1. Art and Diseño

university
Vol. 40, No. 2
gazette.unc.edu
January 28, 2015
7
10
Ca ro l i n a F a cu l ty a n d S ta ff N e w s
Left, Cary police Chief Pat Brazemore leads a training class at the School of
Government on campus.
Smith’s
impact
felt
statewide
Below, participant Chlsea Laws, with the Town of Chapel Hill, asks a question during the class.
Making
government
work better
Dooley
‘makes
the room
better’
I
12
Robots
enhance
remote
interaction
n the shifting sands of partisan discord, Carolina’s School of Government is a refreshing oasis – “a safe harbor, a neutral court,”
according to its dean. And because of that impartiality, the school
earns respect across the political spectrum.
Dean Michael Smith emphasizes the School of Government’s core
values: to be nonpartisan, policy-neutral and responsive. “We’re not here
to tell you what to do,” he told a room full of county officials during a
recent training session in Winston-Salem. “We’re here to help you think
through your options.”
One of the officials in the room was Surry County Commissioner
Larry Phillips, who expressed his gratitude for the services of the school.
As a latecomer to the commission, where some of his colleagues had
already served decades, Phillips said he had a “steep learning curve”
after his election.
“And what I found out was that the School of Government prepared me to be able to hit the ground running with those guys,” Phillips said. “I knew how to research what a statute said. I had the contacts to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, guys, is this right? Can we do
this?’ That to me is an invaluable resource for a new commissioner in
North Carolina.”
See School of Government page 6
Carolina takes steps to boost lab-to-market innovation
Carolina ranks among the top 10 research universities in the country, and University leaders
want to capitalize on that success to transform
ideas from the lab to the marketplace.
Translating critical faculty research into
ways that directly benefit society, and at the same
time, supporting innovation and entrepreneurial
activities across campus have been priorities in
recent years.
The University added two exclamation points
to those ongoing efforts on Thursday (Jan. 22)
with the announcements of a new venture fund to
support start-ups and a new position in the chancellor’s cabinet to help the University maximize
its economic impact on the state by accelerating
innovation and entrepreneurship.
Judith Cone was named as the interim vice
chancellor of commercialization and economic
development.
Chancellor Carol L. Folt and Board of Trustees
Chair Lowry Caudill said Thursday that no one is
better equipped to fill the newly created position
than Cone, who came to Carolina in 2009 as former Chancellor Holden Thorp’s special assistant
for innovation and entrepreneurship. She had
previously served as vice president of emerging
strategies at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where she had worked for 15 years.
See BOT page 3
U n ive rsity Gaze t t e
on th e we b
Get positive
Pioneering positivity researcher Barbara Fredrickson
will share her insights for free in a new Massive Open
Online Course (MOOC) available on Coursera starting
Feb. 9. No background in science or psychology is
needed. Anyone can sign up for the six-week course.
go.unc.edu/g3H7Q
Get help
Ready to take your brilliant idea to the next level but
don’t have the technical expertise? Social ventures
and startups from UNC are all invited to enter the
Codeworthy contest to win tech and design support.
codeworthy.org
Get fun
Did you know today, Jan. 28, is National Fun at Work
Day? If you’re out of ideas on how to have fun at
work, this site can help.
go.unc.edu/o5AHz
university
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Ross to step down next year
UNC President Tom Ross will step down next
January after five years at the helm of the state’s
public university system. Ross and the UNC
Board of Governors announced the decision at
the Jan. 16 BOG meeting.
The board wants to launch a national search
for Ross’ successor and made the announcement
now to “ensure an orderly transition of leadership,” according to a joint statement issued by
the BOG and Ross.
While that timeframe is much earlier than
Ross said he had in mind, he added that he fully
understood the board’s prerogative to select
the UNC system president and pledged his full
commitment to continue to fulfill the responsibilities of the presidency during the period
of transition.
Ross will continue to serve with the BOG’s full
support until his resignation becomes effective
Jan. 3, 2016, or when his successor is in place,
whichever is later, the statement read.
Ross will turn 65 next year, although the decision was not based on Ross’ age or for political
reasons, said BOG Chair John Fennebresque.
“This decision has nothing to do with President
Ross’ performance or ability to continue in the
office,” he said.
Since Ross became president in 2011, the
board composition has changed significantly,
mirroring North Carolina’s shift to a Republican-controlled state legislature. Within a couple
of years after Ross took office, virtually all the
board members were new appointees.
Carolina’s top leaders responded to the
announcement with praise for Ross and the
strength of his leadership.
Chancellor Carol L. Folt said she had always
been inspired by Ross’ belief in and support for
the students, faculty and staff, not only here but
also throughout the UNC system.
“I have enjoyed working with him and have
learned a great deal from him about how to lead
with passion and integrity,” she said. “Carolina
will continue to work closely with President
Ross over the coming year and will partner with
Carolina’s Board of Trustees and the UNC
Board of Governors on strategic plans for both
our campus and the UNC system.”
Board of Trustees Chair Lowry Caudill said
the board greatly appreciated Ross’s support
for Carolina. “The legacy of Tom Ross will be
one of service to the citizens of North Carolina
See Ross page 11
Four directors highlight work of their centers, institutes
Centers and institutes from across the UNC system have been under
review for the past year by a Board of Governors panel.
At Carolina, the University Board of Trustees has also been taking
a closer look at the centers and institutes here to gain deeper insight
into how each contributes to furthering Carolina’s mission of teaching,
research and public service.
The four directors who spoke to the trustees on Jan. 22 were:
Rick Luettich, director of the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences
(IMS), said Carolina had the first coastal field site in 1894. Today, IMS
has 11 resident faculty members who interact with at least 15 different units on campus and play a foundational role in the Department
of Marine Sciences, Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology and
the Institute for the Environment. In 2013, two IMS graduate students
founded SciRen – the Science Research and Education Network –
that connects STEM scientists with K–12 teachers across the state to
develop science lesson plans. Research capstone projects include wind
energy in coastal waters; the impact of storm water runoff to the North
Carolina coast; and the study of oyster reef ecosystems.
Thomas Carsey, director of the Odum Institute, said the institute
helps leaders to gauge the impact of science on society by creating
the data tools for statistical analysis to measure and describe what
society is. Founded in 1924 by Howard W. Odum, the institute’s mission remains what is has always been: to help grow and lead a worldclass social science infrastructure at Carolina. Carsey said the institute
defines social science broadly, paying particular attention to interdisciplinary research and training. The institute’s vision for the next 90
years is to respond to the “big data” revolution by ensuring every student at Carolina becomes data literate, Carsey said.
Joseph Jordan, director of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black
Culture and History, said the mission of the center is to encourage
and support the critical examination of all dimensions of African
American and African diaspora cultures through sustained and open
discussion, dialogue and debate. The Stone Center was created in
1988 and moved to its own building in 2004. In the past decade, Jordan said, the center has become a hub for intellectual activity that
complements the missions, programs and projects of other campus
units in the areas of culture, art and history.
Christi Hurt, director of the Carolina Women’s Center, said the
mission of the center is to create an inclusive education and work
environment where gender is not a barrier to success. It also seeks to
create an environment where difference and diversity are celebrated,
and everyone is safe to live, learn, teach and work without threat of
harm or unequal treatment. Among the services the center offers
is individual support for survivors of interpersonal violence as well
as ongoing educational programs for faculty, staff and students to
ensure compliance with legal requirements.
PowerPoints of the presentations are posted at bot.unc.edu/agendas.
– Gary Moss, Gazette
Mel anie Busbee
2 One of the four presentations during the Jan. 22 Board of Trustees meeting highlighed the work of the Institute of Marine Sciences.
January 28, 2 015 3
Faculty advocate for input into search process for successor to Ross
Anxiety about the future of public higher education in
North Carolina was palpable during the Jan. 23 Faculty
Council meeting, which took place the week following the
announcement that UNC President Tom Ross will step down
next January.
