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Oct. 1, 2007
Carolina in the News
Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina people and programs cited recently in the media:
International Coverage
Southern charm is a big part of the appeal
The Times (London)
Dixieland. Kentucky Fried Chicken. George Bush. Whatever the reference, the US South is often seen as a separate world: more racially diverse, poorer, conservative. But business schools in the South are as proud of the US’s MBA traditions as any. From Duke University and the University of North Carolina (UNC) on the east of the region to the University of Texas, Vanderbilt in Tennessee and Emory University, Georgia, it’s filled with big hitters.
UNC expands real estate teaching
The Financial Times (London)
Real estate developer Leonard Wood is to give $4m to the Kenan-Flagler school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to help it beef up its real estate programme. Kenan-Flagler is one of the few top US schools to offer a concentration in real estate development on its MBA programme.
National Coverage
UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Will Step Down
The Chronicle of Higher Education
BLUE GOODBYE: James C. Moeser, chancellor of the University of North Carolina's flagship campus, in Chapel Hill, announced last week that he would step down at the end of the academic year. Mr. Moeser, who is 68 and has led Chapel Hill since 2000, said his decision to relinquish his job on June 30, 2008, did not signal his retirement. After taking a year of leave to conduct research, he said, he will return to the university as a professor of music.
DIA plans $1 billion renovation
The Associated Press (National)
"The risk of doing it wrong is that Denver's future growth will be threatened," said John Kasarda, a management professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's business school who has studied airport growth. "The community has to know that the livelihood of the entire state is based on air travel. The airport is the lifeblood of 21st century metropolitan economies." The airport's growth was steady from its 1995 opening until dropping after the 2001 terrorist attacks, followed by United Airlines' bankruptcy. The prediction was that it would take several years to get back on track.
Tense Times at Bronxville High
The New York Times Magazine
In the wee hours of the morning last Halloween, Maria Devlin and her mother, Donna, were both wide awake in their apartment in Bronxville, N.Y., scanning an essay that shared Maria’s most profound thoughts on “one or two of her principal intellectual interests.” The buzz from what had become, of late, a 10 p.m. ritual hot chocolate — part soothing balm, part energizing caffeine — had come and gone. ... Now that Maria, an equally strong student, was applying, they saw no reason why she shouldn’t try for the same there, as well as similar scholarships at several other schools. They were impressed by the merit scholarships offered at Davidson College in North Carolina and a relatively new program at the University of North Carolina, which offered a full-ride writing scholarship.
Campuspeak
The New York Times
Word-blending is big in campuspeak. “He’s sort of a nerd, but he’s just so adorkable” combines adorable with dork, the amalgam defined as “endearing though socially inept” by Prof. Connie Eble of the department of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Another blend is fauxhawk, combining faux, “artificial,” and Mohawk, defined as a “hairstyle achieved by combing all of the hair to the center to give the appearance of a Mohawk without shaving the head.”
Back-Seat Parenting for Beginning Drivers
The New York Times
“The one thing that should come through loud and clear is that this is an extremely complex undertaking,” said Robert D. Foss, director of the Center for the Study of Young Drivers, Highway Safety Research Center, at the University of North Carolina. “Learning to handle the car is pretty simple and straightforward; learning to be a wise or savvy driver involves far more than that.”
Faith and Fantasy at the Carousel
The New York Times
“Amusement parks weren’t just places for kids in those days,” said John F. Kasson, a professor of history and American studies at the University of North Carolina and the author of “Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century.” “You went to get away from your family and neighbors, and to meet people.” Such leisure activities transformed the Sabbath.
Muslim sect resisted in Md.
USA Today
Intisar Abbasi looks over the rolling farm field that his Muslim sect hopes to buy for a worship center and annual convention site. The Pakistani immigrant knows many in this small town of unpainted barns and church suppers are "troubled by foreigners" and suspicious of Muslims in particular. ... Today, there are 15,000 Ahmadis in the USA. The Ahmadis "have never been associated with any form of violence," says Carl Ernst, an Islamic studies scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "These people have been on the receiving end of fundamentalist violence. They are not the source of it."
