UNIVERSITY GAZETTE | February 7, 2007 | The University of North Carolina

Exhibit documents North Carolina through the lens of photojournalist Don Sturkey

A young, unrecognized Elvis Presley being turned away from the Charlotte Coliseum. The ladies auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in hoods and robes. Children living in poverty, the public moments of government officials, the grief of ordinary citizens who have lost their jobs, their homes, their loved ones.

As a photojournalist in North Carolina from 1952 to 1989, Don Sturkey was witness to history writ large and small. Beginning Feb. 15, 39 of Sturkey’s photos will be on exhibit in the North Carolina Collection on the main floor of Wilson Library, with an additional 14 images in the entrance area of Davis Library.

“Carolina Faces: An Exhibit of Photographs by Don Sturkey” will run through May 31. The exhibits are free and open to the public. Sturkey will give a free public lecture in conjunction with the exhibit on March 22 at 5:45 p.m. in Wilson Library. A reception will precede the program at 5 p.m. For exhibit and event information, contact Linda Jacobson in the North Carolina Collection (962-1172 or ljacobso@email.unc.edu).

Sturkey, a Georgia native and long-time North Carolinian, discovered his calling while serving in the Navy during the Korean War. His photojournalism career in North Carolina began with the Shelby Daily Star and the High Point Enterprise. In 1955, he joined the staff of the Charlotte Observer and was promoted to chief photographer in 1963, a position he held until his retirement in 1989. Sturkey won the National Press Photographers Association’s Newspaper Photographer of the Year award in 1961 and was Southern Photographer of the Year in 1962 and 1963. He was inducted into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame in 1991.

In 2005, Sturkey donated his archive of 104,000 photographic negatives to UNC’s North Carolina Collection where they are preserved and available for consultation and use. Sturkey himself selected the images to be displayed, and they reflect his wide range of interests as well as defining moments in the history of North Carolina, said Bob Anthony, curator of the North Carolina Collection.

“Sturkey prided himself on capturing the emotion of the moment,” said Anthony. “Looking at these photos is like being allowed a glimpse of the subject’s most inner self.”

Members of the University’s 2007 Summer Reading Program Book Selection Committee have named “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” by Sister Helen Prejean, as their choice for incoming undergraduates to read and discuss.

As part of its summer reading program, UNC asks new students to read a book over the summer and participate in small group discussions led by trained faculty and staff. The non-credit assignment is voluntary. Next fall’s discussions will be Aug. 20; fall semester classes begin Aug. 21.

“The Death of Innocents,” published in 2005, is Prejean’s nonfiction account of her relationships with two death-row convicts, their families and individuals on either side of the death-penalty debate during the time leading to the convicts’ executions. Prejean maintains that both were wrongfully given the death penalty.

Prejean details the trial and execution, in 1999, of Dobie Gillis Williams, a black man from Louisiana with an IQ of 65, who was accused of rape and murder. She recounts the story of Joseph Roger O’Dell, executed in 1997 after a Virginia murder conviction, which she says might have been overturned by forensic evidence the state destroyed after the execution.

A Roman Catholic nun and anti death-penalty activist, Prejean has delivered hundreds of lectures nationwide. Her 1993 book, “Dead Man Walking,” about a presumably guilty death-row convict, was adapted to a film nominated for four Academy Awards in 1996.

“This was the committee’s clear choice,” said Douglas Kelly, chair of the nine-member selection committee and professor of statistics and operations research. “Members praised it as a narrative that, while compelling and moving, is told calmly and with tolerance for all sides of the contentious issue of the death penalty in the United States.”

Of the five books that made it to the final round of the committee’s selection process, only “The Death of Innocents” was in the top three on every member’s list. Other finalists were “Honky” by Dalton Conley, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” by Michael Pollan, “The Wal-Mart Effect” by Charles Fishman and “With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today” by Daniel Rothenberg.

Chancellor James Moeser likes what he sees in the proposed budget that UNC System President Erskine Bowles has prepared. He likes it so much that, when reviewing it with the University Board of Trustees last month, he said, “In previous years we would all have cheered and declared victory. ... This is the most impressive approach that has ever been presented to the General Assembly by the system “

The proposed budget has the right priorities, Moeser said, and for the most part, the appropriate numbers plugged in next to them.

