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Editor's note: In the following pieces, a cross-section of campus leaders describes how passage of the $3.1 billion bond referendum for facilities needs at the state's public universities and community colleges would affect their areas, as well as their ability to serve North Carolina citizens.
If voters approve the referendum Nov. 7, nearly half a billion dollars will
come to Carolina for construction and renovation projects over the next five to
seven years.
See http://www.unc.edu/govrel/ for more information about the bonds.
More room to serve
Linda Cronenwett, Dean of the School of Nursing
Carrington Hall, home of the University's School of Nursing, is full. The
success of the school, and ultimately our ability to assure quality health care
for citizens of this state, is dependent on our continued ability to support
excellence in teaching, research and service. The passage of the Higher
Education Bond Referendum will provide the dollars needed to build an addition
to Carrington Hall.
Teaching: Support for the bond referendum is support for our Clinical Education
Resource Center, a clinical simulation environment in which student nurses
learn and practice physical assessment of patients and the fundamentals of
advanced nursing skills. During peak weeks, there are 400 students using the
lab -- making it difficult for students to concentrate, for instance, on the
interpretation of lung and heart sounds. The bond funds will allow us to create
more learning lab spaces and specialized units where students can practice
their skills with computerized manikins. Bond funds will also support the
expansion of the undergraduate computer lab that is necessary to accommodate
enrollment growth and the Carolina Computing Initiative.
Research: In order for the School of Nursing to be able to continue to conduct
cutting-edge research and retain its fourth-place national ranking in research
funding, additional laboratory and research space is essential. Faculty members
are conducting research on reducing risks for heart disease, recovery from
myocardial infarction, better pain management, coping with cancer, improving
the development of premature infants, reducing cognitive decline in the
elderly, and minimizing sleep disturbances and fatigue in children with
juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, to name but a few studies. In addition to more
research space, we need room for laboratories that support multiple
investigators, such as a wet lab for tissue analysis and processing of
biological samples, an exercise/metabolic laboratory, and interview and
observation rooms. The addition to Carrington Hall will meet these needs.
Service: Offering educational programs that meet the needs of current and
prospective students is always important, but particularly so during this time
of nursing shortage. We are opening a third option for undergraduate nursing
education that will allow us to help the University meet its commitment to
enrollment growth. Simultaneously, we will produce more graduates who will be
prepared to help the state cope with the current nursing shortage. Bond funds
will allow us to build a distance education classroom that will facilitate
outreach programs that prepare nurses who live and work at a distance from
Chapel Hill. A new continuing education classroom will enhance our efforts to
provide convenient, affordable continuing education to nurses across the state.
Finally, the addition to Carrington Hall will provide a suite of rooms for
nursing practice initiatives, where students learn by working with faculty who
deliver nursing care to people of this state.
The Higher Education Bond Referendum is critical to the future of the School of
Nursiing. With a new addition to our building, we can meet present and future
student and faculty needs and ensure North Carolina's claim to a School of
Nursing of national and international renown.
Power surge
Ray DuBose, Director of Energy Services
The University's bond issue on the ballot for the coming election has been
getting a considerable amount of attention because of the sheer magnitude of
the numbers of building projects and the total cost of these projects. The
primary purposes of these projects are to provide new building space for the
expanding University teaching and research programs and also to renovate some
of the older and obsolete structures to provide facilities consistent with the
University's goals to compete qualitatively nationally. What has not gotten a
lot of attention is that the bond issue also includes items that will have a
significant positive impact on our energy usage and infrastructure within the
University.
Energy system improvements are provided in the building renovation projects in
the form of new lighting and new heating, ventilation and air conditioning
systems within older buildings. These new systems will not only improve the
quality of indoor environments but will also be much more energy efficient than
existing systems within buildings. For example, the renovation of Murphey Hall
will replace the existing heating system with a central air system that will be
efficient and in compliance with the current standards for energy consumption.
The space cooling, which is now provided by relatively inefficient window
units, will be provided by the central air system that will be connected to the
campus central chilled water system. New efficient lighting will also be a
significant improvement from an energy standpoint.
