•   Ferris to speak on University Day
•   ACT forums scheduled to discuss parking, transportation
•   Campus plugs water conservation
•   Campus forum addresses flexibility
•   Carolina receives high marks from two key journals
•   Amateurs audition for chance on Apollo stage
•   SILS professor joins effort to improve e-mail management
•   SILS faculty to lead effort to create national statistical knowledge network
•   WUNC FM marks first year under new format
•   Book addresses rescripting of Shakespeare's plays for modern audiences

Ferris to speak on University Day

William R. Ferris, professor of history and associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South, will be the speaker at the annual University Day ceremonies on Oct. 12. The convocation begins at 9:30 a.m. in Hill Hall.

At 11 a.m. the day's events will continue at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities on McCorkle Place where the institute's new building will be dedicated.

Parking for faculty and staff who will participate in the University Day ceremony will be at the Human Resources building at 725 Airport Road. Shuttles will take them to Hill Hall Auditorium beginning at 8:30 a.m.

Ferris, who joined the faculty on July 1, also is an adjunct professor in the curriculum in folklore. Widely recognized as a leader in Southern studies, African-American music and folklore, Ferris is the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Prior to his role at the NEH, Ferris was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he was a faculty member for 18 years. Ferris wrote or edited 10 books and created 15 documentary films, most of which deal with black music and other folklore from the Mississippi Delta.

He co-edited the Pulitzer Prize nominee, "Encyclopedia of Southern Culture," which contains entries on every aspect of Southern culture and is widely recognized as a major reference work linking popular, folk and academic cultures.

University Day was created by the Board of Trustees to commemorate the laying of the cornerstone of Old East, the nation's first state university building, on Oct. 12, 1793.

University Day became a college holiday in 1877 and an all-day celebration in 1900. In 1906, Edwin A. Alderman, former school president, received an honorary degree, the first given on University Day. That practice evolved into the Distinguished Alumna and Alumnus Awards, first presented in 1971 to "alumni who had distinguished themselves in a manner that brought credit to the university."

Recipients this year of a Distinguished Alumnus Award are Phillip Clay, chancellor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Benjamin Long IV, a world-renowned artist primarily recognized for his frescos.

After receiving his doctorate from MIT in 1975, Clay joined the faculty there and subsequently became a leading authority on housing development policy. When he was appointed chancellor in June 2001, he became the highest-ranking black official in the school's history, one of many career firsts. He spearheaded one of the earliest urban gentrification studies, formulated policy for the Housing Act of 1990, and was a founder of the National Housing Trust.

After studying at Carolina, Long secured an apprenticeship with acclaimed fresco painter Pietro Annigoni. Only a few years later, Long received the prestigious Leonardo da Vinci International Art Award for his fresco, "Mary, Great with Child." Now Long's frescoes are found all over the world. Many of Long's frescoes are found in churches, corporate buildings, and civic centers in western North Carolina. Known for his generosity, the Statesville native donated his first N.C. frescoes, and he often shares his expertise with aspiring artists through workshops and college courses.

Building dedications part of festivities

In connection with University Day, two major campus buildings will be dedicated that feature new technology geared to teaching and research, and new space geared to teaching and faculty collaboration. As with University Day, these events are open to the public.

The School of Pharmacy will dedicate the Banks D. Kerr Hall, a 65,000-square-foot annex to Beard Hall, at 2 p.m. Oct. 11. Kerr Hall, which doubles the school's space, is named after Banks D. Kerr, class of 1943, who gave $2 million to the building campaign before his death in 2000. Private fund raising totaled more than $7.6 million. The rest of the $24 million estimated cost came from state appropriations and University funds.

Kerr Hall will feature two auditorium-size lecture halls with cutting-edge technology and 7,759 square feet of dedicated laboratory facilities. A shared instrument facility will house nuclear magnetic resonance and advanced microscope equipment in a space designed to withstand ground and building vibration.

At 11 a.m. Oct. 12, the College of Arts and Sciences' Institute for the Arts and Humanities will dedicate its new building, Hyde Hall. Named in honor of longtime institute supporters and alumni Pitt and Barbara Hyde of Memphis.

The 15,409-square-foot building's total project cost is $6.8 million, and funding was through private gifts, mostly from University alumni.

The institute supports and retains outstanding faculty in the arts, humanities and social sciences. In its new space, the institute will broaden its mission to include fellowships for faculty in the professional schools, leadership training for faculty who are department and division heads, a new ethics program now in development and public fellowships for citizens who come to campus for information and expertise in solving problems in their communities.

ACT forums scheduled to discuss parking, transportation

University community members will get the chance to share their thoughts on parking and transportation at Carolina during forums scheduled for Oct. 1 and 2 at several locations around campus.

