'Remembering
Peace' in Nepal
Against
the background of Maoist insurgents terrorizing Nepal's countryside
and the king removing the prime minister and civilian leadership
and canceling elections, Chapel Hill artist Jyoti Duwadi has mounted
an innovative multi-part public installation in Kathmandu titled
"Shanti Ko Samjhana," or "Remembering Peace."
Several phases of this work were unveiled Oct. 30 to a group at
the Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence via images projected
from his web site and a live audio hookup that included a question-and-answer
session among Johnston Center participants and Duwadi and his
wife, Barbara Matilsky, curator of exhibitions at the Ackland
Art Museum.
Randi Davenport, associate director of the Johnston Center, and
Jamie Bishop, academic technology consultant for OASIS (Office
of Arts & Sciences Information Services), initially worked
to set up a video link for this program. They contacted Sen. John
Edwards' office, the U.S. Embassy in Nepal -- and even the World
Bank there -- in order to secure an Internet or ISDN telephone
line that would allow video conferencing.
It was not to be -- not this year, at least. It turned out that
even with governmental sanction, the connection could not be made.
"They just didn't have enough bandwidth," Davenport said. It wasn't
due to "a lack of support for their project."
But the couple's voices came through loud and clear in the Kresge
Commons Room with just a slight lag time in transmission between
the two continents.
In describing his project, Duwadi said that in the midst of the
civil conflict he chose to focus on issues of peace and social
justice in an environment where "voices unified in their call
for peace can be expressed."
To do that, the multi-media artist chose the serene 15th-century
Rani Pohkai pond in Kathmandu as a backdrop for one of his installations.
Five hundred small jute bags, each filled with earth and a flowering
sapling, were placed in rows of equal distance around the pond.
In addition, 3,000 clay oil lamps were lighted around its perimeter.
The trees memorialize more than 5,000 lives lost in civil unrest
in Nepal, Duwadi said, and symbolize hopes for peace. Three large
oil lamps will be kept lit "in memory of the deceased, in solidarity
with living victims of violence, and to symbolize a future that
is free of violence and injustice," he said.
The saplings will be planted in early November to create a Peace
Grove on an important watershed and pilgrimage site 10 miles from
Kathmandu in Pharping. In this part of the project, Duwadi has
organized women's and youth groups to revitalize the area by clearing
the land, building fences to keep out neighboring cows and planting
the trees.
In turn, it is hoped that the herbal trees and other plants will
provide a long-term, sustainable income source from the sale of
their bark, leaves and flowers. The women, mostly from the lower
castes such as cobblers and blacksmiths, plan to use the profits
for literacy work. "Using art to create [this kind of] stability
is really very compelling," Davenport said.
Three of the trees were purchased by the Johnston Center and the
University.
There has been tremendous public support for Duwadi's project,
Matilsky said. While they received warnings that Maoists might
plant bombs, she said everything so far has gone "very peacefully."
When distributing the 12,000 flyers for the show, Matilsky said
"it was like a mob scene. One person took a flyer and actually
kissed it."
To see more photos of the peace project, refer to www.geocities.com/~akash-himal/shanti-2002/index.htm.
Task
force considers using tuition to raise staff pay
Money generated from campus-based tuition increases in recent
years at the University has been earmarked to achieve roughly
the same purposes in each of those years.
First, from 35 percent to 40 percent of the added revenues was
set aside for need-based tuition aid to prevent higher tuition
from pricing worthy students from poor backgrounds out of Carolina.
A smaller portion of money was set aside to improve teaching stipends
for graduate students.
The bulk of the money was devoted to faculty pay raises or to
hire additional faculty in order to reduce teacher-student ratios.
At the past two meetings of the Student Tuition Task Force, another
unmet need crept into the discussion: salary increases for SPA
staff members.
Nancy Suttenfield, vice chancellor for finance and administration,
raised the possibility of using a share of tuition revenues for
staff raises at the Oct. 10 task force meeting, and at the Oct.
31 task force meeting she presented a summary report that showed
an estimated $6 million worth of salary adjustments would be needed
in order to bring the salaries of all SPA employees up to market
rates.
Suttenfield said that the contribution of staff members to the
University should not be ignored -- not when the only raise staff
members received over the past two years was the $625 across-the-board
raise all state employees received a year ago. That raise, she
said, was erased for many employees by last year's increase in
health insurance premiums and deductibles.