Some faculty expressed anger and frustration at what they
saw as an unwarranted move by the UNC Board of Governors.
Others worried that the individual UNC institutions would
not have adequate input into choosing Ross’ successor. Still
others urged a patient approach working in tandem with the other
16 UNC campuses.
Chancellor Carol L. Folt praised Ross for his leadership
and steadfast support for Carolina, and she reminded faculty members of the importance of finding common ground
during key transitions. Just as Ross is focusing on creating a
positive transition to the UNC system’s next leader, she said,
people at Carolina should find a productive way to show state
leaders the many ways in which the University is important to
North Carolina.
Sociology professor Andrew Perrin asked Folt what faith
she had that Carolina’s faculty and administrators would
have input into the search process, and whether she thought
BOT from page 1
with the leadership and vision of Chancellor
Folt, Carolina is positioned to deliver and have
tremendous economic impact on the state of
North Carolina,” Caudill said.
Support for start-ups
Caudill also thanked Trustee Sallie Shuping-Russell for her role in the creation of the
Carolina Research Venture Fund, which will
help University startup companies overcome
funding gaps to help bring Carolina’s best-inclass research to real-world application.
The trustees first approved the concept
for the fund in 2013. Since then, a committee of trustees, administrators and faculty has
worked to develop a separate organizational
structure through which Carolina can help
fund promising new technologies. The fund
Mel anie Busbee
More recently, Cone has served as interim
director of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and will continue in
that role.
Creation of the new position stemmed
from a campus-wide, comprehensive fiveyear review on commercialization and industry relations, and is strongly endorsed by the
Board of Trustee Innovation and Impact
Committee.
“With the innovation and entrepreneurial
efforts over the past 10 years, with the Innovation Roadmap now four years old, with the
work of our board’s Innovation and Impact
Committee the past two-and-a-half years and
the BOG supported the vision of having a world-class
university system.
Folt said she had every reason to believe the search process
would have broad representation because the board historically has turned to the individual campuses for input in areas in
which they have specific knowledge.
She said she also is convinced that the BOG is poised to seek
greater financial support for the UNC system.
“The overwhelming perspective I am hearing right now is
that they want to be speaking to the legislature about this being
a time to invest in your university, that our great universities are
the reason this state has thrived,” Folt said.
Law professor Eric Muller, who also is director of
the Center for Faculty Excellence, said he hoped people
at every campus would engage the BOG in a conversation
about the values of the university system and the qualities
needed for the next UNC president, but that was difficult to
do given the timeline for the announcement that Ross would
step down.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost James W. Dean Jr.
reminded faculty members that the BOG has the prerogative
to make such a decision, and he suggested that people view the
next steps as an opportunity to focus on the future while representing Carolina’s interests in a positive way.
Folt added that she would do everything she could to
advance the University.
Pete Andrews, professor of environmental policy and
former faculty chair, said that while the BOG had the
right to make such a leadership change, he hoped the board
would not change the overall focus of the UNC system or
move into an era of micromanagement on campus-level and
academic decisions.
Some faculty members wanted the flagship institution to
take a more aggressive stance.
History professor Lloyd Kramer said he was frustrated by
what he saw as “an undirected sense of crisis” at the meeting.
He wanted Carolina’s leaders to ask the system-wide UNC
Faculty Assembly to pass a resolution that the BOG articulate why it wanted Ross to step down. He also asked that the
assembly specify the qualities it values in a UNC president.
“We have to affirm our own concerns, our own priorities and
our own vision for the university, and that’s what the flagship
will begin with $5 million, derived from investment earnings on non-state funds.
Shuping-Russell, a managing director at
BlackRock, said the fund would help move
ideas from University labs to the commercial
marketplace.
“Many of our UNC startups are working on
breakthrough ideas and solutions that could
greatly benefit the public,” she said. “However,
because private investment capital is not broadly
available at this earliest stage, these ideas struggle to get translated into practice use.”
The fund was created to address this gap
in funding.
“This fund will help unlock these young
companies’ potential and get their products
into the hands of businesses and consumers
by providing early capital and leveraging our
relationships with the national venture capital
community,” Shuping-Russell said.
A board of directors made up of trustees,
administrators, researchers and others will
oversee the fund. The board will hire one
or more independent managers to oversee
the fund operations. It will also have an advisory board of leading venture capitalists from
across the nation.
“As the Carolina Research Venture Fund
proves its success, we will continue to invest in
and energize its growth with additional capital,” Folt said.
Adding a singular focus
Chancellor Carol L. Folt makes remarks at a meeting of the Board of Trustees on Jan. 22. The
meeting was held at the Carolina Inn.
Folt said commercializing University intellectual property and capitalizing on the nearly
$800 million in research funding Carolina
researchers brought in last year is one of the
University’s highest priorities.
At Carolina, no one better exemplifies that
frame of mind than Cone, Folt said.
“I am confident that Judith’s business
See Faculty Council page 6
background, experience in the region and
entrepreneurial spirit will enable her to serve
as a nexus for commercialization and economic development activities on the campus,”
Folt said.
Since joining the University in 2009, Cone
has been instrumental in strengthening a
culture of innovation and entrepreneurship
across campus by accelerating innovation programs already in place.
She has also helped Carolina forge regional
partnerships, including a coalition with Duke,
N.C. Central and N.C. State universities and the
Council for Entrepreneurial Development to
develop the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network
to assist next-generation growth companies.
Cone served on N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory’s
Innovation-to-Jobs Working Group and
helped supercharge the University’s innovation and commercialization by supporting
those who translate their ideas.
In 2010, Caudill and Cone helped lead
the Innovation Circle, a group of entrepreneurs and scientists enlisted to help Carolina
increase its impact on the state and the world
by figuring how to do a better job of translating new knowledge into real-world solutions.
Cone also led the creation of the Innovate@
Carolina: Important Ideas for a Better World
roadmap, the University’s vision for using
innovative ideas to solve pressing problems.
“I look forward to harnessing the talent,
resources and potential that exists on this campus – which is truly unbounded – as we continue providing exceptional benefit to this community and to North Carolina,” Cone said.
A video snapshot of the meeting is posted on
the UNC homepage at go.unc.edu/Wq95E.
– Gary Moss, Gazette
4 U n ive rsity Gaze t t e
For sea turtles, there’s no place like magnetic home
The findings were reported in the Cell Press
journal Current Biology earlier this month.
“Sea turtles migrate across thousands of
miles of ocean before returning to nest on
Roger Brothers
Adult sea turtles find their way back to the
beaches where they hatched by seeking out
unique magnetic signatures along the coast,
according to new evidence from Carolina.
Adult sea turtles use magnetic signatures along the coast to find their way back to their
natal beaches.
the same stretch of coastline where they
hatched, but how they do this has mystified scientists for more than 50 years,” said
J. Roger Brothers, a doctoral student in
biology at Carolina. “Our results provide
evidence that turtles imprint on the unique
magnetic field of their natal beach as hatchlings and then use this information to return
as adults.”
While earlier studies have shown that sea
turtles use the Earth’s magnetic field as a
guide while out at sea, it has remained unclear
whether adult turtles also depend on magnetic
features to recognize and return to the nesting
sites chosen by their mothers before them, the
researchers explain.
Several years ago, the new study’s co-author
Kenneth Lohmann, Charles P. Postelle Jr.
Distinguished Professor of Biology, proposed
that animals, including sea turtles and salmon,
might imprint on magnetic fields early in life,
but that idea has proven difficult to test in
the open ocean. In this study, Brothers and
Lohmann took a different approach by studying changes in the behavior of nesting turtles
over time.
“We reasoned that if turtles use the
magnetic field to find their natal beaches,
then naturally occurring changes in the
Earth’s field might influence where turtles
nest,” Brothers said.