Information about the campus development plan's impact on parking and transportation will be available for review at the forums. The development plan marks the first 10 years of the campus master plan, which charts Carolina's growth for the next 50 years.

The forums are being sponsored by the Advisory Committee on Transportation (ACT), a campus panel of faculty, staff and students charged with advising administrators on strategies for achieving convenient, safe and easy-to-use transportation to campus. ACT also will help the Department of Public Safety craft a five-year transportation and parking plan for Carolina.

"These forums will be just one of the ways that we will go about getting input from employees and students," said Derek Poarch, director of public safety and ACT chair. "Our goal is to arrive at a long-term vision of where our campus needs to go regarding parking and transportation issues, and it's critical that the entire Carolina community is a part of reaching that vision."

Oct. 1 ACT forums:

• 10 a.m. - noon, Student Union Auditorium;

• 2 - 4 p.m., Kenan Field House (Rams Room);

• 5:30 - 7:30 p.m., Student Union Great Hall; and

• 9 - 11 p.m., 4th Floor Clinic Auditorium (4008 Old Clinic Building).

Oct. 2 ACT forums:

• 10 a.m. - noon, Kenan Field House (Rams Room);

• 2 - 4 p.m., Wilson Library, Pleasants Family Assembly Room;

• 7:30 - 9:30 p.m., Room 1505 Student Union; and

• 11 p.m. - 12:30 a.m., 4th Floor Clinic Auditorium (4008 Old Clinic Building).

All Carolina faculty, staff and students, as well as UNC Health Care employees, are invited to drop by any of the forums, and they need not be there at the start time.

On hand will be representatives from Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc., a Raleigh-based transportation consulting firm that also is helping develop the five-year parking and transportation plan. They will answer questions and gather feedback to be considered as that plan takes shape.

The campus development plan calls for new construction totaling 5.9 million square feet and increasing the amount of green space on south campus, both of which will require removing some 20 acres of surface parking lots.

The plan also calls for replacing these lost parking spaces with eight new parking decks. But while the decks will provide enough spaces to meet the growing demand from campus visitors and UNC Health Care patients, they will not meet the growth in demand from employees and students. Campus planners say that means alternative transportation programs such as park-and-ride bus service will become more and more important.

Submit comments online

For more information about the Advisory Committee on Transportation and to submit comments on the panel's work, see the web site at www.unc.edu/act

Campus plugs water conservation

"Every Drop Counts."

That's the theme behind a Carolina campaign to cut campus water use by 25 percent compared to last year. The goal came

as the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) earlier this month enacted mandatory emergency water restrictions as the local community continued to suffer from the worst drought in its history. Those restrictions include prohibiting using OWASA water for any outdoor purpose other than extinguishing a fire.

Despite recent rains, the drought is no less severe. As of Sept. 22, OWASA estimated that only a 142-day supply of water remained in its reservoirs. OWASA provides water to Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and -- together -- the University and UNC Hospitals make up its largest customer.

"We can't relax just because we've seen some rain in the past few weeks," said Nancy Suttenfield, vice chancellor for finance and administration. "This area has been getting less-than-normal rainfalls for several years, so this is really a crisis that has been long in the making."

Key administrators from across campus are now developing a plan to reach the 25 percent target. Options being examined include ways to reduce the amount of OWASA water that is chilled and used to cool air for the central campus air-conditioning systems in appropriate facilities, as well as ways to conserve water in laboratories.

"Adjusting thermostats upward is something we may be able to do in some buildings, and students and employees need to be prepared for that," Suttenfield said. "Yes, there may be some discomfort, but some discomfort is worth it if it means we won't run out of water."

Suttenfield said administrators will keep the campus posted as the plan's details are worked out. But, she added, any plan will only succeed with the help of faculty, staff and students.

"The entire campus community is going to have to get behind this," she said. "Cutting water use by 25 percent is an ambitious goal.

"We have to think about the ways we use water and whether they're really necessary."

A major piece of the "Every Drop Counts" campaign will be a promotional effort aimed at building awareness about the need to save water, Suttenfield said. A special web site has been posted at www.unc.edu/depts/pubservsavewater/, and other communications are in the works.

"We'll be getting the word out in a number of ways, and it's a message that can't be repeated too often -- please conserve water, because every drop counts," Suttenfield said.

The University already has taken several steps to save water, such as using disposable dishware in campus dining halls and discontinuing the washing of state vehicles.

The campus also is limiting outdoor irrigation to water from the University's own wells and from Morgan Creek to irrigate the Finley Golf Course.