Jen Daum, the student body president who co-chairs the task force
with Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Shelton, said
she was uncertain that the UNC Board of Governors would go along
with designating a portion of tuition revenues for staff raises.
For this reason, Daum said, she was concerned that including staff
raises in the task force's recommendations could make it more
likely that the Board of Governors might tinker with or reject
some of its other recommendations.
In response to Daum's concern, Suttenfield said she understood
that Daum could be right from a pragmatic point of view. But Suttenfield
said, "I personally feel a moral responsibility to make an effort."
Suttenfield also reminded task force members that Chancellor James
Moeser has made it clear that getting legislators to address staff
salaries will be at the top of his priority list as well.
One person happy to hear Suttenfield's comments was Tommy Griffin,
the chair of the Employee Forum who also serves as a member of
the tuition task force.
Griffin said after the meeting that just being considered for
a pay increase means something. It means that administrators appreciate
staff members and recognize the importance of the work they do,
Griffin said. It also means that they want to find a way to pay
them more, if it is possible.
That means a lot, he said.
Whatever recommendations the task force makes will be forwarded
to the University Board of Trustees for approval early next year.
The trustees' recommendations, in turn, will be forwarded to the
Board of Governors for approval. The Board of Governors' recommendations
will then be forwarded to the state General Assembly for final
action.
The immediate challenge for the task force, though, will be figuring
out how to divvy up tuition dollars to accomplish the array of
worthy goals.
At the task force's next meeting on Nov. 14, Shelton will present
a proposal that will include a specific dollar amount for a tuition
increase along with a breakdown of how much money it would generate
and how that money might be spent.
The final scheduled meeting for the task force is set for Dec.
12.
There is one inescapable fact, Shelton said, and that is that
a tuition increase that task force members would see as reasonable
would not generate enough revenue to meet all the needs that task
force members agree are important. And that was before salary
increases for staff members were added into the mix.
At the Oct. 31 meeting, Shelton presented a series of scenarios
showing how revenues from three consecutive increases in the $400
range could be applied to attack already agreed-upon priorities:
* It would take a total of $24.7 million over the three years
to raise pay for faculty and teaching assistants to parity with
Carolina's peers and to reduce average class size within Academic
Affairs from an average of 18.49 to 16.
* It would take $12.55 million to add the 165 full-time positions
necessary to reduce class size to 16 to one.
* It would take $10.3 million to wipe out the faculty pay disparity
with the University's peers. Along that same vein, it would take
$1.85 million to close the salary disparity for teaching assistants.
Shelton used as Carolina's peer group 38 public and private Research
I institutions belonging to the American Association of Universities.
For the 2001-02 academic year, the average salary gap for teaching
assistants was $1,630, a gap that had widened since the 1997-98
academic year when the gap was $1,012.
Meanwhile, Suttenfield's analysis of SPA employees revealed that
current salaries for all non-exempt SPA workers lag behind the
market by 5.32 percent.
There are about 6,500 SPA employees at the University spread across
more than 2,000 job classifications. The only mechanism in place
now for adjusting SPA salaries is the in-range salary adjustment
policy that allows increases of up to 10 percent each year. Currently,
4,000 SPA employees would be eligible for in-range salary adjustments
that for the upcoming fiscal year would cost a total of $12.55
million to fully implement, Suttenfield said.
Some employees would be eligible for more in-range salary adjustments
after the $12.55 million of adjustments were made in the first
year. To offer adjustments in the second year would cost an estimated
$4.77 million. Adjustments for the third year would cost another
$1.05 million.
At the same time, Suttenfield said the University will also need
to develop priorities based on market competitiveness with whatever
money it has available.
Suttenfield's report also cited the findings of a market analysis
of SPA employees' salaries that the Singer Group conducted in
2001 for Carolina and N.C. State University. The survey sampled
about 70 benchmark positions.
One finding showed that the maximums of salary ranges were too
low in comparison to local labor data. Although average salaries
at both universities lagged the market by only 2.32 percent in
2001, some job classifications showed much wider disparities.
At Carolina, for instance, a painter's pay was 31 percent below
the local market, a "Plumber II" salary was 19 percent below market
parity and a library technical assistant's pay was 15 percent
below the market.