Need-based aid is the top priority in Bowles’ budget — an area that Carolina has attended to on its own with programs such as the Carolina Covenant and the longstanding policy of reserving 35 percent of revenues from campus-based tuition increases for need-based aid.

The next priority is faculty pay that, under Moeser’s leadership, has been the number one priority at Carolina.

Bowles is seeking $43.8 million in recurring funding for faculty salary increases in 2007-08, followed by a request for another $43.8 million in additional funds for 2008-09.

If those requests are funded, Carolina would receive $20.7 million over the next two years. The increases, across the UNC system, are intended to push faculty pay at each campus to the 80th percentile of its peers.

Additionally, Bowles has asked for $70.9 million in recurring funding for 2007-08, following by an additional $72 million in 2008-09, for merit-based increases for faculty. Those figures represent a 4 percent increase in each year of the biennium.

Moeser said the Board of Governors’ calculation used a different set of peer institutions than those that were applied here. Peers were chosen based on each school, each discipline and each department rather by institution.

That different methodology in selecting peers is reflected a greater gap of $40 million that would be needed to get University faculty members up to the 80th percentile with their respective peer counterparts.

Moeser said he was not about to quibble over this difference, however, because Bowles’ proposal was so aggressive. “This moves the ball down the field,” Moeser said. “It is more than a first down. It would be a huge advance.”

The budget priorities after faculty pay, in order of priority, are research, engagement and capital needs. The proposal includes $15 million in each year of the biennium to establish a competitiveness fund to support investments in key emerging industries in the state. One impetus is to encourage UNC campuses to collaborate in research.

Bowles has asked for $76 million to fund projects here growing out of a chancellor’s task force on engagement with the state, including $35 million over two years to address health workforce shortages and $21.7 million to produce more math and science teachers and improve low-performing schools. Nearly $20 million would be devoted to economic transformation through programs to support communities and high-growth companies.

In addition, Bowles is seeking $20.2 million in recurring funds and another $15.8 million in one-time allocations for the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis, where Carolina will have a major presence through its top-ranked nutrition program.

The budget proposal also calls for $5 million in 2007-08 and an additional $5 million in 2008-09 for the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), which collaborates with other campuses to support research efforts statewide.

Additional support for top faculty is being sought by raising the state’s matching fund for distinguished professors from $8 million to $10 million in 2007-08. That is significant, Moeser said, because of the University’s fundraising success. Matching state money has already allowed the Carolina First campaign to create 193 new endowed professorships — seven shy of its total goal of 200.

Finally, Bowles is also seeking $5.1 million in 2007-08 and $5.1 million in additional funds for 2008-09 for graduate student recruitment and retention — money that would add 215 new remissions at Carolina.

With regard to capital projects, the budget proposal seeks $119.6 million for a 210,000-square foot Genomic Sciences Building; $96 million for a 216,000 square-foot Oral Sciences Building for the School of Dentistry; and $12.24 million for first phase planning for Carolina North.

Nobody believes that everything that has been asked for will get funded, Moeser said. “Our mandate is to get funded what matters most to us,” he said. “If we don’t succeed, we are going to have to reopen the whole question of the 6.5 percent cap for undergraduate resident tuition. Given the leadership of the president and the support in Raleigh right now, we will have a shot at this, but it will take a maximum effort.”

The University’s Office of Technology Development has helped launch 38 spin-off companies, including 31 since 2000.

One reason for the rise of start-up companies is the faculty members’ increasingly entrepreneurial spirit. But the starting point is the high quality research faculty members continue to produce, said Associate Vice Chancellor for Economic Development Mark Crowell.

Crowell detailed the office’s progress at the Jan.25 meeting of the University Board of Trustees.

Crowell cited Chancellor James Moeser’s goal to increase the level of research at Carolina to $1 billion by 2015 — a goal that builds upon the University’s already strong position in attracting both talent and funding.

UNC ranks 20th in federal support from the National Science Foundation and 15th in the amount of funding it receives from the National Institute of Health.

