|
 UNC homepage
to reinforce
Carolina’s
unique culture
Task force devises strategies to attract outstanding
students
Thorp takes measures to
improve citizen
soldier program
UNC homepage
to reinforce
Carolina’s
unique culture
Although the University has compelling stories to tell, they
are not easy to find on Carolina’s current homepage. But that is about
to change.
By early spring, the homepage will have a completely
revamped look and means of navigation. As part of its overall marketing
efforts, the University is redesigning its Web presence to convey Carolina’s
personality and continue as a gateway for people to find the information they
need.
The current site, which has been in place with minor
facelifts for 10 years, gets 3.9 million unique visitors a month. While it is
functional, it does not illustrate what is distinct about Carolina, said Scott
Jared, Web
content director.
The Office of University Relations is partnering with
Information Technology Services (ITS) on the redesign.
The new site will not only change the look of Carolina’s
homepage, but the site’s architecture as well. The goal is to reinforce
Carolina as a leading university by showcasing the students, faculty and staff
who create the unique culture here.
“This new site will help us do a much better job of telling
Carolina’s story. There are so many great things happening across the
University, and our current site limits how we can feature that good work,”
said Nancy Davis, associate vice chancellor for University Relations.
During the design process, University Relations created
additional ways for people to provide feedback, including a blog that received
nearly 10,000 views and a poll that drew more than 1,000 responses. All that
input is reflected in the Web redesign, Jared said.
“We’re grateful to all the faculty and staff, especially the
campus Webmasters group, and students who offered comments or their expertise,”
he said.
That includes the Board of Trustees, which endorsed the
redesign last week. Now that the look and architecture of the site have been created,
the next step is to program it.
ITS Web Services will use Carolina Content, a content
management system from Oracle, to build the site, said Jared. That process is
expected to take up to six months.
To see the new design and read the blog, refer to
uncredesign.wordpress.com.
Task force devises strategies to attract outstanding
students
University officials are taking steps now to ensure that
rising enrollment will not result in a drop in quality, real or imagined, in
the years ahead.
The UNC system is expected to enroll as many as 80,000
additional high school graduates from North Carolina in the next decade.
Carolina, like all the system campuses, will be called upon to shoulder its
share of growth.
In 2008, a study by the Art & Science Group said the
challenge would be finding ways to prevent top prospects from interpreting
Carolina’s growing size as evidence of
diminishing quality.
In response to that challenge, Chancellor Holden Thorp
established the Enrollment Excellence Task Force last October. In his
installation address that same month, Thorp called upon the task force to make
specific recommendations about new programs that might be developed or existing
programs that could be strengthened to ensure that Carolina remains a compelling
choice for outstanding students.
In June, the task force – chaired by Steve Reznick,
professor of psychology and associate dean of arts and sciences, and Steve
Farmer, associate provost and director of undergraduate admissions – had
completed a set of recommendations calling for purposeful action in three
complementary areas.
Connect
First, Carolina should connect its best prospective students
with the abundant opportunities already available on campus. Farmer said there
is no shortage of opportunities. Even after working here nearly a decade,
Farmer said he is still learning about programs that have been around as long
or longer
than he has.
The challenge is how to make the connection as soon as
students arrive so they have the time through the course of their four years
here to take full advantage of them,
Farmer said.
To help meet that challenge, the task force has recommended
a goal of assembling by fall 2017 a collection of “connected opportunities”
extensive enough to offer to about
900 students, including those who received merit-based aid or invitations to
join the Honors Program.
Examples include a guaranteed seat in a First Year Seminar
or in Modes of Inquiry (IDST 195), which introduces talented students to
research methods and research opportunities at Carolina. The task force
believes that offering such opportunities to students as they are making up
their minds about choosing Carolina would not only encourage the enrollment of
the strongest prospective students, but also improve their experience after
they enroll.
Communicate
Carolina also has to communicate more consistently and
effectively with prospective students and the broader audience that influences
student perceptions of Carolina,
Farmer said.