SECC
extended to Nov. 21, still 39% short of goal
The
State Employees Combined Campaign (SECC), originally scheduled
to end Oct. 31, has been extended through Nov. 21. At the end
of October, the SECC had collected about 61 percent of its $1.15
million goal.
"We
always hope to reach goal within the designated period. But when
needed, the extension gives people a little more time, and in
the past, it has resulted in significant additional gifts,"
said Bob Schreiner, who is co-chairing the campaign with Bill
Roper, dean of the School of Public Health.
The
SECC is the state's once-a-year opportunity for employees to support
one or more of over 900 chairities. Contributions may be made
by payroll deduction, check, credit card or cash.
More
information about the SECC is on the web at www.unc.edu/secc.
People wishing to make a contribution may contact their local
SECC representative or Schreiner at 966-3012 or bob_schreiner@unc.edu
for information and pledge materials.
Chemistry
professor doubles
as painter, musician
It's
possible that many people who achieve the lofty status of professor
of organic chemistry would consider that pinnacle enough.
Not Thomas Sorrell.
Not only does he teach University undergraduates one of the most
challenging courses of the pre-medical curriculum, but he also
plays violin
in the Carolina Symphony Orchestra and paints landscape watercolors.
Now the latter pursuit has landed him in at least a corner of
the artistic limelight.
Sorrell's "White Rim, Green River," a scene from Canyonlands National
Park in Utah, recently was chosen for an international exhibit
organized by The National Park Academy of the Arts, a private
agency based in Jackson, Wyo. The academy raises awareness and
money for the parks, mainly through its annual Arts for the Parks
competition.
Sorrell was floored when his entry this year was chosen as one
of the competition's top 50 small-format paintings, which were
exhibited in September at Jackson Lodge in Grand Teton National
Park. Jackson, brimming with galleries, has become quite a hotspot
for the visual arts.
"I'd
never won anything like this, so for me, it was great," said Sorrell,
who has won awards in academia. "I just love the national parks.
I love the idea of them. To contribute something that ensures
their future is very satisfying."
The idea of a scientist doubling as an artist is not so far-fetched
as some might think, in Sorrell's view. Organic chemistry is more
intuitive than many other areas of science, he said. It deals
with the shapes and spatial arrangements of molecules and how
they interact. To do well in the subject, students must learn
to visualize things in three dimensions.
To help them out, Sorrell wrote a textbook, "Organic Chemistry"
(University Science Books, 1999). It includes reprints of six
of his paintings, each with a chemistry theme.
Sorrell, at Carolina for 25 years, has painted "on and off for
about 20 years, seriously for the past five or so." He took courses
in life drawing and painting in Carolina's art department and
attends a watercolor painting workshop each summer. He completes
three or four paintings a year. Now, the success of his painting
in competition "has gotten me interested in putting in a little
more time."
Doing that may require even more skillful time management than
Sorrell apparently practices now. His longtime pal Tonu Kalam,
a Carolina music professor who conducts the orchestra in which
Sorrell plays, says the group practices from 7-9:30 p.m. Mondays
and Wednesdays and plays two concerts each semester.
Sorrell teaches "Introduction to Organic Chemistry I" to 120 students
at 8 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. "Mondays and Wednesdays
are long days," he said.
In 15 years of conducting the orchestra, Kalam has seen a fair
number of medical professionals in the ranks, but few from the
basic sciences. Undergraduates make up about 80 percent of the
orchestra, but it's open to anyone by audition. Folks from fields
other than music often participate, keeping alive their treasured
music skills from childhood lessons or undergraduate majors. Some
are alumni. Some, graduate students. One is a psychiatrist, and
one, a chemist and artist.
"The
fact that Tom's interests are so diverse that he can master painting
as well as music makes it even more unusual," Kalam said. "And
Tom is very dedicated when it comes to preparation. Not only does
he practice his own part, but he gets a recording and listens
to it many times to familiarize himself with the big picture."
Perhaps he does that in the car on the way to his weekly 45-minute
violin lesson with Doris Powers of Chapel Hill, a private violin
teacher, freelance musician and columnist for the Chapel Hill
News.
"Tom
asks a lot of very perceptive questions," Powers said. "He really
thinks very deeply about his violin playing. He takes a very creative
approach to technical issues that I don't often see." He's even
figured out some solutions "that will save me a lot of teaching
time," she said.