Drought forum scheduled Oct. 9

Local and University experts will discuss the effects of the drought on the Chapel Hill/Carr-boro area and the Piedmont on Oct. 9 at 7 p.m. in 133 Rosenau.

Ed Kerwin, executive director of Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) will join professors Larry Band, geography; Brian Billman, anthropology; and David Moreau, city and regional planning; along with Ray Dubose, facility maintenance director; and Cynthia Shea, sustainability coordinator.

For more information, e-mail Dan Waxman at dewaxman@ email.unc.edu.

Campus forum
addresses flexibility

The task was big, the vision bold.

Envision what an ideal personnel system for the University would look like, if the state ever granted the University the freedom -- and money -- to do it.

That was the charge Chancellor James Moeser gave the Personnel Flexibility Committee more than a year ago. After a process that included researching personnel systems at other public universities and gathering feedback from Carolina employees, the panel completed its work and forwarded a notebook full of broad recommendations to Moeser this past summer.

But while the committee has answered all of the questions Moeser asked of it and more, pivotal questions remain that can only be answered by legislators.

Will the General Assembly actually give the universities the freedom to try the committee's recommendations? And given more freedom, would the legislature provide the universities the necessary money to make the recommendations work? The uncertainty over those unsettled questions set the mood for a Sept. 13 Employee Forum Community Meeting where the committee's final report was the topic of the day.

The two women who co-chaired the committee --Associate Vice Chancellor for Human Resources Laurie Charest and Associate Provost for Finance and Human Resources Elmira Mangum -- emphasized over and over again that the purpose of the meeting was limited to getting reaction to the recommendations contained in the committee's report.

Over and over again, during an hour-long question-and-answer session, employees revealed they had more on their minds.

Some took the floor to express frustration about rising health insurance costs, in combination with paltry pay raises. This year, there will be no raise at all for staff employees, and money for faculty raises will likely be limited to revenues generated by campus-based tuition increases or private endowments.

Several employees alluded to substantial raises that Moeser gave in January to a handful of administrators and top staff.

These raises, they said, made them suspicious about what the motives in the South Building might be for having more discretionary power to decide how state money is spent.

Moeser, in an appearance at an Employee Forum Community Meeting in June, said he offered the raises as a way to keep key personnel at Carolina. He also said he would not have offered them had he known how bad the state's budget picture would become.

Charest, in response to questions at the Sept. 13 forum, acknowledged that trust was important. Mangum said the only motive the committee had when it did its work was to let employees at all levels and from all parts of the campus have a say in what recommendations were included in the report. That agenda, she said, remains unchanged.

Ken Litowsky, a committee member and policy director in Human Resources, said the accusation that "this was a way for management to do a money grab" was flat wrong. The recommendations were geared to create a personnel system that would work better than the one in place now. For instance, Litowsky said, there was considerable discussion about having the freedom to hire someone who has demonstrated an ability to do a job. Right now, Human Resources could be prevented from hiring such a person if that person lacks the paper credentials such as education and years of experience called for in the job description.

One person in the audience complained that the final report seemed to be dominated by the work of managers and supervisors. Charest said the representation of the committee ranged from housekeepers to professors and extra attention was given to making sure staff members from many different quarters of campus were included.

Mangum said the report is filled with a "confluence of information" that has poured in from a variety of sources from across campus. As a part of that effort, the committee held open forums as well as conducted an employee survey to gather feedback.

John Heuer, the chair of the Employee Forum a year ago when the committee started its work, said that there were plenty of people who had a chance to offer their opinions and to disagree.

"This process is not an end in itself, but a beginning," Heuer said.

To reinforce that point, Heuer alluded to the committee's minority report and asked Steve Hutton, one of the people who had developed it, to share his thoughts. A major recommendation contained within the minority report was the need for collective bargaining. Hutton said that several of Carolina's peers, including the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley, have collective bargaining.

In her introductory remarks, Charest said pay levels could be set a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. But if pay is to become linked closer to performance, as the majority report recommends, even more attention will have to be paid to ensure that all supervisors can establish valid evaluations of work performance, she said.

There is already, for instance, a mechanism that allows supervisors to offer outstanding employees performance bonuses to reward them for outstanding work. There's only one problem, Charest said. "There hasn't been any funding whatsoever for that." And it's been that way for years.

In response to a question, Charest said the University has been making in-range salary adjustments. But she stressed that adjustments are made for retention purposes and are based on conditions within the job market. It would not be appropriate to use these adjustments to reward performance, she said.

A woman from the back of the lecture hall asked Charest if she had any hope that the legislature would supply the money to make any of these recommendations really work.

"Do I have any immediate hope that buckets of money will start flowing for this? No," Charest said.

Her long-term prognosis was more optimistic, however. "I have to have hope, or I guess I wouldn't be here," Charest said.