To investigate, the researchers analyzed a
19-year database of loggerhead nesting along
the eastern coast of Florida, the largest sea
turtle rookery in North America. They found
a strong association between the spatial distribution of turtle nests and subtle shifts in the
Earth’s magnetic field.
In some times and places, the Earth’s field
shifted so that the magnetic signatures of
adjacent locations along the beach moved
closer together. When that happened, nesting
turtles packed themselves in along a shorter
stretch of coastline, just as the researchers
had predicted. In places where magnetic signatures diverged, sea turtles spread out and
laid their eggs in nests that were fewer and
farther between.
Brothers said that little is known about
how turtles detect the geomagnetic field.
Most likely, tiny magnetic particles in the
turtles’ brains respond to the Earth’s field and
See Sea turtles page 11
GAA honors three faculty members for outstanding service
Cohen
Cohen joined the Carolina faculty in 1980. He is the Yeargen-Bate Eminent Distinguished Professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology in the School of Medicine, where he
chairs the infectious disease division; a professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health; and the
associate vice chancellor for global health.
In 2011, Science magazine credited Cohen and his researchers with the “Breakthrough of the Year” for clinical trials showing that treating HIV-1 with aggressive antiretroviral therapy
reduced transmission to uninfected partners to almost zero.
The results prompted the World Health Organization to
change its treatment guidelines.
Cohen has led the UNC Institute for Global Health
and Infectious Diseases since its founding in 2007. He has
received a lifetime achievement award from the American
Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association, the National
Institutes of Health Merit Award, the North Carolina Award
for Science and Carolina’s O. Max Gardner Award, honoring
a faculty member who “has made the greatest contribution to
the welfare of the human race” in that academic year.
Earp
Earp, who joined the faculty in 1974, is a professor and former chair of the Department of Health Behavior at the Gillings
School of Global Public Health. She also is on the faculty of the
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Sheps Health
Services Research Center and the Odum Institute for Research
in the Social Sciences.
A primary focus of Earp’s research has been to end racial disparities in health care treatment and outcomes. An innovator of the
lay health adviser approach now used nationwide, Earp founded
the N.C. Breast Cancer Screening Program that got screening for
more older black women in poor, rural counties
in the state, enabling them to begin treatment
sooner and reduce their mortality rate.
Among Earp’s many awards for teaching,
mentoring and research, she has received
the National Cancer Institute RTIP designation, Carolina’s McGavran Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Cecil G. Sheps Distinguished Investigator Award, the John E. Larsh
Jr. Award for Mentorship and the Women’s
Leadership Council Mentoring Award.
awards to his name. He was the program’s director from 2002
to 2008 and served as the faculty representative on the GAA’s
Board of Directors for 2011–12.
Simpson interrupted his undergraduate studies to pursue songwriting in New York. After completing his degree, he co-wrote the
musical “Diamond Studs” with fellow alumnus Jim Wann. That
musical led to his writing for and performing with the North Carolina string band the musical featured, The Red Clay Ramblers.
Simpson has been a co-composer and co-writer of four musicals and contributed a song to a fifth, the Tony-nominated
“Pump Boys & Dinettes.” He has received the North Carolina
Award for Fine Arts. He also has championed North Carolina’s
coast and other natural resources, including with his book “The
Great Dismal: A Carolinian’s Swamp Memoir.”
Contributed
Acclaimed researchers in HIV/AIDS and public health and a
writer whose works have appeared on the page and stage were
honored Jan. 16 with the General Alumni Association’s Faculty
Service Award.
The GAA’s board of directors presented the award, which
honors outstanding service for the University or the association,
to Myron Cohen, whose groundbreaking research in HIV/AIDS
revealed treatment strategies for limiting transmission of the
virus; Jo Anne Earp, whose research focuses on increasing access
to health care for underserved populations; and Bland Simpson,
whose work includes articles, essays, novels, the musical stage
and documentaries.
Simpson
Simpson graduated from Carolina with a
political science degree in 1973. A member of
the creative writing faculty since 1982, he is
the Kenan Distinguished Professor of English
and Creative Writing and has several teaching
Recipients of the GAA Faculty Service Award are, from left, Myron Cohen, Bland
Simpson and Jo Anne Earp.
January 28, 2 015 5
Faculty/Staff
News
University Teaching Awards
for 2015 are announced
The University has announced the recipients of the 2015 University Teaching Awards,
the highest campus-wide recognition for
teaching excellence. The instructors come
from faculty and teaching assistants, representing 16 departments and three schools.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
James W. Dean Jr. acknowledged the award
winners at halftime of the Jan. 24 men’s basketball game against Florida State University.
A special insert on the winners will appear in
the April 15 issue of the University Gazette.
The teaching award winners are:
Nominee for the Board of Governors’
Award for Excellence in Teaching: Terry
Sullivan, Department of Political Science.
Distinguished Teaching Awards for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction: Bernard Boxill,
Department of Philosophy; Julie Byerley, School of Medicine; Eric Downing,
Department of Romance Languages; Susan
Ennett, School of Public Health.
Tanner Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching: Rita Balaban, Department
In memoriam:
of Economics; Joyce Chua, Department
of Anthropology; Kelly Hogan, Department of Biology; Shimul Melwani,
Business School; Karl Umble, Department
of Health Policy and Management.
Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement:
Philip Sloane, School of Medicine.
Chapman Family Teaching Awards:
Oswaldo Estrada, Department of
Romance Languages; Eliza Richards,
Department of English and Comparative Literature; Mark Schoenfisch,
Department of Chemistry.
J. Carlyle Sitterson Freshman Teaching
Award: Barbara Osborne, Department of Exercise and Sport Science.
William C. Friday/Class of 1986 Award
for Excellence in Teaching: Deborah
Jones, Department of Psychology.
Johnston Teaching Excellence Awards:
Cheri Rivers Ndaliko, Department of
Music; Steven Hemelt, Department of
Public Policy.
Tanner Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching by Graduate Teaching Assist a n t s : L i nd s a y
Brainard, Department of Philosophy;
Suzanne Geiser,
Department of English
and Comparative Literature; Jordan Radke,
Department of Sociology; Kyle Slinker,
Department of Physics;
Joseph
Zappa,
Department of Statistics
and Operations
Research.
John J.W. Rogers,
Carol Malloy
Two retired Carolina faculty members died earlier this month: John J.W.
Rogers from the Department of Geology in the College of Arts and Sciences
and Carol Malloy from the School of Education.
Rogers
Rogers joined the geological sciences faculty in 1975 and remained active
in supporting students and research in the department until his death. He
supervised 25 graduate students and countless undergraduates at Carolina and
remained a constant fixture in the department after he retired, supporting students and faculty members alike.
A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. on Jan. 31 at Croasdaile Village in
Durham. Gifts for the John & Barbara Rogers Fund for Excellence in Geochemistry in Geological Sciences may be made at go.unc.edu/Ae98S; search for fund
105519. Or send a check payable to Arts & Sciences Foundation Inc., with “John
and Barbara Rogers Fund – 105519” noted in the memo line, to the University’s
Arts and Sciences Foundation, 134 East Franklin St., Chapel Hill 27514.
Malloy
Malloy, a faculty member for 15 years, joined the School of Education as
associate director of the UNC-Chapel Hill Mathematics and Science Network.
In that post, she earned a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from Carolina
in 1994 and then joined the faculty, teaching secondary mathematics methods
courses in the Master of Arts in Teaching program, curriculum and foundations
courses for graduate students and mathematics for middle and elementary preservice students.
“Dr. Malloy was a treasured member of our faculty, serving as a mentor to
many students and an inspiration to her colleagues,” said Bill McDiarmid, dean
of the school. “She was a close and dear friend to many, a genuinely extraordinary person who combined sharp intelligence and demanding standards with
uncommon grace and a deeply caring heart.”