The largely hidden energy systems that support the operation of the more
visible buildings are very complex and interrelated. The primary energy utility
systems provide not only vital electricity but also chilled water for cooling
and steam for heating. The combined thermal -- chilled water and steam -- and
electric systems operate very efficiently, and the Environmental Protection
Agency recently recognized us for "superior environmental performance" of these
systems. In order to maintain this high level of performance, significant
attention must be given the energy systems just as the University continues to
improve and grow.
The bond issue will allow us to continue to extend the energy infrastructure in
a planned fashion to take advantage of the technology we have been able to
utilize. The bond issue includes central utility projects for increasing
capacity of the steam and chilled water systems to match the growth of the
University reflected by bond projects. Both central production capacity and
distribution system increases are included. A portion of cogeneration is
included to extend totally the interrelated combined heat and power systems to
continue to provide clean and efficient energy to this increment of campus
growth.
The bond issue, if passed, will significantly affect those of us who are
responsible for campus energy. It will allow us not only to serve the growth of
the University and its energy needs, but will permit us to do so in a way that
is consistent with the excellence for which the University is well known.
Keeping up with change
Linda Dykstra, Dean of the Graduate School and Interim Vice Provost
for Graduate Studies and Research
All of us working in the sciences recognize that research and science education
have changed. The classrooms and laboratories of previous generations are no
longer adequate. Emerging fields such as materials science, genomics and
bioinformatics demand advanced technologies and the specialized facilities
necessary to support them. Even our older, more established disciplines are
facing new questions, and these questions require new equipment, new facilities
and new ways of interacting.
The interdisciplinary collaboration necessary for modern science has been a
constant theme in the planning of our science complex, a key element in
Carolina's share of the bond package. Planned by a group of our faculty
members, the complex would link faculty members and students from the health
sciences with those from the physical, biological and social sciences,
reflecting the new interplay of disciplines emerging in research.
This complex would be situated in the heart of our academic campus, helping to
ensure that the sciences remain in close communication with the humanities and
the arts, promoting the broad-based intellectual exchange that has always been
part of the Carolina ideal.
Here in the Research Triangle, we have for many years recognized that investing
in science infrastructure will help us attract talent and research resources,
yielding jobs, medical breakthroughs and growth for the economy. But we are not
the only university racing for a competitive edge. Recently, private schools
such as Yale, Harvard and Princeton have directed millions of dollars into new
science programs, as have public universities in Michigan, California and
Florida. In each case, the universities have argued that there will be a direct
link between research and economic development in their respective regions.In
North Carolina, we must continue to invest in science infrastructure in order
to compete for jobs and economic development. But there is another, equally
important motive for investing: education. The ability to offer modern
facilities will enable Carolina to attract excellent students, teachers and
scientists, ensuring that our students learn in an atmosphere charged with the
excitement of advanced research. Our challenge is to prepare the young people
who will become the basis of our economic success, who will be our next
generation of leaders and citizens in a world shaped by science and technology.
Regardless of the careers they choose, they will need a foundation in the
sciences.
Whole campus educates teachers
Madeleine Grumet, Dean of the School of Education
The bonds to support building and capital improvements on the University campus
will greatly help the School of Education to provide instruction, support and
license preparation to prospective and practicing teachers. Like many other
states in this nation, North Carolina is facing a severe teacher shortage -- we
will need to recruit at least 8,000 new teachers for each of the next 10
years.
As population in the Triangle and Triad increases, new schools must be built,
new teachers, administrators and school support personnel hired. These staffing
needs make it imperative for this School of Education and its sisters across
the state to extend our efforts as far as our resources and facilities will
allow to support the preparation of the people who will teach the children of
North Carolina.
Because it takes an entire university to educate a teacher, we welcome capital
improvements across this campus. Improvements to arts and sciences classrooms,
to science laboratories, art studios, practice spaces for musicians, and
theater spaces provide opportunities for our students to extend their
enthusiasm for learning and to bring their imaginations and energies into forms
that will travel with them to other classrooms and other students. Every
investment in the learning spaces of this University is potentially an
investment in the opportunities for learning that will be available to the
5-year-olds who enter our school buildings with hope and vitality.
