Carolina First
University lays out budget priorities for next five years
Trustee resolution sets firm timetable for Carolina North
Campus construction program well on the way to completion
Employee Forum news: Forum proposes additional assistance for education
Carolina gives Baddour a two-year extension
‘Green’ technology planned for visitor center
Leading the race for life
LearnIT@unc.edu: Tips help get the most from Oracle calendar tool
@ Your Library: Library offers helpful resources for summer fun
Carolina recognized for commuter alternative efforts

Carolina First

Gift of the Month: May 2006

Gift:$1 million

Donor: George Steinbrenner

Purpose: Carolina Baseball

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner has pledged $1 million to Carolina’s Boshamer Stadium Renovation Project. The baseball Tar Heels are enjoying one of their best seasons ever, advancing to the College World Series for the first time since 1989.

Goal: $2 billion

Raised: (as of May 31) 87 percent/$1.75 billion

Amount of campaign complete: 80 percent

Amount raised in May: $4.1 million

Campaign runs through: Dec. 31, 2007

More information: carolinafirst.unc.edu.

University lays out budget priorities for next five years

Nancy Suttenfield, vice chancellor for finance and administration, presented a draft of the five-year financial plan for the University during the May Board of Trustees meeting. The plan reflects the University’s top 10 funding priorities.

Priorities include: recruiting and retaining a world-class faculty; attracting the best graduate students; facility maintenance; supporting state economic development; engaging with the state; funding the libraries; upgrading information technology support for the campus; and implementing the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP).

The QEP — including revisions to the undergraduate curriculum  — was developed during the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools reaccreditation process, which concluded earlier this spring.

Suttenfield said the University and the state would have to work together over the next five years to increase faculty salaries to the 67th percentile of peer institutions. To reach this level, the University would need $44 million over this span. She said half would come from state appropriations and half from campus-based revenue sources.

“The appropriation of salaries needed is in excess of what would be needed just to be at the increase level of our peers,” Chancellor James Moeser said.

Expanding the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) program, nursing, dental and pharmacy programs is a priority to enhance the health and wellness of North Carolinians. These priorities would be funded through the state, Suttenfield said, at a cost of $18.5 million over the next five years.

Suttenfield said the University would need $150 million “worst case” to upgrade the information technology system in use on campus today. The financial plan called for more than
$29 million in 2006-07 to begin this process.

“Most of these systems are coming to the end of their useful lives,” Suttenfield said. “The plan is to cover the $150 million with debt financed over 10 years.”

Doing so would require special legislation that would allow the campus to carry this cost through debt service. This would be funded at $17.7 million per year, almost entirely from campus-based sources, she said.

Moeser added that the projected cost was indeed worst case and the upgrade could be done for much less.

These priorities give the campus direction for the next five years, Suttenfield said. Overall, the plan lays out nearly $250 million in expenses to fund the 10 priorities.

“The plan remains a draft,” Suttenfield said to the board. “We need your input on the priorities we have set. The draft plan is not intended to be a proposed five-year budget. We use the five-year plan as a way to organize recurring and one-time costs that we have identified for our strategic priorities. The objective is to inform our planning discussions as we go into each annual budget cycle and as we go into annual discussion of tuition and fees.”

The University needs to develop a realistic plan from this, Trustee Paul Fulton said.

“We have to put this into a form that can inspire passion and find the revenue sources to fund the top priorities,” he said.

The University will have to do some adjustments to the priorities Moeser said. Faculty recruitment and retention and the information technology upgrade, he said, would remain at the top of the list.

“Obviously, you can’t do everything,” Moeser said. “This lays out what it would take to achieve everything we have laid out as a priority.”

Moeser said the University will send priorities to the UNC General Administration, which will forward a budget request to the legislature. He will work with vice chancellors, deans and others to arrive at a consensus on campus that will then be put forward for the University.

Trustee resolution sets firm timetable for Carolina North

Some professional schools and academic departments already enjoy top national ranking, while others are comfortably positioned within the top 10. But there is a category — privately funded research — in which the University has lagged behind its competitors for years.