Malloy was widely recognized for her teaching and mentorship. In 2013, the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics honored Malloy with its Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics Education,
and in November she received the School of Education’s Distinguished Leadership Award. Read more about Malloy at go.unc.edu/Pe9n4.
A memorial service was held on Jan. 24. Memorial donations in Malloy’s
name may be made to Lower Cape Fear Hospice and LifeCare Center, 1414
Physicians Drive, Wilmington 28401.
ho no rs
The Athletic Department will recognize its second class
of Tar Heel Trailblazers at the men’s basketball game vs.
Georgia Tech on Feb. 21. This year’s Trailblazers are
Karen Stevenson and Charles Waddell. Stevenson was the first black woman to be granted a Morehead
Scholarship in 1975. She also won the Rhodes scholarship
in 1979, making her the first woman from the University and
the first black woman in the nation to receive the honor. She
competed in track during her Carolina career. Waddell earned
letters in three sports at UNC, including football, basketball
and track and received the Patterson Medal, the University’s
highest athletic award.
Carolina has again been named to the 2014 President’s
Higher Education Community Service Honor
Roll with Distinction in General Community Service. The
President’s Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition that
colleges and universities can receive for community service,
service-learning and civic engagement. The University was
also selected by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as one of 240 U.S. colleges and universities
to receive its 2015 Community Engagement Classification.
This is a re-classification for Carolina; the original classification was received in 2006.
6 U n ive rsity Gaze t t e
School of government from page 1
The School of Government exemplifies former UNC President Edward Kidder Graham’s
vision of making the “boundaries of the
campus coextensive with those of the state”
through its diverse teaching, publishing and
advising efforts. Here are some impressive
annual numbers:
12,000 public officials trained;
175-plus courses, conferences and webinars;
50-plus books, manuals, reports and other
items published; and
20,000-plus queries fielded via phone
and email.
In January alone, the school hosted an orientation session for newly elected state legislators,
trained more than 100 local elected officials in
Winston-Salem and Chapel Hill, held a weeklong training for municipal and county government staff, and conducted a webinar on how to
administer employee performance evaluations.
Each day that the N.C. General Assembly is
in session, the school produces Daily Bulletin
Online, which reports on the day’s activities
for those who need to follow the course of legislation. And several faculty members are also
sharing information with the public via one or
more of the school’s seven active blogs.
Setting the bar high
One indication of local governments’
appreciation of all that the school offers is
their payment of membership dues – all voluntarily – which account for about 8 percent
of the school’s budget. Participation rates are
consistently 100 percent for counties and
greater than 92 percent for municipalities.
People in government trust the school and
its faculty to provide good nonpartisan guidance on how to govern. “Our mission is to
make government as effective and efficient as
possible,” Smith said. “We hold ourselves to
a high standard and try to set the bar for the
Faculty Council from page 3
should do,” Kramer said.
Political science professor Stephen
Leonard, who chairs the UNC Faculty
Assembly, had been scheduled to address
the council before the announcement
about Ross was made. He talked about the
important role Carolina plays in the UNC
system. Leonard also reminded council
members that there was a wide diversity of
opinion among faculty system-wide, and
he urged Carolina’s faculty to move more
cautiously and allow the other
16 campuses to find their voices, “before
we suck all the oxygen out of the room”
with quick responses.
– Patty Courtright, Gazette
government as high as possible.”
That mission hasn’t changed since the school
was founded as the Institute of Government in
1931 by Albert Coates, its first director. “I honestly think if Albert were alive and walked in
today, he’d be freaked out by smart phones and
computers and all that stuff, like anyone would
be,” Smith said. “But I think he would recognize
the mission as exactly the same.”
What has changed is how the work is done
to accomplish that mission. The school now
has a center for public technology, a development finance initiative and an online option
for its master’s of public administration program that makes it easier for far-flung public
officials to further their education.
The Institute of Government became the
School of Government in 2001 and now is
the largest university-based local government
training, advisory and research organization
in the nation. But it’s not just size that sets the
school apart.
“There are lots of universities that have centers and institutes that do parts of what we do,”
Smith said. “I think what’s distinctive about
our work is the extent to which we have a
university that supported us in having tenuretrack faculty doing it as their full-time work.”
With 53 full-time faculty members, the
school can boast many who have, literally,
written the book on the topic of their expertise
– in a way that can be applied very practically
by governments.
“Dave Owens’ planning book, and people
refer to it this way, is the Bible in this field,”
Smith said. Indeed, the University and the
Town of Chapel Hill relied on Owens’ expertise when discussing the Carolina North satellite campus. They invited Owens to come to
several meetings to answer questions about
the “development agreement,” a fairly new
concept being used by other municipalities to
manage long-term growth – a concept both
town and gown endorsed in 2009.
Expanding resources,
training
Faculty members often confer with legislators on both sides of the aisle, bound by statute
to confidentiality. “Our faculty members are
treated as an extension of the legislative staff,”
Smith said. “That’s how they think of us.”
In the past, almost all the school’s faculty
members were lawyers. Today’s faculty still
has 33 licensed attorneys, but these lawyers
also have master’s degrees in planning, policy
or public health, and the faculty has expanded
in the areas of leadership, budget, human
resources and public administration.
In classes and training sessions, the school’s
faculty and staff guide politicians through
the transition to governing and teach them
about ethics and how to manage conflict and
finances. Even superior court judges attend
classes to make sure they are up to speed on
the latest rulings.
Another important role of the school is to
provide the up-to-date training necessary for
government staff members to be re-certified
in their respective fields.
Rowan County Clerk Carolyn Barger has
been a clerk or deputy clerk for 20 years, but
she still comes to any training session for clerks
that the School of Government offers. She also
calls whenever she has a question. “There are
not enough adjectives to adequately describe
how much the services they provide mean to
the clerks,” she said.
All across the state, nearly every day of the
year, the School of Government is helping to
smooth the way for public officials to do their
jobs as efficiently as possible.
“We are blessed in North Carolina to have
them. If you had to learn this on your own,
you’d never live long enough to do it,” Phillips
said. “They enable you to say, ‘I want to run to
make a difference.’
“And the School of Government comes
alongside of you and says, ‘Let’s equip you
with the skills to make you sharper and make
you better.’ And you can’t beat that.”
– Susan Hudson, Gazette
Timely topics in Pat Brazemore’s class were immigration, prescription drug fraud and protests in
Ferguson, Missouri.
Universit y responds in detail to SACS board
The University earlier this month submitted its more than 200-page
response to information requested by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). The commission had asked for additional information about Carolina’s compliance with accreditation standards in light of findings of the independent investigation led by former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein.
The process of compiling that detailed information was an opportunity to re-examine the academic issues and the policies and reforms
that have been put in place – not only to test their effectiveness but
also to outline any new steps that were needed, Chancellor Carol
L. Folt told both the Faculty Council and the University’s Board of
Trustees on successive days last week.
“We took this extremely seriously and essentially started from the
beginning,” she said.
This report, which was organized around the specific questions
SACSCOC asked, included details that weren’t available when the
University submitted its first report in spring 2013 or the monitoring report the following year, Folt said. If the commission comes
back with follow-up questions, as fully expected, the University will
respond completely.
“I feel confident about the integrity of this institution,” she told
the trustees, “but we will always look at what we do and try to make
things better.”
During the Faculty Council meeting, history faculty members Jay
Smith and Harry Watson questioned whether the University could
have been more forthcoming in the 2013 report.
Folt stood by her assertion that the Wainstein investigation, and
the 1.5 million email messages and other electronic documents the
investigators could access and use for follow-up interviews, provided
key information that had not been available before.
To read the Wainstein report, the SACSCOC request and the
University’s response, see carolinacommitment.unc.edu.