Crowell said his office brokers relationships between faculty members and investors. His office has had success in that role, Crowell added, because of partnerships his office has forged with the College of Arts and Sciences, Kenan-Flagler Business’s School and the School of Law.

Basic research leads to technology transfer, which in turn produces jobs and economic growth through the state. Consumers benefit from products based on new knowledge.

Asklepios, for instance, is a company that holds the promise of offering a novel method of delivering gene therapy for Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy, an inherited disease that usually affects only males. A Phase I trial has been funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Leading the research effort is Richard Jude Samulski, professor of pharmacology and director of the Gene Therapy Center.

Immtech, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and using University compounds used as anti-fungal and antibacterial applications in the developed world, is conducting a Phase III trial in Africa to fight sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis. Leading the research effort is Richard Tidwell, professor of pathology and lab medicine in the School of Pharmacy.

Liquidia, a company that uses nanoparticle technology for targeted drug therapy, was a key factor in the University winning a nanocancer grant. Leading this research effort is Joe DeSimone, the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Carolina and N.C. State.

Qualyst Inc. offers technology useful in streamlining drug discovery and development that has been licensed to many major pharmaceutical companies. Leading its development was Dhiren Thakker, associate dean of the School of Pharmacy.

Inspire Pharmaceuticals, one of North Carolina’s leading biotechnology companies, is the first University company and the only one to have an initial public offering to outside investors. In the early 1990s, Richard Boucher and his colleagues at the University’s Cystic Fibrosis Research Center discovered the potential of the molecule uridine triphosphate (UTP) to act like a natural hormone in cystic fibrosis cells, which cannot produce the moisture required to line a person’s airways with mucus.

Crowell said these companies represent a rich pipeline of research and innovation that generates 120 invention reports each year. The returns on that innovation can be measured a myriad number of ways, from national prestige to faculty satisfaction to student interest. One measurement that has becoming increasingly important and relevant — both to the University and the state — is the connection between Carolina’s research and North Carolina’s economic development efforts, Crowell said.

The impact and results of those efforts have been felt throughout the state, from the small microscopy business in downtown Carrboro to the web-based Spanish curriculum being offered for health workers. Such efforts helped the University to be ranked 25th in the world in the Milken Technology Transfer and Commercialization Index. Crowell said that the 24 universities ahead of Carolina had started technology transfer programs before Carolina.

Crowell said the challenges and opportunities for the Office of Technology Development can be found in Carolina North because it can provide the space for growing industry partnerships, start-up company incubation and translational research. To help make that happen, Crowell said, a proposed Business Innovation Center would add up to a 70,000 square-foot incubator with offices, labs, management and seed capital to help launch companies with high growth potential.

Carolina is one of the few public universities without a research park or incubator. Their presence at Carolina North, Crowell said, would help to take the University to the next level of technology transfer.

Carolina’s Curriculum in Toxicology was ranked first under the 2005 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index.

The annual index offers a new standard for measuring doctoral programs that ranks departments according to their scholarly input. Its use was the subject of a Jan. 12 story in The Chronicle for Higher Education.

The toxicology ranking was part of a table that listed the top departments in 104 fields. The 2005 index also compiled overall institutional rankings on 166 large research universities as well as 61 smaller research universities.

Carolina, with its 56 Ph.D. programs, ranked 25th among the large research universities.

The index is partly funded by the State University of New York at Stony Brook and produced by Academic Analytics, a for-profit company. The index rates faculty members’ scholarly output at nearly 7,300 doctoral programs throughout the country. In doing so, it examines the number of book and journal articles published by each program’s faculty as well as journal citations, awards, honors and grants received, the Chronicle reported.

UNC’s toxicology curriculum is an interdisciplinary program that is administratively based in the School of Medicine.

Weather forecasters correctly predicted snow early Feb. 1 that sent grounds crews to make building steps safe(above) and students to McCorkle Place (below) to take advantage of the rare opportunity to make a snowman. The snow later shifted to rain, avoiding a long predicted frozen mix. Employees are reminded of the University’s adverse weather policy, which details related operating and work schedule issues. For more, refer to hr.unc.edu/hottopics/adverseweather.