Duke University ranks first in the country in the percentage of research funding coming from private industry. North Carolina State University ranks a respectable 15. Carolina barely cracks the top 100 at 90.

Those numbers, University trustees said last month, add up to a heightened sense of urgency about the development of Carolina North.

And it was out of this urgency that the trustees, following a lengthy discussion the night before, voted unanimously on May 25 to approve a resolution that spells out a definitive timetable for moving forward next year.

The resolution followed a presentation by Tony Waldrop, vice chancellor for research and economic development, that outlined reasons why moving ahead with Carolina North has such pivotal importance to the University’s future.

Carolina North, Waldrop said, will provide room for the University to grow in new directions while preserving the special qualities of main campus.

Carolina North will bring researchers together for closer collaboration and nurture new businesses inspired by their innovations.

Carolina North will foster new partnerships with industry and government and provide a setting for outreach and service.

And Carolina North will position the University to compete for private funding that is needed to counterbalance the stagnant trend in public research funding in recent years.

Of the $579 million that Carolina received in total sponsored funding in fiscal 2005, 74 percent of it came from the federal government, 8.6 percent came from non-profit organizations, 5.6 percent from foundations, 5.5 percent from the state of North Carolina and only 4 percent from private industry. The remaining 2.2 percent came from other government sources.

The good news in those numbers, Waldrop said, is the success of Carolina researchers at winning grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Carolina has been near the top nationally in attracting NIH funding, producing $302 million in the 2005 fiscal year alone.

But that success has been both a blessing and a curse, Waldrop said.

NIH funding, by design, more than doubled between 1998 and 2002 and University researchers benefited by winning a proportional share of that increased funding.

Since then, however, NIH funding has stayed flat or declined slightly, establishing a pattern that, according to some analyst’s projections, is expected to continue through the end of the decade and beyond.

“I believe our faculty will compete extremely well, but there will be a smaller pool of (government) money they will be competing for,” Waldrop said.

It was after this primer on the strategic importance of Carolina North that Waldrop reviewed the progress that had been made by the Carolina North Leadership Advisory Committee in its initial three meetings between March and May.

Waldrop said Chancellor James Moeser created the committee in February to establish a forum for a wide cross section of stakeholders to develop guiding principles on how to build Carolina North. The hope was the committee members might reach consensus on key issues so that they would not become sticking points later when the campus formally submitted plans to local governments. The charge of the group, Moeser told committee members at the first meeting in March, was to figure out how, not whether, to build Carolina North.

But in the three meetings held to date, some trustees noted, time has been consumed making presentations of already completed reports and talking, not about how to build Carolina North, but how the committee should operate.

University representatives on the group, including trustees Bob Winston and Roger Perry, were disheartened at the committee’s May meeting when one of its members staked out a position that the Horace Williams report, which was conducted by a citizen’s group appointed by the town of Chapel Hill, was the “policy” of the town.

With that policy in place, some town representatives said at the May meeting, they could not negotiate any contentious issue, only discuss it enough to explain the disagreement.

Perry, who chairs the trustees’ Buildings and Grounds Committee, and Winston, who serves on the committee, shared their experiences and observations about the leadership advisory committee to other trustees when the committee reported to the full board on May 24.

The next morning, when the full board resumed the May meeting, they passed a resolution that reaffirmed the University’s commitment  “to seek out and listen to community input regarding the principles that should guide the development of Carolina North” and “welcomes the work of the Carolina North Leadership Advisory Committee and looks to that process to provide important input that will help guide the University’s development efforts.”

But the resolution also spoke of the urgent need to develop Carolina North and directed Moeser to report to the board of trustees on the completed work of the leadership advisory committee in March 2007 and for the University to submit zoning and land development applications for Carolina North to the applicable local government jurisdictions by October 2007.

The resolution further states “conditions have evolved from 17 years ago when the University first identified the importance of developing this tract of land and commenced the planning process for the property. Federal funding for research is declining and facilities for public-private partnerships are needed.”

The resolution reinforced the growing sense of urgency among trustees that many of them had expressed the previous day.

Trustee Russell “Rusty” Carter said the state is extremely focused on economic development and state leaders are aware of how vital the development of Carolina North is to that effort.