January 28, 2 015 Mr. Smith goes
to Raleigh … and
everywhere else
in the state
In its 83 years, the School of Government has had only
four leaders. The current one, Michael Smith, has been dean
since 1992 and a faculty member since 1978.
But just a few years before joining its faculty, Smith didn’t
know the School of Government (then called the Institute
of Government) existed, even though he was a law student
in the neighboring building on Ridge Road.
Smith was in the midst of a research project on a confusing aspect of criminal law when he discovered a pocket
manual called “The Laws of Arrest, Search and Investigation.” He hurried to the office of one of his professors, the
little book in hand.
“This is amazing! All these legal treatises have not been
nearly as helpful to me as this little publication,” he told his
law professor. “And it’s published by this place called the
Institute of Government here at this university. Do you
have any idea where that is?”
The professor rolled his desk chair to the window and
pointed next door. “It’s right there,” he said.
Smith tells that story today with the same sense of awe
and respect he had upon discovering the school, even as he
has become its public face. This smart, funny, honest and
direct man is the embodiment of the qualities that have
inspired the trust of countless public officials across the
state for decades.
“The School of Government is the distinguished and
well-regarded school it is today thanks to Mike’s leadership
over the last quarter of a century,” said Jean Elia, associate
provost for strategy and special projects, who has worked
with Smith on campus-wide initiatives.
“He has been the guiding light behind an institution that
in its nonpartisanship is able to serve all peoples and communities throughout North Carolina.”
Smith, a native of Michigan, was the first in his workingclass family to go to college – the University of Michigan.
His roommate there was from Durham, and Smith went to
visit a few times and liked the area. He applied to Carolina’s
School of Law, but assumed he would return to Michigan to
practice law after graduating. Instead, he went straight from
law school to the Institute of Government.
His primary interest was criminal law, and one of his early
assignments was to work with the North Carolina Sheriffs’
Association on issues around prisons and jails. Smith jokes
that he’s been in every jail in North Carolina – on a professional basis, that is.
He also worked with officials in the areas of civic liability
and police misconduct and – at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s – helped corrections officials understand
HIV and how to manage it in the prison population.
Smith was made a full professor in 1992, the same year
John Sanders stepped down as the institute’s director.
Despite his junior status, colleagues approached him about
the leadership position. Smith said he decided to put his
name in consideration, mostly because he wanted to make
sure some key issues would be addressed by the next director.
“I still remember the day,” Smith recalled. “I was sitting
in my office in my blue jeans and polo shirt, and my phone
rang and it was Paul Hardin, the chancellor at the time. And
he said, ‘I asked a search committee to give me three names
to be the next director, and they’ve only given me one name
and that’s your name. And so I need to meet you.’”
The two talked over lunch and Smith got the job.
In addition to leading the School of Government, Smith
serves on a wide range of boards, commissions and committees on and off campus. He has also been tasked to take
charge of campus-wide projects, most notably the University’s response to then-President Erskine Bowles’ UNC
Tomorrow initiative in 2008.
The 18-month initiative was designed to find out from
the state’s citizens what challenges they wanted the UNC
system to address.
While other institutions focused their response on a few
specific areas that were their specialties, Smith wanted
Carolina’s response to be broader. As the system’s flagship university, Carolina should respond to all the UNC
Tomorrow Commission’s recommendations, Smith
decided, pulling together a team to collect existing public
service projects and brainstorm new ways to address the
remaining recommendations.
“He is the consummate leader, respectful of everyone without regard to organizational position,” said Elia,
who worked with Smith closely on the UNC Tomorrow
response. “He’s a clear, thorough thinker who can quickly
and succinctly get to the heart of a matter.”
Smith is also a leader who puts a great emphasis on relationships. With his easy-going manner, he can work with
just about anyone – and has needed to. His demeanor sets
the tone for the school’s faculty and staff. The relationships
he has developed and nurtured over the years are inextricably linked to the school’s success and popularity statewide.
“Mike is a thoughtful, engaged and effective leader. Having been a member our faculty, he has a keen appreciation
for and is an ardent supporter of the work we do and the
mission of the school,” said Norma Houston, lecturer in
public law and government. “His collegial approach and
sense of humor creates a culture of friendly collaboration in
which everyone’s contribution and perspective is valued.”
Some people mistakenly assume that, because of Carolina’s reputation, the school supports a liberal agenda. Smith
spends a lot of time debunking that myth, stressing the
school’s goal to work with people across the state, no matter
their politics or political standing.
“Our role is old-fashioned in a way,” he said. “We think
democracy works best when all the ideas are in play and working out, and everybody has to put their best foot forward.”
He points to Harold Brubaker, a former Republican state
legislator, as an example. “While he was sitting on the back
row, we helped him,” Smith said “And when he became
Speaker of the House in 1994 as part of the Republican revolution, Harold Brubaker was one of our biggest supporters.”
It’s those kind of personal and professional relationships,
built by working with people over time and getting to know
them, that lead to trust.
Smith can never stop building those relationships, not
as long as new people are elected to public office, as he was
reminded during the most recent School of Government
orientation for new state legislators.
After his talk, Smith was approached by a new state senator who happens to be a big supporter of the N.C. State
Wolfpack.
“When you first started talking,” the senator began, “I
thought to myself, ‘Now I’ve got to sit here and listen to
another jerk [he actually used another word] from Carolina.’ But I was wrong.”
In response, the good-natured Smith said, “You know,
that may be the nicest teaching evaluation I’ve ever had, so I
really appreciate that.”
– Susan Hudson, Gazette
7
8 U n ive rsity Gaze t t e
News
In Br i e f
Record number of applications
‘Cedars in the Pines’
Carolina announced a 10th consecutive record for firstyear applications – an increase of 2 percent over last year and
37 percent over five years ago.
As of Jan. 20, the 31,848 first-year applicants came from
99 counties in North Carolina, all 50 states and the District
of Columbia, and 113 countries outside the United States.
Students who applied in October will receive their decisions by
the end of January. Students who applied in January will receive
their decisions by the end of March. The University expects to
enroll a first-year class of 4,000.
The documentary “Cedars in the Pines: The Lebanese in
North Carolina” will screen Jan. 29 at 6 p.m. in the Nelson
Mandela Auditorium in the FedEx Global Education Center.
The film, which documents the Lebanese-American community in North Carolina, is part of the Southern Culture Movie
Series, which seeks to further introduce international students
and scholars and the local community to Southern history and
culture. The screening is free, open to the public and followed
by a facilitated discussion and refreshments. More information
is available on the UNC Global website, global.unc.edu.
TEDxUNC
Adult Spelling Bee
“Assembly Required” is the theme of TEDxUNC 2015,
scheduled for Feb. 7 from noon to 6 p.m. at Memorial Hall.
Tickets for the free, popular conference series were made available beginning Jan. 26 at noon at www.tedxunc.com – which
means they may be all gone by now. Here are some other ways
to score tickets: Jan. 29, 12-hour Instagram contest (Insta:
@tedxunc); Feb. 2, 12-hour TED Trivia social media contest
(Twitter: @tedxunc, Facebook: TEDxUNC)
and 12-hour
Twitter contest; Feb. 4, deadline for photography contest
(entries will be given a ticket to the conference).