The renovation of Peabody Hall will permit us to outfit classrooms with
state-of-the-art technology and lab resources. Renovations will permit us to
improve access for people with disabilities and will also help us to provide
spaces for our students and faculty that invite study and conversation. They
will also permit us to address safety hazards in this building that can only be
corrected through a process of major renovation.
In addition, the bonds will help us to provide spaces that will permit us to
bring area teachers together for workshops. It will provide the development of
a teacher education wing to facilitate outreach efforts of the School of
Education as we develop the Carolina Teaching Network, which will provide
graduate study to cohorts of teachers who share school sites in a circle of 10
counties surrounding Chapel Hill.
Room for research
Jeffrey Houpt, Vice Chancellor for Medical Affairs and Dean of the School of
Medicine
November's bond referendum will pay for desperately needed building
improvements -- just ask Sharon Milgram, PhD, assistant professor of
neurobiology at the School of Medicine.
As a member of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Dr. Milgram works
in the Medical Science Research Building studying how cells clean foreign
pathogens from airways. Her research is vital to understanding and fighting
lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and asthma. Research being conducted by
her colleagues has direct implications for understanding cardiovascular
disease, birth defects, muscular dystrophy, Lou Gehrig's disease, cancer and
other illnesses.
More than 80 percent of the department's budget comes from external grants --
mainly the National Institutes of Health. Last year, the department received
about $8.5 million, ranking it sixth nationally among physiology departments
(and up from eighth the previous year).
The department is conducting potentially lifesaving research -- and developing
a national scientific reputation -- in what can only be described as terrible
physical conditions. Dr. Milgram's lab has no air conditioning, so she often
must experiment with the windows open. As a result, she loses experiments
because pollen has protein in it and that harms the accuracy of her results.
The building has no emergency power, so an outage could destroy years' worth of
work. The building recently caught on fire, and flooding is a frequent
occurrence.
With the recent announcement that scientists have mapped the three billion
chemical parts that spell the genetic code for a human being, we now stand at
the threshold of the most exciting time for medical research in the history of
the world. The implications of this are mind-boggling. For those of us old
enough to remember how polio once terrified our communities, we will get to see
during our lifetimes the capacity of medicine not only to treat or cure
diseases genetically, but prevent and eradicate them altogether.
The School of Medicine's faculty is doing its part to push forward the edge of
the scientific envelope. In fiscal 1999, Carolina brought in a total of $344.5
million in outside research grants and contracts, of which $171.3 million came
from the National Institutes of Health. The NIH funding resulted in our ranking
14th overall among both public and private universities.
But without quality buildings, the School of Medicine and the University will
struggle to maintain high standards for education, research and public service.
Other universities and states are willing to make vital investments in their
educational infrastructures. Yale put aside $500 million to renovate five
existing science buildings. The University of California at Berkeley, which
does not have a medical school, recently appropriated $500 million for life
sciences. The University of Michigan is allocating $2 billion dollars from the
state's tobacco settlement to connect its campuses with a research park -- not
unlike what is found in our state's Research Triangle.
Critics of the bond referendum have said that North Carolina can't afford the
$3.1-billion bond issuance. My response is the state can't afford not to pass
these bonds.
Adequate space needed
Marian Moore, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology
Information Technology Services (ITS) consists of Academic Technology and
Networks, Administrative Information Services, and Metalab and numbers more
than 300 technology professionals. These very dedicated employees bring you
everything from the CCI and state-of-the-art business software and scientific
applications support, to the best university campus data network in the country
-- as well as something we all take for granted -- dial tone.
What's more -- all of our critical services must operate 24 hours a day, every
day. The people that quietly deliver all of these services do so under some
very poor working conditions. ITS is spread over 12 buildings on campus and
five buildings off campus. Most of our on campus office space is in basements.
The basement of Phillips Hall is a useful example. Not only does it house the
main campus academic server clusters, but it is also home to a number of our
scientific and support staff. A striking aspect of the staff offices in
Phillips is that everything, and I mean everything, is raised -- including the
desks. Depending on the time of year, there may be sand bags outside the
entrance stairway. Periodic flooding is not an uncommon occurrence and high-end
computer equipment and gully washers don't mix.