“Time is of the essence,” he said. “We are not going to wait for windmill technology and electric cars to get this thing going.”

Timothy Burnett, who served as an alternate on the leadership advisory committee, talked of how seven years ago he asked someone if they thought there was any chance we would see anything happen on Horace Williams during Burnett’s remaining time on the board.

“I was told that I should wish to see something in my lifetime,” Burnett said.

Since then, Burnett said, he has served on at least three committees to discuss what is now called Carolina North.

“In the 17 years that we have been talking about Carolina North, we have run out of room on this campus.

“That puts us at a disadvantage. I don’t see how we can have the luxury of talking any more. We’ve got to have a plan. That plan has not got to be good just for the immediacy of the moment, it has to be a 100-year or a 200-year plan. We have another campus the size of this campus sitting just down the road and it is going to be what serves us for the next 200 years. We’ve got to be very careful what we do with it.”

Burnett then encouraged the board to draw up the resolution that was passed the next morning. 

Campus construction program well on the way to completion

It is by no means completed, but if the University’s long-running capital program were a tunnel, a faint glimmer of light would be appearing at the end of it.

Chancellor James Moeser, right, Bruce Runberg, associate vice chancellor for planning and construction, second from right, and Trustee Roger Perry, center, toured several construction projects across campus last month.

Bondurant Hall, the Environment, Health and Safety Building, the renovation of the Ambulatory Care Center and roof replacements for Davie and Howell halls are among the recently completed projects that Bruce Runberg, associate vice chancellor for planning and construction, reviewed with members of the Board of Trustees’ Buildings and Grounds Committee on May 24.

The capital program — fueled by $515 million of higher-education bond funding that North Carolina voters approved in November 2000 — will spend $1.8 billion on projects.

More than $800 million is earmarked for construction from non-state sources — including private gifts and overhead receipts from faculty research grants.

The program has now moved beyond the midpoint and past the peak point of construction that took place a year ago.

As of May, Runberg said, 53 projects valued at $459 million, or 26 percent of the $1.8 billion program, are complete.

Another 41 projects are in construction and together represent 48 percent ($867 million) of the total program.All of the remaining 60 projects are now in design. They represent $474 million of construction, or 26 percent of the total program.

Among the recently awarded contracts are the Carolina Physical Science Complex; the Smith Center re-roofing; and exterior renovations for Gerrard Hall and the old Playmakers Theater.

Roger Perry, committee chair, asked Runberg if all the projects could be completed without supplementary funding.

Runberg said it would be close, but that several million may be drawn from overhead receipts generated by faculty research grants to finish the last few projects.

“That’s unbelievable,” Perry said. “Hat’s off to you.”

Forum proposes additional assistance for education

During the June meeting, Employee Forum delegates discussed a proposal to create a textbook assistance program for employees.

Chuck Brink, chair of the education and career development committee, outlined the program, which would provide up to $100 per employee annually for textbook purchases. The money could be used for job- and non-job related educational expenses.

The limit would be $2,500, so the program would be on a first-come, first-served basis. Following successful completion of an approved course from an accredited institution, the employee would apply for reimbursement for book expenses up to $100.

The forum would use money from the staff development fund to pay for the program.

“Money for the staff development fund comes from an endowed gift,” Brink explained. “It was set up during the Bicentennial Campaign for Carolina to promote staff development. We can recommend to the chancellor how this money gets used.”

The interest on this account produces between $15,000 and $17,000 per year, Brink said.

“There is $82,000 waiting to be used right now,” he said.

Some money is always left over in the tuition assistance fund as well, Brink noted.

The forum will vote on the proposal at the July meeting.

Employee internship program
One of the recommendations of the Chancellors Task Force for a Better Workplace was to restore the basic clerical skills program. The task force also recommended that the program be coupled with an internship program.

The forum wants to help employees gain on-the-job training and experience by providing funds for such an internship program.

Once an employee has completed the basic clerical skills program at UNC, he or she would be eligible to participate in an internship. This would allow the employee to put new skills into practice and receive real-world experience for six months.

