Carolina Arts & Sciences, spring 2008 by UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Inside: Climate Change • Sam Ervin & Terry Sanford • PlayMakers’ New Day

arts&sciences C

Spring • 2008

The Kenan Legacy

World-class faculty, students and facilities

CELEBRATING CAROLINA FIRST: • Distinguished Professors and Fellows • Global Giving and Learning • New Programs and Scholarships • Dedicated Donors

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In Memoriam

Carolina Loses a Special Person Eve Carson, 1985-2008 By Holden Thorp, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Carolina lost a special person on March 5

— Eve Marie Carson, 22, a senior political science and biology major in the College of Arts and Sciences. Carson, the victim of an off-campus shooting, was elected UNC’s student body president in February 2007. Her term would Eve Carson have ended in April. A native of Athens, Ga., Carson was born on Nov. 19, 1985. She came to Carolina in the fall of 2004 as the recipient of a prestigious Morehead-Cain Scholarship. She was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and served on the UNC Board of Trustees. My relationship with Eve began in March 2004 when I and three colleagues interviewed her for the Morehead Scholarship. Eve’s written application seemed to me almost too good to be true. She was interested in neuroscience and, in particular, in the sociobiology hypothesis initially posited by Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, a hero we both shared. My skepticism about her intellectual prowess was quickly eliminated, however, because when I began questioning her about the roles of genes in behavior, I found she was an expert. But she also talked about the world with a combined scholarly sophistication and wide-eyed idealism, a special brand of optimism that came to inspire all of the UNC community. On top of all that, Eve starred in soccer, so she was our top candidate. A few days later after she got the good news about the Morehead, I wrote her a short e-mail of congratulations and told her I’d be happy to answer any questions she had about Carolina. Her e-mail response of four years ago shows how well she had already figured out what the College was all about: “When I began my college process,” she said, “I was sure that the small, private college was for me. As I went on, however, I realized that I do want the entire college experience — the academics, the town, the opportunity for study abroad and undergraduate research, an enthusiastic student body and involved teachers — and that is what UNC offers.” Always inquisitive, she added, “I will be sure to get in touch with you if I have any questions about UNC (or if I have questions about socio/neurobiology — if that is alright with you.)” A year or so later, when I was director of the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, I invited E. O. Wilson to come to campus to give a talk. Eve was there, of course, and I got to introduce her to our hero. Last year, Eve was elected student body president at just the same time that I accepted my job as dean. Like everyone, I thoroughly enjoyed working with her. We shared the podium many times in the last year, and we loved sharing our passion for Carolina with the audience. I never could quite match Eve. She always talked about the “Carolina Way,” which she described as “excellence with a heart.” That heart is heavy with the tragedy of Eve’s death and the loss of one of Carolina’s greatest friends.

The College of Arts & Sciences • Holden Thorp ’86 Dean • William Andrews ’70 MA ’73 PhD Senior Associate Dean, Fine Arts and Humanities • Bruce Carney Senior Associate Dean, Sciences • Karen Gil Senior Associate Dean, Social Sciences • Tammy McHale Senior Associate Dean, Finance and Planning • James W. May Senior Associate Dean, Program Development; Executive Director, Arts & Sciences Foundation • Bobbi Owen Senior Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education • Arne Kalleberg Director, International Programs

Arts & Sciences Foundation Board of Directors

• Ivan V. Anderson, Jr. ’61, Charleston, SC, Chair • H. Holden Thorp ’86, Chapel Hill, NC, President • William L. Andrews, ‘70 MA ‘73 PhD, Chapel Hill, NC, Vice President • Tammy J. McHale, Chapel Hill, NC, Treasurer • James W. May, Jr., Chapel Hill, NC, Secretary • James L. Alexandre ’79, London, UK • D. Shoffner Allison ’98, Charlotte, NC • William S. Brenizer ’74, Glen Head, NY • Cathy Bryson ’90, Santa Monica, CA • Jeffrey Forbes Buckalew ’88 ’93 MBA, New York, NY • G. Munroe Cobey ’74, Chapel Hill, NC • Sheila Ann Corcoran ’92 ’98 MBA, Los Angeles, CA • Vicki Underwood Craver ’92, Cos Cob, CT • Steven M. Cumbie ’70 ’73 MBA, McLean, VA • Archie H. Davis ’64, Savannah, GA • Jaroslav T. Folda, III, Chapel Hill, NC • Mary Dewar Froelich ’83, Charlotte, NC • Gardiner W. Garrard, Jr. ’64, Columbus, GA • Emmett Boney Haywood ’77 ’82 JD, Raleigh, NC • William T. Hobbs, II ’85, Charlotte, NC • Lynn Buchheit Janney ’70, Butler, MD • Matthew G. Kupec ’80, Chapel Hill, NC • William M. Lamont, Jr. ’71, Dallas, TX • Paula R. Newsome ’77, Charlotte, NC • John A. Powell ‘77, San Francisco, CA • Benjamine Reid ’71, Miami, FL • H. Martin Sprock III ‘87, Charlotte, NC • Emily Pleasants Sternberg ’88 ’94 MBA, Greenwich, CT • Thomas M. Uhlman ’71 MS ’75 PhD, Murray Hill, NJ • Eric P. Vick ’90, Oxford, UK • Charles L. Wickham, III ’82 BSBA, London, UK • Loyal W. Wilson ’70, Chagrin Falls, OH

Table of Contents Steve Exum

carol ina F i r st campaign Special Section

A celebration of the transformational impact of private giving on students, faculty, programs and facilities in the College of Arts and Sciences

M o r e St o r i e s 23 Profile

F e at u r es 4 • The Kenan Legacy

Steve Exum

The Carolina blue sky’s the limit for faculty and students who are reaping the educational benefits of Carolina First gifts from the Kenan family

Cutting-edge facilities attract outstanding faculty and students and help them tackle the world’s problems

She has motivated thousands to give

to Carolina and the College

24 powerful Programs

Gifts enhance communication studies,

Jewish studies, creative writing,

philosophy and honors

New scholarships, undergraduate

research support and graduate

fellowships

33 Celebrating 34 Profile

Support for students, programs and faculty here and abroad, and a new international hub on campus

Entrepreneurship

16 • Global Giving Opens New Doors

20 • Building Science

Mary Anne Dickson ’63

30 Star Students

7 • Faculty Support

Distinguished professors Bill Ferris, Peter Sherwood, Mike Ramsey, Pam Durban and Dinesh Manocha, plus news on fellowships and research support that help us recruit and keep the best teachers and scholars

Cover photo: Kenan Giving:The Kenan Trust has given generously to students, faculty, new buildings and programs in the College. Pictured, from left (front row): Kenan trustee Tom Kenan, chemist Nancy Allbritton, Kenan Trust executive director Richard Krasno, Institute for the Arts and Humanities faculty fellow and professor Pat Parker. (Back row): Kenan Music Scholars Daniel Hammond and Lauren Schultes, Kenan Eminent Professor James Rives and Kenan Music Scholar Jessica Kunttu. (Photo by Steve Exum)

Margaret Harper

Supporting the College since 1975

35 College First

A historical snapshot, plus the

campaign by the numbers

36 Sixty-Six new Distinguished Professorships

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 1

Table of Contents Richard Miller/Courtesy of NASA

Table o f Con ten ts Carolina Arts & Sciences

•

Spring 2008

De p a r t me n t s 37 Profile

Mysteries of the Olmec:

PhD alum explores first New World

civilization.

38 High Achievers

F e at u r es

Steve Exum

Transcendental honor, Davie Award

winners, Louise Fletcher receives

PlayMaker Award,WOWS Scholars

support women in science, lifetime

Exploring the relationship between climate change and drought

achievement in geography, 4 win state’s

highest civilian honor, Pukkila advances

48 • A New Day

science education, 2 faculty win

Fulbrights, and more

50 • ‘Artistic Home’

51 Highlights

42 • The Heat is On

Joe Haj ’88 is writing a fresh script for PlayMakers

Ray Dooley has been calling PlayMakers home for 19 years

New use for old bridges and dams,

Entwisle directs National Children’s

55 • Historic Showdown

Terry Sanford and Sam Ervin square off in an excerpt from this new Ervin biography

Study Center, understanding addiction,

bye-bye Venable, high-tech football

helmets reveal info about head injuries,

marine scientists teach under water,

Ted Turner talks, and more

55 College Bookshelf

2 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

New books from Russell Banks,

Robert Morgan, Philip Gura,

Daphne Athas and other College

faculty and alumni.

CarolinaFirstCarolinaFirst FirstCarolinaFirstCarolina CarolinaFirstCarolinaFirst FirstCarolinaFirstCarolina CarolinaFirstCarolinaFirst FirstCarolinaFirstCarolina CarolinaFirstCarolinaFirst FirstCarolinaFirstCarolina CarolinaFirstCarolinaFirst F r o m the Dean

Steve Exum

Celebrating Carolina First

Transformative. We’ve been using that word a lot lately to describe the extraordinary impact of private giving to the College of Arts and Sciences during Carolina First. The numbers are astounding: Nearly 35,000 alumni and friends gave more than $387 million to the College (soaring past our goal of $350 million) during the fundraising campaign, which began July 1, 1999, and ended Dec. 31, 2007. In my time working on the Carolina First campaign as dean and chair of chemistry, one thing shines through: People love Carolina. My fondest thoughts of the campaign Holden Thorp are the looks on the faces of our alumni when they come into my office to see the Old Well outside the window and the appreciative welcome that I always get when meeting Carolina folks in far-off locations. The donors make so many things possible for us because they so value and cherish their experience in the College. It has been a great privilege to work with all of you on this campaign. Thank you. And now for some of the details: Carolina First raised $2.38 billion for the University, going down in the record books as the fifth-largest completed campaign in U.S. higher education. We’ve come a long way in the College since our first official capital campaign in 19841986, when our goal was $5 million and we raised $22.2 million. The momentum has continued to grow from there, and we’re getting a great return on our donors’ investment in the College. Their gifts will enhance the Carolina experience for future generations of students, and the financial return on the investment of our growing endowment has been phenomenal. We have a lot of reasons to celebrate, and we do just that in this issue of Carolina Arts & Sciences. I am excited to share with you a special campaign section focused on how private gifts are transforming faculty, students, programs and facilities in the College. Early in the campaign, we started off with a bang. A $24 million gift from New York investment manager Julian H. Robertson Jr. ’55 and his wife, Josie, divided equally between Duke and UNC, created a pioneering collaborative scholarship program that has recruited exceptional undergraduate students who study at both campuses. Gifts of all sizes are making a difference. In these pages, you’ll read about the Kenan family, which has given more to the College during the recent Carolina First campaign than any other private donor. The various Kenan philanthropies gave the University nearly $70 million during Carolina First — and more than half of that total has been designated for the College. We also profile Margaret Taylor Harper, who made the first annual gift of $1,000 to the College in 1975 — and has continued to give to the Annual Fund every year. During Carolina First, donors created 66 endowed professorships in the College and enhanced an existing fund, the Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorships. You’ll read about how private gifts have helped us to recruit and retain faculty, one of our key priorities. You’ll see how scholarships are making a difference for students, how Carolina is becoming more global, how academic programs are enhancing their offerings, and how new buildings are attracting faculty stars to campus. The rest of the magazine includes our regular feature section, this time showcasing the work of College scholars who are exploring the relationship between climate change and drought. You’ll read about Joe Haj ’88, who is transforming PlayMakers Repertory Company. We feature an excerpt of a showdown between Senator Sam Ervin ’17 and Terry Sanford ’39 JD ’46, from a new Ervin biography by Karl Campbell PhD ’95. The purpose of the College of Arts and Sciences, as I see it, is to promote original thought and produce the people and ideas needed to solve the world’s biggest problems. The $387 million raised during Carolina First energizes every aspect of our academic mission. Let’s celebrate! Holden Thorp, Dean

The College Index

• Amount raised for the College of Arts and Sciences during Carolina First: $387 million

• Percentage used to support students

through scholarships, study abroad funds, undergraduate research and awards: 18.6

• Percentage directed to faculty support: 39.9

• Number of new endowed professorships: 66 • Number of donors to the College: 34,507

• Earliest class year of a donor to Carolina First:

1926. Dr. Guy Adams Cardwell (died in 2005) • Classes with the most donors to the College: 1971 (729); 1990 (704); 1989 (689)

• Oldest living donor: Maxine Swalin, born in 1903

• Number of donors from Class of 2009: 21, most born in 1987

• Number of College alumni who have made gifts: 27,866

• As a percentage of all College donors: 81 • Percentage of all donors to the College from North Carolina: 53

• After N.C., top states in donors to the College in descending order: Virginia, Georgia, New York, California, Florida

• Number of donors making gifts of $100,000 to $499,999: 270

• Number of donors making gifts of $500,000 to $999,999: 64

• Number of donors making gifts of $1 million or more: 95

• Number of new endowment and expendable funds created in Bicentennial Campaign (1990-1995): 337

• Number of new endowment and expendable

funds created in Carolina First (1999-2007): 735 • After U.S., top countries in donors to the

College in descending order: England, Canada, France, Germany, Japan

• Largest single gift: $14,204,700

• Amount of largest cumulative gifts from one donor: $21,510,000

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 3

Carolina First K e n a n

L e g a c y

Ke T h e

s long as there’s been a Carolina, there have been Kenans to support its mission, and the College of Arts and Sciences has been one of the major beneficiaries. The family and its two charitable trusts have given more to the College over history and during the recent $2.38 billion Carolina First capital campaign than any other private donor. The family’s generosity supports faculty, students, facilities and programs across the arts and sciences, including the following Carolina First gifts to the College from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust: • $8 million to provide full scholarships for four incoming music students every year and to complete the Kenan Music Building; • Five $3 million professorships of the $27 million given to the University to endow 10 faculty chairs. There are currently four Kenan Eminent Professors in the College, and a search is under way for a fifth; • $3 million for the Carolina Physical Science Complex for state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories; • $500,000 to the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, which is dedicated to the “recruitment, retention and refreshment” of faculty; and • $250,000 to PlayMakers Repertory Company in the department of dramatic art. Gifts from the Kenan family have benefited Carolina faculty since 1917 when Mary Lily Kenan Flagler left a bequest establishing the Kenan Foundation for Distinguished Professors. William R. Kenan Jr. (class of 1894) died in 1965 and left $95 million for philanthropy in the service of education, singling out his alma mater for special attention. The trust was formed that year and immediately began providing support for endowed professorships. • In 1965, the trust committed $5 million to endow 25 W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professors at UNC. Today 11 of these are in the College of Arts and Sciences. • In 1995, Kenan funds endowed four Kenan Distinguished Professors of 4 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

Undergraduate Teaching Excellence in the College. • In 1998, the trust established the W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professorship in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at UNC and N.C. State, a post currently held by chemist Joe DeSimone. “Higher education, and particularly the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has always been a priority for the Kenan Trust,” said Thomas S. Kenan, III, a trustee of the family foundation, who graduated from Carolina in 1959 with a degree in economics. “We’ve never wanted anything less than to help transform the University … contributing to the Carolina First Campaign was another step toward that goal.”