Sorrell downplays his skill, noting that he is "the last chair
of second violins." He took lessons as a child but only began
playing seriously again about three years ago.
"Playing
in the orchestra helps me see what students are going through
in my classes, how they struggle with new ideas and difficult
material," Sorrell said. I think it's made me a better, more empathic
teacher."
Park
Art
For more information on The National Park Academy of the Arts'
annual Arts for the Parks competition, see www.artsfortheparks.com.
Click "Mini 50" to see the winning paintings. To go directly to
Thomas Sorrell's winning work, see www.artsfortheparks.com/2002m50/pages/sorrellwhite.html.
Return
of the matrix
Lee
McIlwain's graphic new findings revive a long-neglected idea about
the existence of structural frameworks in cells. This time, will
scientists believe?
To me, to you, the picture might look like nothing special. But
Lee McIlwain was struck by it.
On May 15, 1999, McIlwain sat at his desk flipping through a textbook.
Today, he doesn't remember exactly why he checked out that book
from the library. But in it he came across a review of some 20-year-old
research by Sheldon Penman, a respected cell biologist. Penman's
work had little to do with McIlwain's. But McIlwain's eye was
drawn to a picture -- an electron-microscope image that showed
a human epithelial cell with hundreds of tiny structures crisscrossing
inside.
McIlwain realized that if what Penman had seen in these epithelial
cells was true, it might explain some things in McIlwain's work
that had seemed a mystery.
McIlwain, professor of cell and molecular physiology, had been
studying large nerve cells known as spinal motor neurons for 25
years -- about the same amount of time that his lab technician,
Victoria Hoke, had been working with him. The two were trying
to understand the size and shape of these neurons, hoping that
they could provide some insight into Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
(ALS) -- commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease.
When McIlwain looked at this image from Penman's work, he began
to see his motor neurons in a whole new way. He read Penman's
papers. By May 17, McIlwain was handwriting notes -- questions,
instructions -- on the back of used office paper. He also sketched
how the insides of spinal motor neurons might look if they contained
what he called the "intracellular matrix." The next day, he was
at the whiteboard, hashing out his ideas with Hoke, sketching
the matrix again with a red marker.
That one image from Penman's work made so much sense to McIlwain
that he switched gears and began a series of experiments that
would consume his and Hoke's work life for almost two years. If
Penman had been right, and epithelial cells contained a framework
that held the cells together, then maybe motor neurons did too.
The only trouble was, scientists had never agreed that Penman
was right. Scientists had accepted the idea of a cytoskeleton
in the nucleus and cytoplasm of cells. But they had reservations
about the framework that Penman had isolated. Penman and other
scientists debated the idea. But not even Penman, a member of
the National Academy of Sciences, nor Keith Porter, another prominent
cell biologist and National Academy member, could get scientists
to agree.
But McIlwain couldn't resist. The idea had such "explanatory power"
that he had to pursue it.
Before he found that picture, McIlwain had been experimenting
with spinal motor neurons' size and shape. When he would injure
a motor neuron by cutting its axon, the cell would swell. But
it didn't just swell. The parts of the cell -- the nucleus, the
nucleolus, and the cell body -- changed size in proportion to
one another, and the nucleus moved away from the center of the
cell. The cell seemed to have something keeping all its parts
in line.
McIlwain and Hoke tried to determine what proteins were increasing
during the swelling. They ran gel after gel -- gel electrophoresis,
a procedure used to separate and identify proteins. "We used two-dimensional
gels, thinking that any protein that was really going to be of
interest to us was going to be on those gels," McIlwain says.
But they couldn't find what they were looking for.
Besides running the gels, they would measure the amount of protein
in the cell body after cutting the cell's axon. The protein increased
by 50 percent within three weeks after the cell was injured. But
the gels didn't show the increase. "Where is that fifty percent
protein increase that should be on these gels?" McIlwain thought.
One possibility was that the cells contained a lot of protein
that couldn't be identified using gels. Insoluble protein -- protein
that can't be dissolved by the usual detergents.
While McIlwain was stewing over the missing protein, he came upon
Penman's electron microscope image. The picture got him thinking
-- maybe there were insoluble proteins in motor neurons formed
a matrix similar to the one that Penman had seen.