Across the street from Phillips is Abernethy Hall -- where the main offices of
ITS and ATN are located (about 34 people). Abernethy was built in 1907 as the
infirmary for the town of Chapel Hill. I have heard many stories about
Abernethy: that it is haunted (by the ghosts of children that died during the
influenza epidemic of 1918); that it has been condemned (more than once); that
when it was offered to a couple of academic departments, they turned it down
preferring cramped quarters elsewhere to more space in Abernethy. Some things I
know for sure -- the power to the building is inadequate and the "newer"
outlets (post WWII) are on the outside of the walls, the ceiling fell in last
year in the main entrance, closets have been turned into office space, and the
floors are asbestos and crumbling.
Attracting new employees (and keeping current ones) in this environment is a
real challenge. Our competition is every high-tech company in the Triangle and
many offer modern office space, great salaries, a stock option plan, a
café, workout facilities AND a parking space.
For ITS, the bonds will certainly not fix all of our space problems, but it
will allow us to move critical resources out of Phillips -- turning the space
over to the College of Arts and Sciences. It will allow us to consolidate our
administrative staff in a renovated facility off campus -- what to us looks
like a luxury but to a commercial shop would be considered the only way to do
business. It will also mean that some of our on-campus space, specifically, in
Abernethy and Swain, will finally be replaced with shared space in a modern
digital multi-media center.
This, of course, still doesn't compete with multi-million dollar IT facilities
at say, Michigan or Georgia Tech. It will, however, get us moving in the right
direction. And though there will still be basements in our future, improving
the conditions for ITS strengthens our ability to deliver the highest quality
support to the faculty, staff, and students -- the people who make this
University great and such an asset to North Carolina.
It's not just the buildings
Risa Palm, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
The bond referendum is about much more than replacing old facilities
with new ones. The ballot question responds directly to the issue of our future
capacity to provide the best liberal arts education to the future leaders of
our state and our nation.
As the largest and oldest school within the University, the College of Arts and
Sciences faces several serious challenges in the near future.
Our first hurdle is the growing student population. The number of high school
graduates in North Carolina alone is expected to jump by 26 percent in the
coming decade. The College's enrollment is already about 15,000 students. It's
not clear how many additional students we will take in over the coming decade,
but we can expect to increase our undergraduate enrollment by about 100
students each year over the next three years alone.
At the same time, many of our leading professors will retire in the near
future. In order to attract and retain new faculty of the same high caliber, we
need to compete with other top public and private universities nationwide. The
quality and capacity of our classroom and research facilities will make a big
difference.
Many of our facilities were constructed before central heating and cooling were
available, and before anyone ever heard of nanoscience and genomics. We've been
good stewards of our historic architecture, but rare books and music
collections require climate-controlled environments, and 21st-century science
questions demand high-tech laboratories and equipment.
The bond referendum responds to these pressing concerns with several important
capital initiatives, which would provide the facilities necessary to prepare
our students for their roles as citizens in a fast-changing and global
society.
The new Science Complex would include expanded and up-to-date classrooms,
offices and research space and bring scientists together for cutting-edge
interdisciplinary research and instruction in bioinformatics, genomics,
materials science, physics and astronomy, mathematics, biology, chemistry,
computer science, marine science and environmental science. This would greatly
enhance our science facilities and make us more competitive for research grants
and for recruiting new faculty.
The new Digital Multi-Media Center and Music Library would provide a much
needed home for our incomparable collection of music. It would also provide
improved facilities for music programs as well as the multimedia activities
associated with our growing Department of Communication Studies.
The new International Studies Center would bring together our diverse
area-studies programs, the international studies curriculum and study abroad
office. Such programs are crucial to a liberal arts education in our global
society.
Finally, renovations of old and venerable buildings on Polk and McCorkle places
would mean up-to-date classrooms and offices in many of the humanities and
social science departments. This would allow us to meet increasing enrollment
demands, while taking advantage of the new technologies that so enhance our
teaching and research.