Number of obese growing on global scale
The Chicago Tribune
The world is growing together. And that is not a welcome thing. Obesity, it turns out, is not just an American problem; the whole world is becoming overweight. In China, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Latin America, scientists and health experts have documented alarming weight gains in recent years, especially in children and women. "We may think we're a lazy, gluttonous people," said Barry Popkin, a University of North Carolina professor studying the global weight gain. "But you begin to see that there are some things in common that make so many people overweight."
Failure of surgery and pills drives healing quest
Men's Health Magazine
My dad improved his condition by embracing nontraditional therapies, while I've made myself sicker by avoiding them. I work too much, sleep too little, eat and drink with religious intensity. When the swelling and pain in my intestine escalate, I up my dosages or talk to my surgeon. But with every slice of the scalpel, the outlook grows grimmer. "You need the small intestine to absorb calories and fluids," says Kim Isaacs, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the gastroenterologist for me, my dad, and my brother Rex. "Cut too much and you'll need to be hooked up to an IV constantly, and life becomes pretty difficult."
Law prof who challenged Miss. segregation dies
The Associated Press (National)
Constitutional law professor William P. Murphy, who enraged Mississippi segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s by teaching that school integration was the law of the land, died Saturday of prostate cancer. He was 87. He died in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he had retired, his son, Rob Murphy, said. The family said a memorial service will be at Chapel Hill and burial will be in Houston. Dates for the services were pending.
Regional Coverage
Bright spot in Iraq: the emerging press
The Baltimore Sun (Commentary)
During the reign of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi newspaper Azzaman could only be published in London. Fleeing the government's muscular arm in the 1990s, the newspaper's founder, former Hussein aide Saad al-Bazzaz, was forced to run his media operation out of Europe for nearly a decade. ... Justin Martin is a doctoral student in the school of journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
PBS series puts reality of World War II in focus
The Lawrence Journal-World & News (Lawrence, Kan.)
It was the good war, the big war, maybe simply the war, and for the last week it has dominated television. Filmmaker Ken Burns is at it again, creating another visual icon, this one a tribute to the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary courage, determination and vision helped preserve our very ordinary lives. ... “This was, in fact, a struggle not only for control of territory and resources, but about who would live and control the resources of the globe and which peoples would vanish entirely because they were believed inferior or undesirable by the victors,” Gerhard L. Weinberg of the University of North Carolina wrote in his massive global history of the war.
State & Local Coverage
State of the Universities
News 14 Carolina (Raleigh/Durham)
The State of the University was the name of the game this week, as chancellors at N.C. Central University, N.C. State and UNC Chapel Hill gave the address to members of their respective communities. ... During his address at UNCCH, Chancellor James Moeser announced that he will be retiring from the position next summer. He will still serve as a professor. “My pledge to you is to bring the same level of passion, energy and commitment in my last year as I did in my first seven years as your chancellor," said Moeser.
Healthy Haircuts
WUNC-FM
Some African American men in eastern North Carolina are getting a little bit more than a shave and a haircut when they go to the barbershop. Barbers historically played a role in health care. They acted as medical practioners, pulling teeth and drawing blood. Yasmeen Khan reports how researchers at UNC Chapel Hill have enlisted barbers to help spread information about cancer.
North Carolina black households lag in income, employment
The Associated Press
Black households make 40 percent less money than their white counterparts in North Carolina and have nearly twice the unemployment rate, according to census data released Thursday. ... Economists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found in a 2006 study that a rising number of Hispanic workers had depressed wages and displaced some black workers. But John Kasarda, one of the study's authors, said blacks reported in interviews that they were unwilling to take the jobs Hispanics do - at any wage.