No one yet knows which of the recommendations, if any, will be considered by the University trustees and UNC Board of Governors, or finally implemented by the state legislature, Charest and Mangum said.

What is certain is that the recommendations in the report will not be the only ones legislators will consider. The UNC system's Office of the President, for instance, has hired an outside consultant to do much the same work for the system that the committee attempted to do for Carolina. The consultant's report will not be finished until October at the earliest, Charest said.

The state legislature is not scheduled to begin talking about whether to grant more managerial flexibility to University administrators until next spring.

"U.S. News & World Report" magazine has ranked Carolina the fifth best public university in the nation as part of its annual "America's Best Colleges" guidebook.

And the "Journal of Blacks in Higher Education" has ranked the University first among public universities and sixth overall in nationwide measures of institutional racial integration, including recruitment of black faculty and students.

In recent years, Carolina "has made a concerted effort to increase the level of black students and black faculty on campus," the journal's Sept. 9 issue reported. "The university is particularly strong in the categories dealing with student diversity. ... (UNC) ranked second in the percentage of total black enrollments and first in the percentage of black first-year students." That percentage has increased each of the past three years.

"Chapel Hill also fares well in most measures of black faculty," the journal stated. "The university has nine African-American faculty members who hold endowed chairs. This is the highest number in the United States." In a separate survey earlier this year, the journal listed Carolina as having the most tenured black faculty, 51, among top universities.

In the "U.S. News" results, the University of California at Berkeley was first among public universities, followed by the University of Virginia. The universities of Michigan at Ann Arbor and California at Los Angeles tied for third on the public list, followed by Carolina at fifth.

Carolina also placed fifth last year. These same five campuses have either traded or tied for the top five slots in the magazine's public campus category over the past several years.

Overall, Carolina ranked 28th, tied with Tufts University, among both public and private campuses -- identical with last year's listing. The other top public campuses were listed between 20th (Berkeley) and 25th (UCLA and Michigan) overall.

In other categories, "U.S. News" listed Carolina 20th among national universities and third among public campuses granting doctoral degrees for offering the best value based on a formula reflecting academic quality and factoring in a net cost of attendance for a student receiving the average level of financial aid. Carolina also was fifth on the magazine's overall list of campuses, public or private, with graduates carrying the least debt load.

In a new ranking category, called "programs that really work," Carolina was listed tied for 10th with Harvard University for its first-year experience programs. Schools in this category were cited for efforts to build into the curriculum first-year seminars and other programs that bring small groups of students together with faculty or staff on a regular basis. Four other public campuses appeared higher on that list.

Another sub-category of "programs that really work" was undergraduate research/creative projects, in which Carolina was listed 20th, tied with Johns Hopkins University, UC-Berkeley and Williams College. This category reflects opportunities for students to engage in independent or small-team work, under the direction of a faculty mentor. The students conduct intensive and self-directed research or creative work that results in an original scholarly paper or other product that they can formally present on or off campus.

Among public and private universities offering undergraduate business degree programs, UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School tied for fifth with the University of Virginia and was listed third among public campuses. In specialty areas, Kenan-Flagler's rankings also included fifth for marketing; seventh for finance, management and operations (tied with UC-Berkeley); and ninth for accounting.

In the "Journal of Blacks in Higher Education" rankings, Carolina placed behind Duke, Emory, Princeton and Vanderbilt universities and Washington University in St. Louis, based totally on quantitative data. Following Carolina were Georgetown and Harvard universities, the University of Virginia and Brown University.

The journal ranked only 26 universities, those it considers to be America's leading, most selective institutions and role models for the nation's 3,000 four-year campuses.

The article said Carolina would have scored higher except for "a very low black student graduation rate of 66 percent and a large racial gap in graduation rates between whites and blacks."

But the University compared favorably in black graduation rates with the 62 other research campuses in the American Association of Universities. Of black freshmen at Carolina in 1997, half graduated in four years, compared with a 21-percent average for all AAU campuses; 68 percent in five years, to 40 percent for all AAU schools; and 62 percent in six years, compared with 48 percent for AAU.

Carolina also has posted a 95 percent retention rate -- defined by freshmen returning as sophomores -- among minority students, the same as the rate for all students.

Top five publics in
'U.S. News & World Report'

1. University of California at Berkeley
2. University of Virginia
3. Universities of Michigan at Ann Arbor and California at Los Angeles (tie)
5. CAROLINA

1. CAROLINA
2. University of Virginia
3. University of Michigan
4. University of California at Berkeley

Amateurs auditionfor chance
on Apollo stage

The hallway was dim at mid-afternoon. A few jittery people tried to stand still -- most in street clothes, one in a shiny black cocktail dress -- straining to hear any muffled sounds coming from around the curtained corner.