On his handwritten notes, McIlwain listed experiments he should
try. One instruction reads simply, "image it." McIlwain didn't
know what he was getting himself into.
To view cells with electron microscopy, scientists cut thin-sections
-- they slice lengthwise through the cell, using diamond knives
or plate glass. To get the super-thin slices, scientists use an
embedment material, a hard plastic.
But Penman had used a different way of thin-sectioning. Instead
of plastic as the embedment material, he used a flexible wax.
And he removed the wax before viewing, which allowed him to see
an entirely new structure in the cell.
McIlwain needed to do the same thing with his motor neurons. He
and Hoke soon realized one reason why this technique is unusual
-- it's hard to get it right. The wax can become brittle and hard
to work with. Mess up once, and you must start over with a new
slice.
Hoke had never done electron microscopy before. She worked at
it. The wax kept falling apart. She and McIlwain modified the
wax so that it would hold up. Then the slices of cell kept coming
out very thick. The thick slices made the pictures too dark.
"At
first we got really ugly images," McIlwain says. "But then, peeping
through were some things that looked like we were on the right
track," he says. "So we kept going back."
Hoke worked some more. "Vickie hardly ever drops an experiment,"
McIlwain says. "She is careful and deliberate, and at the end
of the experiment, you know that it's reliable."
After six months of learning the new technique, and almost two
years after McIlwain had discovered that picture, McIlwain and
Hoke, together at their department's electron microscope, finally
got their first good images of the matrix structure.
"When
those pictures came out, it was just so obvious. We're talking
about looking at the same thing that Penman had been looking at
in nonneuronal cells," he says.
McIlwain was sure that the structure they were seeing was holding
the cell together. Before examining the cell, they extracted its
soluble protein using 10-normal sodium hydroxide, which "dissolves
protein like crazy," as McIlwain says. The substance had extracted
about 60 percent of the total protein from the cell. "You remove
half the protein, but you still get something that looks like
a cell," Hoke says. This convinced them that the cell contained
insoluble proteins that were controlling its size and shape.
The two also found success with experiments that followed. "For
a while, every experiment we did was suggested by Penman's work,
and we could predict how it was going to come out," McIlwain says.
The experiments showed that the size and shape of the isolated
framework changed after nerve injury, that the framework contained
all the missing protein, and that the framework was very insoluble.
McIlwain has no doubt about the matrix. He's one of the few. One
criticism: when Penman was promoting this idea, some scientists
argued that one part of the thin-sectioning method --removing
the wax and drying the cells with a technique called critical
point drying -- could be altering how the fine details of the
framework appeared.
McIlwain concedes that could be true. But whatever the fine details
of the framework, something is maintaining the cells' size and
shape, even after McIlwain removes the soluble proteins. "I think
these are the true bones of these cells," he says.
The explanation satisfies him enough that he's willing to spend
the next few years -- the end of his career -- refining this work.
"I'm happy to just stand right in line behind Porter and Penman
and say, `Well, I took your ideas and applied them to neurons,
and, by golly, they seem to check out,' " he says.
To agree with McIlwain, scientists will have to change they way
they think about cells. Bringing about such a "paradigm shift"
is not easy. "It's hard for scientists to believe that something
this fundamental has been overlooked," McIlwain says. "The whole
idea of the cytoskeleton is so familiar that it's hard for scientists
to accept new ideas about it."
If the proteins in the matrix are indeed insoluble, they're going
to be hard to identify. McIlwain is betting that mass spectrometry
-- a tool of the new field of proteomics -- will help. He has
begun sending human cell samples to Carolina's Proteomics Core
Facility. There researchers break the proteins down into their
small chains, known as peptides, and run them through a mass spectrometer
to determine their mass. Then McIlwain can use the human genome
to identify the peptides, giving him a clue as to which proteins
they come from.
McIlwain believes that the framework is not made of the usual
cytoskeleton proteins. These proteins are soluble, and the way
he sees it, the matrix is not. "I may be able to show that there's
some interesting new protein in motor neurons," he says.
McIlwain hopes that proteomics will help scientists see the "insoluble
world" in cells. "This world exists in nonneuronal cells as well
as in neurons," McIlwain says. "We've got to come to grips with
it."