Related Link: http://www.charlotte.com/local/story/294942.htmlRenewing access to psychiatric care (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
There is much to be encouraged about in the renewed focus on recharting mental health reform in North Carolina. All concerned have acknowledged the myriad and complex problems with the reorganization and financing of care in the redesigned system. It is critical however, that as we move forward we offer simple, common-sense ideas to encourage stakeholders that new funding in our system will be well-spent. ... T. Scott Stroup, M.D., is a professor in the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Psychiatry.
Study: Ultrasound aids cancer search
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Adding ultrasound to mammography finds more breast cancers than mammography alone -- but it also results in many more false positives, according to results of a study out Friday. UNC Hospitals was one of the sites of the study, enrolling 198 women, or 7.5 percent of all participants. A UNC-CH professor and vice dean, Etta Pisano, was co-author of the study.
Concussions: Panthers' Morgan dismisses warnings
The Fayetteville Observer
"Anyone who believes that these players aren’t at risk for future injury once they’ve had a concussion is a fool,” said Dr. Kevin Guskiewicz, chairman of the University of North Carolina’s department of exercise and sports science. “Somebody that has had three or four concussions in their career is certainly at greater risk of sustaining subsequent injury than someone who has never had one before.”
Chapel Hill catalogues its critters
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Critters, creepy crawlies and creatures of the night were catalogued Saturday to get a scientific snapshot of Chapel Hill's biodiversity. Scientists and community members teamed up to conduct and inventory the area's flora and fauna at the BioBlitz, a day-long collaboration between the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center and the North Carolina Botanical Gardens.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/sep07/bioblitz091307.htmlReynolds Price to receive Wolfe Prize
The Charlotte Observer
N.C. author Reynolds Price will receive UNC Chapel Hill's 2007 Thomas Wolfe Prize and deliver the annual Thomas Wolfe lecture on Wednesday in Carroll Hall auditorium. The public event is free and will begin at 7:30 p.m.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/sep07/reynoldsprice091407.htmlMelanoma study grants total $7.8M
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Researchers at UNC's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center have been awarded two five-year grants totaling $7.8 million from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences to study how sunlight causes skin cancer, also known as melanoma. Scientists will determine how genetic mutations in melanoma genes, as well as genes that suppress melanoma, contribute to cancer development.
UNC News Brief: http://www.unc.edu/news/briefs/2007/092607.htmlGrant keeps UNC in leadership role
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
The N.C. Institute for Public Health, the service and outreach arm of the UNC School of Public Health, has received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to continue its leadership of the national Public Health Leadership Institute. ...UNC has directed the program since 2001. The leadership institute has trained more than 800 top public health leaders since it was created in 1991. Edward Baker, director of the N.C. Institute for Public Health and research professor of health policy and administration in the UNC School of Public Health, will direct the leadership institute.
UNC News Brief: http://www.unc.edu/news/briefs/2007/092607.htmlWestern UNC med school proposed
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Officials say a proposal to create a branch campus of the UNC School of Medicine in Western North Carolina could bring more doctors, jobs and newcomers to the region.
Business center gets $4 million donation
The News & Observer
Leonard W. Wood, a former principal of Atlanta-based Trammell Crow Residential, is giving $4 million to the Center for Real Estate Development at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of UNC-Chapel Hill.
UNC News Release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/sep07/woodgift092107.htmlMake 'strange' a strength
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Daniel M. Cable believes that normal is bad. The management professor at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School recently published "Change to Strange" ($25.99, Wharton School Publishing), which argues that employers need to invest in unusual workers and policies to keep a competitive edge.
Execution and the pain of it all
The News & Observer
Dr. Philip Boysen, anesthesiology department chair at the UNC School of Medicine, testified in a hearing that an inmate undergoing lethal injection in North Carolina is at risk of chemically burned tissue and conscious suffocation. Because the person would be paralyzed, he would not be able to signal that he was hurting.