A special partnership

It all began in 1790, when North Carolina legislator James Kenan, a member of UNC’s first Board of Trustees, contributed $50 to the construction of Old East, the first state university building in the nation. Over the next two centuries, dozens of family members would serve as trustees, make their way to Chapel Hill as students or function as benefactors. Taken in sum, this has created what Chancellor James Moeser has happily characterized as “one of the oldest philanthropic partnerships in American higher education.” There’s virtue in longevity. Members of various Kenan branches continue to give to the University, either as individuals or through foundations and trusts. The gifts range from targeted to all-purpose, with funds going to professorships and libraries, athletic scholarships and the arts. But the charitable benchmark of the family was established when William Rand Kenan Jr. died and left the bulk of his estate for the trust bearing his name. From that has been shaped a national philanthropic institution focused widely and deeply on higher education, but favoring UNC, the

only school specifically mentioned in the guidelines for the trust. Kenan majored in chemistry and as an undergraduate collaborated with chemistry professor Francis Preston Venable and alumnus John Motley Morehead on the groundbreaking discovery of acetylene gas. In his memoirs, Kenan — the chemist, engineer, industrialist and executive — wrote fondly of his alma mater and noted, “Education is a dynamic thing. Education should concern itself with the whole personality.” His will codified this conviction: “I have always believed firmly that a good education is the most cherished gift an individual can receive, and it is my sincere hope that the provisions of the Article will result in a substantial benefit to mankind.”

enan Legacy

Carolina First K e n a n

L e g a c y

One family’s largesse has transformed the College over time

Stories By Lisa H. Towle

LEFT TO RIGHT: Kenan Eminent Professor James Rives, Kenan Music Scholar Daniel Hammond, Kenan trustee Tom Kenan, Kenan Music Scholar Lauren Schultes, Kenan Trust executive director Richard Krasno, Institute for the Arts and Humanities fellow and communication studies professor Pat Parker, chemist Nancy Allbritton and Kenan Music Scholar Jessica Kunttu. Steve Exum

Today, the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust is valued at $550 million to $600 million, and the assets of the four affiliated William R. Kenan Jr. funds total $140 million to $150 million. About 90 percent of their grants each year fund education both inside and outside the classroom. Thus, said Richard M. Krasno, executive director of the Kenan Trust and president of the funds, “This is a unique institution among academic foundations. We have really stuck to our knitting. We’re committed to the enduring rather than the trendy and provocative.” That explains, then, the philanthropy’s willingness to be the momentum-makers in the Carolina First Campaign. Upon hearing about the start of the campaign in 2000,

Krasno paid a visit to the chancellor in order to learn more about its goals and priorities. He took the information back to the trustees, Thomas Kenan and Mary Lily Flagler Wiley, a grandniece of William R. Kenan Jr. They concurred it was critical to support Carolina’s vision of becoming the nation’s leading public university. The various Kenan family philanthropies gave the University nearly $70 million during Carolina First. More than half of that total has been designated for the College of Arts and Sciences, comprising nearly 10 percent of private support raised for the College in the campaign. “In recognition of the importance of the Carolina First Campaign to the University,

the trust wanted to give gifts that built on the precedent set by generations of members of the Kenan family,” said Krasno, former president of the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., as well as former president and CEO of the Institute of International Education in New York. “The thing about Kenan giving is this: It reflects an extraordinarily sophisticated understanding of higher education, from the aspect of students, teaching and budgets,” said Holden Thorp ’86, dean of the College and the Kenan Professor of Chemistry. “For one public university to have such a benefactor at this level is unusual. If someone asked what makes UNC stand out, especially among Southern universities, this kind of philanthropy is it.” • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 5

Carolina First K e n a n

L e g a c y

Harmonic Progression

Joey Seawell/Steve Exum Photography

“transformational” resonates with first-year student Lauren Schultes, a vocalist from When asked what an Grosse Pointe, Mich. Last fall, $8 million gift from the Kenan she joined three classmates Trust means to the department from North Carolina — of music, Tim Carter, chair and Cynthia Burton of Banner Elk David G. Frey Distinguished (violinist), Daniel Hammond Professor of Music, takes a of Raleigh (French horn player) moment to search for just the and Jessica Kunttu of Cary right adjective. Then comes, (bassoonist) — as the inaugural “Transformational. It’s been class of Kenan Music Scholars, ABOVE: The first class of Kenan Music Scholars, from left: remarkable in every possible a quartet selected from almost Jessica Kunttu, Cynthia Burton, Daniel Hammond and Lauren Schultes. way.” 200 students who auditioned. Richard Krasno, executive director of performer, internships with elite music groups, “I can’t describe the opportunity to study the trust, says that was precisely the idea. attendance at music festivals and other music at UNC as anything less than a blessing. I “The trustees believe the grant will thrust the events, and travel to audition for graduate couldn’t have afforded to come here as an department into the top five programs of its school programs. out-of-state student, and I wanted a broader kind nationally,” he said. The other half of the Kenan gift — education than conservatories offer,” said The gift, the largest private gift to an $4 million — went to complete funding Schultes. academic department in the College of for a new building now under construction An operatic soprano who’s been Arts and Sciences as part of Carolina First, on Columbia Street. recognized for achievements in French, included $4 million to create an endowment The Kenan Music Building is slated dance and distributive education as well as for full four-year merit scholarships in music to for completion in 2008 and will include a music, Schultes has already experienced be awarded annually to four undergraduates. large instrumental rehearsal hall, 18 faculty mountaintop moments as a result of her While the trust has long supported faculty and studios for applied teaching, 100- and 45scholarship. For instance, she and her voice facilities at Carolina, the scholarships represent seat classrooms, three piano studios, three professor, Terry Rhodes, traveled to the its most generous gift directed to students. ensemble rehearsal rooms, three practice Kennedy Center to see Placido Domingo The Kenan Music Scholarships cover rooms, a world music room, a digital perform in “La Boheme.” Afterward, they in-state tuition, student fees, room and theory laboratory, a recording studio and a met with the internationally renowned tenor. board, and provide a $6,000 allowance percussion suite. Schultes said she’ll never forget when he said for study abroad, work with a particular Carter’s description of the gift as to her: “I hope to hear you sing someday.” •

Eminent Impact • Fact 1: In 1917, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler left UNC the largest bequest ever made to a state institution at the time. Her will established the Kenan Foundation for Distinguished Professors. • Fact 2: In the mid-1960s, endowing professorships was the first order of business for the new William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. Trustees aimed to augment the quality of undergraduate teaching and scholarship at U.S. colleges and universities, and they started with UNC. • Fact 3: A third of Carolina’s faculty, like their counterparts nationwide, are nearing retirement age, placing the University in intense competition for world-class scholars. • Fact 4: Carolina’s most well-known faculty are often targeted for recruitment by 6 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

other leading institutions who have bigger endowments. So it was that legacy and need met in the establishment of Kenan Eminent Professorships during Carolina First. A $27 million lead gift to the University from the Kenan Trust, the William R. Kenan Jr. Fund and the Kenan family resulted in the $3 million professorships. Ultimately numbering 10, they will be the most generously endowed professorships in University history. Richard Krasno, executive director of the trust, described the professorships as “part of a proactive recruitment and retention strategy.” The College of Arts and Sciences is already benefiting from that vision. In the summer of 2006, James Rives, a renowned classics scholar, arrived in Chapel Hill from York University. He joined two other Kenan Eminents in the College: Minrose Gwin,

an expert on Southern literature, and Jeff Spinner-Halev, a scholar of political ethics. A fourth Kenan Eminent, Patricia McAnany, was appointed in July 2007 in anthropology, and a search is under way for a fifth. “UNC has an excellent classics department, but I was happy in Canada,” said Rives. “Uprooting myself from a tenured position and moving was a daunting prospect. If not for the plum of being a Kenan Eminent Professor, and the affirmation it brought, I wouldn’t have done it.” Rives’ main area of scholarly interest is religion in the Roman imperial period, though he teaches courses in a range of areas, including Greek myth, Roman law and Latin historical prose. “I anticipate my stay in Chapel Hill will be a long one,” he said. “I can’t imagine an offer that would tempt me away.” •

Southern Scholar Southern Scholar

Carolina First F a c u lt y

S u p p o r t

Ferris holds professorship named for longtime friend, colleague

B y N ancy E . O ates

ill Ferris tried three times to get a grant to support The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. “Many scholars didn’t think the South had enough serious information to deserve an encyclopedia,” said Ferris, who co-edited the book with Charles Wilson. Originally published in 1989, the tome has won numerous awards and a Pulitzer nomination, sold well over 60,000 copies and is now being republished in 24 separate volumes divided by topic. Ferris, the Joel R.Williamson Eminent Professor of History and senior associate director of UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South, is an astute chronicler of all things Southern, from Delta blues to moon pies, Hank Aaron to zydeco music. He grew up on a farm in Mississippi and says he never quite left, though more accurately, when he left he took the South with him. He attended prep school in the Northeast, did graduate study in Chicago, Pennsylvania and Ireland, held teaching positions at Jackson State,Yale and home again at Ole Miss., and served as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C., from 1997 to 2001. “The South is a world that has always stayed in my heart and has inspired me to do the work that I do as a teacher and scholar,” Ferris said. The title of Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History was conferred on Ferris when he accepted the UNC appointment in 2002. A gift from John A. Powell ’77 and Paula J. Robichaud funded the endowed professorship established in 2000 to honor Williamson, a member of the history faculty from 1960 to 2003, and to provide substantial financial support to help the College recruit and retain outstanding faculty. To honor Carolina’s renowned teachers and scholars in Southern studies, Powell and Robichaud also created the John Shelton Reed Distinguished Professorship, held by Larry Griffin; and in 2007, Powell established the George B. Tindall Distinguished Professorship. Williamson has written a number of award-winning books on the American South. Williamson and Ferris are “old, old friends,” Ferris said. The endowed professorship, he said, “makes me feel like I really came to the right place.”

The prodigious Encyclopedia is only a part of Ferris’ body of work. He has written or edited 10 books so far and created 15 documentary films, mostly about Southern music and folklore. Among his many honors, Ferris has received a Lifetime Achievement Award at an international film festival in Prague, a Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award from the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration, the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities from former President Bill Clinton and the American Library Association’s Dartmouth Medal. Ferris was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he was on the faculty for 18 years. Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, has worked with Ferris on a number of projects and admires Ferris’ ability to make connections among people from disparate disciplines and create work that has a resonance beyond the University. “He would walk the halls of Congress and find ways to get Jesse Helms interested in the National Endowment for the Humanities, a tall order when he arrived in Washington,” Bill Ferris, the Joel Rankin said.“While R.Williamson always keenly Eminent Professor aware of significant Steve Exum of History and differences, he looks senior associate for what we share, director of not at the things that UNC’s Center for the Study of the American divide us — and South, is an astute chronicler of all things builds from there.” Southern, from Delta blues to moon pies, At Carolina, Hank Aaron to zydeco music. Ferris has been teaching classes on the history of music in the American South and its impact on the region’s history and culture. His students have explored Native American songs, Appalachian folk ballads and Afro-American hymns, spirituals and work chants, and considered a range of forms including blues, country music, gospel, jazz, rock and rap. “I’ve always told my students … ‘You will not have a rich and full life unless you do the things you love,’” he said. With support from a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Nelson Schwab Faculty Fellowship from the College’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Ferris has been working on a book about the roots of Mississippi blues, where he started his fieldwork decades ago. • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 7

Building Bridges Building Linguistic Bridges

Carolina First F a c u lt y

S u p p o r t

New professorship exposes students to Hungary’s rich cultural legacy

B y J ess C larke

eter Sherwood built his first linguistic bridge at 15 when, while a student, he also took on the role of teacher. His first pupil for lessons in Hungarian was his physics instructor at Manchester Grammar School in England in 1963. The instructor planned a trip to Hungary, Sherwood’s native country. “Suddenly I realized I had been blessed with two mother tongues, and ever since I have wanted to provide a cultural bridge between Hungary and the English-speaking world,” Sherwood said. Sherwood is the new Laszlo Birinyi Sr. Distinguished Professor Steve Exum in Hungarian Language and Culture in the department of Slavic languages and literatures. “In this post at UNC, I hope to make that bridge ever stronger and wider.” Sherwood, who started at UNC in January, is the first professor of Hungarian literature, culture and film at Carolina. He also teaches the language, which has been offered at Carolina for five years. Although Hungarian is not a Slavic language, the position has been placed in the Slavic languages department for a number of reasons having to do with the history and geography of the region. The $1 million endowed professorship “is intended to expose undergraduate students to Hungary’s extremely rich artistic and cultural legacy and to train future specialists on Hungary at the graduate level,” says Christopher Putney, chair of the Slavic languages department. “Professor Sherwood has the talent and qualifications to make Chapel Hill a world-class center of research and scholarship in Hungarian studies.” Those qualifications include about 35 years teaching in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London, where Sherwood was honorary senior lecturer before moving to Chapel Hill with his wife, Julia. He has produced Hungarian-English and English-Hungarian dictionaries, including Oxford University Press’ first English-Hungarian dictionary, which was recognized as one of the best Hungarian dictionaries by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2007. A literary translator, Sherwood also has written a textbook, A Concise Introduction to Hungarian (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1996), and he plans a 8 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

revised second edition of the now out-of-print book. The Carolina appointment “offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity for me to establish a Hungarian studies program in the United States based on the intensive study and learning of the language,” says Sherwood, 59, who received the Order of Merit from the republic of Hungary in December in London. Historically and culturally, Hungary has been an integral — though distinctive — part of the area for more than a millennium. “No study of Europe is complete without it,” Sherwood said. Demonstrating and making accessible “the fascinating but shifting position of Hungary between East and West, making students aware of the richness of the linguistic and cultural heritage of Hungary, will be the major challenge” of his first teaching position in the U.S., Sherwood added. As a native of Hungary, Sherwood has a bond with Laszlo Birinyi Jr. ’67, who established the professorship named for his father. Sherwood and the Birinyis Peter Sherwood emigrated from their homeland. is the new Sherwood, born Laszlo Birinyi Sr. Distinguished Professor in Budapest, in Hungarian Language and Culture in the moved to department of Slavic languages and literatures. England at 8 after the failed Hungarian revolution in 1956. Birinyi’s father led the family out of Hungary during World War II, and they settled in the U.S. when Birinyi was 7. The younger Birinyi grew up in Pennsylvania and in 1962 enrolled at Carolina, where he majored in history. He later established himself as a successful equity trader and became president of Birinyi Associates Inc., a stock market research firm. He lives with his family in Southport, Conn. Sherwood and Birinyi are in distinguished company. Hungary has produced such luminaries as Laszlo Biro, inventor of the ballpoint pen, and financier and philanthropist George Soros. “Hungary’s distinctive language and complex historical and cultural development have produced people who have contributed to the culture of the Western world, and to the U.S. in particular,” Sherwood said. “The contribution and relevance of Hungarians to the world as we know it today is quite astonishing.” •

Good GoodChemistry Chemistry

Carolina First F a c u lt y

S u p p o r t

Innovator lured by great faculty support, colleagues and lab

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arolina chemist, engineer and entrepreneur Mike Ramsey traces his passion for scientific innovation to a chemistry set he received as a birthday present in junior high school. Until his imagination was captured by chemistry, Ramsey claims he was a mediocre student. It was also the gift that kept on giving. With his scientific interest sparked, the flame was fed by undergraduate work in chemistry at Bowling Green State University. Ramsey started laying the foundations for technology he would later pioneer — microfluidics or “lab-on–a-chip.” Ramsey’s Ph.D. in chemistry from Indiana University was followed by work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he first focused on spectroscopy, a technique he used to identify single molecules. He established himself as a leader with an ability to persevere and attract project funding despite skepticism about new ideas — the practical uses for these tiny fluidic circuits, for example. The lab-on-a-chip allows lab tests to be performed in miniature on silicon, glass or plastic chips that have been etched with a series of tiny interconnected channels through which chemicals and other fluids can run. These are then mixed in a miniscule reactor under the control of a computer. The technology has applications for everything from drug discovery to environmental monitoring. In 1996, lab-on-a-chip won Discover magazine’s Technology Award, a NOVA Award from Lockheed Martin Corp. and an R&D 100 Award. As the 21st century dawned, Ramsey was “getting antsy” for a new challenge. “I’d gone as far as I could go with regards to promotions at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and was looking for a new environment. Academia was calling, again, but this time I was ready to answer,” he said. At the top of his list was UNC, where a graduate school classmate and friend, Jim Jorgenson, W.R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Chemistry, had inspired Ramsey with his work related to reducing the size of chemical separation techniques. “In addition to having friends and colleagues at UNC, I also liked the area — the proximity to the entrepreneurial spirit found in Research Triangle Park,” Ramsey said.

There were other suitors, but Carolina moved quickly, offering Ramsey the Minnie N. Goldby Distinguished Professorship. Established with a $666,000 gift by chemistry alumnus Steven Goldby ’61 and his wife, Florence, of Atherton, Calif., in honor of his mother, that amount was matched by $334,000 from the state’s Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund to create a $1 million endowment. Then came the coup de grace: Ramsey was also able to design his research group’s 5,000-square-foot, state-of-theart lab space in Chapman Hall, part of the new Carolina Physical Science Complex. “I had always dreamed of designing my own laboratory from the ground up,” explained Ramsey. “So to say the offer was a dream come true is not exaggeration.” In the fall of 2006, Ramsey received a $3.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to further develop his lab-on-a- chip technology. He predicts that in the next five to 10 years the technology could make genetic information so inexpensive that everyone could have their DNA sequence asUNC chemist, engineer and entrepreneur sessed. Such information Mike Ramsey traces his passion for could allow health care scientific innovation to a professionals to tailor chemistry set he received diagnosis, treatment as a birthday present in and prevention to each junior high school. Steve Exum person’s genetic profile. Ramsey was one of several Carolina faculty members to establish the Carolina Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence. The center’s scientists work together to quickly harness innovations in nanotechnology for the early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Ramsey said the opportunity to work with colleagues in the School of Medicine also made Carolina appealing. “Through collaborations with medical school faculty we are identifying and developing important clinical applications for microfluidic technologies — for example, a clinical diagnostic tool that oncologists could use to quickly diagnose the effectiveness of a chemotherapy regime using a drop of blood,” Ramsey said. “Our efforts in developing microfluidics has not only been enjoyable research, but it has also been satisfying to see commercial products that are based upon our work, and that they are being used for important problems such as drug discovery that will hopefully benefit society.” • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 9

Lifetime Teacher ‘Once -in -a -Lifetime Teacher’

Carolina First F a c u lt y

S u p p o r t

Pam Durban named first Doris Betts professor

B y J b S helton

hen beloved English professor and noted author Doris Betts retired from the classroom after 35 years of teaching at Carolina, devoted alumni and friends created a distinguished professorship in creative writing in her honor. The torch was passed when Rosa P. “Pam” Durban — whose writing is included in a collection of the best American short stories of the past century — was named the first Doris Betts Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing. The endowed faculty chair was established in 2001 with a major gift from 1950 alumnus Ben M. Jones III and more than 200 individual donors. They were all anxious to honor Betts, the nationally respected Southern voice in American literature, author of six novels and three short story collections, who had been the Alumni Distinguished Professor at Carolina. Durban describes the moment (then) English department chair William Andrews offered her the Betts professorship. “The sun rose and shone fully on me.” • Honoring a lively heart “The search committee faced an exhaustive nationwide search for the first Betts professor. Doris, our program’s lively heart for over three decades, was retiring,” explained creative writing professor Michael McFee. “We sought a writer as fearless and accomplished, a teacher as inspiring yet demanding, a colleague as generous and devoted as she was.” They selected a gifted storyteller and teacher, a woman born and raised in Aiken, S.C., recipient of an undergraduate degree from UNC-Greensboro and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Before coming to UNC in the fall of 2001, Durban was a professor at Georgia State University and had been director of the creative writing program at Ohio University. McFee is thrilled with Durban’s appointment. “Pam Durban’s fiction and essays are literary art of the first order,” he said. “Her excellent and intense instruction is already legendary, and her dedication to UNC’s community of writers is obvious to all of her lucky students and fellow teachers.” 10 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