"It
doesn't happen very often that you just feel like something comes
along and synthesizes what you're doing," he continues. "For me
the real reward has been in getting an answer that really made
good sense."
This work was funded by two small grants from UNC-Chapel Hill
-- a University Research Council grant and a Medical Alumni Foundation
Endowment grant.
Editor's
note: This story is reprinted from the Fall 2002 issue of "Endeavors,"
a magazine highlighting research at Carolina. It is published
three times a year by the Office of Graduate Studies and Research.
Neil Caudle serves as editor, and Angela Spivey -- who wrote this
piece -- is associate editor. Employees who would like a free
subscription to "Endeavors" should send their name, job title,
department and campus address to the "Endeavors" office via campus
mail (Endeavors, CB 4106), e-mail (endeavors@unc.edu)
or the subscription form at the magazine's web site (research.unc.edu/endeavors).
Software to teach disabled children
to write
Software
being developed by Carolina researchers may help children with
disabilities become competent writers.
The University, on behalf of Janet Sturm, assistant professor
of speech and hearing sciences in the School of Medicine, and
colleagues, has licensed this knowledge of how a successful writing
tool should be designed to Don Johnston Inc., a Volo, Ill.-based
company that develops and commercializes literacy learning tools.
The software, based on years of literacy research, will provide
instruction in all phases of the writing process from kindergarten
to sixth grade for the general education classroom. It also will
enable children with severe disabilities to participate in the
same kinds of writing activities that children in general education
classrooms use when they write.
Take Colin, a kindergarten student with cerebral palsy whom Sturm
sees regularly in her clinic. He knows his numbers, colors and
letters of the alphabet, but because he can't physically grip
a pencil or type on a traditional keyboard, his teacher is unsure
how to teach him to compose sentences and paragraphs. But with
the right tools, Colin can learn to write like other children.
Because Sturm works one-on-one with children who have severe physical
disabilities, she knows, for example, exactly how big the pictures
and words on the screen need to be and in what way they need to
be categorized.
Such knowledge has helped Sturm and her colleagues make a better
writing software tool that incorporates many different modes for
accessing a computer. Colin, for example, needs to use an infrared
sensor to navigate the menus on a computer screen. He wears a
reflective dot on his forehead, and when he moves his head, it
moves the cursor. Stopping on an item indicates his choice.
"We
wanted the learning environment to be obvious for students and
teachers, so we put a lot of thought into how things should be
displayed," Sturm said. This helps reduce the burden on teachers
so they don't have to spend time setting up special programs for
each student with a different need.
The agreement between Carolina and Don Johnston Inc. allows the
researchers to continue adding their knowledge of the best writing
instructional strategies as the software program is constructed
and then marketed by Don Johnston Inc. Because the tool is geared
to different abilities and ages, the input from researchers is
key to success, Sturm said. "In first grade, for example, we don't
want children to pay attention to editing something they've written,"
she said. "So we don't ask them to revise. We just want them to
write and then write some more."
Mark Crowell, director of Carolina's Office of Technology Development,
helped negotiate the deal. "Mark Crowell was invaluable in helping
us understand intellectual property and filing it as an invention,"
Sturm said. "We didn't want to just hand over what we'd been studying
for the past decade and not see it become a useful learning tool
for children who have serious literacy learning difficulties."
Don Johnston, founder of Don Johnston Inc., said his company's
collaboration with Carolina will benefit the entire education
community. "UNC is doing research work for students who struggle
with writing, and no one else in the country is doing that right
now," Johnston said. Along with Sturm, the research team includes
Professor James W. Cunningham and doctoral student Kathleen S.
Cali, both in the School of Education; David E. Yoder, professor,
and Karen A. Erickson, coordinator, both at the Center for Literacy
and Disability Studies; and Stephanie A. Spadorcia of Leslie University.
Funding for the research was provided by the National Institute
on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Don Johnston Inc. provides
technology interventions that help struggling students and students
with disabilities achieve literary results.
Administrative
Office Building
OVERVIEW
*
Project location: 104 Airport Drive, across from the Giles Horney
Building and adjacent to the art laboratory building.
* Projected cost/funding source(s): $8.9 million/self-liquidating
(overhead receipts).
* Scope/benefits of project: This new building will accommodate
finance, contracts and grants, research services, payroll and
other administrative functions, allowing adequate space at the
existing 440 W. Franklin Street building for Information Technology
Services.