Individuals and teams are welcome to take part in an adult
spelling bee at the DSI Comedy Theatre on Feb. 3 from 6:30 to
8:30 p.m. The event is part of the North Carolina Comedy Arts
Festival. go.unc.edu/Zi8a5
Combat Paper Project
In the Combat Paper Project, veterans come to workshops
to transform uniforms worn in service into works of art. The
uniforms are cut up, beaten into a pulp and formed into
sheets of paper. Participants use the transformative process of
papermaking to reclaim their uniforms as art and express their
experiences with the military. The Combat Paper Project will
be in residence at Gerrard Hall with workshops and a display
showing the recently completed print portfolio that accompanies Kronos Quartet’s “Beyond Zero: 1914–1918.” The project
is open to the public Jan. 30 from 10 a.m. to noon and Jan. 31
from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Clean Tech Summit
The 2nd annual N.C. Clean Tech Summit will be held at the
Friday Center Feb. 19–20. The event, hosted by the University’s Institute for the Environment and Kenan-Flagler’s Center
for Sustainable Enterprise, will highlight the clean technology
industry’s latest innovations, trends and challenges with an
emphasis on problem-solving efforts. Registration for the twoday summit is now open at go.unc.edu/k6K9A.
Great Books reading groups
A series of Great Books reading groups, led by faculty, will be
held at Flyleaf Books on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to noon. The
first book, “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway, will
be discussed Feb. 3 and 7. Participants will receive a copy of
the book before the session to facilitate group discussion. Preregistration is required. humanities.unc.edu
Carolina Performing Arts discounts
Several ticket discount options for Carolina Performing Arts performances are available
for active and retired faculty and employees. Single performance tickets are discounted
15 percent and up to 35 percent will be discounted from the general public ticket prices when
purchasing a “Choose Your Own” ticket package. A valid UNC OneCard must be presented
at the time of purchase and tickets can be ordered online at cpatix.org or at the Memorial Hall
Box Office. Upcoming performances in which discounts are available include:
Jan. 29–30 – National Theatre of Scotland and Royal Shakespeare Company’s
“Dunsinane”;
Jan. 31–Feb. 1 – The Mariinsky Orchestra;
Feb. 6 – Audra McDonald;
Feb. 12 – Kronos Quartet‘s “Prelude to a Black Hole and Beyond Zero: 1914–1918”;
Feb. 15 – Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra;
Feb. 18 – Shantala Shivalingappa “Akasha”;
Feb. 20 – Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band;
Feb. 24–25 – Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; and
Feb. 27 – The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma.
The Mariinsky Orchestra will return to Memorial
Hall for the fourth time with two Russian concerts on
Jan. 31 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 1 at 2 p.m. The musical performance will feature Valery Gergiev, artistic and general director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg,
as conductor and world-renowned Denis Matsuev on
piano. go.unc.edu/t6YBp
Contributed
Mariinsky Orchestra
The Grammy award-winning Kronos Quartet will
present a multimedia performance commemorating the
centennial of the outbreak of World War I at Memorial Hall on Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m. The title of the piece is
“Prelude to a Black Hole and Beyond Zero 1914–1918.”
go.unc.edu/j4LDx
Biljana Ustic
Kronos Quartet
In “Dunsinane,” award-winning playwright David
Greig picks up the “Macbeth” story where Shakespeare
left off. An English army has swept through the landscape, killed the tyrant and taken the seat of power.
Attempting to restore peace and put in place a new
ruler, the commanding officer is beset by a brutal
guerrilla uprising and isolation from his own men and
Scottish allies alike. The National Theatre of Scotland
will perform the play at Memorial Hall Jan. 29 at
7:30 p.m. and Jan. 30 at 8 p.m.
Jason @ JS Gr aphic
Not that Scottish play
January 28, 2 015 Spotlight on Scholars
Spotlight on Scholars features University faculty discussing their recent work
– their new books or newest scholarly passion. The discussions are held from
4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays at Flyleaf Books. This spring the theme is “Spotlight Goes to the Movies” in recognition of Carolina’s many film programs.
Feb. 3 – “The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley
Temple and 1930s America” with John Kasson, professor of history; and
Feb. 10 – “Take a Walk on the Wild Side: When White Characters
Masquerade Blackness” with Charlene Regester, associate professor of
African, African American and Diaspora Studies.
MFA Thesis Exhibitions
“AVIFORM Storytelling | Language” by Shane C. Smith will
be the featured MFA Thesis Exhibition Feb. 9–13 at the Hanes
Art Building. The artist’s work represents storytelling in the
context of Native American languages once spoken in Maine.
Then, Feb. 16–20 will feature “Above and Below” by Sydney
Steen. The artist’s creations are sculptural works inspired by
geological landscapes, spanning from the desert to the Arctic.
Gallery hours are Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–5 p.m. For more
information, contact Jina Valentine, [email protected].
‘Ralph Peer and the Making of
Popular Roots Music’
Music scout, record producer and industry visionary Ralph
Peer helped shape and popularize American country and roots
music from the 1920s through the 1940s. On Feb. 6, “Ralph
Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music,” a new biography of Peer, will be the topic of an author talk by Barry Mazor.
The talk will begin at 6 p.m. in the Pleasants Room at Wilson
Library. A concert by musician Dom Flemons will follow at
7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. For information, call Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, 919-548-1203.
Online Regalia Sale
UNC Student Stores will hold a custom regalia sale online
Feb. 9–13. A 10 percent discount will apply to all custom regalia
orders placed online at store.unc.edu during this time. Appointments to view samples can also be made at this time. Contact
Catherine Stotts with any questions at [email protected].
‘Trouble in Mind’
‘Trouble in Mind’ continues at PlayMakers
PlayMakers Repertory Company continues its mainstage season
through Feb. 8 with a scathingly funny backstage drama, “Trouble in
Mind.” African American theater pioneer Alice Childress wrote this
groundbreaking drama set behind the scenes of a Broadway play in 1957.
In rehearsals for a potentially landmark, racially integrated production,
the leading actress must wrestle with a choice between the role of a lifetime or compromising her values. For show times and ticket information,
visit www.playmakersrep.org or call 919-962-PLAY (7529).
African Americans in Theater and
Popular Culture after 1945
A seminar on African Americans in Theater and Popular Culture after
1945 will explore the historical and biographical context of “Trouble
in Mind.” The seminar, held at
the School of Government on
Jan. 31, will begin at 9 a.m. and end
at 12:30 p.m., in time for participants to attend the matinee performance of the play. Pre-registration
is required for this event. go.unc.
edu/o4K2F. The fee, which
doesn’t include a ticket to the play,
is $25 for the general public, $15
for graduate students.
Lectures
Jan. 29 – Award-winning Washington Post columnist and
best-selling novelist David Ignatius will deliver the annual
Weatherspoon Lecture in Koury Auditorium at the KenanFlagler Business School at 5:30 p.m., focusing on “Foreign
Affairs – How to Fix the World.” go.unc.edu/g5Q9Y
Feb. 3 – Civil rights activist Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. will
deliver the annual Bobby Boyd Leadership Lecture in the
auditorium of the Tate-Turner-Kuralt building at 5:30 p.m.
The lecture, which will focus on freedom fighting, is free and
open to the public. ssw.unc.edu
Feb. 4 – Cecelia I. Roscigno, assistant professor in the School
of Nursing, will speak on “Active Listening to Children and Parents of Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: Stepping
Back to Move Forward” from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Fetzer 109. For
more information, contact [email protected].
Feb. 6 – Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs
of staff, will speak at 5:30 p.m. in the Genome Science Building, Room 100. go.unc.edu/Lw6b7
Jon Gardiner
“Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey
Creek” tells the painful but inspiring story of Derrick Evans and the African American community of
Turkey Creek, Mississippi, as they battle developers
and politicians in an effort to save their community’s
land, history and culture. A free screening of the documentary will be held Feb. 12 at 6 p.m. at the Gillings
School of Global Public Health. Filmmaker Leah
Mahan and local environmental justice leaders will
attend. Sponsors of the film are the Institute for the
Environment, the Department of Communication
Studies and the Duke Environmental Law and Policy
Clinic and Working Films.
Contributed
Spencer Weiner /SAWfoto.com
‘Come Hell or High Water’
9
employee, past or present” by Chancellor Carol L. Folt and
include an award of $7,500. Nominations can be submitted
at go.unc.edu/t8G3R.