The bond referendum is not just about buildings. It's about nothing less than
our capacity to provide the faculty and facilities required to educate a
growing population of students for citizenship and leadership in the 21st
century.
Serving critical needs for world-class faculty
Bill Roper, Dean of the School of Public Health
My greatest sources of pride as dean of the School of Public Health are our
world-class faculty and our top-flight students from all over the world. During
its 60-year history, the school has achieved worldwide recognition for its
ability to balance leading-edge science with informed, community-based
practice. Our school recently was voted the top public School of Public Health
in the country by U.S. News & World Report magazine, second only to Johns
Hopkins and Harvard. Singled out for special notice were the school's graduate
program in health services administration, ranked second in the nation, and our
program in environmental health engineering, which ranked 10th.
Our goal in the coming years is to make the school the leader in the nation
among schools of public health, public and private. The better our school, the
better students and faculty we can attract, the better graduates we can send
into the world, and the better and more diverse research we can accomplish, all
in the interest of improving the health of citizens worldwide.
We are faced with such public health challenges as the emergence of new
infectious diseases, re-emergence of old foes, and development of microbial
resistance among many infectious agents. Infectious diseases remain the leading
cause of death worldwide and the third leading cause of death in the United
States. Global climate change, changes in air and water quality, and proper
nutrition challenge even the richest nation in the world.
Solutions to these problems will come from laboratory science and will require
the most modern and sophisticated equipment. We have inadequate lab space to
accommodate our faculty and student researchers, and some of the labs we do
have are so decrepit that we are having to lease off-campus labs and offices.
We have planned a new research and teaching building to adjoin the school's
longtime home, Rosenau Hall. Some $23.4 million of the bond referendum is
dedicated to the School of Public Health for construction of the new building
and renovations to Rosenau Hall. In order to complete construction on the new
building, we will need to raise about $10 million from private and corporate
donations. We have this as our top priority for the Carolina First campaign.
Our new building will house modern laboratories to serve three departments with
wet-labs: nutrition, epidemiology and environmental sciences and engineering.
It will include a high-tech teaching facility dedicated to the school's core
courses, and will house an instrument fabrication shop, cold rooms and clean
rooms, student study spaces, faculty offices and conference rooms, and an
auditorium with current computer/electronic audiovisual equipment.
This will take us into the 21st century and help make the school even better
able to serve the citizens of North Carolina and the world. For more information,
including photos of the current labs and drawings of the new building, contact
me at bill_roper@unc.edu I encourage
you to educate yourself on our projects and others here at Carolina and throughout
the UNC system, and I ask you to please make sure to vote Nov. 7.
Building on the legacy
John W. Stamm, Dean of the School of Dentistry
If voters approve the bond referendum on Nov. 7, $21.8 million would come to
the University's School of Dentistry for important capital facility upgrades.
These funds would pay for deferred maintenance and cover the cost of
modernizing, replacing and building new classrooms, research space and health
care facilities for the state's only dental school.
We are fortunate to have a state-of-the-art clinical facility, Tarrson Hall,
that allows us to provide valuable services for patients from across the state
and around the world. Our misfortune is that the school's classrooms and
seminar rooms are in dire need of renovation. We are not able to keep pace with
technological advances in education that prepare our students for their patient
treatment experiences. Additionally, current space constraints severely limit
our ability to gather our students together for special lectures, seminars and
conferences. Despite the fact that we don't have a room in which two or more
classes can gather, our school provides more continuing education programs than
any other dental school in the United States -- all conducted off site.
Our research facilities have remained virtually unchanged for more than 30
years. Yet, during those three decades, we have increased our research output
from hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in the 1960s to more than $10
million in 2000. It will become increasingly difficult to compete to maintain a
competitive edge without enhancements to our research space.
The School of Dentistry is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 1999-2000, and
our record of education, research and service is one of the University's true
success stories. The remarkable achievements, starting from the school's
founding in 1949 to its continuing pre-eminence in 2000, leave a rare legacy of
accomplishment of which the University and North Carolina's dental profession
are justly proud.
The passage of the bond referendum in November will help continue that legacy
of accomplishment for the next half-century and beyond.
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