* Square footage: 77,784.
* Projected construction timeline: Nov. 1- Dec. 2003.
IMPACT
ON CAMPUS AESTHETICS
*
Trees/green space/landscaping: The site will be cleared for the
new building and parking lot. A 30-foot buffer will be maintained
on the north, a 50-foot existing planting buffer on the south
and a 100-foot planted buffer on the east. There will be new plantings
added around the building and in the parking lot.
* Architecture: Building is scaled to appear to be three sections
with hip roofs and will be mostly brick.
IMPACT
ON PARKING AND TRANSIT, TRAFFIC, AND PEDESTRIAN SAFETY
*
Parking and transit: Area where some parking currently is used
by art lab and Giles Horney will be used as part of construction
staging area during construction. All parking used by arts lab
will be restored at completion of construction.
* Traffic: There will be no changes to vehicular traffic flow
during construction. After construction, the intersection at Airport
Drive and Airport Road will be reconfigured to include right and
left turn lanes off of Airport Drive.
* Pedestrian safety: A temporary pedestrian route will be around
Giles Horney during construction. After construction, there will
be new sidewalks on the south side of Airport Drive and the west
side of Airport Road ending at Barclay Road around the entire
site of the project.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND UPDATES
* See Facilities Capital Improvements Program web site at www.fpc.unc.edu/CIP/Projects.asp?Project=33.
* Contact design manager Charlotte Abbate at Cabbate@fac.unc.edu.
New
park-and-ride lots
open for business
Two
new park-and-ride lots have opened recently providing transit
users even more options for commuting to campus.
The University's Friday Center park-and-ride lot opened with full
bus service on Oct. 14. This new lot has more than 800 spaces.
The interior of this lot is served by the FCX route, which begins
with 10-minute service at 5:55 a.m. Five-minute service begins
at 7:15 a.m. and continues until 8:30 a.m. The FCX morning service
continues until 10 a.m. Beginning at 10 a.m. and continuing throughout
the day, the Friday Center park-and-ride lot is served from the
bus stop on Friday Center Drive by the HU and the S routes.
Afternoon FCX buses run every 10 minutes from 3:30 to 4:20 p.m.
and then move to five-minute service until 5:20 p.m. Ten-minute
service continues until 6 p.m., and then there is 15-minute service
until 7:45 p.m.
For more Chapel Hill Transit Route information, see www.ci.chapel-hill.nc.us/transit/routes/all_routes.html.
This lot is quite popular and has alleviated all overcrowding
that has occurred at the Town of Chapel Hill's N.C. 54 park-and-ride
lot. Because this new lot is owned by the University, a free sticker
is required to park there. For permanent employees and commuting
students, stickers -- which give users access to all University
park-and-ride lots and Emergency Ride Back services -- are available
through the Commuter Alternatives Program (CAP). CAP participants
also receive Occasional Use Permits (if eligible) and a CAP Discount
Card.
For more CAP information or to register online, see www.dps.unc.edu/dps/alternatives/commuter_alternatives_program.html.
Registration also can be done in person at the Department of Public
Safety. Students must be able to present proof of insurance to
register for the program.
The town's Jones Ferry Road park-and-ride lot opened on Oct. 21.
This more-than-400-space lot is open to everyone and has alleviated
much of the overcrowding in the Carrboro Plaza park-and-ride lot.
The Jones Ferry Road lot is served by the JFX bus route, as well
as the CM and CW routes. For more information on these routes,
see www.ci.chapel-hill.nc.us/ transit/routes/all_routes.html.
The opening of these two new lots has made the morning commute
more pleasant for hundreds of Carolina commuters.
Sponsored
by Department of Public Safety
Writer:
Debby Freed, Transportation Demand Management coordinator
Zero
waste is the goal
on Carolina campus
Editor's
note: The following piece, which has been edited for style,
first appeared in the Oct. 27, 2002, issue of "The Chapel Hill
News."
Many
companies and institutions now realize that anything leaving the
premises via a dumpster, discharge or smokestack is an unnecessary
expense and potential liability. The new thinking is that everything
leaving the building should generate revenue. A DuPont representative,
speaking recently at Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School,
stated that new DuPont factories in Asia have almost reached the
corporate goal of zero waste and emissions.
