeting or when we're stuck in traffic."

Bus drivers scrutinized
The News & Observer
Between his home in Wake Forest and bedside at Duke Hospital, David Umscheid
spends days and nights waiting for his wife to get better....An annual study conducted
by the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center in Chapel Hill indicates that serious bus accidents are rare. The study shows that about 2 percent of
bus crashes statewide in the 2001-02 school year resulted in death or severe injury;
studies from previous years show similar results.

Issues and Trends

NCAA Proposes New Gauge for Graduation Rates That It Says Is Fairer and More Accurate
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The National Collegiate Athletic Association on Tuesday unveiled a new way to measure
graduation rates that, unlike the current federal standard, would not punish teams when players in good academic standing choose to transfer to other institutions.

Balancing act (Editorial)
The News & Observer
Next month, the University of North Carolina system's Board of Governors may take a step that could be monumentally symbolic to the state's citizens who support the system with tens of millions of dollars each year.

Wider opportunities (Letter to the Editor)
The News and Observer
The UNC Board of Governors is entrusted with managing the state's greatest asset: the 16-campus University of North Carolina system and its flagship university in Chapel Hill. It is incumbent that the board accommodates the 22 percent out-of-state undergraduate admissions policy, in step with a systematic strategy to increase overall enrollment.

Keep out-of-state cap at 18 percent (Editorial)
The Durham Herald Sun
The Moeser administration at UNC Chapel Hill is often a study in contradictions, and never more so than in its support for a proposal before the Board of Governors to raise the systemwide cap on out-of-state freshmen from 18 percent to 22 percent.

UNC Board Of Governors To Consider Admitting More Out-Of-State Students
WRAL-TV (CBS-Raleigh)
A new plan to raise student standards at North Carolina's 16 state universities raises old
questions of fairness. Next month, the UNC Board of Governors will consider a proposal
to hike the cap on out-of-state students from 18 to 22 percent.

Bus stop has commuters dodging traffic
The Chapel Hill News
Several days a week, Madge Hubbard parks her car at UNC's Franklin Street
park-and-ride lot and hopes on the bus to the university's Study Abroad office,
where she works.

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.