Editor's note: APPLES (Assisting People in Planning Learning Experiences in Service) is the student-led program at the University that engages students, faculty and community agencies in service-learning partnerships. Its goal is to foster socially aware and civically involved students through participation in an enriched curriculum and hands-on experiences that address the needs of North Carolina communities. Recently, APPLES Director Jenny Huq sat down with Deborah Bender, a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration in the School of Public Health and APPLES’ Faculty Fellow for Global Service-Learning, to discuss the Global Service-Learning Program that they started in Mexico in 2003, as well as its recent expansion.

Gazette: Dr. Bender, can you talk a bit how your work led you to this new mentoring program?

Bender: I have worked with APPLES for the past six years. I served as a member of the APPLES Advisory Board. I began to wonder why APPLES didn’t do any international service-learning projects. Although I didn’t want to diminish APPLES’ longstanding commitment to serving the people of North Carolina, I thought that the growing immigrant populations in the state provided multiple possibilities. Jenny and I talked about the possibility, and in 2003, we partnered with the International Partnership for Service Learning and sent the first group of UNC students to Mexico to improve their Spanish language skills and do service learning. This past year, Jenny graciously created a more formal position — the Global Service-Learning Faculty Fellow, in response to the program’s rapid growth and rising participation.

Gazette: The idea behind this service program is to tap into the insights these students return home with after studying abroad, with the understanding that their international experiences better equip them to work with people from other countries who have come here to live and work. Is that right?

Huq: That’s exactly right. Students returning from our abroad experiences engage in local service-learning with newly arrived immigrants. Dr. Bender’s involvement in this program began as an extension of her board role, but she quickly became deeply integrated into its development and evolution. In 2002, she approached me with the idea of global service-learning, encouraging us to really think about its value. Simultaneously, students returning from their traditional study abroad experiences began to inquire about opportunities to serve and study abroad. They were encountering students from other universities taking advantage of service-learning opportunities that at the time were not approved UNC programs.

Bender: When I approached Jenny about the possibility of developing global service-learning experiences, one of my concerns was that we not let an international program overwhelm the domestic service-learning program. International travel is always romantic — you can get on an airplane and go some place different and, wow, everybody wants to hear about it. That doesn’t meet our goal of serving the population of North Carolina, which is part of the core mission of the University and APPLES.

Bender: We decided to develop global service-learning opportunities in countries where people were leaving to come to North Carolina. Mexico was an obvious first choice since 63 percent of the Spanish-speaking immigrants in North Carolina come from Mexico. The U.S. Census reports that from 1990 to 2000 the Hispanic population in the state increased by 394 percent. The change is huge because the infrastructure wasn’t there to respond. So it was this surge in the Latino and Spanish-speaking population that helped us to focus on what we wanted in a global-
local service learning initiative.

Huq: We noticed an increase in the number of Spanish major and pre-med students who were seeking out opportunities to serve in communities abroad in an effort to inform their work with local immigrants. The experiences, the development of language skills and the opportunity to work with immigrant cultures are extremely valuable for students’ professional development.

Gazette: How does APPLES identify those students who may be interested in participating?

Huq: Some may have already participated in one of our courses, internships or fellowships, but the majority of them hear about global service-learning from the Study Abroad Advisers.

Huq: The program is at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, or UAG as it is called. It’s the first private university founded in Mexico and they have a sizeable language school where they teach students from all over the world all year long. That’s set up at about eight different levels of language learning. They have other students, including our own, who are offered service-learning experiences. These students go to grammar and conversation classes for three or four hours in the morning and then in the afternoon they go to their service-learning sites.

Huq: The majority of service-learning placements for our students in Mexico focus around working with youth in a variety of ways. The children they work with tend to be elementary to middle-school age. Some are boys in residential home facilities where they are away from their parents doing the week, returning home on weekends. Some live in orphanages. When placing our students, we identify a variety of opportunities to meet the varied interests of the students. We encourage them to consider up front the connection between the work that they will do in Mexico and the work they will do once they return.