Disembodied, melodious Voice Number One: "Hello, how are you today? Do you play or sing?"

Disembodied, quavering Voice Number Two: "I sing."

Voice Number One: "Will you be singing a capella?"

Voice Number Two, confidently: "Yes."

Voice Number One: "Make yourself comfortable then, and I'll be ready whenever you are."

Voice Number Two: "Well, I have a track."

Voice Number One, still melodious, patient: "Oh, then you won't be singing a capella."

A few moments passed, and soft warbling accompanied by a soundtrack wafted from the stage. After 90 seconds, it was interrupted, gently, by Voice Number One. "Thank you very much. We'll be making our decision in a couple of days, and we'll be giving you a call if you're chosen for the show."

And so it went at the Sept. 5 auditions for Apollo Theater Amateur Night, held in the depths of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union, as entertainment wannabes lined up for what amounted to two minutes in the limelight -- if they were lucky.

A cattle call brought in more than 100 entertainers that afternoon, hoping for the chance to be chosen as one of 13 acts that will perform at Carmichael Auditorium Oct. 25 for the Carolina Union Performing Arts Series event. The stark stage was set only with a banged-up grand piano and a tan metal folding chair.

Every effort was made by the New York judges to put the acts at ease in the seconds allotted them, as evidenced by this exchange:

Voice Number One: "Southern Comfort?" [the group's name]

Southern Comfort, in unison: "Yes."

Voice Number One: "I've had some of that today. [pause] No, not the drink. Southern hospitality! [pause, chuckle] Begin whenever you're ready."

Carolina connections
Among those auditioning was Number 80, Cassandra Durham, who really did perform a capella. She sang "Inseparable," made famous by Natalie Cole, and it's a song she often performs at weddings.

Durham works as a financial counselor for UNC Physicians and Associates in the orthopaedics clinic in UNC Hospitals. This was Durham's second contest -- her first was for the promise of a gospel recording contract "years ago" -- but unfortunately the soprano didn't receive the coveted call she was hoping for.

One performer who did, though, was Shontae Henry, a 22-year-old from Fayetteville who sang Whitney Houston's "I Believe in You and Me." Henry is no stranger to a stage. She's been singing since she was 4 and has sung at James Cleveland Gospel workshops and has been a guest singer for the likes of John P. Kee and Shirley Caesar, to name just a few.

She's also the niece of Aretha Chavis, a grants specialist with the School of Nursing, and Audrina Bunton, a social research assistant at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services. Chavis and Bunton come from an extremely musical, church-oriented family that serves as an incubator for musical talent.

Although Chavis did not try out herself, she organized five different acts for the Amateur Night auditions, made up of singers from her family, including her two children and nieces and nephews. All attend Come As You Are Evangelistic Center in Aberdeen, where her mother is the pastor and her brother is the assistant pastor. As Chavis said, "My mother has eight children, 30 grandchildren and about 21 great grandchildren. We all are members of the church, and we all sing."

On to New York
The subdued nature of the auditions contrasted with the lively promise of the event that will take place on campus on Oct. 25. As at the Apollo Theater in New York's Harlem, there will be a "Host" and "Hostess" to entertain the crowd, and it'll be up to the audience to decide who gets to stay on stage to finish their act or who gets booed off to be escorted in shame by the famous "Executioner."

The winner of the Carolina event gets $1,000, two round-trip plane tickets to New York and a date to appear on the real Amateur Night at the famed Apollo.

Later on at the auditions, a girl in lavender took the stage and sang gospel music, really loudly -- and really off-key. It went on for 60 seconds before the gently raised finger of Voice Number One stopped her with the off-repeated refrain: "Thank you very much. We'll be making our decision in a couple of days, and we'll be giving you a call if you're chosen for the show."

Never mind that the final decisions were to be made that night. And never mind that after each performer finished, his or her entry form was immediately dropped in one of three piles in front of the judges, possibly fait accompli. Accepted, not accepted, and fodder for the Executioner?

Tickets available for Oct. 25 show

Carolina Union Performing Arts Series' Apollo Theater Amateur Night takes place Oct. 25 in Carmichael Auditorium at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 for the general public and $16 for students. Call 962-1449 for tickets or visit the box office in the lobby of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union. Box office hours are Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. See carolinaunion.unc.edu/happening/performing.html for more information.

SILS professor joins effort
to improve e-mail management

The School of Information and Library Science (SILS) has begun an investigation of the desktop management and e-mail practices of faculty and staff in academic units and administrative offices.