While the employee is away from normal duties interning at another job, the home department would need to fill their position with a temporary employee.

Through the internship program, the sponsoring department, which receives the UNC employee as an intern, would pay for 50 percent of the costs of a temporary employee (to work at the intern’s normal job) and staff development funds would be used to pay the other 50 percent.

The intern employee, meanwhile, would receive the regular salary he or she is paid by the department in which they normally work on campus.

The proposal would fund up to five internships per year for the next two fiscal years.

The resolution would recommend that the Employee Forum staff development fund be used to financially support the implementation of a clerical skills internship program.

Forum members noted that several department heads have already expressed an interest in participating in the internship program.

This proposal will be voted on at a later meeting.

Lifelong learning proposal
Employee Forum Chair Ernie Patterson, in his May presentation to the Board of Trustees, said that the University “can no longer afford to be known only as an institution of higher learning.”

To meet the challenges of the future, he said, Carolina must “become an institution of lifetime learning.” 

Patterson asked trustees to consider a proposal to help employees meet the challenge of a competitive job market by providing them with educational opportunities. The University needs to make a commitment to providing staff development opportunities for employees at all salary grades, he said. 

“Everyone needs to be encouraged and rewarded for efforts to improve themselves, whether that improvement enhances current job skills or teaches the worker a brand new set of skills,” Patterson said.

Patterson proposed the establishment of a Learning Enhancement Program to provide:

 Full funding for departments to support employees’ continuing education;

 Full funding for employees to retrain themselves for other jobs that are needed on campus;

 A policy stating that employees can count the actual time spent in class in up to two courses per year as work time; and

 Incentives for supervisors and upper management to allow them to support and buy in to a life long learning initiative.

“These initiatives will be an important step in making UNC-Chapel Hill an institution of lifelong learning not just for its faculty and students, but for its staff as well,” Patterson said. “We would like your support to work with Chancellor Moeser and on having this proposal included as a UNC initiative in the Board of Governors list of priorities for next legislative session.”

Employee compensation
Delegate Marshall Dietz presented information that showed how much state employees have lost in purchasing power over the last five years.

He outlined how the typical state employee wage increase has been below the consumer price index increase over each of those years.

“The fact is, what I am being paid today in the year 2006 is not $100 anymore,” Dietz said. “When my salary was $100 in 2000, it is really only worth $93.14 now in purchasing power. No wonder I can’t pay for gas.”

The forum also collected “real stories” from state employees to show how the increased cost of living has affected their lives.

Patterson said he would share these stories and Dietz’s information with legislators as he met with them during the week.

Carolina gives Baddour a two-year extension

Chancellor James Moeser and the UNC Board of Trustees have given Director of Athletics Dick Baddour a two-year contract extension through the 2008-09 season.

Baddour

Baddour is completing his ninth year as director of athletics. In those nine years, the Tar Heels have won a league-leading 49 Atlantic Coast Conference championships, eight more than Duke, which is second. This year, the Tar Heels tied Duke and Virginia for the ACC lead with five team titles.

Carolina is the only school in the nation that has placed teams in a football bowl game, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four, the NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four and the NCAA Baseball College World Series in the last two seasons.

The Tar Heels have clinched a Top 10 spot nationally in the 2005-06 NACDA Cup (National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics) and will be the highest finishing ACC school in the NACDA Cup for the seventh time in Baddour’s nine years as athletics director. The NACDA Cup measures each school’s participation and success in NCAA postseason play.

“Dick Baddour is a man of integrity who has led our athletic department for nine outstanding years,” said Moeser. “He is committed to fielding teams that demonstrate excellence in all aspects of University life. He continues to position Carolina as a national leader in issues such as anabolic steroids, the Leadership Academy and responsible corporate partnerships.

“UNC’s teams are competitive at a high level within the ACC and nationally, while at the same time our student-athletes graduate at a level comparable to the rest of the student body. Throughout his tenure, our teams have been at or near the top in the ACC both competitively and academically. We are fortunate to have a leader who understands how athletics complement, yet not consume, our students’ academic experience.”

With Baddour as director, the Tar Heels have won national championships in men’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, and field hockey.