Feb. 9 – Nominations for the Sherpa and Hyatt Rotary Fellowship awards from the Carolina Center for Public Service
to support students conducting service projects abroad.
go.unc.edu/Lr5b2
Feb. 13 – Nominations for the University Awards for the
Advancement of Women, which recognize Carolina faculty,
staff and students who have contributed to the advancement
of women in one or more ways. go.unc.edu/z9M2T.
Feb. 16 – The Class of 1938 Global Fellowship, which
awards summer study abroad fellowships to U.S. students
interested in pursuing independent career or personal
projects. go.unc.edu/Cn82E
Feb. 23 – Spring 2015 applications for University Research
Council publication grant awards. Only one URC publication
proposal may be submitted each semester; full professors are
no longer eligible for URC awards. go.unc.edu/o6M2T
Deadlines to watch
Jan. 30 – The Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, for summer and academic-year funding for the study of
less common languages. go.unc.edu/j5JLe
Feb. 6 – The MURAP application, designed to help students
from diverse backgrounds get into graduate school and land
faculty positions. go.unc.edu/s6PNw
Feb. 6 – Nominations for the 2015 C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Awards. The awards honor six recipients for
“unusual, meritorious or superior contribution made by an
NEWS IN BRIEF Submissions
Next issue includes events from Feb. 12 to Feb. 25.
Deadline for submissions is 5 p.m., Mon., Feb. 2. Email
[email protected]. The Gazette events page includes
only items of general interest geared toward a broad
audience. For complete listings of events, see the Carolina Events Calendars at events.unc.edu.
10 U niv ersity Gazet t e
Carolina
w o rk i ng a t
Ray Dooley finds his ‘artistic home’ in Chapel Hill
Finding the magic
Joe Haj, PlayMakers producing artistic director who cast the
pair, believes PlayMakers is one of the best resident theater
companies in the country because it has members like Dooley
and Fishell who have worked together so long and know each
other so well.
Rehearsal rooms often move at the pace and level of the most a director as an actor can get,” Coble said. “He inhabits his roles
talented actor in the room, Haj said, and “when that person is in an informed way.”
One definition of talent is the ability to inhabit an imaginary
Ray Dooley, it makes the room better.”
world
with full personal conviction, Dooley said. After all the
PlayMakers has seven permanent members drawn from the
Carolina faculty who anchor each production. At any point in
time, the company also includes 12 to 16 graduate students
See Dooley page 11
along with a handful of
guest artists including
actors, designers and
directors.
McKay Coble, assistant chair of the Department of Dramatic Art
who designs sets and costumes for the stage, said
Dooley joined the faculty
right after she did in the
late 1980s. Although the
faculty members of the
company are all about the
same age, Dooley rises to
the level of a father figure
who leads by example,
she said.
“I don’t know if I
would say Ray is the
hardest worker among
us, but he is probably the
most holistic worker in PlayMakers Repertory Company’s production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” features long-time
that he is as close to being company members Ray Dooley and Julie Fishell.
Jon Gardiner
Familiarity, so the saying goes, breeds contempt.
Ray Dooley begs to differ.
In the world of theater, Dooley believes, familiarity with
other people on the stage instills the confidence needed to take
risks. Familiarity can be the safety net that allows an actor to
inhabit an imaginary role so completely that, in that moment,
the imaginary seems real.
That kind of familiarity is exactly what Dooley and Julie Fishell drew upon when playing George and Martha in the play
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” for PlayMakers Repertory
Company in 2011.
The intense emotional drama, written in 1962 by Edward
Albee, examines the breakdown of the marriage of a middleaged couple following a university faculty party. George is an
associate professor of history; Martha, the daughter of the president of the college where George works.
“George and Martha had been married, I believe, for 22 years,”
Dooley said. “At the time we played them, Julie and I had been
working together at PlayMakers for 18, and those years together
gave us an instinctual familiarity with each other that you cannot
manufacture in a three-week rehearsal.
“We were just comfortable sitting on a couch together and
talking to each other.”
Above, the Move For The Dream 5K, sponsored by the student
group Carolina Rejuvenating Our Community Through Service, had
nearly 130 runners registered.
At right, Carolina’s Black Law Students Association worked on a
Habitat for Humanity project in Durham.
Br andon Bielt z
Br andon Bielt z
Celebrating MLK Day
At Carolina, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was commemorated the way it was intended to be – with
service to others.
Students spent the earliest part of the day sorting
through hundreds of canned foods with dozens of
volunteers at the Carolina Rejuvenating Our Community Through Service’s (ROCTS) Move For
The Dream 5K.
Nearly 130 runners registered for the race, which
was organized by the student organization ROCTS
and raised money for the International Civil Rights
Museum in Greensboro as well as food for the
Carolina Cupboard.
Students also extended their efforts outside Chapel Hill as members of the UNC School of Law’s
Black Law Students Association spent the afternoon
participating in a Habitat for Humanity project in
Durham. The community service project included
cementing, laying pipes and finishing the home’s
foundation. Once completed, the home will be
given to a low-income family.
“[King’s] purpose was for us to do something with
our lives – something that would benefit or further
move the ball the goal of diversity,” said Joseph Bishop,
president of the association. “This is a great way. I’ve
been on many different projects in the past for MLK
Day and they’ve all been great, but to get your hands
dirty and getting in there, there’s no greater feeling. ”
The day’s events also included the annual Chapel
Hill-Carrboro and Carolina chapters of the NAACP
rally and march and a speech by author Angela
Davis at Memorial Hall.
Read more about the weeklong events at go.unc.
edu/Yj9q4.
January 28, 2 015 11
At left, biology doctoral student Roger Brothers studies sea turtle migration.
Sea turtles from page 4
Roger Brothers
– Thania Benios,
Communications and Public Affairs
Ryan Chabot
provide the basis for the magnetic
sense, but no one knows for sure.
Sea turtles likely go to great
lengths to find the places where
they began life because successful nesting requires a combination
of environmental features that are
rare: soft sand, the right temperature, few predators and an easily
accessible beach.
“The only way a female turtle
can be sure that she is nesting in a
place favorable for egg development is to nest on the same beach
where she hatched,” Brothers said.
“The logic of sea turtles seems to
be that ‘if it worked for me, it
should work for my offspring.’”
Below, a sea turtle nests in familiar sands.
Dooley from page 10
preparation, all the research, “you have to tune in to what’s happening right in front of you in the moment,” he said.
“The best kind of acting – the acting that we all aspire to – is
that alchemy between preparation of the world you are inhabiting with absolute spontaneity. It is not showing emotion, it is
re-experiencing emotion from my life in the moment on stage,
within another context.
“The people in the audience are seeing context, they are seeing a set design, they are seeing a world, so the audience will do
the work of translating the personal behavior into the behavior
within the world of the play.
“That’s the magic that happens with theater.”
Passing down the craft
Dooley also embraces working with young actors, both on
the stage as a colleague and in the classroom as a teacher.
Styles may come and go, but the fundamentals of the craft
really have not changed much through the centuries, Dooley
said. “The way you got the laugh with the Shakespeare line in
1598 is pretty much the same way as you get the laugh with that
same line now,” he said.
Ross from page 2
and, of course, to the University.”
During a news conference following the
meeting, Ross said he had seen a period of
considerable transition for the UNC system.
“There’s been a dramatic change in board
leadership. There’s been a dramatic change in
the state’s leadership and policymakers,” he
said. “There’s been about as bad an economy
as we’ve had. So it’s been a challenging time
to lead.”
Ross worked with the BOG to develop a
Then there is the relationship with the audience.
“They are the reason behind the hard work, and all of my
colleagues feel the same way,” Dooley said. “We feel a responsibility to the people who come to see us.”
