CHAPEL HILL – Approval of a proposed “millennial” campus at UNC-Wilmington will be on the agenda of the Board of Governors this week.
Board members, meeting in Chapel Hill June 7 and 8, will discuss UNC-Wilmington’s plans to create the Campus for Research, Entrepreneurship, Service and Teaching (CREST), a 210-acre campus at the university.
The University of North Carolina’s ambitious construction plans got a boost from the Senate leaders approved their $20 billion spending plan on Thursday.
Senate leaders are proposing $1.2 billion in bond funding through certificates of participation – $1 billion of which would go for projects within the UNC system. Certificate of participations are bond packages in which the state finances new construction projects, backed by buildings and land. These do not need voter approval.
Editor’s Note: Peter Hans is a member of the UNC Board of Governors and was recently re-elected to a new four-year term. He is also a member of the new UNC Tomorrow Commission, which was created by the Board of Governors. In this interview, we ask Hans about the commission, its plans, and its purposes.
Clarion Call: First, what is the commission?
Peter Hans: This is our effort to assess what North Carolina needs from its public university system over the next twenty years, and how we should respond to those needs.
RALEIGH – Thursday was the deadline for bills to clear either the state House or the state Senate for them to have a chance of passage during the 2007-09 legislative session. With the deadline comes the passage of several bills that affect the University of North Carolina system and the North Carolina Community College System.
Among the many bills passed during the first few months of the session, some pertain to UNC President Erskine Bowles’ effort to make the university system more efficient. Others would amend performance measures within the community college system and make other changes to the two higher education systems.
Members of the House Education Committee Tuesday approved a bill that would begin phasing out a tuition waiver program for graduates of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
CHAPEL HILL – Purnell Swett has a decision to make, and members of the State House of Representatives have some explaining to do.
The newly elected member of the UNC Board of Governors can take his seat on the governing board when his term begins on July 1. He can also decide not to accept his post due to his 1998 conviction for taking money from the school system he headed.
RALEIGH – Early Friday morning, while many in North Carolina were sound asleep, state House members approved a $20.3 billion budget that keeps in place temporary taxes that were scheduled to end and provides more than $11 billion in funding for education in the state.
The budget process now moves to the state Senate, where leaders there are expected to make significant changes to the House budget document.
Included in the House budget is $2.5 billion in funding for the University of North Carolina system and $926 million for community colleges. The remainder of the education budget, more than $7.6 billion, goes to the Department of Public Instruction.
RALEIGH — Many North Carolinians, especially in rural areas, suffer from lack of dental care. Would a $100 million new dental school at East Carolina University provide it? The General Assembly is pondering that question.
Although the proposed ECU dental school has significant political support, its future is uncertain. In 2006, the legislature gave ECU $3 million to plan the school. But the governor has proposed that funds for building it go into a bond issue, to be presented to the voters in November.
The House and Senate are still developing their budgets. On May 3, appropriations subcommittees proposed only $1 million for the dental school’s professional staff and $2.5 million for capital planning.
CHAPEL HILL – University of North Carolina officials began working on ways to improve campus security weeks before Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech and then himself on April 16.
Originally, UNC officials were responding to incidents at UNC-Greensboro, where a student was shot in a dorm, and at East Carolina, and Winston-Salem State University. Officials were looking at what was needed to improve campus safety. Those meetings involved President Erskine Bowles, chancellors, and campus police chiefs across the system.
Now, in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, those discussions now include the Board of Governors (BOG).
Is the University of North Carolina system experiencing a “brain drain” because of inadequate faculty compensation?
The UNC administration seems to think so. In 2006, the UNC Board of Governors approved a plan proposed by UNC President Erskine Bowles to raise UNC faculty pay to the 80th percentile among peer institutions. (Why the 80th percentile and not 75th or 85th or some other figure was not made clear.) This plan would also provide merit-based pay increases of four percent per year and $2 million to match private funds for distinguished professorships. To pay for all of that, Bowles has asked the legislature for an additional $87.8 million in fiscal years 2008-09.