In the last five years, the Tar Heels have won 20 individual NCAA titles in swimming, track and field and gymnastics.

Baddour’s contract runs through the 2008-09 school year.

 “It is gratifying to know the Board of Trustees and Chancellor Moeser have confidence in the leadership of the Carolina Athletics program,” Baddour said. “It is an indication of the talented student-athletes, coaches and staff who I am fortunate to work with. We are quite proud of all that UNC has accomplished competitively while staying true to the academic values of this great University. I look forward to continuing to work with the outstanding people in this department to meet those challenges.”

‘Green’ technology planned for visitor center

Students at the University have awarded $210,000 to help build a “green” Visitor Education Center at the North Carolina Botanical Garden.

An artist’s rendering shows the proposed design of the Visitor Education Center at the botanical garden.

The student-run Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee made the group’s largest award to date to help construct a geothermal well system as part of the center. A $4-per-semester student fee approved by students generated the funds.

The geothermal well system will significantly reduce the cost of heating and cooling the 29,000-square-foot Visitor Education Center. Geothermal wells act like a giant heat pump. Water circulates through deeply buried, sealed pipes, taking advantage of the earth’s constant temperature of 55 degrees Fahrenheit to cool the building in summer and warm it in winter.

With rising energy costs, experts say the geothermal wells will pay for themselves in less than nine years.

Other “green” features of the building will include photovoltaic panels that generate electricity from sunlight, rainwater cisterns and storm water “rain gardens,” clerestory windows that harvest controlled daylight and locally sourced, non-toxic construction materials.

Designed by Frank Harmon Architect of Raleigh, the center will welcome and orient visitors, and provide space for school classes and horticultural therapy activities as well as for interpretive exhibits and meeting space. It will be located on state-owned land near the existing Totten Center, south of the Carolina campus off Old Mason Farm Road near the U.S. 15-501 bypass.

More information on the garden is available at www.ncbg.unc.edu.

Leading the race for life

Rameses, the Carolina mascot, provides Elle Curtain with moral support while she makes a blood donation on June 6 at the Smith Center. The 18th Annual Carolina Blood Drive brought together hundreds of volunteers and donors — including 139 first-time donors — who provided 860 usable units of blood. Those 860 units had the potential to be turned into 2,580 blood products to be used in the Carolinas region to help sustain the lives of the sick and injured. UNC’s summer blood drive is the largest single-day, single-site blood drive on the East Coast.

Tips help get the most from Oracle calendar tool

If you add multiple occurrences of an event to your Oracle calendar, you may be familiar with the option to repeat an event based on a regularly occurring schedule — every Tuesday, every second Wednesday or every Sept. 23, for example.

The Oracle calendar also makes it very easy to add multiple occurrences of an event that does not have a regular pattern. For example, if you need to add a series of article deadlines that occur on July 10, Aug. 21, Sept. 18, and Oct. 16 (as the deadlines for this column do), enter the meeting details as usual and look for the “Add Date ...” button at the bottom of the new meeting data entry screen.

A calendar will display. Select the first date you want to add. Continue to use the “Add Date ...” button to add all occurrences of the event. You can also combine this feature with the “Repeating ...” option for events or meetings that have both a regularly occurring pattern and ad hoc dates.

Engaging the online learner
If you teach online, conduct committee work online or otherwise engage in group work that is primarily or solely online, you may find useful information in the book, “Engaging the Online Learner: Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction.”

If you ask your class to do group work, the book suggests these factors to consider when forming teams: time zones, day and time availability for synchronous work (if applicable), subject matter expertise, facility with technology and personal hobbies or situations that might help members relate to each other (p. 61).

The book includes a number of specific exercise examples. One example (p. 65) describes setting up a “dyad debate” for students (or others) to learn how to talk about controversial issues online.

This book, by Rita-Marie Conrad and J. Ana Donaldson, is available in Davis Library, call number LB1044.87 .C65 2004. Remember that you can check availability of this book (and any other) by using the online library catalog.

Reminder: free credit report
As previously announced in this column, you can receive one free credit report from each of the three major services each year. If you’ve decided to space yours out to receive one every four months, now is the time to request another. To make your request, point your web browser to www.annualcreditreport.com.

