October 6, 2004

Carolina in the News

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

National Coverage

Study Shows Health Benefit for Immigrants
The New York Times
More than half the children under 7 in New York City are growing up in immigrant families, and in many of them no one over 13 speaks English well. But a new report released yesterday suggests that this linguistic isolation helps protect them from the higher rates of obesity, asthma, and adolescent risk-taking that afflict native-born and Americanized children...In trying to explain how being in an immigrant family helps, Professor Harris, who teaches sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she found that being tied to a foreign culture and ethnic values in immigrant enclaves explained up to half the differences, and speaking a foreign language at home was part of that.

State & Local Coverage

UNC aiming to top its peers in graduation rate
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
UNC graduates its students at a pretty good clip. But in his continuing
efforts to move Carolina past its peers among elite public universities,
Chancellor James Moeser wants the graduation rate to improve. Thus his
ambitious recent announcement that UNC will try to push its six-year
graduation rate, which is now at 82.8 percent, to at least 92 percent.

UNC collects supplies for hurricane victims
The Chapel Hill Herald
UNC students are collecting supplies to aid hurricane victims in western
North Carolina. Clothing, cleaning supplies and non-perishable food items
are being accepted through Oct. 13. Clothing, cleaning supplies and
non-perishable food items are being accepted through Oct. 13. On campus, the
items may be placed in blue recycling bins on the first floor of campus
residence halls. Bins also are available in the Frank Porter Graham Student
Union off South Road and the Campus Y on Cameron Avenue.
UNC News Services issued a news release showcasing this effort on Tuesday.

Keeping A Tight Lip (Editorial Column)
The Daily Tar Heel
Members of the Horace Williams Citizens Committee presented some valid
concerns regarding Carolina North plans in the finalized report that they
released last week. But UNC officials haven't bent over backwards to
accomodate those concerns-and rightly so.

Politics added to Americans' diet (Commentary)
The Charlotte Observer
On the battleground of nutrition policy, where science, money and politics
contend, score one for consumers, two for industry. That is, of course, if
the government lets stand proposed changes to the Dietary Guidelines for
Americans, our nation's blueprint for food and nutrition policy...Suzanne
Havala Hobbs-registered dietitian and a clinical assistant professor in the
Department of Health Policy at UNC.

School science gets a boost
The News & Observer
A new educational Web site has been created to help elementary school
teachers across North Carolina prepare students for end-of-grade tests in
science. NCKidScience.com is a science education clearinghouse for third-,
fourth- and fifth-grade science teachers...The site was designed by
UNC-Chapel Hill sophomore Kris Jordan in partnership with KidSenses
Children's Interactive Museum in Rutherfordton.

Brown faces brother's death
The News & Observer
To Jason Brown, the game is forever lost in some unreachable place of his
mind. The North Carolina center had snapped the ball and thrown some blocks
on the afternoon of Sept. 27, 2003..."I was basically going through the
motions," Brown said in a recent interview. "It was a blur."...If Brown
can't recall the game, he can't forget how he found out that Army Specialist
Lunsford Bernard Brown II, 27, had been killed Sept. 20 during a mortar
attack near Baghdad.

Civil rights figure dies
The News & Observer
Some mornings in 1959, when Evelyn McKissick dropped her children off at
Durham schools, the white kids inside would block the schoolhouse door.
McKissick would get out of her car and force the door open for the
children...Evelyn Chlorine Williams McKissick, a mother of the civil rights
movement, died Friday. She was 81...Her husband's first civil rights case
came in 1951 when Thurgood Marshall sued for McKissick's right to enroll at
the University of North Carolina law school in Chapel Hill. He won..."She
stood out there beside him and never flinched," said Ben Ruffin, a family
friend who would later become the first African-American chairman of the UNC
Board of Governors.

UNCP Participates in Grant
The Pilot (Southern Pines)
UNC Pembroke will participate in a $912,000 National Science Foundation
grant that will allow the state's astronomy students to get a front row seat
on the universe. The program will allow North Carolina universities to build
six telescopes high in the Chilean Andes. Construction began in August. The
PROMPT (Paramount-based Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry
Telescopes) program is a shared resource with UNC-Chapel Hill as the lead
institution.

Childbirth revives trauma
The News & Observer
Penny Simkin was working as a childbirth educator in the mid-1980s when she
first heard a woman describe her baby's birth as if it were rape...Last
week, Simkin was in Chapel Hill to train doctors, nurses, midwives, social
workers, rape crisis counselors and doulas...in how to be sensitive to the
needs of women with a history of sexual abuse. On Sept. 29, she lectured to
doctors at East Carolina University. On Sept. 30, she led a daylong
conference at UNC-Chapel Hill, attended by about 90 from across the state
and Virginia.

Issues & Trends

New College Try: Early Admission Rules See Change
The New York Times
Students applying for early admission to colleges may soon have more
choices...In a significant step, this past weekend the National Association
for College Admission Counseling, voted to allow its nearly 5,000-member
colleges to broadly adopt "single-choice early action" policies. Under these
policies...students apply early to only one school. However they won't be
required to attend if accepted.

Audit finds scandal at School of the Arts
The News & Observer
Employees at the N.C. School of the Arts misspent or misappropriated nearly
$1 million on undocumented overtime expenses, Cadillac payments, travel and
a down payment on a home for the chancellor, state auditors say...The School
of the Arts, part of the UNC system, has 1,074 students at its Winston-Salem
campus.

High schools to flip to block scheduling
The Herald-Sun
Patrick Rhodes stood in front of 250 concerned Jordan High School parents
Monday night and told them he hasn't always been a believer in block
scheduling...Rhodes and Jordan Principal David Christenbury told parents
Monday night that the block-scheduling change was the idea of a high school
reform committee formed in April. The committee...decided to overhaul the
current schedule after examining new statewide graduation requirements and
the UNC's system increasing admissions standards.

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.

Please share any questions, comments or suggestions at news@unc.edu.