This research will result in a compilation of best practices and realistic recommended guidelines for management of e-mail and electronic records based on user needs and behaviors. In addition to electronic records management guidelines, the project team will produce both classroom and web-based training modules.

The potentially three-year study is being conducted at Carolina, across the UNC system and at Duke University, comparing digital information management at public, and a private, institutions. SILS faculty member Helen Tibbo and Duke University Archivist Tim Pyatt are leading the research project.

The project is being funded by a $78,605 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

"Electronic records, and especially e-mail management are issues that universities across the country are struggling with now," Tibbo said. "Time is of the essence in finding solutions and best practices to help employees manage the materials on their computers. Unlike paper records that exist for long periods of time under benign neglect, electronic records require active management if they are to survive for any extended length of time.

"It is very exciting that Carolina and Duke are collaborating on a project that is addressing digital preservation and electronic records management -- some of the largest challenges of our ime."

Paul Conway, an internationally recognized preservation expert and director of Duke Library's Information Technology Services, is also a project team member.

Management of electronic records is difficult due to the ease with which users can create, copy and distribute electronic information; the growing amount of information generated and received in the workplace; and the fact that few people have been trained in how to organize and manage information.

Since none of the typical desktop applications such as word processing or e-mail, have electronic records management (ERM) features, employees lacking any records management training are left to their own devices. The success of desktop records management and subsequent archiving of material from the university environment presently depends on the individual and his or her specific information management behaviors.

Carolina's current e-mail retention policy, designed for compliance with the North Carolina Public Records Law, requires employees to print out a paper copy of e-mail of lasting archival value. The primary goal of this project is to give people better ools and information with which to manage the data of their daily lives. In addition to the creation of best practices guidelines, this research project will lay the foundation for exploring the appropriateness of electronic records management systems for the University.

Faculty/staff survey due Oct. 11

Phase one of the digital desktop project involves conducting a short survey of faculty and staff through e-mail. "The point of this research is to design best practice guidelines around the way people really work. To do that, we need to know how real faculty, administrators and staff deal with their digital desktops," said Helen Tibbo, a School of Information and Library Science faculty member who is helping to lead the study.

The survey can be completed at www.ils.unc.edu/digitaldesktop/survey.html through Oct. 11.

For more information, contact Tibbo at 929-6246 or tibbo @ils.unc.edu.

SILS faculty to lead effort
to create national statistical
knowledge network

Professors Gary Marchionini and Stephanie Haas of the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) will lead a joint university/government effort to make government statistics available over the Internet more accessible and understandable by the general public.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Marchionini, Haas and their team a three-year, $1.3 million grant to lay the foundations for a national statistical knowledge network. Carolina will be the lead institution on the project and will coordinate the nationwide effort to link state and federal statistical resources and develop user interfaces.

Other team members include researchers from the University of Maryland at College Park and Syracuse University and representatives from a variety of federal and state statistical agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, Energy Information Administration, Social Security Administration, National Agricultural Statistical Service and the N.C. Office of Information Technology Services.

The project, "Integration of Data and Interfaces to Enhance Human Understanding of Government Statistics: Toward the National Statistical Knowledge Network," builds upon studies of how people seek and use statistical information and human-computer interface designs done in collaboration with these agencies over the past five years. Based in the SILS Interaction Design Laboratory in Manning Hall, the project's web site is at www.ils.unc.edu/govstat.

WUNC FM marks first year
under new format

Change is never easy, especially when the reasons for it are not readily apparent. That describes the situation that managers of WUNC FM faced last September when the station dropped its longtime classical music programming format and switched to an almost all-news format.

At the time, the 100,000-watt station served nearly 195,000 weekly listeners across central and eastern North Carolina. It marked its 25th anniversary in April 2001 and was considered by its loyal listeners and peer stations as one of the premier affiliates of National Public Radio.

And it was this long record of success that had station manager Mike Arnold the most worried.

Arnold knew one of the biggest challenges he would face after the change would be explaining to loyal listeners why the station had felt the necessity to fix something that few among them had ever considered broken.

The new format, Arnold knew, was in line with the strategic vision that had been created for the station's future, a vision that called for an increased commitment to producing more local news programming while at the same time raising its quality. The station was about to add more than a dozen new programs originating from its own staff and studio as well as from National Public Radio, British Broadcasting Corp., Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and independent producers.

But to make room for all these things, Bach and Beethoven had to go.

And that is why Arnold and his staff braced for the flood of complaints they were sure would come.

But Sept. 11 arrived first. And in the days and weeks that followed, it was news that nearly everyone wanted. And it was news, from morning until night, that WUNC supplied, from sources and places that listeners could not get anywhere else.