Win a Student Stores gift card by using CBT
Subscribe to the computer-based training (CBT) service between now and Sept. 30 and receive an entry in a drawing for two Student Stores gift cards. Already subscribed? You can receive entries in the drawing by completing CBT courses between now and Sept. 30. In fact, for each course you complete, you will receive an entry. If you subscribe and complete two courses, you receive three entries. If you are already subscribed and complete four courses, you receive four entries. Use CBT between now and Sept. 30, and you could win.

CBT featured courses: Cascading Style Sheets
Using cascading style sheets (CSS) for your web site gains you more flexibility over the style and design of the pages; lets you easily offer different views of the same content; and can make your web site more accessible to people with disabilities. So how do you learn about cascading style sheets?

If you cannot attend the LearnIT workshop on June 21 (LearnIT.unc.edu->Current Schedule of Workshops) or if CBT suits your learning needs better, you can take three CSS courses using CBT: Cascading Style Sheets (Second Edition), Cascading Style Sheets: Designing Web Page Layout, and Cascading Style Sheets: Enhancing Web Page Layout. To subscribe to the CBT service, point your web browser to cbt.unc.edu. If you’re already subscribed to the CBT service, these courses are available to you. And remember, subscribing and completing courses between now and Sept. 30 will add entries for you in the drawing for two Student Stores gift cards.

Find this information useful?
This LearnIT column should help you. Does it? If you have comments about what we include or suggestions for what we should include, please let us know: LearnIT@unc.edu.

Library offers helpful resources for summer fun

If a summer vacation is in your plans, let the campus library be your first stop. Use the library to learn about your destination, prepare for your trip, even talk like a native once you get there. If you’re staying closer to home, we can still help you dream of distant locales.

Getting ready to go
Find general travel information using the library’s quick e-reference links at www.lib.unc.edu/reference/quick/. Both the
“General Topics” and “Government Information” options include helpful resources for travelers.

Travel guides
Borrow Lonely Planet and Rough Guide travel guides from the House Undergraduate Library. Look them up by typing “Rough Guide” or “Lonely Planet” and your destination into the catalog search box at www.lib.unc.edu. You may also use the catalog to find additional travel guidebooks in the Undergraduate Library and Davis Library — whether it’s “Eat smart in Poland” or “Motel America.” Regional tour books from the American Automobile Association are at the reference desk in Davis Library.

For in-state travel, stop by the North Carolina Collection in the Wilson Library. The collection has travel books for most areas of the state, along with a growing file of brochures, fliers, pamphlets and promotional publications about hotels, restaurants, festivals and organizations in the state. (NCC travel materials are for use in the library only.)

Health concerns
Do you need immunizations before you go? Is the drinking water safe? NC Health Info (www.nchealthinfo.org), an online guide developed by the Health Sciences Library and the National Library of Medicine, links to traveler’s information from the National Library of Medicine’s trusted MedlinePlus resource. It is also a clearinghouse for health services in North Carolina. Select the “Traveler’s Health” topic or your in-state destination from the “Quick Start” search box.

Learn the language
From Afrikaans and Arabic to Vietnamese and Zulu. Choose from nearly 100 titles for basic language learning in the Media Resources Center of the House Undergraduate Library. Our LinguaSearch web site (www.lib.unc.edu/house/mrc/lingua_search) lets you see what’s available.

To download digital audio courses from the Pimsleur Language Program, select “NetLibrary eAudiobooks” from our resource list at eresources.lib.unc.edu/eid/, then enter “Pimsleur” or the name of a language into the search box.

Talk like a Tar Heel
Chalybeate Springs have you stumped? Perplexed by Potecasi? You, too, can learn to talk like a Tar Heel with our online pronunciation guide to North Carolina place names (www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/resources/tlth.html). The web site features sound clips of two North Carolina natives, authors Bland Simpson and Michael McFee, pronouncing more than 150 place names.