At Carolina, a similar effort is afoot to reduce waste campuswide.
The traditional recycling program for paper products and beverage
containers, coupled with composting of food waste from the main
dining hall and research laboratory animal bedding, captures 37
percent of campus discards. This saves $600,000 annually in avoided
landfill fees. Adding the 16,000 tons of recycled coal ash from
Carolina's combined heat and power plant to the waste equation
brings the overall campus recycling rate to 74 percent. A new
program that was piloted in August at Fall Fest will reduce the
waste generated at special events by providing staffed recycling
stations that include a container for compostable food waste and
paper products.
Today's concept of waste encompasses an ever larger scope. Warm
air leaving a building on a cold day represents an energy source
that could be used more efficiently. Rainwater is a valuable resource
that could be used to flush toilets or irrigate the landscape.
Lights illuminated on a sunny day represent both electricity consumption
and an increase in air conditioning load that would be unnecessary
if the building were designed to harness daylight more effectively.
New programs to use energy, water and materials more efficiently
are being introduced in a range of new and existing campus buildings.
With 5.9 million square feet of new buildings and renovations
planned over the next 10 years, campus construction waste could
overwhelm area landfills and quickly run up disposal costs. At
the Murphey Hall renovation project begun last year, a waste management
specification was included in construction documents for the first
time.
Campus departments, outside architects and stores that sell second
hand building materials first identified items that could be salvaged
and used again. Once the contractor started work, these items
were released to the parties that had expressed interest in them.
Then the contractors wrote up plans for managing and recycling
the items they would remove from the building. Limited space prevented
a separate container for each material type. Fortunately, Materials
Reclamation in Raleigh separates mixed loads of building debris
for recycling. Fully 85 percent of the materials removed from
the building found a new life as a recycled product. The contractors
saved money relative to disposal and readily admitted they would
not have explored the recycling option if the University had not
pushed it.
The campus master plan to guide the placement of new buildings,
parking and green space includes an environmental master plan
to guide natural resource management. One tenet of the plan is
that stormwater be regarded as an opportunity, rather than a problem.
While most new buildings and parking lots create more impervious
surface, which increases stormwater runoff, Carolina has adopted
a different approach. In the future, storm-water will be used
to irrigate new and existing green spaces and slowly recharge
creeks.
During the expansion planned throughout this decade, the University
has pledged not to increase the volume, rate or pollutant load
of stormwater leaving campus. Infill development, clay soils and
a vast network of underground utilities rule out the use of detention
ponds, the strategy most area developers use to hold runoff.
Instead, the University is exploring a range of best management
practices and has already adopted several. The new park-and-ride
lot on N.C. 54, next to the Friday Center, is topped with porous
pavement, as is the expansion to the remote student parking lot
on Estes Drive Extension. Porous pavement -- and the gravel underneath
it -- store rain until the water seeps slowly into the ground,
recharging area creeks. The petrochemicals and heavy metals that
typically flush quickly into storm sewers and streams are filtered
by the soil, rendering them less harmful to ecosystems.
Recreation fields and new green spaces provide additional water-holding
potential. At Carmichael Field on South Road, a 70,000-gallon
underground cistern stores the rain that falls on the School of
Government and the indoor track. The water will be used in the
future to irrigate
the playing field. (This site is not yet sodded because of outdoor
watering restrictions.)
At the Carrington Nursing School addition, a vegetated roof --
known in the ecological building world as a "green roof" -- will
soak up rainwater. Situated next to an attractive patio, the privately
funded roof will provide students with a green vista during breaks
in their studies. In some German cities, the multiple benefits
of "green" roofs make them mandatory in new construction.
A green roof is also planned at the Rams Head project. There,
a surface parking lot will be transformed into a three-level parking
deck. Atop the deck will be a green plaza, an at-grade walkway
in a currently steep part of campus, and a new dining hall and
recreation center. Rain falling on the buildings will supply water
to irrigate the plaza, providing a new green gathering place on
south campus.
Lighting upgrades, water-free urinals and recycling programs for
batteries, dental amalgam and computer monitors are all part of
the effort to reduce waste at Carolina. As national recycling
activist Gary Liss puts it, "If you're not for zero waste, how
much waste are you for?"
Sponsored
by Facilities Services
Writer:
Cindy Pollock Shea, sustainability
coordinator