Bender: I think the range of experiences they have teach them very valuable life skills. For instance, spending time side by side with a child really makes a tremendous difference in a child’s life. These experiences facilitate relationship-building which is a critical skill when working in and with communities.

Gazette: I understand many of the students when they come back to campus participate in a seminar to share their experiences with other students.

Huq: The reflection seminar is designed to create a space for students to continue to engage in their abroad experience from a local standpoint. The course provides students personal debriefing opportunities to help them reflect on their experiences as well as move forward with their lives. They also learn a lot of new information about how they can apply their abroad experiences to working with local immigrant communities.

Bender: All the students who come back from the projects are placed in a local service setting during the semester following their trip. They are also taking the one credit hour seminar that focuses on various aspects of migration transition, including health, education and social justice. Nationally, there are strong opinions on both sides of the fence about undocumented immigration, but at the individual or family level, the issues are much clearer. Families want a better life for their children.

Gazette: Do any of your students work with Latino populations in any of the local schools?

Bender: We’ve worked at Chapel Hill High, East Chapel Hill High and with the students at Carrboro Elementary. What is most powerful to our students is to discover the migration paths of these students — how much their hopes and dreams parallel those of the families they met in Mexico. The families coming here now come for economic reasons, by and large. Many of the women I’ve interviewed talk about their hopes and dreams for their families. What many of them miss the most about Mexico, no matter how you ask the question, is family.

Gazette: So much of what your students learn is that there is a new pattern of immigration that represents a twist to the American Dream.

Bender: What Jenny and I are working on is to create learning and living situations where students’ academic knowledge can connect to the local community. I want them to see the patterns of migration where sending remittances back home keep them connected to their families in Mexico. Many families in fact, are sending money home to Mexico to buy a piece of land and build a home.

Gazette: How do the experiences these students gain from this program help them to figure out what they want to do with their lives? Are their experiences laying a foundation for future careers?

Bender: It helps students to think about their professional careers and where they want to go and how they would like to integrate this global experience into their future plans. As a professor of public health, for instance, my interest is health care access for immigrant populations. For an immigrant without health insurance, prescription medicines are quite expensive through the formal health-care system. If a physician understands that from a Latino’s perspective, he or she is going to be much more careful to ask questions about what other medicines they might be taking. Have you asked anyone to bring medicines for you across the border? Are you taking any herbal medicines? A doctor should know answers to these questions before prescribing any other medications to prevent possible adverse drug interactions.

Huq: We now offer global service-learning programs in Central America, Southern Africa and Vietnam.

Gazette: Both of you have been involved in putting together a delegation of University faculty to represent Carolina at the International Service-Learning Institute at Elon University later this month. What is the significance of that conference in terms of pushing your service-learning model to the next phase?

Huq: The conference will allow institutional teams to come together and talk about opportunities for undergraduate students to connect their academic coursework to serving within global communities. We are interested in providing more access for students interested in this global-local approach, so we’ve begun dialogue with many constituents across the campus engaging in this type of work. Deborah and I know that on this campus there are a lot of things going on. The UNC delegation is comprised of 15 representatives from various disciplines and administrative roles across the campus. The conference will provide momentum for our initial conversations around increasing
collaborative efforts and sharing resources to create more opportunities for students in the future.

GRADS supports course planning efforts

Beginning this month, UNC advisers can spend less time doing paperwork and more time advising students with ITS’ new Graduation Requirements Advising System (GRADS). GRADS helps students plan which courses to take in order to meet their graduation requirements. Students will be able to use the system to aid their spring advisement sessions to plan what classes they will take this summer and fall.

“Previously, advisers spent a lot of time filling in a worksheet by hand with all the classes a student had taken and how they met requirements,” said Joe Bray, applications development project supervisor. “This system gives advisers more time to actually advise, because GRADS fills in the worksheet for them and updates automatically when the student registers for a course and again when the course is completed.”

“The quality of the advising process should be improved,” said Donna Redmon, associate registrar. “When you take the mundane requirements tracking out of meetings, then you can discuss career objectives, programs of study and satisfaction of the students’ selection of their primary program or major. You’ve moved advising to another level. Your meetings become less quantitative and more qualitative.”