• Antebellum ghosts and country music stars Durban’s prose mesmerizes readers with stories about relationships and traditions, many of them purely, beautifully, uniquely Southern, from antebellum family ghosts to stardomseeking country music singers. “I love the initial impulse of writing, the hard work of revising, people reading and reacting to my words,” said Durban. “I love the whole process and the idea that it is a process.” Her short works are collected in All Set About with Fever Trees and Other Stories and appear in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike, and the prestigious Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses anthology, as well as the 20th anniversary edition of Best of the South. Her novel, The Steve Exum Laughing Place, was The torch followed by So Far was passed Back, honored with when Pam Durban was the 2001 Lillian Smith named the first Doris Betts Distinguished Award for Fiction. Professor of Creative Writing. She was founder and co-editor of the Georgia State University literary journal Five Points, which won the National Council of Literary Magazines’ 1998 Best New Journal Award. • Once in a lifetime teacher Durban is also passionate about working with students. She transforms her students into lovers of the printed word, through their own writings and through reading the work of others. “It takes a lot of energy and time to teach students how to engage with their work,” Durban said. “I tell them that I take them seriously. In return, I expect them to work to make their writing more honest, more generous, more insightful.” Durban jokes with colleagues that each year she writes a novel’s worth of comments on her students’ stories. Her commitment pays off when students acknowledge that they’ve learned to appreciate the art of writing. “Professor Durban was my once-in-a-lifetime teacher,” said senior Aaron Marcus, an economics and public policy double major. “She taught me to write tautly, yet expressively, to appreciate writing as artists appreciate the aesthetics of painting.” •

Liberal Arts Love of the Liberal Arts

Carolina First F a c u lt y

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David Frey’s vision has boosted the arts

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ack in the late ’50s when his high school track team came to UNC for spring training, David Frey ’64 ’67 JD knew he was destined to be a Tar Heel. He may have been born a fullblooded Yankee — his family has lived in Grand Rapids, Mich., for five generations — but even he couldn’t resist the lure of springtime in Chapel Hill. Frey, a third-generation banker (now retired, but busier than ever), knew his career would be in banking, but he purposefully opted for an English degree. “The liberal arts are the foundation of an undergraduate education,” he said. “Every undergraduate should have exposure to the arts in some form or another.” Because Frey is so thankful for the great influence Carolina and the College have had on his life, he continues to give back to the University time and again and has made it his personal mission to lure all sorts of people here — from accomplished playwrights and musicians to his own two sons. One of 20 cabinet members for the Carolina First Campaign, Frey helped kick-start the College’s campaign by establishing three distinguished professorships — one each in dramatic art, music and American art. “I consider these the three legs of the art stool,” Frey said. “The arts bring pleasure to people of all ages and reflect mankind’s most creative efforts.” While a search continues for the Frey Distinguished Professorship of American Art, both Frey professorships in dramatic art and music have been filled by highly accomplished and talented scholars. Leon Katz, a widely published playwright with many original works, holds the Frey Distinguished Professorship of Dramatic Art. A legend in the area of American dramaturgy (where literature meets practical stage practice), Katz has previously served on the faculties of Carnegie Mellon University, Yale University School of Drama and the University of California at Los Angeles.

The Frey Distinguished Professorship of Music is held by Tim Carter, who also serves as chair of the music department. Carter, who came to Carolina from Royal Holloway, University of London, focuses on opera and music of Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. He also has a special interest in the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Of the Frey professorship, Carter said, “It encouraged me to come to UNC and enabled me to take new directions in my own research on American musical theatre that has also fed into my teaching. If in passing Hill Hall you hear the sounds of ‘Oklahoma!’ or ‘South Pacific’ echoing through the rafters, give thanks to David, as do I. His generous support for the arts, and arts scholarship, has had a striking impact at Carolina.” Prior to the Carolina First Campaign, Frey, along with his family’s foundation, established the Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professorship which brings to campus prominent leaders in international policy, public affairs and the performing arts. Recent distinguished Back in the late ’50s when his high school track visitors have team came to UNC for spring training, David included David Gergen, Christine Frey ’64 ’67 JD knew Todd Whitman, he was Frank Rich, destined Harry Belafonte, to be a former Brazilian Tar Heel. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Ted Turner. Frey, who served on the board of directors of the Arts and Sciences Foundation from 1991 to 1997 and from 1999 to 2006, was also pivotal in helping to raise private funds to supplement an $8.4 million state appropriation to complete the Center for Dramatic Michael Buck Art in 1998. From arts professors of the highest caliber to world-renowned public leaders and performing artists, Frey is all about bringing the stars to Carolina. And with help from generous donors like Frey, it’s not surprising that the stars want to come to Chapel Hill. “Eyes across the nation are watching the incredible momentum building in the arts at Carolina,” Frey said. “You have an arts renaissance on campus, and I’m glad to be a part of it.” • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 11

Ground-breaking Greeks’Groundbreaking Support

Carolina First F a c u lt y

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Computer scientist holds second professorship funded by UNC fraternity

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rofessor Dinesh Manocha, a renowned expert in the computer science field, says the finest products of his department at UNC are its students. That may be because the department is one of the best in the nation, but it also attests to Manocha’s dedication to his students and their academic pursuits. Manocha was awarded the Phi Delta Theta/Matthew Mason Distinguished Professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences in 2006. The professorship was named in honor of Matthew Mason, a longtime employee of the fraternity who was later inducted as a member of the fraternity. It’s the second College professorship funded by a Carolina fraternity. In 2005, philosophy professor C.D.C. “David” Reeve became the Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor, the first “Greek professor” named at UNC. Three sororities have launched campaigns for distinguished professorships in the College, including Delta Delta Delta, Kappa Kappa Gamma and Chi Omega. Led by the efforts of Shoff Allison ’98 of Charlotte, N.C., nearly 300 Phi Delt alumni contributed more than $750,000 toward the professorship. Allison’s enthusiasm for the campaign, along with the recognition for Mason, inspired one-third of the fraternity’s alumni to make gifts. The professorship links the fraternity with some of the nation’s best teachers and scholars, such as Manocha, who concentrates his research on graphics, geometry and robotics, all sub-branches of computer science. His academic interests include computer-based simulation, which has a plethora of real-life applications. “Take, for example, the movies ‘A Bug’s Life’ and ‘Toy Story,’” Manocha explained. “How do you make the graphics in these movies look realistic?” This research has applications in entertainment and gaming — some recent endeavors are to create genuine emotion of characters in video games and to produce realistic-sounding synthetic noises for interactive applications. Outside the entertainment industry, the U.S. Department of Defense uses Manocha’s simulation work to prepare soldiers for training, especially for urban warfare. In addition, his group has worked closely with designers at Boeing, who employ computeraided design methods to generate and validate a computer model 12 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

of the 777 and 787 airplanes. Manocha also contributes to the medical field by simulating procedures such as a catheter used in liver cancer treatment. Simulation techniques allow processes to be tested and perfected for optimal performance in real life. Some of the earlier simulation technologies produced by his research group are now used by tens of thousands of researchers worldwide and have been licensed to more than 40 commercial vendors. Manocha integrates these realistic applications and research questions with teaching. You can discuss cool stuff in the classroom, he said, like how to make sure a robotic Dan Sears Dinesh vacuum cleaner Manocha, covers an entire a renowned room. Students in expert in the computer science his graduate course field, says the finest products of his department “Robot Motion at UNC are its students. Planning” recently tackled this matter. Manocha believes teaching is a two-way dialogue in which the professor should ask open questions to stimulate further academic inquiry. “Computer science is still evolving,” he said, “There are many opportunities to ask, ‘Are we doing this right, or can we do it better?’ And the classroom is the best place to figure that out.” Manocha and his research group are extending those learning opportunities outside UNC boundaries through outreach programs meant to expose middle and high school students to new computer technologies, such as a computer-based 3-D painting system. Through this haptic paint technology, students “paint” on a computer screen with a virtual paintbrush, each brushstroke simulating what would be produced with real paint. Manocha advocates this program to stimulate young people’s excitement about computer science. Manocha said he’s honored to be the Phi Delta Theta/Matthew Mason Distinguished Professor. As funding for projects becomes harder to obtain, the support from this endowed professorship gives him many more options, including the flexibility to pursue a “new crazy idea,” which in the past have led to significant breakthroughs with a multitude of applications. •

Carolina First F a c u lt y

S u p p o r t

Faculty Development

Private support helps keep and attract outstanding professors D e l

Helton

Nancy

E. Oates

oshua Knobe at 31 was a rising superstar in the world of philosophy before he had taught a single class at Carolina. His work in the new field of “experimental philosophy” has drawn accolades from fellow scholars for its pioneering methods of research, which include chatting with people in a public park to test how ordinary people think. Knobe had just completed his Ph.D. at Princeton in 2005 when he had job offers from five universities.The SprayRandleigh Fellowship helped bring him to Chapel Hill. “It was wonderful the way, just as I was trying to make a decision about which job to take, UNC was able to show this strong commitment to encouraging junior faculty engaged in interdisciplinary research,” Knobe said. Early in the Carolina First campaign, a $1.2 million expendable gift from the Spray Foundation of Atlanta and the Randleigh Foundation Trust of Chapel Hill provided additional research support for faculty studying European and American culture and enabled them to integrate their scholarship into the undergraduate classroom. It also helped the College of Arts and Sciences recruit and retain more than 77 outstanding scholars, such as Knobe.

sixth among all states in public funding of higher

• Faculty Support gifts top $154 Million The College’s efforts to recruit and retain its faculty are increasingly challenged by ever sharper competition from wealthy private institutions, peer public research universities, and even government and industry. Even with generous support from the citizens of North Carolina, which last year ranked

• Research funds make a difference Ralph Mosley ’63 worked his way through UNC selling Bibles door to door for Southwestern Company of Nashville, Tenn. Fifteen years later, he was appointed the company’s CEO. In addition to the $250,000 he and his wife, Juli, donated toward need-based scholarships, the couple committed $1 million for faculty

RIGHT: Chemist Matt Redinbo benefited from private funds that supported his research on killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

education, the College relies more than ever on private funding to recruit, nurture and enhance its faculty. In particular, the University’s outstanding liberal arts tradition hinges upon its ability to recruit and retain superlative faculty in the arts and sciences. Faculty support was Carolina First’s highest priority. Donors responded with $154 million in endowment and expendable gifts, creating endowed professorships for senior and midcareer scholars; faculty fellowships in the College’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities (IAH); Faculty Partners funds and faculty excellence funds, which provide research and course development grants; travel monies and summer salaries.

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recruitment and retention in the College. In 2006-2007, the Mosley Faculty Enhancement Fund supported UNC chemist Matt Redinbo whose research focused on killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria. He took an unusual approach that no one had ever tried. Other universities were looking appreciatively at Redinbo. So the College awarded him additional financial support for his research, funded in part by the Mosley Fund and other private recruitment and retention funds, to show how much Carolina wanted to keep him. Redinbo used the money to buy a key piece of equipment to test his idea. “We were able to go after something only we had thought of,” said Redinbo, whose work has received national media attention.“We wouldn’t have been able to do that if it weren’t for this generous, nostrings-attached kind of support.” Redinbo took the faculty support as “a mandate to try something that was a little risky.” “Not only can we stop the transfer of antibiotic-resistant genes, but we can kill bacteria that are harboring these genes, continued

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Carolina First S u p p o r t

Dan Sears

14 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

RIGHT: Political scientist Mark Crescenzi received research money from the Wilson Family Fund. BELOW: Historian Yasmin Saikia.

Isaac Sandlin

selectively killing them,” he said.“That has the potential to be a big contribution to our battle against antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.” Political science professor Mark Crescenzi also benefited from faculty support funds. He received a research budget as part of a retention package when Texas A&M University was attempting to recruit him. The money came from the Wilson Family Fund. Loyal Wilson ’70, his wife and daughters created the fund to keep Carolina professors who “inspire students and instill in them a passion for learning and a lifelong dedication to their communities,” said Wilson, the founder and a managing director of Primus Capital Funds, a private equity firm in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and a member of the Arts and Sciences Foundation board of directors. Crescenzi and his team are studying the way governments and terrorist groups interact. The research is important to understanding and creating strategy to ease tensions in the Middle East, for instance. The research funds allowed him to go to some high-profile conferences and take graduate students with him. The retention package, along with other support, also afforded him the opportunity to develop a successful grant proposal for the National Science Foundation that provides $500,000 over three years. “You could make the argument that the retention package paid for itself,” he said. Crescenzi collaborates with sociologist Charles Kurzman and Robert Jenkins, the director of UNC’s Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies, both of whom study problems of conflict in international relations. “The College of Arts and Sciences said,‘We really want you to stay and keep doing what you’re doing,’” Crescenzi said. “I have colleagues around the country in state and private institutions who are

Dan Sears

F a c u lt y

always struggling for research funds.This is a dream to not have to be in that position.” • Fresh ideas Ideas and renewed Renewed Commitment to teaching commitment Teaching Classics professor Carolyn Connor spent her 2006 spring break in church — 50 of them to be more precise — in Rome and Ravenna, Italy. A Chapman Family Fellow, she was researching her book, Saints and Spectacle: Byzantine Mosaics in Context, and the travel time and funding were only part of the fellowship’s benefits. “This was an immensely rewarding semester, because the fellows of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities (IAH) made such a supportive and stimulating group of colleagues with whom to discuss my work,” Connor said. “I was grateful for the travel stipend, which allowed me to travel to Italy and observe a number of mosaiced churches. The first-hand experience of standing in and ‘sharing’ the space with its medieval viewers is vital for a realization of the function and impact of monumental art.” Connor’s fellowship, funded by Max C. Chapman Jr. ’66 of New York, is one of 17 named IAH fellowships. Two dozen College faculty from the arts, humanities and social sciences were

awarded semester-long IAH fellowships during 2007-2008 through a competitive process. The time away from the classroom relieves faculty from teaching responsibilities and enables them to work in Chapel Hill without interruption on a project for the semester. Fellows participate in a weekly seminar that provides a forum for discussing their projects with colleagues in other departments. Younger faculty learn from senior members, and more experienced faculty gain insights from those more recently in graduate school. The experience prepares the fellows to return reinvigorated to the classroom with fresh ideas and a renewed commitment to teaching. • Faculty partners Partners connect Connect The popular Faculty Partners program continues to help faculty who requested funding for specific projects. During Carolina First, more than 50 donors made gifts to the Faculty Partners Fund, which provides faculty with financial support for their research, whether it’s for lab equipment, travel to a conference, or other costs related to their research and unmet by other funding sources. Donors pledge a $25,000 expendable gift — $5,000 a year for five years — to become Faculty Partners, and they are matched with faculty members who have submitted proposals for funding. These are examples of how Faculty Partners are making a difference for faculty:

Carolina First F a c u lt y

• Todd BenDor, city and regional planning, is studying the impact of urban development on environmental systems, specifically wetland restoration and creation. With his Faculty Partner funds, BenDor will purchase research materials and hire a student assistant. He is also collaborating with the Renaissance

Computing Institute in Chapel Hill to create computer models of urban growth to assess the effects of land use change on water quality and availability in the face of drought and infrastructure stress. • Yasmin Saikia, history, is preparing maps and illustrations, compiling indexes and editing

manuscripts for her two books about the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. The first book is based on 10 oral accounts by survivors in Bangladesh. The second book weaves together political and historical events with the experiences of violence suffered by victims and perpetrators in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. •

Supporting Academic Leadership

Isaac Sandlin

who I worked with when I was a development officer at UNC,” Hyde said. “It was from those relationships that I came to appreciate the central, powerful impact faculty have ABOVE: American studies professor on the University.” Joy Kasson was a Leadership Fellow. Now that RIGHT: Donor Barbara Hyde. she serves on the UNC Board of he Hyde Family Foundation pledged Trustees, Hyde said she appreciates even $5 million to endow the Institute for more deeply the importance of retaining that the Arts and Humanities’ (IAH) intellectual talent. Academic Leadership Program in the “We’re in a very competitive market College. The program was named for Ruel where universities are raiding each other W. Tyson, religious studies professor and all the time,” Hyde said. “Great businesses former longtime director of the institute. know that one of their first priorities Foundation president Barbara Hyde ’83 is attracting and retaining talent. The and her husband, former AutoZone CEO University recognizes that as well. If we lose Pitt Hyde ’65, have supported many of the faculty and have to go into the market to institute’s programs, and gave the lead gift replace them, it will cost a whole lot more. toward IAH’s permanent home, Hyde Hall, It’s smarter to invest money on the front end completed on McCorkle Place in 2002. to retain those scholars and researchers.” The institute, said Barbara Hyde, proThe Ruel Tyson Academic Leadership vides opportunities for faculty development Program in the IAH sponsors seven to 10 that didn’t exist previously on campus. leadership fellows annually. The Academic “I’ve been fortunate over the years Leadership Fellows, who come from all to have had meaningful relationships with departments and schools at UNC, participate individual professors who inspired me as in a weeklong leadership training program, a student and with entrepreneurial faculty two overnight retreats, monthly leadership