The complicating factor is that it will have to be done on a
sustained basis with little additional funding.
The Art & Science study found that prospective students
are heavily influenced by their perceptions of the quality of the student body
at Carolina as well as their perceptions about the composition of the student
body in terms of where students come from and who they become after they
graduate.
“Smart students want to study alongside other smart
students,” Farmer said.
“The more we help prospective students realize that they’d
have terrific classmates if they came to Carolina, the better the chance
they’ll eventually enroll.”
Create
Finally, Carolina will need to create new opportunities that
are intellectually rigorous, consistent with Carolina’s traditional strengths
and values and attractive to the group of students that Carolina most wants to
enroll.
This, too, must be done during a time of financial
constraints, but Farmer said attractive opportunities could be implemented
quickly and inexpensively as experiments or pilot programs.
The task force also endorsed in principle a focus on
addressing big problems, a key recommendation made by the “Carolina: Best Place
to Teach, Learn and Discover” initiative led by former Student Body President
J.J. Raynor and University Trustee John Ellison.
Bruce Carney, interim executive vice chancellor and provost,
has established a group to help implement, where feasible and appropriate, the
recommendations of the task force.
“Almost everyone on the original task force has agreed to
continue serving,” Farmer said. “We’re excited about our work and think we’ll
be able to implement or at least pilot several of the proposals this year.”
Thorp takes measures to
improve citizen
soldier program
Chancellor Holden Thorp reported to trustees last week that
serious flaws had been found in the Citizen Soldier Support Program and that
the University is taking action to correct them.
The program began in March 2005 with the support of a
federal grant and a charge of helping the families of soldiers in the National
Guard and Army Reserves deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The idea of the
program was to strengthen services for military personnel and their families
before, during and after they are deployed, especially those families located
away from large military installations where services are available.
Four years later, the program had spent $7.3 million of the
$9.8 million in federal money it received, but showed little evidence of
delivering those services.
The review of the program was triggered in June 2008 when
U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick of Charlotte received a complaint about the program’s
ineffectiveness. Myrick forwarded the information to UNC President Erskine
Bowles, who brought the matter to Thorp’s attention.
In response, Tony Waldrop, vice chancellor for research and
economic development, asked Phyllis Petree, director of Internal Audit, to
conduct an audit of the program.
Waldrop formed a committee to review the public service
program, which is housed in the Howard G. Odum Institute for Research in Social
Sciences.
The committee created to launch the full review included two
retired military officers who were familiar with the program and its goals as
well as Tom Bacon, head of the AHEC program, and Kimrey Rhinehardt, vice
president for federal relations in UNC General Administration.
Neil Caudle, who is Carolina’s associate vice chancellor for
research and the father of a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, chaired the
review committee.
Thorp told trustees the committee spent six months taking a
hard look at the program’s strengths and weaknesses and examining whether the
program met the needs of military families as intended – and by so doing,
satisfied its contractual obligations to the federal government.
That report, which was completed in June and forwarded to
Thorp, cited multiple problems with the program, including overpaying employees
and relying heavily on outside consultants. Moreover, the review found that the
program lacked a system of evaluation to measure practical results.
Based on his review of the committee’s report and audit,
Thorp told trustees last week that he believed the program has “serious flaws”
and that he did not believe the University had given the federal government the
best return on its investment.
To be fair, Thorp added, the committee found that leadership
turnover, related organizational issues and funding delays had limited the
effectiveness of the program in its early years. The report also said that
under new leadership in the Odum Institute the program had achieved some
notable successes, especially in the area of behavioral health.
Thorp said he and Waldrop had discussed the review
committee’s report with Bowles and Rhinehardt. Rhinehardt suggested some
additional steps to accelerate improvements in the program.
“Bottom line: We need this program to show dramatic
improvement in a short period of time to remain viable. And to that end, I
think we are well on our way to doing that,” Thorp said.
The administration reactivated the internal review
committee, Thorp said, and program leaders gave a progress report earlier this
month. Another report to the committee is scheduled
in October. |