The system is part of a larger yearlong project to renumber courses and revise the undergraduate curriculum.

“Because of the work that has been put into the development and analysis of this system, I believe it is far superior to any degree audit system that I’ve seen,” said Redmon. “This system is tailored to UNC’s very distinct academic programs. And that doesn’t exist on a lot of campuses elsewhere. That’s what makes GRADS so effective.”

GRADS can be accessed using Student Central and Faculty/Staff Central.

Reminder: Update Symantec client to protect from malware
A type of malware that exploits Symantec desktop security products can compromise computers and computing systems. To protect your computer from this combined worm and botnet, all UNC users are asked to immediately update their Symantec client to the Symantec Antivirus 10.0.2.2002 version available free at https://shareware.unc.edu.

To make sure you are using a protected version and to learn about updates, visit help.unc.edu/?id=6058. If you need assistance or require any additional information, call 962-HELP.

Games for learning: The conversation continues
Interested in using games for learning in your curriculum? ITS Teaching and Learning has a new resource for the UNC. Games4Learning is an online forum set up as a Google Group. To join a conversation about educational games on campus, contact LearnIT@unc.edu or point your web browser to googlegroups.com and search for Games4Learning.

“Edu-gaming” was featured on the front page of the December 2006 issue of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). The article described an October 2005 summit on educational games sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists, the Entertainment Software Association and the National Science Foundation that focused on the aspects of learning that could be supported by video games; research needed to guide effective use of games; market barriers; and changes in the educational system that might be needed to incorporate games for learning. View the NSTA article at www.nsta.org by searching for “edu-gaming” and materials from the educational games summit at www.fas.org/gamesummit.

Listserver tip: list attachments
The maximum size of messages sent to lists using listserv.unc.edu is 5 megabytes. If you send attachments, the total size of the message (body text plus attachment) cannot exceed 5 megabytes. If you have large documents to distribute to list members, consider making the document available online and using the list to let subscribers know where to access the document.

Online tutorials prepare students for study abroad

Picture this: Your starry-eyed student has just been accepted to study abroad for a semester in Paris, France. Baguettes! Berets! Head-butting soccer players!

But how well prepared is your student to live and study there? Even years of classroom exposure to the language or discussions about culture and history may not be the key to navigating everyday student life.

Enter the University Library’s online Study Abroad Research Tutorials. Created in fall 2006, the tutorials are web-based, self-paced learning modules designed to teach students how to research their destination before going, as well as how to conduct research while they’re studying abroad.

Lisa Norberg, director of public services for the library, said the tutorials serve three purposes. They provide general information about the country, advice on how to conduct research while there and instructions for connecting back to UNC library services and resources while abroad.

“We’d like students to use them as part of their preparation for their study abroad experience to help familiarize themselves with the country and the information resources that are available to them,” Norberg said.

The tutorials were created in response to the University’s Academic Plan and the recommendation to expand study abroad opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students. “As more and more students go abroad during their course of study,” said Norberg, “the library’s tutorials can help them make the most of these opportunities.”

Students can currently access tutorials on France, India, Italy, Russia, South Africa, Spain and the United Kingdom. Tutorials about studying in Argentina, China, the Czech Republic and Germany are also in the works. Each tutorial was written in consultation with natives from the country and offers a multi-faceted approach to becoming familiar with a study abroad destination.

Take, for example, France. In the “Getting to Know ...” section, students can find information about the country in links to the CIA World Factbook, The Library of Congress Portals to the World and the BBC News Portal. There are also listings for books in the library’s holdings about the country and its culture, as well as French and international newspapers. Travel guides, travel websites, maps and French films round out the mini-tour.

The “Conducting Research in ...” section introduces students to the French library system. In “Accessing UNC’s Resources Abroad,” students will find links back to the University Libraries’ homepage, connecting them to a wide array of online resources and a qualified staff of librarians.

Though the tutorials are relatively new, Norberg said, she hoped they will be helpful to students.

“We’d like students to know that even though they are abroad, the UNC libraries are still accessible and available to provide research assistance and support,” she said.

@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 website for the UNC Libraries is www.lib.unc.edu. This month’s column was written by Margaret Hair.