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development forums, weekly seminars to discuss critical issues facing the University and other networking opportunities. “In graduate school, no one is taught how to be a department chair,” said Joy Kasson, professor and chair of American studies and a 2004 Leadership Fellow.“To be effective, you have to know the ways in which you can get things done at the University.You have to know effective leadership skills, how to manage personnel, think about budgets, create new programs and implement things you want to accomplish.” Kasson, a three-time IAH Faculty Fellow, began teaching at Carolina in 1971. She was among a group of faculty who proposed that a program be established to address issues relevant to research and teaching. “The Academic Leadership Program helps faculty think of themselves as innovators, either in formal administrative positions, or by creating new programs or initiatives,” she said. “For me, the program helped me learn more about directing an academic department and finding ways to make it grow. In American studies, we have added more faculty, more undergraduate majors, and we are now planning a graduate program — all of which I can trace back to the training I received through the generosity of this program.” “Over the years, the leadership program has built bridges,” Kasson added.“It has made the fellows more connected, more loyal and more committed to staying at UNC.” •

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Carolina First Gl o b a l

Ed u c a t i o n

Global Giving opens new doors B y

N ot too long ago, fewer than one in five Carolina undergraduates studied abroad,

programs,” said Robert Miles, associate dean for study abroad and international exchanges. and it was difficult for international experts Private gifts have created about 25 new to work together on campus because they scholarship funds for undergraduate study were spread across the University. abroad.The Phillips Ambassadors Program, Now more than one-third of Carolina funded by former U.S.Ambassador Earl students go abroad before graduating and N.“Phil” Phillips ’62 of High Point, N.C., a gleaming four-story building has brought enables up to 50 undergraduates per year to together key international programs under study in Asia (see example page 18). one roof. Another innovative initiative, the Nearly 10 percent of Carolina First Carolina Southeast Asia Summer Program funds in the College support international funded by Alston Gardner ’77, provides initiatives.The impact is already being scholarships covering all program costs for felt by students and faculty in Chapel Hill 25 students a year to study in Singapore, and abroad. Malaysia and Thailand at the end of their “International education and the first undergraduate year. perspective it provides can’t be over A generous gift from Amy and Robert emphasized in today’s interconnected Brinkley of Charlotte also supports Asian world,” said David F. McSpadden, chair of studies.The Grier/Woods Presbyterian China the Advisory Board for Global Education, Initiative, named for family members who who received his undergraduate degree in were missionaries in China during the late international studies from UNC in 1983. 18th and 20th centuries, provides: scholarships “Wherever a student’s career interests lie for students to study Mandarin in Beijing, — medicine, business, art, government, travel fellowships for faculty research and journalism or elsewhere — being able to course development activities in Asia, and an work confidently and adeptly with peers additional lecturer in Mandarin language at across cultures will be fundamental to success.” UNC.Amy Woods Brinkley, a 1978 graduate With support from Advisory Board of UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, was volunteers and many donors, the College named one of the 50 most powerful women has raised nearly $36 million for international of 2007 by Fortune magazine. initiatives.About $19 million supports Several scholarship programs support scholarships for studies overseas and another study abroad for students from North $4.5 million underwrites programs that Carolina. Mary Anne Dickson ’63 and enhance study abroad, such as UNC faculty- Martha O’Neal Johnson ’76 established led field research seminars, international a scholarship in honor of their late father, curriculum development and graduate Charles Garland Johnson Sr., a banker and student fellowships. community leader in Elkin, N.C.This Carolina First donors gave more than endowment fund, which gives preference $7.2 million to the FedEx Global Education to students from Surry,Wilkes and Yadkin Center, which was funded by a combination counties, supported study abroad scholarships of public and private funds, including a for 15 North Carolina students in 2007. $5 million gift from FedEx Corp. (see page 19). (See page 17 for a story about one scholarship Private funds for scholarships and winner and page 23 for a profile on Mary Anne programs have resulted in more students Dickson.) going abroad. Last year about 1,350 Carolina Dickson’s husband,Alan, was instruundergraduates studied abroad in more than mental in establishing the Harris Teeter 300 programs in 70 countries. Study Abroad Scholarship with gifts from “Private funds have been fundamental Harris Teeter and the Dickson Foundation. to the expansion of our study abroad The Harris Teeter supermarket chain is a 16 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

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subsidiary of Ruddick Corp. which Alan Dickson chaired until his retirement.When fully funded, the scholarship will support study abroad for about 25 in-state students each year, with preference to Harris Teeter associates or their children. An anonymous gift established the Jenkins Study Abroad and International Experience Fund, earmarked for students from eastern North Carolina. The Carolina First campaign also raised about $4 million for endowed professorships to attract and support outstanding faculty who specialize in international topics.These include: • The Anthony Harrington Professorship in Latin American Studies, established with a gift from Anthony Harrington ’63, former U.S.Ambassador to Brazil, and his wife, Hope.The gift was matched by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a $1.6 million endowment. • The Gussenhoven Distinguished Professorship in Latin American Studies, established with a gift from John and Harriette Gussenhoven, 1968 and 1971 UNC graduates. • The Jordan Family Distinguished Professorship in International Studies, established by a bequest from William Jordan ’38 in honor of his late mother, Louise Manning Huske Jordan.The benefactor’s nephew Stuart Jordan ’85 and his wife, Sheri, funded the professorship during William Jordan’s lifetime; Dr. Jordan died March 10. The College also received $2 million for Asian studies and the Carolina Asia Center, as part of the nationwide Freeman Foundation Undergraduate Asian Studies Funding Initiative.The gift funds faculty positions in Chinese and Japanese language and literature, course development, library acquisitions, a speakers and visitors series, study abroad scholarships and programs in Asia.The Foundation’s support made it possible for Carolina to become the first university in the UNC system to offer undergraduate majors in Chinese and Japanese. •

Carolina First Gl o b a l

Ed u c a t i o n

In the Shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro B y

ABOVE: Anna Glasgow, center, enjoys a pickup soccer game in Kenya.

A nna Glasgow ’08 of Salisbury, N.C., had been abroad before for church missions in Latin America and a European tour. But her first academic experience overseas this past fall — open-air Kiswahili language classes and wildlife research in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro — was profoundly different. A biology major with an environmental studies minor, Glasgow collected data on the habits of an extraordinary array of exotic creatures in the wild. She learned firsthand about a land and culture that most of us know only through National Geographic or the Discovery Channel.And she experienced the surreal thrill of realizing that those friendly armed guards really were necessary to keep hungry wildlife away from her camp. Glasgow was one of 34 American students studying and conducting research through the School for Field Studies Kenya Wildlife Management Studies program. Her trip was supported by a Charles Garland Johnson Sr. Scholarship, made possible by a gift from College of Arts and Sciences alumni Mary Anne Dickson ’63 and Martha O’Neal Johnson ’76 in honor of their late father, a banker and community leader in Elkin, N.C.The scholarship is for UNCChapel Hill students from North Carolina, with preference to those from Surry,Wilkes and Yadkin counties. Glasgow realized she was in for an adventure when she gazed out the Range Rover window during the bumpy five-hour

trip from the Nairobi airport to Kilimanjaro Base Camp. “We saw giraffes and zebras, but the most National-Geo-like [scene] was the Maasai herding their cows with their colorful garb blowing in the wind in front of the sunset,” she wrote in an e-mail from the bush. She lived with other students in huts called “bandas.”They got used to outdoor showers and the ever-present dust and heat during the dry season. “What surprised me most was the overall comfort I began to feel with being in such a different place,” Glasgow wrote. “Dirt under our nails and in every crack in our skin, bandanas and t-shirts, same outfit three days in a row, cold showers while peeking over the door at the acacia trees, brushing my teeth in front of Kilimanjaro ... the squawk of the huge ibis birds each morning, rice, mashed potatoes, pasta, beans and pineapple every day ... very starry skies and already at least three rainbows(!),” she recalled.“Everything became a comfort, and this place began to feel like home.” Glasgow took language, wildlife management and environmental studies classes with Kenyan professors in an open- air “chumba” or outdoors on hilltops with panoramic views of surrounding ranches and distant Nairobi. She also participated in wildlife research expeditions, where she camped with the other students in national parks within earshot of the roar of lions and leopards at night.There were no fences between their camp and the wildlife, but they were protected by experienced armed guards. “These guys were amazing,” Glasgow wrote.“They could hear a lioness breathing while we were talking, and then they chased it away!” Glasgow observed buffalo, cheetahs, cranes, crocodiles, eagles, elephants, gazelles, giraffes, hippopotami, hyenas, lions, warthogs

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and zebras. She collected data on the animals and analyzed the impact of local agricultural practices on wildlife and their habitat. She interviewed crop farmers and visited Maasai herders in a traditional “boma” or village. She learned about the conflicting needs of crop farmers, cattle herders and wildlife — all relying on the land for their survival. “Our goal is to help figure out how to go about a sustainable solution to the human-wildlife conflict in this area without compromising the economic and cultural livelihoods of the people here,” she wrote. “It is very complicated. ...This land is suitable for pastoralism (herding and keeping cattle), however the Maasai are feeling both political and economic pressure to switch over to an agricultural existence.The farmers around our campsite told us about the wildlife that ruin their crops.” Glasgow also witnessed a Maasai riteof-passage ceremony that takes place every 10 years as villagers come together to induct young boys into Moranhood, the status of a warrior.“This was a beautiful sight,” she wrote.“There was chanting and jumping, face-painting ... and all of the men of the village were there to watch their sons.” She said her semester in Kenya was everything she wished for, and more. “I was hoping to not only learn about the wildlife and the conservation problems facing this area, but also something about myself by being placed outside of my culture and my comfort zone,” she wrote in a December e-mail.“By being here I have really learned how people of the world are so different but still so alike. I have learned the frustrations and rewards of working in a team, and I have learned how to be happy with less.” • — Anna Glasgow returned to North Carolina before violence broke out in Kenya over the recent presidential election. She is continuing her study of Kiswahili at UNC and hoping for peace in Kenya, so that she may return to work there in the future.

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 17

Carolina First Gl o b a l

Ed u c a t i o n

China’s urban building boom B y

W hy would an international studies major focusing on Arabic and the Middle

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China.” This was one of three comparative globalization study East spend a summer abroad studying the abroad programs, also made posurban building boom in China? Sarah sible by private funds. Jacobs ’08 from High Point, N.C., had “The goal was to plenty of good reasons. introduce the students to China’s For starters, she is interested in extraordinary recent growth and economic development, and China is development, but do it in a way experiencing the fastest growing economy that connected to China’s deep in the world. Last summer UNC urban past as well as the globalized planning experts Thomas J. Campanella and world at large,” said Campanella, Yan Song were leading an intensive fouran assistant professor in the ABOVE: Sarah Jacobs, center, visited with Chinese villagers week trip to urban centers in China to study department of city and regional at a “yao dong” home built into the hillside. the unprecedented building boom taking planning.“Even without the place there. Campanella is the author of The travel, it would have been an Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and intensive bit of education.We literally went its current point of intense development What It Means for the World (see page 56). from the Silk Road to the Special Economic and what it must do to sustain it, including “Though my academic focus is in the Zones in four weeks.” economic, environmental and infrastructure Middle East, the comparative study in China They attended lectures in the morning needs and impacts. will be invaluable,” Jacobs explained.“What and took field trips in the afternoon to visit “China will continue to develop,” Jacobs happens in China affects the world.” developers, contractors or businesses, or to said.“The goal now is to ensure that China’s Studying in Asia would also visit urban villages, where they encountered development is sustainable and beneficial complement her other international massive factories and crowded public to all its people. One in five people live in experiences. She had already studied abroad housing developments. China. If China suffers, so does the world.” in London and Oxford, through UNC’s “Entire families live in a single room,” Jacobs enjoyed getting to know Chinese Honors Program (see page 28), and she knew Jacobs said. students at each of the universities that hosted she would be headed to Cairo for the fall She was especially interested in “The their classes. Many of them spoke English 2007 semester.“I wanted to study in China Great Peace Village,” a farming community well, and they appreciated the opportunity to become aware of other parts of the world,” in Xi’an.The village has survived for to further hone their language skills by she said. hundreds of years in one of the most arid conversing with Americans.At first the A major factor leading Jacobs to China parts of western China. Its most notable conversation would involve “small talk” was High Point business executive and former feature is an ancient form of sustainable about American television shows.“Oh, yes, U.S.Ambassador Earl N.“Phil” Phillips ’62, building, the “yao dong” house, tucked I watch ‘Sex and the City’ and the ‘West who made a major gift to the University to into the hillsides. Wing,’” they would tell Jacobs. establish the Phillips Ambassadors Program, “Houses are built like caves into “But once they were comfortable, providing scholarships for study in Asia for the ground to increase surface area for we were able to discuss the relationship up to 50 Carolina undergraduates each year. farming,” said Jacobs.The earthen homes, between China and America,” Jacobs said. Jacobs was among the inaugural group of the ultimate in “green architecture,” are “And when they truly trusted me, we were 2007 “Phillips Ambassadors.” also warm in winter and cool in summer. able to talk about the Cultural Revolution “I would not have had the opportunity Most of the villagers had never and Communism. I still keep in touch with to study in China if it wasn’t for Mr. seen a Westerner before, she said.“As we a few of the students I met.” Phillips’ generosity,” she said.“The Phillips approached each house, the men and “My experience in China was incredAmbassadors program allowed me to be a women climbed their trees to pick fruit to ible,” Jacobs said.“But it does not matter truly international student.” stuff in our pockets and bags.They had a where you study abroad as long as you Jacobs and 14 other Carolina undercelebration with music and fruit and lots of stretch yourself past what you experience in a graduates spent a week with Campanella pictures.We were welcomed warmly.” classroom and immerse yourself in a different and Song in each of four cities: Hong Kong, In addition to classes and field trips, culture. Our world is shrinking, and borders Shenzhen, Xi’an and Shanghai, as part of the UNC students conducted independent are breaking away. I recommend studying their seminar on “Transforming Urban research. Jacobs explored how China reached abroad to every student at Carolina.” • 18 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

Carolina First Gl o b a l

Ed u c a t i o n

Portal to the world

Dan Sears

B y

The Global Education Center was completed with state bond revenues and more than $7.2 million in private funds, including $5 million from FedEx Corp. “The FedEx Global Education Center at the University of North Carolina will epitomize ABOVE: The FedEx Global Education Center is a hub our belief in innovation,” of international teaching, research and cultural activities. said Fred Smith, FedEx chair, president and chief he most visible evidence on campus of the executive officer, speaking at the official University’s commitment to international dedication in October.“This building will learning is the new $39 million FedEx serve as the nucleus of intellectual and social Global Education Center.You can’t miss activity for faculty, students, alumni and the the gleaming four-story structure with its community of international scholars from rooftop garden and street-side patio at the around the world.” corner of Pittsboro and McCauley streets. The Center has quickly become a But what’s going on inside UNC’s portal to hub of international teaching, learning and the world tells the real story. outreach. For the first time, the Study Abroad The Munro-McMillan Gallery Lounge Office, the Director of International on the second floor features rotating art Programs and Sciences, and seven other and photography exhibits.The gallery major international and regional programs space is supported by gifts from Donald in the College are housed together in Munro ’82 and Peter McMillan ’81, who modern offices surrounding a three-story were roommates at Carolina. Munro was a atrium.These include: the Curriculum for Morehead scholar from Great Britain who International and Area Studies, the African majored in Latin American studies, and Studies Center, Carolina Asia Center, McMillan was a business major from Texas. Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle Munro serves on UNC’s Advisory Board East and Muslim Civilizations, the Center for Global Education. for European Studies, Institute for the A reception area for International Study of the Americas, and the Center for Student and Scholar Services on the Slavic, Eurasia and East European Studies. second floor honors the class of 1938. Other programs inside include: the Office Members of the class, who lost friends to of International Affairs, Development for World War II, created an endowment that Global Education, the Center for Global supports independent studies abroad for Initiatives, and International Student and undergraduates. Scholar Services. The Arthur S. and Martha D. DeBerry The building provides classrooms, Family Conference Room on the third floor offices, exhibit space and the 256-seat is supported by a gift from Arthur DeBerry Nelson Mandela Auditorium.The fourth JD ’57, a member of the Advisory Board for floor will house an institute to support Global Education. collaborative international research for UNC A fundraising effort is also under way faculty and visiting scholars. to name a prominent space in the building

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to honor UNC anthropology professor James Peacock and his wife, Florence, for their lifelong dedication and service to international education at Carolina. Professor Peacock was director of the University Center for International Studies (now called the Center for Global Initiatives) and one of the key champions for creating the Global Education Center. Led by Marguerite Hutchins of Chapel Hill and Arthur DeBerry, the campaign has raised more than $450,000 in gifts and pledges from friends, family and former students around the world. The Global Education Center is already a hot spot for dinners, receptions, films, lectures, art exhibits, music and cultural events involving the University and the wider community.The first major international event in the building was a reception and dinner last March honoring former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. Last year the African Studies Center hosted a conference honoring distinguished colleague Bereket Selassie, with a keynote address by Gloria Steinem. The Global Education Center hosted an African music concert by Mamadou Diabate, and performances by Cambodian dancers, musicians and singers, and a Japanese drumming group. Public school students flocked to the Center for a program with African and Caribbean drummers and educators.A public lecture on global poverty packed the Mandela auditorium in January. The building’s architect and designer, Andrea Leers of Leers Weinzapfel Associates, said she designed the Center to bring people together:“It’s a meeting place, common grounds.That was the idea, that there were crossroads, places to gather, for communication and exchange.” • — To learn more about the FedEx Global Education Center and international initiatives, check out the new UNC Global Web site at: global.unc.edu.