Beach reading and armchair travel
Bestsellers, popular books, audiobooks. If you’re looking for recent fiction, biography and other popular titles, try the browsing collections in Davis Library (second floor) and the Undergraduate Library (Ragland Reading Room, first floor). Use the catalog search box at www.lib.unc.edu to find your favorite title or drop by to skim the shelves.

Or listen to your summer reading. The media resources center in the Undergraduate library provides access to popular audiobooks that you may borrow for up to thirty days. You can also download best sellers, book club favorites and award-winners to a computer or portable listening device by visiting eresources.lib.unc.edu/eid/ and navigating to “NetLibrary eAudiobooks.”

North Carolina novels
Can’t decide what to read next? Pick up a novel set in the Old North State. The North Carolina Collection’s online guide (www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/novels.html) is organized by region, town (real or fictional) and author. Circulating copies of most titles are available in the North Carolina Collection and often in other campus libraries, as well.

On-screen adventures
Let the movies take you far away. The Undergraduate Library’s Media Resources Center has thousands of videos, CDs and DVDs, many of which can be borrowed for home use. Select the “Film-Finder” icon at www.lib.unc.edu, then enter your cinematic destination in the “Origin” box. Whether it’s “Bye-Bye Brazil” or “March of the Penguins,” all kinds of destinations are as close as your library!

@yourlibrary highlights library services, collections, events and news of special interest to faculty and staff. Questions about this feature and requests for future topics may be sent to Judy Panitch (panitch@email.unc.edu), director of library communications. The web site for the UNC libraries is www.lib.unc.edu.

Carolina recognized for commuter alternative efforts

More incentives on the way

Carolina was among 72 institutions of higher learning recently recognized as Best Workplaces for Commuters by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation. The 2006 award is one of several UNC has earned in recent years for its commuter assistance efforts.

Last month, the national agencies honored 1,500 workplaces for their commuter programs. By commuting, these employees annually:

 Saved 30 million gallons of gasoline;

 Reduced 616 million miles of driving;

 Saved $86 million spent on gasoline;

 Reduced 260,000 metric tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide:

 Reduced 370 short tons of volatile organic compounds;

 Reduced 700 short tons of nitrous oxide; and

 Reduced 7,750 short tons of carbon monoxide.

“We continue to stay among the leaders in providing commuter alternatives,” Public Safety transportation demand management specialist Claire Kane said. “We’ve had this designation since the recognition program began in May of 2002 when it was called the Commuter Leadership Initiative. Still, we try to improve our program offerings each year.”

Most of UNC’s alternative transportation programs fall under the Commuter Alternative Program (CAP) umbrella, which rewards commuters who forego an on-campus parking permit.

Among them is the partnership with the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro to provide the fare-free transit buses that serve campus and nine area park-and-ride lots, subsidized regional Triangle Transit Authority monthly bus passes to all UNC employees and students for $10 a month ($60 less than the cost of a full-priced pass), a $10 monthly subsidy toward vanpool costs, discounts to local shops and giveaways.

CAP registrants also have access to an Emergency Ride Back service and a limited amount of occasional use on-campus one-day parking permits. In addition, UNC’s car-sharing program, Zipcar, is available to individuals and departments, Kane said.

Since 1998, nine park-and-ride free parking lots have opened.

CAP began in 2002 as a way to reduce single-occupancy vehicle use on campus, offering store discounts and giveaways for those choosing to bicycle, walk, park and ride, or carpool/vanpool to campus.

In 2002, Chapel Hill Transit became fare-free, thanks to a partnership between the University and the town.

The Zipcars — including two Volkswagen Beetles, a Toyota Scion xA and a Toyota Matrix wagon — have been available on campus since early 2005 and can be rented by the hour for short or long trips. Reservations are made online and individual Zipcar ID cards serve as the keys to the vehicles. Fuel is free.

“Soon, we hope to continue to enhance these programs,” Kane added.

This fall, for example, all TTA buses will be fare-free for employees and for those students who have more than a two-mile commute, and the monthly vanpool subsidy will increase to $20.

“The campus faces many transportation challenges as UNC accelerates progress on the construction of the campus master plan,” Kane said. “As parking spaces are lost, we are working to provide more ways to access campus and better serve the transportation needs of our community.”