Joan Siefert Rose was just getting settled in as the new general manager at WUNC when the strange convergence between the changeover at her station and these cataclysmic events occurred. A year later, she offered this perspective of those drama-filled days.

"You never can predict what external force will impact a decision like a format change," Rose said in a recent interview. "We planned and researched our strategy given all the known factors -- but an incident like September 11 changes everything."

Rose said the outstanding news coverage that NPR and the BBC provided in those days demonstrated the need for a full-time public radio news and information station in the region. The news staff at WUNC also turned in valuable work, from updates on conditions at Raleigh-Durham airport and local post offices to interviews with soldiers' families at Fort Bragg to coverage of the many memorial services and prayer vigils that were held.

"While most radio and TV stations provided extensive coverage in the first few days after the attacks, WUNC was able to stay with round-the-clock coverage for weeks afterwards," Rose said. "Listeners knew that if there was a significant new development in the story, they would hear it presented in a thoughtful, rational manner on 91.5 FM."

One reason WUNC administrators were confident the changeover would be accepted was because classical music listeners could turn to other stations in their area to get classical music, Rose said. Here in the Triangle, there is WCPE (89.7 FM), a full-time classical music station in Raleigh. In the Triad, classical music is offered middays and evenings by WFDD (88.5 FM) at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.

Arnold said it is safe to say that the new format has gone much better than expected, but one reason why was all the preparation that was done prior to the change. That process of change really began back in 1998, Arnold said, when the station began staffing up its local news reporting capacity and building a team of highly competent reporters with experience at some of the best public radio stations in the country, including National Public Radio.

The quality of his staff's work has been affirmed both in rankings and awards.

Arnold said WUNC is one of the most-listened-to public radio stations in the country. In the Winter 2002 Radio Research Consortium report, the most current public radio stations comparison available, WUNC ranked first in market rating and first in market share, two key measures of listener service in public radio. Both measures reflect the percentage of people reached in a community by a radio station.

The market share ranking jumped three spots from last year's ranking. WUNC ranked first in market rating last year, but this year WUNC FM was 2.1 rating points ahead of its nearest competitor compared to .2 of a rating point last year.

As for awards, the WUNC news staff earned several journalism awards from the Associated Press of North Carolina and the Radio-Television News Directors Association for stations in the southeastern United States.

Among the awards:

• The entire WUNC news staff, led by News Director Emily Hanford, won for "North Carolina Voices: The State of Aging," a series of reports and commentaries on the state's aging population and its impact on family and work and politics throughout the state.

• Reporter Amy Nelson won the "Best Feature" category for "Wearing Hijab," a story about what Islamic women experienced when they continued to wear their traditional clothing after Sept. 11. Reporter David Brower won honorable mention in the same category for his look at the history of Durham blues musicians.

• Brent Wolfe's report, "Fast Food in the Hospital," took a look at the appropriateness of putting a Wendy's fast food franchise in UNC Hospitals and won two awards.

For Arnold, the strong showing served as validation for what he had believed -- his staff was strong and getting stronger.

"WUNC has worked to build a very competent team of news reporters over the past four years, and this investment is bearing fruit in many ways," Arnold said. "We've been able to develop areas of interest and expertise in our reporters to allow them to do thoughtful stories about a range of topics.

"We've also designed a way to draw on resources from the community to be sure our reports are informed and cover issues that are clearly relevant to the subject at hand."

For example, before Hanford assigned reporters for the aging series, she held a seminar with a range of experts in aging and representatives from aging groups to discuss some of the issues affecting them. Hanford used the information gathered through that meeting to inform the focus of the series.

"We see this kind of reporting as a positive reflection on WUNC and an excellent fulfillment of our station's mission and the mission of UNC-CH," he said.

The goal for the next year is to build on the first year's successes, Arnold said.

This summer, WUNC received a three-year, $450,000 grant that will be used in the production of "The State of Things," the station's daily public affairs program highlighting issues, people and events in North Carolina. Toward that end, Fred Wasser was hired in August as the executive producer of "The State of Things."

The goal is to make the show a locally produced program that sounds as good as the programming heard on NPR, and Wasser's presence will help, Arnold said. Wasser came to WUNC from National Public Radio in Washington, where he worked on some of the most popular public radio programs in the country, including "Morning Edition" and "Weekend Edition."

Other locally produced programs in addition to "The State of Things" include "North Carolina Postcards" and "Back Porch Music."

"WUNC is committed to providing a service that provides context and perspective to the news of the day, and we have a great deal of time every day to do this," Arnold said. "We're also very lucky to be able to draw on the talents of hundreds of journalists across the country. Since we're based in the community, we can react to the needs of listeners here with local programming -- and national programs -- that address interests of people here."