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 19

Science

Dan Sears

Lars Sahl

Building

Carolina First

B e c ky

O s k i n

New facilities help faculty and students break new ground

ancy Allbritton’s research crosses many boundaries, incorporating chemistry, physics, biology, engineering and medicine. Her new space in Max C. Chapman Jr. Hall has room to house them all. Allbritton, the Paul Debreczeny Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, was wooed from the University of California, Irvine, in 2007 to Carolina on the strengths of a new laboratory in Chapman, as well as UNC’s reputation for outstanding chemistry and cancer research. “I would not have come without that space,” said Allbritton.“To get such a large space is very difficult, if not impossible, at most universities. It will really benefit the lab to have everyone in one place.We have people working in multiple disciplines, and we want them to be talking to each other.” At UNC,Allbritton will focus on developing new technologies for biological and medical problems. One project involves inventing new chemical tests and instruments for diagnosing chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Some CML patients have a genetic mutation that affects how they respond to the drug Gleevec, the best available treatment. Allbritton’s research will allow doctors to precisely tailor the amount of drug to the individual needs of people with CML. TOP TO BOTTOM: Caudill Labs provides much-needed space for chemistry • In Chapman Hall, students watch UNC marine scientists teaching under water from the Florida Keys • Chapman Hall is attracting science stars to Carolina • Chapman’s lecture halls are optimal teaching and learning facilities.

20 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

Carolina First S c i e n c e

CO m p l e x

Lars Sahl

Steve Exum

Dan Sears

While Allbritton’s laboratory New and was completed in February, many senior faculty College faculty had already moved are excited into Caudill and Chapman Halls, about using a the first two buildings completed as 4,500-squarepart of the Carolina Physical Science foot fluids Complex. Partially funded by $22 laboratory, million raised through the Carolina including a First campaign and $84 million from 120-foot-long a higher education bond referendum wave tank and a wind tunnel, approved by N.C. voters, the $205 which will allow for new million complex is the largest collaborations between the construction project in the mathematics and marine University’s history.Alumnus sciences departments. Lowry Caudill ’79, who “We have a renewed made a lead gift, led the vigor to raise our visibility,” fundraising efforts. said department chair Brent “This has been a labor McKee, the Mary and of love for me,” said Caudill. Watts Hill Jr. Distinguished “When I’m talking to Professor.“We’ve had people about this, it is from excellent students despite the the heart. It’s not only to fact they had to deal with CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Dean Holden Thorp (left) educate the students — we cramped facilities, and I think with Lowry Caudill, who led science complex fundraising also need it for the future of [the new space] is really going to efforts • (From left), Chancellor James Moeser, North Carolina,” he said. pay off in increased recruitment Max Chapman Jr., UNC Trustee Nelson Schwab and Senior “We have all sorts of of graduate students.” Associate Dean for Sciences Bruce Carney • Nancy research technologies within Chapman features a remote Allbritton enjoys new space in Chapman Hall • Caudill UNC, and to take that and observing control room for the Labs is the last building to be constructed on Polk Place transfer that into the private SOAR telescope in Chile, 4,600 sector, to allow companies miles to the south, and a rooftop chemistry and the top 15 overall departto be created, jobs to be created, for North observatory deck for astronomy students Carolina is a wonderful thing,” Caudill said. ment of chemistry (according to U.S. and faculty.The glass-walled Constance and News & World Report) — adding to existing Leonard Goodman Remote Observing The W. Lowry and Susan S. Caudill space in the Kenan Laboratories (1971) and Room in Chapman, located in a zoolike Laboratories — the last of two buildings to Morehead Laboratories (1985). The fouropen in phase one of the Carolina Physical habitat near the building’s main entrance, Science Complex and the last building ever story building houses 52,000 square feet draws passing students who watch of chemistry research laboratories, 7,000 to be constructed on Polk Place — was astronomers at work. The Goodman family square feet of faculty offices and conference is a longtime supporter of physics and officially dedicated April 26, 2007.The space, and 2,000 square feet of “open” complex’s Royce Murray Quadrangle astronomy at Carolina, where Leonard was student space. honors the longtime Carolina chemistry a student in the 1940s. A $5 million gift to the College from professor who was Caudill’s mentor.The While the telescope was in a testing alumnus Max Carrol Chapman Jr. ’66, brick plaza outside Caudill Labs is named phase this fall, astronomy professor Gerald helped fund the first building, Chapman for William F. Little, former chemistry Cecil and senior Dmitry Rashkeev took Hall, which opened in fall 2006. department chair and Research Triangle some pioneering pictures of the planet The impact was immediate for the Park co-founder. Mercury from the observing room. department of marine sciences, which With about 120,000 square feet, The images could be some of the best moved from the basement of Venable Hall Caudill Laboratories provides substantial ever taken of Mercury’s uncharted half, to Chapman while it waits for space in research laboratory and office space for normally hidden by the sun’s glare. continued new buildings which will replace Venable. the nation’s No. 1 program in analytical Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 21

Carolina First CO m p l e x

Steve Exum

S c i e n c e

Several floors above • Computer the observing room is the Science new rooftop observatory. expands Because students In its nearly 45-year taking Astronomy 101 history, the department previously had to work in of computer science has shifts on four telescopes outgrown eight buildings. on the observing deck at In late 2008, it will Morehead Planetarium, expand into its ninth some had to make their location — Frederick observations in poor light P. Brooks Jr. Hall, now conditions.The larger under construction ABOVE: The $205 million setup in Chapman has adjacent to Sitterson Hall, science complex is the more room for students the department’s current largest construction project and faculty, said Bruce home. Brooks is the first in the University’s history Carney, senior associate facility to be built in dean for sciences. phase two of the science “The new observing deck at complex building effort. Former students Chapman enables the telescope-based made a gift to name the building after the labs to be taught all at once, and at a time department’s founder and 20-year chair. when the sky is dark, unlike the previous Fred Brooks came to Carolina in 1964 sequential sessions at Morehead where one after a nine-year career at IBM, where he group often had to try to work in twilight,” made landmark contributions to computer said Carney, who is also the Samuel Baron architecture, operating systems and software Distinguished Professor of Astronomy. engineering — contributions that have Also in Chapman, two high-tech stood the test of time and shaped the way lecture halls named for Vicki ’92 and people think about computing. David Craver ’92 and Stephen M. He coined the term “computer Cumbie ’70 ’73 MBA, who supported the architecture” and was project manager for science complex, provide optimal learning the development of the IBM’s System/360 — and teaching — facilities. family of computers and operating In old labs in Phillips Hall, the system/360 software. Institute for Advanced Materials, The building adds 32,000 square feet to Nanoscience and Technology had to deal Sitterson’s 70,000 square feet, and includes with vibrations from cars and trucks in an several classrooms, with one 21-seat room adjacent parking lot, power lines and the designed for First Year Seminars, a graphics building’s window air conditioner. Since lab for the nation’s top university in this the move to Chapman, Rich Superfine, specialty, and an entire floor dedicated to the Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor in study of computer security. physics and astronomy, discovered that the data from a microscope he uses to • What’s next examine single molecules of DNA in Venable Hall, home to the chemistry studies of blood clotting is “considerably department since 1925, was demolished quieter.” in late 2007 and early 2008 and two new “The better measurements I think buildings are under construction in its will allow us to better determine the place. New Venable and a building yet to forces involved when cells divide and be named will house the chemistry library, help us understand the process of clotting classrooms, lecture halls, conference rooms better,” he said. and the marine sciences department. • 22 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

A love for Carolina Chemistry By

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s head of Avery County Bank, Martha Guy led the family-owned institution to the top of its class. Founded by her father in 1913, the bank was named first among community banks by American Banker in 1998 and had $72 million in assets and $54 million in deposits in 2003, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. But Guy never set out to become a banking legend. She was drawn to chemistry and spent her undergraduate years at Carolina roaming Venable Hall. After graduating in 1942, Guy returned the following year to pursue a master’s degree in chemistry, but war intervened. Guy’s father, Edwin, asked her to return to her hometown of Newland and lead the bank while her brother Robert served in World War II. Broken-hearted, Guy went home. But the people she met during her early years as a banker convinced her to stay. “They were all so nice,” she said. During the next 60 years, Avery County Bank became a national leader through its focus on community banking and supporting local businesses like Christmas tree farms. Despite many offers, Guy resisted selling the bank until 2003, when she was 81. The sale to First Citizens Bank finally allowed Guy to focus on her first love — Carolina’s chemistry labs. Her gift of a charitable remainder trust funded the first floor of the Caudill Building in the Carolina Physical Science Complex, which houses the Martha Guy Laboratories. “For years I’ve wanted to give back,” Guy said. Guy has since returned to Carolina to meet the faculty and students who will be housed in the new science buildings. “I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the professors. I still love chemistry, even though I don’t remember any of it,” said Guy, laughing. •

Carolina First W o m e n ’ s

A Champion for Carolina

B y

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L e a d e r s h i p

B a b c o c k

Steve Exum

Mary Anne Dickson ’63 has motivated thousands to support Carolina First

ABOVE: Mary Anne Dickson

C arolina’s Women’s Leadership Council co-chair Mary Anne Dickson, a 1963 political science graduate, has helped to motivate thousands of women to support Carolina First. The Council’s impact on the campaign, and Dickson’s own leadership and generosity, will make a difference for the College and the University for many years to come, especially for students interested in learning firsthand about the world. The Women’s Leadership Council is a campuswide initiative whose mission is to create a network of women committed to supporting the University. Dickson cochairs the council with Barbara Hyde ’83 and Julia Sprunt Grumbles ’75. “We believe in the University, and we believe in what we’re doing,” Dickson said. “Women are using their voices and time and talent, as well as their resources.We went from an attendance of 30 the first year to 150 last year at our annual meeting.”At the same time, the council held outreach events that drew Carolina alumnae from around the country. “This thing has just sort of snowballed, but we really had to roll up our sleeves to make it happen,” Dickson added.“After

three years, it really took on a life of its own.We have had well over 18,000 women who made first-time gifts.” Dickson is also a member of the Carolina First steering committee and has chaired the Board of Visitors. She and her sister, Neal Johnson ’76, endowed the Charles Garland Johnson Sr. Scholars Fund in International Studies, enabling students from North Carolina to study abroad.The fund, named in honor of their father, provided scholarships for 15 students during 2007-2008 alone. “Honoring our father in this way was a natural fit,” Dickson said.“Our parents enjoyed traveling, we both enjoy traveling, and one of the chancellor’s goals is for every student, whether he or she can afford it, to have the opportunity to study and travel abroad.”

{ } “We believe in the University, and we believe in what

we’re doing. Women are using

their voices and time and talent, as well as their resources.

We went from an attendance of 30 the first year to 150 last year at our annual meeting.”

— Mary Anne Dickson

Raymond B. Farrow III, executive director of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC, recalls how Dickson helped him raise funds for study abroad programs and scholarships when he served as director of development for international studies in the College from 1998 to 2004.

At the time, international studies lacked a well-defined constituency since the major had only recently become popular among undergraduates. But Farrow didn’t have to recite his well-practiced entreaties about why Carolina had to become more international. “From the moment we began talking,” he recalled,“Mary Anne ‘got it.’” Then she said,“Let’s figure out how to raise some money.” Dickson began discussing how she and her sister wanted to establish an endowment. In addition to her own gift, Dickson discussed a number of other donor prospects.Almost all ended up providing significant support to international studies by the end of the campaign. “Mary Anne was, for me, a prime mover,” said Farrow.“Her gift and visible support for international studies led to many others.The trajectory of Carolina will be forever altered because of the work she has done.” After graduating from Carolina, Dickson moved to Rocky Mount, N.C., where she served as the assistant to the chairman and chief executive officer of Hardee’s Food Systems. She also holds a degree in business administration from North Carolina Wesleyan. Dickson has received two of UNC’s highest honors. In 2003, she was given the William Richardson Davie Award from the Board of Trustees. In 2006, she was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal from the General Alumni Association. Both of her children, Chase ’89 AB ’95 MPH and Chris ’92, are Carolina graduates and actively involved with the University. Dickson said it’s “really thrilling” to support Carolina and to motivate other donors to do the same. “I feel so rewarded because of the incredibly wonderful women I’ve met,” she said.“It has just been very gratifying.” • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 23

Carolina First B y

J B

S u p p o r t

S h e l t o n

New professor makes that a rhetorical question

JUNC effrey Alan Allred has three degrees from and a million dollars worth of faith in the power of debate. Appropriately putting his money where his mouth is, he established the Jeff and Jennifer Allred Initiative for Critical Thinking and Communication Studies, which brought rhetoric scholar Christian O. Lundberg to UNC. Lundberg’s appointment as assistant professor in the department of communication studies was based on his natural abilities as an experienced teacher and coach of debating’s finest skills.The fund also honors Allred’s friend, mentor and former debate team member Joseph P. McGuire ’72. Allred (’76 AB political science ’80 MBA/JD) came to Carolina due largely to the national stature of its debate program. He was involved in the debate program throughout his undergraduate years and was a member of UNC’s freshman national championship debate team.“My experiences on UNC’s intercollegiate debate team served as the foundation for my success,” said Allred, who is president and CEO of the Griffeon Group, a business consulting firm in Atlanta. “The ability to critically think, articulate and defend a position is essential no matter what your life’s calling.”

•

Debate ANYONE?

Another champion

Christian O. Lundberg received his Ph.D. in 2006 in rhetoric and public culture from Northwestern University. He has coached three university teams to national championships in intercollegiate debates. “We didn’t believe the hype about Chapel Hill,” said Lundberg,“until I joined the faculty and we moved to Hillsborough, where my wife, Beth, and I are raising our daughter,Annabeth. Even the hype doesn’t do the area justice.” He explained,“I came to UNC with a determination to make debate and critical thinking practices publicly relevant, on and off campus.” He teaches “Globalization and Communication,”“Rhetorical Theory” 24 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

and “Theories of the Public Sphere,” and also serves as a resource to faculty on effective oral communication and critical thinking skills. “I created the First Year Seminar ‘Think, Speak,Argue’ as a vibrant environment for student-centered learning,” said Lundberg. Readings include Plato and Aristotle as well as educator John Dewey’s How We Think. Students develop thinking and communication skills by writing persuasive speeches, role-playing Top: Christian congressional investigative Lundberg is committees and passionate about brainstorming public debate. Middle: Woody Durham. Bottom: Michael Piller, who created policy issues. stories for ‘Star Trek,’ proudly wore his Carolina cap on the set. “The rationale for the course emulated Jeff Allred’s vision Making a Difference that a university is most successful when it in Carolina First not only teaches people competencies in specific academic areas, but when it also • Michael Piller Distinguished helps students use those competencies to Visiting Professorship positively impact society,” Lundberg said. The legacy of Michael Piller ’70

•

Think your favorite color is blue?

Across the University, students think, speak and argue about the seminar. Ting Xu Tan, a biology major, credits Lundberg with “battering down my fears of public speaking.” Julianne Goodpaster, a business major, said,“Think your favorite color is blue? He will convince you it’s green. I’m humbled to have studied under such a remarkable talent and offer my condolences to anyone who attempts to debate him.” Fellow business major David Blumberg noted,“Debate defines Carolina as much as any other focus at UNC — except for Tar Heel basketball. He instills us with an internal drive for knowledge that will extend far beyond our years at school.” •

continues through the writing for the screen and stage program. Piller, best known for creating stories for “Star Trek,” died in 2005. This endowment will bring stage and screen writers, directors and producers to teach at UNC. • Kenneth W. Lowe Fund Ken Lowe ’72, who founded Home and Garden Television and serves as president and CEO of the E.W. Scripps Co., gave $300,000 to establish the fund to support and retain communication studies faculty. • Woody Durham Distinguished Professorship More than 120 friends and admirers of the “Voice of the Tar Heels” have contributed $666,000 to establish this distinguished professorship in communication studies.

Isaac Sandlin

P r o g r a m

Carolina First P r o g r a m

The WRITE choice

Above: Thomas Wolfe Scholars Kendra Fish ’09, Andrew Chan ’08 and Caitlin Doyle ’06 with poet Fred Chappell, wearing the Thomas Wolfe Medal. Right: Bland Simpson.