Warming to a global issue
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Some of these questions and answers ran in the newspaper, and we put a lot of the Q&As online. The experts included Douglas J. Crawford-Brown of UNC-Chapel Hill, Brian C. Murray of Duke and Len Pietrafesa of N.C. State. That's one of the advantages of publishing a newspaper in the Research Triangle. We have access to a lot of smart people.
Forums will focus on health care
The News-Record (Greensboro)
The League of Women Voters of the Piedmont Triad and a local foundation are teaming to offer public forums on health care for the 2008 election season. ... The programs will begin during the 2008 primary election season. The first, on March 11, will be led by Dr. Jon Oberlander from the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine and will focus on how health care money is currently spent.
Bargain or brand?
The Rocky Mount Telegram
Consumer loyalty is not exclusive to the older generation though, said Gary Armstrong, professor of marketing at UNC-Chapel Hill. The generation people grow up in and the values they are raised with play an important role in buying decisions. For example, some marketers believe members of Generation X have a more cautious economic outlook because of the way they grew up, Armstrong said. They were largely a generation of latch-key kids who grew up with an increasing divorce rate, recession and corporate downsizing.
For what it's worth
Business North Carolina Magazine
The SEC method is designed to smooth out pay for CEOs that get big stock or option grants every few years. ... “The good news is you can look at both,” says Robert Bushman, professor of accounting at UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. “If you feel like that smooth number is not what you really want to know, you can fix that.”
Soltys' good fight (Editorial)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Florence Soltys won a good many battles on behalf of aging and sick people in North Carolina, and across the United States for that matter. But even those who went up against her and felt they'd won knew they'd been in a tussle. Soltys, who died Thursday at 72 in Chapel Hill, brought passion and selflessness and courage to all causes that were of benefit to the elderly. And she did so for many years working through UNC-Chapel Hill's splendid School of Social Work as a professor, and through the schools of medicine and nursing as well. She was simply a presence in North Carolina who cannot be replaced.Reporter saw the world and told its stories
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
In 30 years of reporting, Morris Rosenberg saw the inside of a Cuban jail, survived a Venezuelan coup and covered a Caribbean hurricane so fierce he came home with socks full of mud. ..."This guy was one of the giants, and I never heard of him before I came here," said Chuck Stone, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who can make his own boasts about being history's witness. "We have these great people in our midst and never know it."
Issues & Trends
Balancing athletics, academics (Editorial)
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
As Ray Gronberg reported on the front page Tuesday, Duke University is embarking on a major effort to develop a strategic plan for the athletics department. ... Even though overall fund raising at Duke and UNC keep reaching record levels, and they have scored head-spinning major donations this year, they are bound to be influenced by the nationwide arms race. Witness, for example, the sharp increase in what UNC thought it must pay to attract a top-rank football coach -- and Duke's concern about aging Wallace Wade Stadium. ... In fact, of the 64 (out of 73) colleges in the six major conferences that responded to a Chronicle survey on athletic fund-raising, the top spot is held by none other than UNC. ... On top of that, UNC has raised $230 million in capital campaigns for athletics in the past five years, one of the very highest totals among the 64 schools.
Growth in Sports Gifts May Mean Fewer Academic Donations
The Chronicle of Higher Education
As the country's biggest athletics departments have sought ways to pay for multimillion-dollar facility expansions, coaches' salaries, and other rising costs, their fund-raising operations have experienced enormous growth. But contributions to sports programs are eating up an ever-larger share of donations to colleges, Chronicle research suggests. ... The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill led the way, collecting $51-million.
Cost of business (Letter to the Editor)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
The fact is that salaries have been increasing, and UNC President Erskine Bowles, an experienced business person, recognizes that it is cheaper to keep good people in place than to recruit new, untested individuals to replace individuals lost to other institutions
Related Link: http://www.chapelhillnews.com/opinion/letters/story/9983.htmlSomething rotten in the state of education?
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Within the 16-campus UNC system, seven campuses do not require English majors to study Shakespeare. UNC-Chapel Hill maintains the requirement, while N.C. State University does not.
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.
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