WUNC now operates a five-station radio network that serves more than 250,000 weekly listeners from Greensboro to the Outer Banks. It can be heard at 91.5 FM in the Triangle and the Triad, at 90.9 FM in the Rocky Mount/Wilson/Greenville area, and at 90.5 and 90.9 FM along the Outer Banks.

By viewing hundreds of professional productions of William Shakespeare's plays since 1974, theater historian Alan Dessen has probably set some sort of record.

Traveling across the United States, Canada and Great Britain, he has seen it all -- from Malvolio imprisoned in a doghouse to Tybalt driving a red Alfa Romeo in 1980s Verona.

Dessen, Peter G. Phialas professor of English, followed up on his fascination with a new book about the choices, omissions and interpretations contemporary directors make when confronting Shakespeare plays. "Rescripting Shakespeare: The Text, the Director, and Modern Productions," set for release in September by Cambridge University Press, marries his interest in words spoken and scenes omitted or transposed to his analyses of about 280 top productions.

There's nothing new about "rescripting to streamline the play, save running time by cutting speeches or entire scenes and to eliminate obscurity and conserve on personnel," Dessen said. Today, directors are "rewrighting" more extensively, moving closer to the role of playwright, such as when the three parts of "Henry VI" are compressed into two plays. The results can be practical and effective -- or not.

"For years, I've written about the ways Shakespeare's plays were performed in the 1590s and early 1600s," he said. "In this book, I use terms such as "tradeoff" and "price tag" to play off recent changes against what might have been the point of some omissions or original choices. For example, if you set "The Tempest" on Mars or "Henry V" on roller-skates, you get some distinctive effects, but you also lose something."

Dessen, funded by a National Humanities Center fellowship, joked that he's too much of a purist to have a favorite rewritten production -- "Shakespeare knew what he was doing" -- but said he sympathized with directors staging the well-known classics.

"I'm not trying to treat directors as vandals sacking Rome -- some take pride in doing something different, especially in Britain where the Royal Shakespeare Company long ago ceased to be a company of actors and is now basically a collection of directors," he said. "The plays are cycled so often that directors feel pressured to come up with something different, to make their mark. This leads to lots of changes -- some that playgoers like and others that they don't."

A favorite example was Michael Bogdanov's 1986 contemporary production of "Romeo and Juliet," in which the director changed the ending to resonate with younger audience members.

"Bogdanov is a master of updating and changing," the scholar said.

"In this production, Romeo injected poison instead of drinking it. I saw it at a matinee and that moment electrified younger theatergoers. But that choice blurred a major motif in the script where Juliet talks about an empty cup, kisses Romeo to get any remaining poison and exclaims, `Thy lips are warm.' All that is irrelevant if Romeo injects the poison."

Dessen found that many changes happen in the last scenes when directors feel the "clock ticking and want to finish the play off." Often, they cut or streamline lengthy closing speeches to prevent audience impatience.

The financial bottom line, an important reality of life and theater, is often behind cuts and changes, he said. "Most companies have to stay within limited budgets. This means that while in the original production one actor may have played several roles, today directors are forced to simply cut minor figures."

That's fine in most cases, Dessen said, but where it starts to matter, for example, is in a new production of "Julius Caesar" where plebeians are cut completely, and the famous funeral oration is delivered with no onstage audience. "There's something important lost there."

Other challenges face contemporary directors, he said. "Shakespeare, in putting quill to paper, was writing for playgoers, actors and playhouses that no longer exist. There's a lost theatrical language even at the London Globe Theater where one would think a production would be as close to authentic as it gets." On the other hand, directors have to bring plays alive for modern audiences.

Directors of Stratford-upon-Avon productions also know many playgoers' first language is not English, and deciding how to handle verbal nuances is especially tough."

Heavy rescripting or "rewrighting" of Shakespeare's works is seen more often with longer, weightier plays and less with the shorter comedies often taught or staged in school -- works such as "Twelfth Night," "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "As You Like It."

But in theater, as in life, "nothing is sacrosanct," he said -- not even Shakespeare. "Some scholars argue that the plays we have in our anthologies are longer than those played originally. We don't know how much of a script was necessarily used. This is especially difficult to tell with "Hamlet," which survives in three early printed versions. It's ironic that one of the things missing from the First Folio of "Hamlet" -- the famous soliloquy in Act 4 -- is always used in modern productions."

Dessen still finds teaching Shakespeare invigorating, but he cautions against force-feeding the Bard to disinterested youths. "A friend of mine says that Shakespeare has bored more people than any other writer who ever lived," he said, "but that's because so many have been forced to read his work and memorize bits in high school. Once they see a good production, however, that feeling can disappear."

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