T homas Wolfe ’20, UNC’s most celebrated author, is best known for his novels of personal exploration, Look Homeward,Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again. His legacy thrives through the words and works of talented new writers and devoted alumni of the creative writing program in UNC’s department of English and comparative literature. In 2001, Frank Borden Hanes Sr. ’42 of Winston-Salem, N.C., an accomplished journalist, poet and novelist, contributed $2 million to establish the Thomas Wolfe Scholarship. The scholarship offers full, four-year financial support for up to two incoming students per year, selected for exceptionally focused literary ability and promise. Since fall 2002, the scholarship’s board of advisers has named seven Wolfe Scholars. “Our program had a high profile thanks to the talented writers and teachers who have come through here, but when Mr. Hanes gave us the scholarship he put a huge gold star on creative writing,” said program director Bland Simpson, a Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Professor.“There really aren’t any other programs quite like this. It certainly elevated our national profile and stature.”

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Thomas Wolfe Scholars

The Thomas Wolfe Scholars minor in creative writing and are instilled with Wolfe’s

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Honoring the legacy of Thomas Wolfe, other writers

spirit, honing their talents in the place fondly called the “Southern Part of Heaven.” Andrew Chan, an ’08 English and comparative literature major from Charlotte, N.C., is the third recipient of a Wolfe Scholarship. “The scholarship has had a major impact on my life,” said Chan, who has applied to cinema studies graduate programs and hopes to become a film critic. “For the first time, I felt affirmed in my desire to make writing a priority in my life.Throughout my four years, I have felt supported by the faculty and my peers,” Chan added.“I am so grateful for this scholarship, which has made my growth and commitment as a writer possible.” In addition to Chan, the scholars are Caitlin Doyle ’06 of East Hampton, N.Y.; Hannah Poston ’07 of Newtown, Pa.; Kendra Fish ’09 of Castle Rock, Colo.; Nathaniel Lumpkin ’10 of Raleigh, N.C.; Maria Devlin ’11 of Bronxville, N.Y.; and Denise Rickman ’11 of Apex, N.C.

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Unwavering support and faith

“The unwavering support we receive from the friends of the University is a marvel,” Simpson said.“Their generosity makes possible the depth of our curricular and extracurricular activities.” In 2007-08, nearly 700 Carolina undergraduates will choose from the creative writing program’s 40-plus courses of prose and poetry. Simpson, who began teaching at UNC in 1982, said,“The program has always been good, but it has become stronger and more vibrant because of the succession of gifts we have received.” •

Making a Mark in Carolina First

• Blanche Britt Armfield Fund The late poet Blanche Britt Armfield (MA English ’28) endowed the fund, enhanced with a gift from her estate, to champion the cause of poetry at UNC. • Doris Betts Distinguished Professorship of Creative Writing A $1 million endowment was funded with a gift of $334,000 from Ben Jones ’50 and $332,000 from more than 60 donors. The gifts were matched with $334,000 from the state Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund. • Suzanne Bolch Literary Award The award sponsors a Carolina undergraduate’s summer travel-writing project. Named for Suzanne Bolch ’88, the award honors the role played by the creative writing program in her filmmaking career. • Froelich Family Fund Henry ’81 and his wife, Molly Dewar Froelich ’83, memorialized Mazie, his mother, through a $100,000 expendable fund. The gift bolsters the salaries of successful writers who are lecturers in the program. • Walker Percy Fund The Frank Borden Hanes Charitable Lead Trust honors the distinguished Southern novelist and 1937 UNC alumnus with an endowment that supports lecturers. • Robert Ruark Award In remembrance of the N.C. novelist, the award celebrates student nonfiction writing. Support comes from the Robert Ruark Society, a charitable remainder trust created by James T. Cheatham III (’57 ’61 JD). • Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award Fund The late Bill Hooks (’47 MA ’50) created the fund to support awards for students who write books for children and young adults, and to fund travel for students to attend a children’s writing conference. Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 25

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Focus on Ethics

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Gifts enhance teaching, research and outreach

T wo business leaders and Carolina alumni agree on at least one thing — that the study and practice of ethics is crucial for better business and a better world.That’s why Gary W. Parr ’79 and John Allison IV ’71 have directed substantial gifts to the department of philosophy that have had a significant impact on classroom teaching, research and outreach involving ethics. When Parr pursued his business major at UNC, ethics courses were not offered as part of the undergraduate business program. “Teaching ethics as a part of business seemed to me to be fundamental,” said Parr, deputy chairman of Lazard, a global financial advisory firm in New York City. “I’m a big believer that people of all ages should be taught frameworks for dealing with [tough] issues.” In 2004, the Gary W. Parr Family Foundation established the Parr Center for Ethics in the department of philosophy with gifts totaling $2.156 million.The center is devoted to the study, teaching and discussion of ethics across the University and in the community. “The Parr Center stands as the public face of the University’s commitment to ethics. In the process, it works well to support research and teaching devoted to ethics, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels,” said department chair Geoff Sayre-McCord. The center complements ethics courses and projects already offered at Carolina.“There is now a place for coordinating efforts and creating synergy,” he added. Events at the center have explored a variety of issues: sports, corporate law, capital punishment and other topics. Some offerings reach beyond Carolina, like the ethics bowl, an undergraduate competition hosted at UNC in November.The center also organized workshops on ethics and disability that included events in Chapel Hill and England. 26 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

In addition to seminars, workshops and lectures, the Parr Foundation gift supports research and a visiting faculty member each year who teaches undergraduates and participates in Parr Center events.

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Culture based on values

From left: Gary Parr ’79 and John Allison ’71 have directed gifts to philosophy to enhance teaching, research and outreach involving ethics.

Allison, who earned a UNC business degree, is now chairman and chief executive officer of BB&T. The corporation’s banking culture is built around 10 primary values that are consistent, integrated and put into practice.The focus on values grows from the belief that ideas matter and that an individual’s character is of crucial significance. “As a large business, subject to all types of regulations and constantly striving to meet the needs of our customers, BB&T has a significant interest in exploring and understanding the moral foundations of a free society and free markets. Because of its focus on ethics and rationality, the philosophy department at UNC is an excellent place to achieve this end,” said Allison, who has lectured on leadership and values at the Parr Center. The BB&T Charitable Foundation’s two $1 million gifts, made in 2002 and 2007, have supported research and a visiting faculty member every year. These gifts have established what Sayre-McCord calls “a fund for excellence.” “Thanks to the BB&T gifts, we’re in a position to support valuable research, innovative teaching and a more

challenging intellectual environment. Faculty are able to go to conferences that we couldn’t have afforded otherwise.We bring in exciting speakers who are doing cutting-edge work,” he said.“We’ve been able to enhance dramatically our research, the quality of our graduate program and the excitement in our department.” BB&T also has helped support the establishment of a minor in philosophy, politics and economics, and a visiting faculty member who teaches undergraduate courses and does research with a focus on human nature, Aristotle, theories of justice and political economy. “Thanks to the support from the Parr Family Foundation, from BB&T and from a number of other generous donors, UNC’s philosophy department is thriving,” Sayre-McCord said. • — The Fiske Guide to Colleges has repeatedly named philosophy among Carolina’s strongest undergraduate programs, and The Philosophical Gourmet Report, a national survey, ranks philosophy in the top 10 in the country. Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, a private survey based on faculty publications and citations, said UNC has the most productive philosophy department in the nation.

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Momentum for Jewish Studies

Key gifts bolster faculty, programs

of interest in Jewish history and culture, from biblical times to the present, across the Carolina campus — continues its quest to put the program on the map nationally and internationally. The Jewish studies center was founded in 2003, and today more than 1,000 students study Jewish history and culture in the College.The program continues to receive substantial gifts to bolster faculty, while a lecture series and statewide outreach program attract growing numbers. “We’ve secured funding for four new endowed faculty positions in Jewish studies, and we’re hoping soon to be able to create a Jewish studies program second to none in the country,” said director Jonathan M. Hess, the Moses M. and Hannah L. Malkin Distinguished Term Professor in Jewish History and Culture.

• Leading scholar joins the program In fall 2007, Jonathan Boyarin was named the Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Thought. Boyarin joined UNC

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from the University of Kansas. “He’s one of the world’s leading scholars on Jewish culture,” Hess observed. “I’m encouraged to come to a place where the development of Jewish studies was already well in progress,” Boyarin said. “That means developing discourse and competence in various areas of Jewish culture, history, politics and tradition —

“Modern Hebrew is a linchpin of any Jewish studies program,” Hess said. “This position will enable us to bring in someone who will teach courses that our students could have only dreamed of in the past.” The gift came from two generations of a Charlotte, N.C., family and their family foundations: Lori and Eric Sklut, and Lori’s parents, Leon and Sandra Levine. Eric Sklut is a 1980 Carolina alumnus and member of the center’s advisory board. Eli N. Evans ’58, chair of the Jewish studies advisory board said, “The credibility conferred by this gift will surely inspire others to join the mission of making a first-rate Jewish studies program available to every student at the University and every community across the state.”

all of which help show the way that the study of Jewishness is a vital connecting thread through the humanities, arts and social sciences.” This spring, Boyarin is teaching “Hasidism and Modern Orthodoxy” and “Secularism and Political Theology.” Boyarin’s hire was made possible by a $1 million gift in 2006 from Greensboro resident Leonard Kaplan, a 1949 Carolina alumnus, and his wife,Tobee. Additional funding from the N.C. Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust brought the Kaplan endowment to $1,334,000.

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ABOVE: Jonathan Boyarin, the new Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Thought. RIGHT: Lori and Eric Sklut and Lori’s parents, Leon and Sandra Levine, gave a $1 million gift to hire a ‘rising star’ in Jewish studies.

T he Carolina Center for Jewish Studies — which has helped spark a groundswell

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The center recognizes it’s also critical to attract new faculty who can build their careers at UNC. In September 2007, the center received a $1 million gift to hire a young scholar in modern Hebrew literature and Israeli culture. The center is applying for a state matching grant of $500,000 to bring the endowment to $1.5 million.The center is currently recruiting for the Levine-Sklut Fellow in Jewish Studies, and hopes to have someone on board in fall 2008.

Rich history, promising future

Jewish studies classes were first taught at Carolina in the 1940s. Today, the program draws on the expertise of faculty from American studies, religious studies, history, English, Germanic languages and literature, Slavic languages and literatures, and Asian studies. It offers about 30 courses and also undergraduate minors in Jewish studies and modern Hebrew. During Carolina First, three other distinguished professorships were created: • The late Moses Malkin and his wife, Hannah, 1941 UNC graduates from Sun City, Fla., established the distinguished professorship awarded to Hess. • The JMA and Sonja van der Horst Distinguished Professorship in Jewish Studies was established by the family of Johannes “Hans” and his wife, Holocaust survivor Sonja.Two of the children, Charles van der Horst, a professor of medicine at UNC, and Jacqueline van der Horst Sergent ’82 MPH, have UNC connections. • The Sara and E.J. Evans Distinguished Professorship was funded by the Arie and Ida Crown Memorial of Chicago. • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 27

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Honors Expands

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Gifts increase professorships, international presence

Vin Steponaitis

dam Edgerton, an English major, calls his Honors semester in London, studying Shakespeare and taking classes in Winston House, “definitely the best three months of my life.” The senior from Clayton, N.C., had never been abroad when he signed up for the fall ’06 course with English professor Chris Armitage, who has been taking students to England since 1970. “It changes your worldview when you study abroad,” Edgerton said. The opening of the $5 million European Study Center in Winston House on historic Bedford Square in London marked a milestone for the College of Arts and Sciences. It is the first building the University has acquired abroad for academic programs. Winston House is one of a series of major, privately funded initiatives that have significantly expanded Honors opportunities for UNC students and faculty. Acquisition of the historic London property was set in motion with a $1 million lead gift from

Digging Deep

James H. Winston ’55 Conn., residents, Peter and his wife, Mary, of T. Grauer ’68, chairman Jacksonville, Fla., in of Bloomberg LP in New honor of the Winston York, and William Harrison family and their ’66, retired chairman deep connections to of JPMorganChase Carolina and England. and Co., will endow More than 30 donors five new distinguished contributed to the professorships in the ABOVE: Winston House in London project, including College. marks a milestone for the College Peter and Laura And a $1.3 million and the University. Grauer, the estate of gift from the MoreheadJames M. Alexander, Cain Foundation will W. Lee Hemphill and Elsbeth Lindner, the establish a distinguished professorship in Peter and Elisabetta Mallinson Trust, and art history, in honor of arts advocate and Chad and Blake Pike. philanthropist Mary H. Cain. Expanding the number of students • More Honors faculty, classes, students who are invited to join Honors means that Another $5 million initiative, funded the University can attract more outstanding by an anonymous donor, will increase the students, said James Leloudis, associate dean number of first-year for Honors. students enrolled in Grauer, who has chaired the Honors the Honors Program to advisory board since 1997, calls the program 260, an expansion of a “magnet for the University.” 30 percent. “Honors allows us to compete head to The gift, which head with anybody for the highest quality honors two Greenwich, students, and students say their experiences

funded by Lucius Burch ’63 of Nashville, Tenn. Students learned Seminar focuses on archaeology in Natchez the techniques of archaeology by Anthropology excavating ancient ABOVE: Leah Williams ’08 professor Vin Steponaitis Indian mounds at takes notes at the Natchez dig. got to realize a dream by a site called the taking students 30 years Feltus Mounds, later back to the very place — Natchez, which dates to ca. AD 700-1000. Miss. — that first ignited his interest in “I think for many of them it cemented archaeology. their interest in archaeology,” said Steponaitis. Through the Honors Program, Burch seminars have taken students Steponaitis created a Burch Field Research to Washington, D.C.; New York; and the Seminar in fall ’06. The seminars are Balkans. Summer 2008 programs will be

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offered in Turkey and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. “The field experiences can be very intense. … When you work with students five days a week, you get to know them, and that’s really special,” Steponaitis said. Senior anthropology major Leah Williams of Boiling Springs, N.C., calls the Natchez seminar “undoubtedly the highlight of my Carolina experience.” “Professor Steponaitis is one of the most outstanding professors I have had at Carolina,” she said. “I learned more during that semester than I ever could have in a classroom. The experience was unforgettable.” •

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Rhythms of Life

scholarships for students to pursue passionate interests Habib Yazdi explores in self-designed, Ghana, Thailand off-campus study ABOVE: Habib Yazdi (left) experiences. studied drumming in Ghana. Senior Habib Yazdi of Yazdi is Boulder, Colo., has gotten teaching other students about his love for great mileage out of his passport during drumming this spring through the Honors his time at Carolina. Through Honors, he C-START course “Ghanaian Drumming: has explored documentary filmmaking in Rhythms of the Fante.” Thailand and drumming in Ghana. While in Ghana, Yazdi lived as the About his time in Ghana in summer “adopted 10th member” of a Ghanaian 2006, where he won a Burch Fellowship, family. A typical day had him going strong Yazdi wrote: “Quite simply, Ghana gave from sunup to sundown as he took drum me a whole new meaning to feeling alive lessons and performed with the group, — every day, all the time, without any Twerammpon Traditionals. breaks from life or the desire to take one.” A communication studies major, Yazdi The fellowships, funded by Lucius whetted his appetite for international study in Burch ’63 of Nashville, Tenn., provide

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spring 2005, when he participated in a Burch Field Research Seminar on documentary filmmaking in Thailand, with women’s studies professor Joanne Hershfield. Honors offers study abroad opportunities around the globe, including an internship program in Cape Town, South Africa; a program on Renaissance art and literature in Rome; and a changing roster of Burch seminars. The seminars, also funded by Lucius Burch, enable undergraduates to experience research firsthand by going on semester-long trips designed and led by UNC faculty. Yazdi said study abroad opened his mind as he experienced unique cultures. “I really like meeting people who have different perspectives and participating in how they view the world,” he said. •

Paul Welby

Blake Michael

in Honors make lasting impressions on their and her husband, • The perfect location time at Carolina,” Grauer said. Peter ’80, have Armitage, who Biology professor and chair Steve Matson continued to served as faculty has taught Honors classes since he came to support Honors director of Winston UNC 24 years ago. in Asia through a House in fall ’06, said “Students in Honors courses are ready, fellowship program the European Study willing and able to do the work, and they’re for students that Center is in the perfect continually inquisitive,” Matson said. originally began location. The Honors Program has long been when Peter was “It’s a very recognized by The Fiske Guide to Colleges as head of Jones ABOVE: Chris Armitage (center) teaches valuable asset for “one of the best and most accessible in the Apparel Group. a Shakespeare course in London. Honors,” said Armitage, country.” Honors seminars are available to The program has the Bowman and incoming students invited into the program been renamed to honor Heather’s father, the Gordon Gray Professor of English. “It’s around and others with late William D. Weir. the corner from the British Museum, and most a “B” average on She said Honors’ of the theatres are in walking distance.” a space-available ability to jump-start While Winston House serves Honors in basis. innovation makes it a London, it is also open to the entire University. Heather breeding ground for great James Winston hopes the building will be Boneparth ’80 of ideas. occupied 365 days a year. New York, who “It’s so quintessen“I hope it will constantly be in use, not serves on the tially Carolina,” she said. just by the College but by the University,” Honors advisory “The energy, curiosity and Winston said. “Speaking for past generations, board, came to creativity of the students is we were nurtured at Chapel Hill. It’s a way to Carolina as a like an incubator. Honors tie us to a place that we all feel like we came student because of is the crown jewel in the from, and an effort that makes so much sense ABOVE: Peter Grauer (left) and Jim Leloudis Honors. Boneparth College.” for the future.” • celebrate the opening of Winston House. Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 29