Something Bruce Springsteen was quoted as saying resonates with Dooley: that when someone buys a ticket to see him
perform, it is no different from standing there and shaking the
person’s hand.
“And as with Springsteen, there is a compact made when
people come to a show that they are going to get our best every
time,” Dooley adds.
The University recognized Dooley’s steadfast commitment
to his community and his craft by naming him one of six recipients of a 2014 C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award.
an ‘artistic home’
Born and raised in Mineola, New York, a Long Island suburb,
Dooley was as active on the ball field as he was on the stage. Maybe
that is why he still sees one part of acting as a competitive sport.
“When you go in for an audition, there can be 20 other guys
who sort of look like you,” Dooley said. “You can pretty much
figure 15 of them aren’t very good, but the five other guys have
what it takes to beat you out of the part. Winning a part is a
matter of arriving prepared and peaking at the right moment.”
new five-year strategic plan called “Our Time,
Our Future: the UNC Compact with North
Carolina,” which called for increased budget efficiency, ways for more North Carolinians to obtain a college degree, incorporating
technology in learning and investing in key
research areas. He also worked in partnership
with Folt to initiate an independent investigation of past academic problems at Carolina (see carolinacommitment.unc.edu for
information about the Wainstein investigation and report).
Ross came to the UNC system post
following three years as president of
At Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, Dooley graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a double major in English and theater, then received a master of fine arts degree from the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.
By then, Dooley had begun to appreciate not just the competition of acting, but the teamwork it demands as well.
“Probably, deep down, I knew I wanted to engage as an actor
because of the physical component it requires, the social component that it requires and the company it gives you – the feeling of
working with the team to create something,” Dooley said.
“That has always been extraordinarily important to me. I am
always happiest when I’m working with people I respect and love.”
And it is why, for the past 26 years, he has been so happy to
be here.
For Dooley and other resident members of the company
who have been around almost as long as he has, Chapel Hill
is their “artistic home.” The term, Dooley said, comes from a
book written several decades ago that became a manifesto on
the notion that artists flourish best when they find a home in
which to work and live.
“That has certainly been true for me in Chapel Hill,”
he said.
Davidson College, his alma mater. Ross holds a
law degree from Carolina and had a rich career
as a lawyer, state superior court judge and
director of the state’s Administrative Office of
the Courts. He also was executive director of
the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, based in
Winston-Salem.
When Ross steps down, he will begin a
research leave before joining the faculty of
Carolina’s School of Government. Early in his
career, Ross was an assistant professor at the
school for a short period.
– Patty Courtright, Gazette
– Gary Moss, Gazette
12 U niv ersity Gazet t e
Robots to
the rescue!
M
videoconferencing, beginning in 2005
with classes
taught by
professors in
Chapel Hill
to students in
other parts of
the state.
With giant
12-foot screens in both rooms, the lecturers loom over their
remote students and can see their much-smaller faces looking back – not so different from the in-class experience. The
school is now wired with 19 videoconferencing classrooms,
13 here (in Beard, Kerr and Marsico halls) and six in Asheville.
“We have the lecture thing down,” said Casey Emerson, until
recently the director of education technology
at the pharmacy
school. “Where we know we have room for improvement is
one-on-one interaction.”
The school began looking for small-group alternatives about
five years ago. Existing options included Skype, Face Time
and one-on-one videoconferencing. The school used that
last technology to create “office hours” – a room the size of a
phone booth, equipped with a computer, video camera and a
smart podium screen that allows the user to write formulas or
draw diagrams.
But none of these options allowed remote users to control
their view. They would have to be satisfied with a static view or
rely on someone on the other end to move the remote device.
So, inspired by mobile medical robots used at hospitals, the
school explored the robot option. They discovered that the
Double Robotics robot
offered mobility and the
ability to interact easily
with more than one person at a time for much
less than the medical
models cost.
With the robot, the
user can turn to address
people all around a conference table, roll over to
a desk to take a student’s
question or even scoot
behind students to see
how many are on Facebook during class.
And since the iPad
used as the “face” of the
robot is roughly the size
of a human face, “You
don’t have this lording over you presence,”
Above, Carolina students Sabree’ Burbage (left) and Merci Igwe wave to students in a classroom at the satelEmerson said. “You can
lite campus in Asheville as they are displayed on the video conference robot at the UNC Eshelman School
look someone in the eye.”
of Pharmacy. Top right, Casey Emerson talks with Ben Halligan in Asheville on the video conference robot.
atthew Brown is grateful for the UNC Eshelman
School of Pharmacy robots. Otherwise, the thirdyear pharmacy student wouldn’t have been able to
keep up with his classes this semester while receiving treatment
for cancer.
Brown’s treatment plan includes four cycles of chemotherapy; each cycle requires five days of infusion, and each infusion
lasts five to six hours. While he could stream or watch recordings of his lecture classes, he also was required to participate
in a smaller interactive group of 10 to 12 students in a course
called “Problems in Pharmacotherapy.” The class would have
been, well, a problem – if not for the robot that let him dial
in to class with his iPad.
“I use my iPad to control the robot and use ear buds with a
microphone to interact with my group. I am able to move the
robot during the meeting to, say, look at the white board or a
specific person,” Brown said. “Without the robot, I would not
have been able to continue in school this semester because
group participation is heavily weighted in our ‘problems’
course grade.”
The school owns three Double Robotics robots, two
in Chapel Hill and one at the school’s satellite campus in
Asheville. Each one is basically an iPad mounted on a remotecontrolled base that looks something like a Segway.
On its one wheel, the robot rolls forward, backward, left and
right, and can make turns. The user controls the robot’s motion
from a distance with a laptop, iPad or even an iPhone using an
app and a wireless connection via Bluetooth. The iPad screen
on top faces forward from wherever the wheel has placed it
and can be raised or lowered on the pole, but it doesn’t turn
independently.
The pharmacy school has been a pioneer at Carolina in
As a graduate student, Emerson used the robot when one
of his classes conflicted with his job monitoring the computer
control room. “I used the robot to connect up to a class,” he
said. “I listened to the lecture, then drove over to my small
group, worked with my group and went back to the lecture. It
worked just fine.”
Other students, like Brown, have used the robot when illness
or injury kept them from attending class. One student even
dialed in all the way from Budapest, Hungary, where he was
attending a wedding.
Faculty members like the robot, too. Greene Shepherd, a
Carolina professor based in Asheville, has attended meetings
with it, but finds the robot most useful when working with
small groups in Chapel Hill – like in the “Problems in Pharmacotherapy” class.
“Using our standard videoconference meeting rooms, everyone in the group appeared tiny, and I had no way to zoom in
when someone was talking. This is where the robot has come
in handy,” Shepherd said. “The robot allows me to control who
and what I look at, and even to move around in the room if
needed. From my point of view, it really allows me to be a more
effective facilitator when I am working remotely.”
The videoconferencing robot gets attention whenever it’s
rolling down the hallway with the remote operator looking out
from the iPad screen and talking to passersby. Dean Bob Blouin
counted on that “wow” factor when he gave his presentation
at a recent UNC Board of Visitors meeting, using the robot to
scoot around the conference room and roll right up to members of his audience.
As much as the robot enables interaction, it does have its limitations. It is strictly for indoor use, its equilibrium challenged
by bumpy brick walkways, grassy quads or any other surface
not absolutely smooth and, preferably, level. Even doorframes
make it a little wobbly and must be taken slowly with extrawide turns to avoid running into the wall.
The robot also needs to be in Wi-Fi range to work. It can’t
climb stairs or even use an elevator, as Emerson discovered
early on. He had rolled the robot right into the open doors
of a Beard Hall elevator only to realize his mistake after the
doors closed.
“No arm or finger to press the button!” he said. “I got stuck in
there for about 15 minutes waiting for someone else to call the
elevator so that I could drive the darn thing out.”
– Susan Hudson, Gazette