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Dowd Scholarships attract Top Students

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W hen most students talk about going to Amazon, they’re referring to the Web site sometimes used to purchase discounted textbooks. But when junior biology major Claire Thomson, a Dowd Carolina Scholar, mentions the Amazon, she’s talking about the rainforest where she spent a month listening for something that sounds “like hyperventilating ducks.” In summer 2007, she studied ecology and conservation while working with New York University’s Proyecto Primates in the Oriente, a region in eastern Ecuador. Her study measured the population of a species of monkey by tracking the primates’ ducklike calls. The adventurous Thomson almost didn’t come to study in Chapel Hill, much less in Ecuador. The Dowd Carolina Scholarship helped her decide to come to UNC. Awarded to the most academically outstanding students, the Carolina Scholarship provides students with scholarship support, faculty mentoring and special opportunities, including participation in the Honors Program. “I was also considering Washington University in St. Louis, and I was actually there for a scholarship weekend when I received the call about the Dowd scholarship,” said Thomson, who is from Durham, N.C., and also pursuing a minor in creative writing. “I was leaning towards Carolina, but Washington attracted me because of the scholarship it was offering. Getting the Dowd scholarship pushed my decision over the edge, and I knew that Carolina was the best school for me.” Established in 2002 with a $1 million gift from the Dowd Foundation, the Carolina Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences honors Elizabeth “Pepper” Dowd ’53 of Charlotte, N.C., and her dedication and service to the University. It is the largest Carolina Scholarship to be established during Carolina First, funding six new merit scholarships for North 30 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

Carolina students.The first Dowd Scholar, Daniel Reeves, graduated in 2007 with a degree in economics and political science. Dowd has long been involved in the University. She served on the Board of Trustees from 1983 to 1991 (including two years as vice chair), helped to found the Arts and Sciences Foundation and has served on multiple committees during the past 30 years. She has received two of the highest awards given by the University: the William R. Davie Award and the Distinguished Service Medal. Fellow Dowd Carolina Scholar Anna Wyatt of Charlotte says that although both her parents are alumni, she hadn’t strongly considered attending UNC until she learned about the Carolina ABOVE: Dowd Scholar Claire Thomson in the Galapagos Islands Scholars program. Wyatt took advantage of her look at global communities during their scholarship support to join two Carolina time abroad. programs in China. A senior environmental Wyatt was struck by the stark contrast studies major, she spent summer 2007 between the poor and those who have in Beijing, where she studied Chinese recently become wealthy because of urbanization with city and regional China’s rapid expansion.Thomson’s trip planning professors Tom Campanella and taught her about the connections between Yan Song. (See page 18 for a story about economic, environmental and socioanother student’s experience in that program.) political isues in another country. She says She also worked in a startup company that Ecuador and its citizens are faced as part of the Carolina Entrepreneurial with a difficult series of Catch-22s but Initiative.Wyatt and 20 other UNC that her experience there has challenged students lived with Chinese roommates in her to think of ways she can use her the dorms at Capital Normal University. career and her Carolina education to Both Wyatt and Thomson got a fresh make a difference. •

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PHOTO CREDIT?????

Courtesy Herbert Brown Mayo

Student Scholars

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Undergraduate students pursue research thanks to private funds

An economics and finance professor at the College of New Jersey, Mayo created three more undergraduate research funds — each named for family members — in arts and sciences for students ABOVE: Herbert Brown Mayo honored his grandparents interested in Herbert and Amelia Brown, pictured here in the early 1900s, economics, music and aunt Beatrice Brown Pearman, front left, with undergraduate research and art, in addition funds in their names. Also pictured is his aunt Margaret Ellen Brown. to a fund in his mily Rosowski didn’t always know father’s name at Kenan-Flagler Business she wanted to attend graduate school in School. molecular biology. Now, after completing Pukkila said that research can help an undergraduate research fellowship undergraduates learn what it would be and obtaining her bachelor’s degree in like to be a graduate student and research biology, she’s a doctoral candidate at the scholar and perform the work every day. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That is exactly what Nancy Hanes Rosowski ’07 of Arlington, Mass., White ’70 of Raleigh, N.C., wants is one of many Carolina alumni who undergraduates to get from fellowships. test the waters of their chosen field “They’ll experience something and through research. More than half of a lightbulb will go off, and they’ll think, College of Arts and Sciences’ class of ‘I really like this,’ ” said White, who 2007 graduates completed research with her husband in 2003 established efforts, said Pat Pukkila, director of the the Monty and Nancy White Summer Office for Undergraduate Research and Undergraduate Research Fellowship. professor of biology. Private funding for But on Rosowski’s road to biology, undergraduate research — a Carolina she made a stop along the way: a physics lab. First priority — has enabled scores of Though it was still a good experience, students to experience a wide range of Rosowski said she didn’t enjoy it nearly as studies. much as the biology lab. Rosowski, who received the Herbert Pukkila thinks these experiences are and Amelia Brown Undergraduate equally as valuable. She acknowledged Research Fellowship in Botany in that a student might work with a faculty summer 2006, credits her experience for member but then discover that they don’t her decision to pursue a graduate degree. like the research as much as they thought Herbert Brown Mayo ’65 AB of Ringoes, they would, allowing them to try it out N.J., created the fund in 2004 in memory before making a huge commitment. of his grandparents, who immigrated in White echoed Pukkila’s sentiments, the 1890s from England to Richmond, saying that students who find that they Va., and opened a florist shop. don’t like their chosen field can find

out early and switch to something they do like. “Even if you start doing something you don’t like, you’ll learn from it. It’s not wasted,” White said. Andrea Martin ’07, a recipient of White’s fellowship in summer 2006, learned a lot about the process of scientific work during her first independent research experience at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, where she studied the hormonal influence on the calling behavior of the tropical tungara frog. Martin gathered frogs into soundproof boxes and examined their hormone levels and responses to stimuli. “It’s pretty much experience that relates almost directly to work you’d do in the field as a professional biologist,” she said. Another benefit for Martin was that some of the professionals she worked with were scientists whom she had referenced in her work. It is this collaboration that helps bridge the gap between undergraduates and graduate students, who are more commonly expected to complete research. “There is no rule that says an undergraduate can’t have an incredibly important idea,” Pukkila said. And the research community reflects that. “In professional discussion, there is wonderful egalitarianism, so it’s not who you are; it’s what you’re doing now,” Pukkila said. White, whose passion for research was ignited by a botany field trip she took as an undergraduate, thinks young people’s important ideas are especially needed in matters facing society today, such as the environment. “I do think the sooner, the better. The younger, the better. That’s why it’s so important to have undergraduate research.” • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 31

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Fellowship honors couple’s 25-year

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Edevoted arl Baughman and his wife, Barbara, more than 25 years to nurturing

the minds — and stomachs — of Carolina graduate psychology students. From the classroom in Davie Hall to the kitchen in their Chapel Hill home, the Baughmans had a special place in their hearts for these future teachers and scholars. Of all the things he loved most about his life’s work, Earl, a clinical psychology professor at UNC from 1954 to 1981, counted time spent with graduate students at the top of his list, whether on campus or over dinner in his home. Barbara, who also helped Earl by proofreading his books and manuscripts, always made sure there was plenty of home-cooked food for the young scholars. In recognition of their parents’ contributions to Carolina, daughters Elizabeth Florio of Rye, N.Y., and Gretchen Baughman of Chapel Hill, N.C., have established the Earl and Barbara Baughman Graduate Fellowship 32 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

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in Psychology, enhancing a graduate student award fund they created in 1997 with a gift that will make it a fully endowed graduate fellowship. Investment growth, along with the new gift, will result in an initial endowment of more than $350,000. Annual income from the fund will produce at least $17,500 for the fellowship. It will be one of the department’s largest named fellowships and will help bring to Chapel Hill the brightest scholars — the same kind of students that Earl enjoyed teaching for so many years. “Graduate students were always welcome in our home,” recalled Florio.“My parents went beyond knowing them as students to knowing them on a more personal level.” Earl met Barbara when he graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in math and took a position teaching physics at Edwardsville (Ill.) High School while waiting for his military assignment in World War II. She completed her bachelor’s degree at Purdue University, and he continued his education in the Air Force as a meteorologist and then at the University of Chicago, earning a Ph.D. in psychology. The couple celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 2007 and now live in Cary, N.C. Earl and the late Grant Dahlstrom, his co-author and faculty colleague who taught at Carolina for more than 40 years, won the prestigious Ansfield-Wolf Book Award in 1969 for their groundbreaking research on comparative studies of Southern rural children. Earl’s classroom

instruction also won an undergraduate teaching award.The Baughmans will now be recognized with yet another honor — a full graduate fellowship in their name that supports generations of future teachers and scholars.

In recognition of their parents’ contribution to Carolina, daughters Elizabeth Florio of Rye, N.Y., and Gretchen Baughman of Chapel Hill, N.C., have established the Earl and Barbara Baughman Graduate Fellowship in Psychology, enhancing a graduate student award fund they created in 1997 with a gift that will make it a fully endowed graduate fellowship. Bernadette Gray-Little, now provost and executive vice chancellor, was among faculty members influenced by Earl’s generosity. She first met the Baughmans in 1970 when she interviewed for a faculty position in the department. “Earl was very encouraging during that interview and after I accepted the position, he went out of his way to help me develop ideas and materials for a new course that I was assigned to teach,” she said.“I remember him for his graciousness and generosity to me and for the care he took in welcoming other new faculty to the department. He was a true department and University citizen.” •

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Artists are entrepreneurs, too

College offers new course for undergraduates

Isaac Sandlin

new The minor, offered by the course in the department of economics, undergraduate requires four courses, a entrepreneurship prerequisite and a summer program in the internship.A scientific College of Arts and entrepreneurship track for Sciences is showing undergraduates, launched last artists how to year, was co-taught by UNC market their work. alumni Lowry Caudill ’79 The introducand Holden Thorp ’86, dean tory class for a new of the College. Other tracks ABOVE: Communication studies artistic entrepreare in commercial and social professor Francesca Talenti teaches neurship track is entrepreneurship. artistic entrepreneurship. being co-taught Talenti and Kang are definby filmmaker and ing “artistic” broadly for their communication studies professor Francesca undergraduate course, since a lively arts scene Talenti and Emil Kang, executive director for fosters growth in many fields,Talenti said. the arts at UNC.The course is part of the Chris Dias, a junior music major, Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI). enrolled because he wants a career in the The artistic track is offered to students administrative side of running an orchestra, who enroll in the entrepreneurship minor. such as fundraising.“I want to combine my

passion for orchestral music with my leanings toward music management,” he said. Sophomores Tripp Gobble and Al Mask plan to start a nonprofit, University-based record label to produce recordings of student bands.The two hope to take advantage of the artistic entrepreneurship course to take their next steps. UNC was one of eight universities nationwide selected in 2003 for multimilliondollar grants from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Mo., to establish entrepreneurship education across the arts and sciences as well as in business schools. CEI is led by faculty and staff from an array of disciplines. Successful entrepreneurs, many of them UNC alumni, serve as advisers, lending their real-world experience. • — Angela Spivey ’90 — For more information on artistic entrepreneurship, visit www.unc.edu/cei/arts.

Dreams come true P

Steve Exum

at Parker’s in affiliation with UNC, based in dream was to create a public housing community in the Ella Baker Chapel Hill, then to replicate the Women’s Center model nationally. for Leadership “I had the vision, based on and Community the research I’d done, but I didn’t Activism (named have the entrepreneurial skills,” for a prominent said Parker, associate professor of civil rights activist communication studies at UNC from North ABOVE: Pat Parker since 1998.“I had no idea how Carolina) to to put my dream together in foster leadership, self-empowerment and terms of a business plan.” Parker’s research community activism among young women and teaching are in the areas of organizational living in low-income neighborhoods.The leadership; racial, ethnic and gender diversity; center will work to counter the trend of workplace democracy; women’s executive increasing social fragmentation among young leadership communication; and girl’s and people who struggle daily with issues of women’s empowerment. poverty, violence and crime. When she won a competitive Kauffman Parker hopes to create the model center Fellowship, Parker was able to spend time

pursuing her project.The fellowships are funded by the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI).After taking a UNC course “Launching theVenture,” she attended national conferences, and networking led her to a successful model in Maryland for her program. She located community partners, wrote grant applications and started fundraising. She readied the paperwork to apply for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. She then launched a pilot program that she hopes will be the flagship for the Ella Baker Women’s Center. “I’ve learned a lot, both by things that have gone well and things I would do differently,” said Parker, who was also a J.W. Burress III Faculty Fellow in the Institute for the Arts and Humanities in the College. She said the fellowships boosted the energy she will bring to her teaching. • — Nancy Oates

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 33

Carolina First B y

T i n a

F u n d

C o y n e S m i t h

A College FIRST

Margaret Harper made first gift to the College

“T here is so much left to be done at the College, and so many needs that must still be met each year.” With these words, Margaret Taylor Harper made her most recent annual gift to the Arts and Sciences Annual Fund, as she has done every year since the inception of the Arts and Sciences Foundation in 1975. In fact, Harper holds the distinction of having made the very first annual gift of $1,000 to the foundation.

“I can’t give multimillion-dollar gifts, but I know that what I can give joins with the gifts of others to do great things for students and faculty at the College.” — Margaret Harper A 1937 alumna of Greensboro College, Harper holds a lifelong love for UNC-Chapel Hill.“I wanted to go to Chapel Hill, but girls weren’t allowed in when I was coming along.” That stipulation never lessened her love for Carolina and the College of Arts and Sciences. She passionately supports the College, believing that an outstanding liberal arts education is the best foundation for life. Harper describes herself as a volunteer by profession and a pioneer for women. Publisher and owner of The State Port Pilot, a community newspaper in Southport, N.C., she has served journalism, politics, the Methodist church and Carolina. In the ’60s, she was one of the first women to run for statewide office; she ran for lieutanant governor in 1968. She has held numerous leadership positions in a host of service organizations, including secretary-treasurer of the North Carolina Press Association, 34 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

president of the North Carolina Press Women and president of the North Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs. She has been inducted into the N.C. Journalism Hall of Fame. She served on the Research Triangle Institute Board of Governors as well as the UNC Board of Trustees. Walter Royal Davis, a fellow trustee, notes,“Margaret’s one of the best trustees UNC has ever had. She was always there when she was needed and always willing to spend her time and effort to try to improve the University.” As Carolina was gearing up for its first fundraising campaign in the mid-’70s, Harper was surprised to learn that the College of Arts and Sciences ABOVE: Margaret Harper has given a gift to the Arts and Sciences had no formal mechanism Annual Fund every year since its inception in 1975. for fundraising.As a member of the Board of Trustees, she knew that of the Carolina First Campaign.“I can’t private giving was the surest means for the give multimillion-dollar gifts, but I know College to grow.And so she worked with that what I can give joins with the gifts of the College dean and other volunteers to others to do great things for students and create an Arts and Sciences Foundation faculty at the College.” that would be tasked with raising money She is a recipient of the William for the College. She then served tirelessly Richardson Davie Award for service on its board of directors. to the University as well as the GAA Her legacy is enormous.The Arts Distinguished Service Award.And she and Sciences Foundation has come a long leaves another legacy to the University: way from its first fundraising goal of $5 both of her sons, James M. Harper III and million. During the recent Carolina First Edward Taylor Harper, and two of her Campaign, alumni and friends contributed grandchildren graduated from Carolina. more than $387 million to the College of Harper speaks of UNC with warmth Arts and Sciences. Equally as impressive, and enthusiasm. She describes eloquently alumni and friends contributed more than the people and spirit that distinguish this $8 million to the Arts and Sciences Annual University.“I could write a book about Fund, the unrestricted fund that directly the friendships I made at UNC. I found supports students and faculty at the College. that the people I met there became my Harper herself chose to support the family, and I am eternally grateful for my Arts and Sciences Annual Fund, among experiences with the University. I will other campus units, during the course support Carolina as long as I can.” •

Tina CoyneSmith

A n n u a l

Carolina First &

A r t s

S c i e n c e s

F o u n d a t i o n

A History of giving, from 1975 to 2007 B y

• Creation of the Arts and Sciences Foundation, 1975.

On Dec. 3, 1975,Archie K. Davis, William F. Little and Charles M. Shaffer signed the articles of incorporation of the new Arts and Sciences Foundation.The Foundation’s first officers were: Frank Borden Hanes Sr., chair; Elizabeth Dowd, vice chair; James R. Gaskin, president; Wiliam F. Little, vice president; and Charles M. Shaffer, secretary/treasurer. The Foundation postponed formal fundraising efforts until the conclusion of the University’s first capital campaign. Margaret Harper (see story, page 34) became the first of many donors to the Foundation with a gift of $1,000. • Foundations for Excellence, 1984-1986. College goal: $5 million. Gifts and pledges: $22.2 million.

The College’s first capital campaign aimed “to protect and enhance the reputation of the College of Arts and Sciences and its long tradition of excellence.”

The first major gift to the campaign was a $750,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1986, with gifts and pledges from more than 13,000 alumni and friends, the campaign exceeded $22 million.The new funds helped the College endow professorships, boost its technological resources and create new programs. • The Bicentennial Campaign, 1989-1995. College goal: $50 million. Gifts and pledges: $53 million.

This major campaign that honored Carolina’s 200th birthday unveiled a number of new initiatives, including the Carolina Scholars Program, a meritbased scholarship program to encourage undergraduate excellence and attract exceptionally talented students. Donors Student Support continued to respond $72,116,924 to the growing need for 18.63% endowed professorships

J i m

M a g a w

and graduate fellowships in maintaining the University’s national reputation. • Carolina First, 1999-2007. College goal: $350 million. Gift and pledges: $387 million.

The campaign ended as the fifthlargest university fundraising drive among completed campaigns in the history of U.S. higher education.With more than 190,000 donors, including nearly 35,000 giving to the College, Carolina First exceeded its goal and raised more than $2.3 billion. During Carolina First, the Foundation helped the College raise more than $387 million for its top priorities, including faculty recruitment and retention, teaching and research facilities, and student support. •

Faculty Support $154,450,490 39.90%

• Where Carolina First

Unrestricted $8,768,337 • 2.27%

Academic Experience $112,879,219 29.16%

Facilities (capital) $38,902,431 10.05%

Gifts Were Directed in the College of Arts and Sciences. Total: $387,117,404 million.

Carolina First in the College (1999-2007)

Receipts by Category

• Current (expendable) support

$112,148,138................................................................................ 29%

• Endowment funds

$236,066,834................................................................................ 61%

• Capital projects

Total

Total $

Percent

$38,902,432................................................................................ 10% $387,117,404..............................................................................100%

Campaign giving by Source

• Alumni & students

• Non-alumni (also includes faculty, staff, parents)

$43,472,269..............................11.2%...................................... 5,691

• Family foundations

$34,475,044................................ 8.9%........................................... 90

• Foundations & trusts

$60,175,091..............................15.5%........................................... 61

• Estates

$14,255,559................................ 3.7%........................................... 45

• Corporations

$41,022,165..............................10.6%......................................... 535

• Other organizations

$13,068,437................................ 3.4%......................................... 218

Total

’ 8 9

Total $

Percent

No. of Donors

$180,648,839..............................46.7%.................................... 27,866

$387,117,404...............................100%.................................... 34,506

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 35

Carolina First P r o ff e s s o r s h i p s

Carolina First Professorships in the College

Donors created 66 endowed professorships in the College during Carolina First, and greatly enhanced an existing fund, the Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorship. All but two of the 66 professorships benefit from matching funds from the North Carolina Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund. Income from professorships provides critical research funding and salary stipends that enable the College to attract and retain outstanding faculty. An endowed professorship is awarded to teachers and scholars who can help sustain Carolina’s traditional strengths in the liberal arts. Most of the Carolina First professorships for the College were funded at the $1 million level or higher. Includes one anonymous professorship. •

Carolina First Professorships • Dr. & Mrs.William Arey, Jr.

Distinguished Professorship • John P. Barker DistinguishedProfessorship • Edward M. Bernstein Distinguished Professorship • Doris Betts Professorship in Creative Writing • Laszlo Birinyi Sr. Hungarian Culture Professorship 36 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

• George A. Bush Distinguished

• Kenan Eminent Distinguished

Professorship Fund • Mary H. Cain Distinguished Professorship in Art History • Austin H. Carr Distinguished Professorship • Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professorship • Woody Durham Distinguished Professorship • Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat Professorship in Jewish History and Culture • Norman and Dorothy Eliason Distinguished Professorship • Sara and E.J. Evans Distinguished Professorship • Druscilla French Distinguished Professorship in Women’s Studies • David G. Frey Distinguished Professorship in Dramatic Art • David G. Frey Distinguished Professorship in Music • David G. Frey Professorship in American Art • Minnie N. Goldby Distinguished Professorship • Peter Thacher Grauer Distinguished Professorship (4) • Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorship • Katherine Smith Gunter Distinguished Professorship in Exercise and Sport Science • Gussenhoven Distinguished Professorship in Latin American Studies • John Wesley & Anna Hodgin Hanes Professorship • Anthony Harrington Visiting Distinguished Professorship in Latin American Studies • William Burwell Harrison Distinguished Professorship • Mary & Watts Hill Jr. Distinguished Professorship I in Marine Sciences • Michael Hooker Distinguished Professorship in Biology • Leonard & Tobee Kaplan Professorship in Jewish Studies • James G. Kenan Distinguished Professorship (2)

Professor (5) • Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professorship in Peace,War, and Defense • Mary Noel & William M. Lamont Distinguished Professorship in Humanities • Levine-Sklut Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies • J. Burton Linker Distinguished Professorship in Mathematics • Townsend Ludington Distinguished Professorship • Hannah L. and Moses M. Malkin Distinguished Professorship • Mann Family Distinguished Professorship • Colin McMillan Distinguished Professorship in Geological Sciences • Mellon Distinguished Professorship in Medieval and Early Modern Studies • Roy C. Moose Distinguished Professorship in Renaissance Studies • Morehead Visiting Distinguished Professorship • John R. and Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professorship (4) • Phi Delta Theta/Matthew Mason Distinguished Professorship • Michael Piller Distinguished Professorship • Chalmers W. Poston Distinguished Professorship in Modern European History • Edwin Averyt Poston Distinguished Professorship (2) • John Shelton Reed Distinguished Professorship • Sewell Family Distinguished Professorship in Marine Sciences • Stephenson Distinguished Professorship in American Civil War Studies • George B.Tindall Distinguished Professorship • Ruel W.Tyson Jr. Distinguished Professorship • JMA and Sonja Van der Horst Distinguished Professorship in Jewish Studies • Joel R.Williamson Distinguished Professorship

Profile P r o f i l e

Mysteries of the Olmec Ph.D. alum explores first New World civilization By Pamela Babcock

he past six months have been a whirlwind for Amber M. VanDerwarker (PhD, anthropology, ’03). She left a Pennsylvania college professorship and moved to California. She’s now an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and is living her dream of directing her own work and research. In October, Smithsonian magazine profiled VanDerwarker in a feature titled “37 under 36: America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences.” The story highlighted VanDerwarker’s research into the ancient Olmec civilization, which inhabited Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast from 1400 to 400 B.C. Few clues have survived about the Olmec society, which most scholars agree was the first New World civilization. VanDerwarker’s interests lie in ancient diet and understanding people and past activities and “life-ways” — by looking at what people consumed and how they prepared and processed what they ate. Her field work has taken place predominantly in Mexico, Northern Peru, North Carolina and Virginia. The Smithsonian reported: “Unlike her predeccessors … [VanDerwarker] believes that the best way to understand this ancient civilization is to carefully examine the mundane habits of those who lived outside the bustling cities.” “With the exception of a few small studies, no one had ever really looked at the food data (the plants and animals) to even see what people were eating or how they were organizing their subsistence economy,” she said. “I analyzed large data sets and was able to actually formulate a model of subsistence and then consider how the food economy fit into the larger political economy of the earliest Mesoamerican civilization.” VanDerwarker, a native of Newport News, Va., thought she’d be a writer and knew she never wanted a 9-to-5 grind “where someone was looking over me and I was living

in a cubicle.” During her first year ABOVE: Anthropologist Amber VanDerwarker PhD ’03 in college, was featured in Smithsonian magazine. VanDerwarker took a cultural anthropology class and was (zooarchaeology) remains, Scarry said. hooked. “It opened my eyes to the amazing “People usually do one or the other,” she diversity of the way different people live in added. “Amber basically mastered two sets different parts of the world,” she recalled. of skills and wove them together in ways that VanDerwarker received a BA in really set her work apart.” anthropology from the University of Scarry and VanDerwarker collaborated on Oklahoma at Norman in 1996 and chose a paper in which they considered differences Carolina for graduate school because she between menus of everyday household meals said UNC had the best program for studying and larger community events as they relate archaeology of the Southeastern U.S., which to changing group identity among the Sara was her interest at the time. Indians. They examined plant data from the From fall 2004 to spring 2007, Upper Saratown site in the North-Central VanDerwarker was a visiting assistant Piedmont area of North Carolina. professor, then became assistant professor VanDerwarker said a study done for of anthropology at Muhlenberg College in the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife in Allentown, Pa. She was the only archaeologist North Carolina and Virginia is among her at the undergraduate teaching college, but most widely cited research. She assessed the she said the experience helped make her a abundance and distribution of shortnose and better teacher. Atlantic sturgeon at prehistoric archaeological Over the years, VanDerwarker has sites along the Roanoke River. Shortnose received more than a half-dozen grants sturgeon is currently classified as endangered. and fellowships, the most recent a National “The results of that study are significant Science Foundation Research Grant for two because they provide a basis for the Wildlife seasons of fieldwork in Veracruz, Mexico. Service to mitigate the impact of man-made Her book, Farming, Hunting, and Fishing in dams on endangered and threatened species,” the Olmec World, was published by The she said. University of Texas Press, Austin, in 2006. In VanDerwarker openly talks about her the book, VanDerwarker provides solid data “modest” childhood and how hard work can to back up the belief that the Olmec people pay off for people who are passionate about were pursuing a radically different way of life what they do. She’s not the first person in her from the first civilizations in Africa and Asia. family to graduate from college — but she is Margaret C. Scarry, an associate professor the first person to get a doctoral degree. in UNC’s department of anthropology and “I grew up in a single parent home in VanDerwarker’s dissertation director, called a trailer park,” VanDerwarker recalled of her former student “extremely talented and her background. “My mom worked two, dedicated.” sometimes three jobs.” VanDerwarker’s work is unusual because “You can be what you want to be. I do she mastered several analytical techniques believe there are sometimes constraints that within archaeology, including the ability to restrict us. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t study both plant (archaeobotany) and animal paths that can be taken out of poverty.” • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 37

High Achievers H i g h

A c h i e v e r s

Transcendental honor

Carolina professor Philip F. Gura was named a nonfiction finalist for a 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award, one of the most prestigious book honors in the U.S., for “American Transcendentalism: A History” (see page 56). Gura paints an accessible, comprehensive narrative history of the Transcendentalists, America’s best known — and perhaps least understood — public intellectuals and reformers. He sheds new light on old favorites Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, while emphasizing the significant contributions of lesser-known movers and shakers such as Orestes Brownson, Margaret Fuller, Caroline Healey Dall and Theodore Parker. The Washington Post wrote: “There’s nothing perfunctory or dryly academic about ‘American Transcendentalism.’ Gura writes a lean, impassioned prose, chockablock with anecdote and information. Gura underscores how much we remain the descendants of these still too little known thinkers and crusaders.” Gura, the William

Philip Gura

S. Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture, has been teaching at UNC since 1987. He holds appointments in English, American studies and religious studies. •

38 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

Board of Trustees honors four with Davie Award T

he UNC Board of Trustees presented four alumni Joe Hackney Mike Overlock with the William Richardson Davie Award in November, the board’s highest honor. All four have ties to the College: Rep. Joe Hackney of Chapel Hill, N.C.; Mike Overlock of Greenwich, Conn.; Ken Thompson of Charlotte, N.C.; and Patricia Timmons-Goodson of Fayetteville, N.C. The Davie Award recognizes extraordinary service to the University or society. • Hackney, a Chatham Ken Thompson Patricia Timmons-Goodson County native, is serving his 14th term in the N.C. House of Representatives. Hackney earned an undergraduate degree in political science and a law degree. Hackney has served as speaker pro tem, House majority leader and House Democratic leader and was elected speaker of the House in January 2007. He is consistently rated by his peers as one of the 10 most effective legislators. • Overlock earned his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1968. After serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, he earned an MBA from Columbia University in 1973. That year, he joined Goldman, Sachs and Co., where he spent his entire career. Overlock has brought that experience to serve his alma mater as cochair of the Carolina First Campaign, and he previously served on the Arts and Sciences Foundation board of directors. • Thompson is chair, president and chief executive officer of Wachovia Corp. He entered UNC in 1969 as a Morehead Scholar and graduated with a degree in American studies; he later received an MBA from Wake Forest University. Thompson has served UNC in many roles. He was on the class of 1973’s 20-year reunion committee, the Board of Visitors and the Arts and Sciences Foundation board of directors. • Timmons-Goodson is the first African-American woman to serve as an associate justice on the N.C. Supreme Court. In 1998, she was the first African-American woman elected to any state appellate court. Born in Florence, S.C., Timmons-Goodson earned degrees in speech communication and law at UNC, in 1976 and 1979, respectively. •

High Achievers A c h i e v e r s

Oscar winner Louise Fletcher receives PlayMaker Award Oscar winner and College alumna

Louise Fletcher ’57 received the PlayMaker Distinguished Achievement Award at the 20th annual PlayMakers Ball in November. Fletcher joins a distinguished group of past award winners, including actors Jack

ABOVE: Louise Fletcher ’57

Palance, Eva Marie Saint, Faye Dunaway and Hume Cronyn; New York Times critic Frank Rich; costume designer William Ivey Long; director Gene Saks; and Broadway composer and lyricist Richard Adler. Fletcher is perhaps best known for her portrayal of the tyrannical Nurse Ratched in the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” for which she won both the 1975 American and British Academy Awards for Best Actress. She is a graduate of the department of

dramatic art at UNC, and a self-described “Playmaker” who trained with Foster Fitzsimmons and acted in the outdoor drama “Unto These Hills” in Cherokee, N.C. Of her training in Chapel Hill, Fletcher mused, “One of the best lessons I learned was through my experience working as a Playmaker. I dug ditches to lay the cable in the Forest Theatre. I built sets and moved them. I learned how to stage-manage. All these jobs gave me a healthy attitude about the big picture.” Fletcher’s film credits include Robert Altman’s “Thieves Like Us,” Neil Simon’s “The Cheap Detective,” Lewis Teague’s “The Lady in Red,” “Brainstorm,” “The Boy Who Could Fly,” “Nobody’s Fool,” “Two Moon Junction,” “Blue Steel” and “Blind Vision.” “Brainstorm,” filmed in North Carolina in 1981, marked the first time Fletcher returned to the state since graduation. Fletcher recently appeared on the small screen in the CBS drama “Joan of Arcadia,” for which she was nominated for an Emmy for Best Guest Actress on a Drama Series. •

Lifetime achievement in geography

Geographer Stephen J. Walsh received the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG). Walsh, who also is a fellow of the Carolina Population Center, received the award for his contributions to the following: • Advancing the discipline of geography through his research in spatial

digital technologies, population environmentinteractions and physical geography; • Training undergraduate and graduate students in the classroom, lab and field; • Providing leadership to the broader community of geography scholars. Walsh has been teaching at UNC since 1986. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. •

WOWS scholars advance women in science

The College has named its first two fellows in the Working on Women in Science (WOWS) program, a campuswide initiative to foster the advancement of women in science and medicine. The College fellows are Laurie McNeil and Jane Hawkins. McNeil, professor and chair of the department of physics and astronomy, is a condensed matter/materials physicist, specializing in optical spectroscopy of semiconductors and insulators. Hawkins, professor of mathematics, works on the mathematical theory of physical or abstract objects that change over time. She is also working on a mathematical model

Dan Sears

H i g h

ABOVE: Mathematician Jane Hawkins

of the spread of HIV in a lymph node. “I am confident that our first WOWS Scholars will make important contributions to our goal — promoting the professional advancement of women in the sciences,” said Karen Gil, senior associate dean for social sciences in the College. •

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 39

High Achievers H i g h

A c h i e v e r s

Four with College ties win state’s highest civilian honor

She digs teaching archaeology of ancient world

Jodi Magness, a leading expert on the

our leaders with ties to the College won the prestigious North Carolina Award, the highest civilian honor that the state can bestow. They are alumni Jerry Cashion and Jan Davidson, eminent presidential historian William Leuchtenburg and distinguished biologist Darrel Stafford. • Cashion, the N.C. Historical Commission chair, has long been the person to turn to with questions about North Carolina history. In 1958, Cashion enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he received bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in history. His dissertation addressed the Cherokee during the period preceding the American Revolution. As a graduate student, he taught popular courses on North Carolina and United States history. Among his students was future Governor Michael F. Easley, whose friendship he values to this day. • Davidson has been called “North Carolina to the bone.” His contributions to understanding Tar Heel arts and culture are extraordinary. Since 1992 he has served as director of the John C. Campbell Folk School, founded in 1925 at Brasstown in Clay County in the southwestern corner of the state. As a teenager, he was a disc jockey at WCVP in Murphy, N.C. He followed his muse to UNC-Chapel Hill, where at night he played in a rock band called the Southern States Fidelity Choir. In his daytime hours he completed undergraduate studies in English and a master’s degree in folklore. • Leuchtenburg, a UNC history professor emeritus, is the nation’s leading authority on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Leuchtenburg was lured to North Carolina by the National Humanities Center and served for 10 years as a Kenan Professor at UNC before retiring in 1992. The author of more than a dozen books on 20th-century American history, Leuchtenburg is best known for The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932 (1958), widely used in courses, and the prize-winning Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (1963). • Stafford, a biology professor at UNC, has been at the forefront of research into blood coagulation for 15 years. He has made world-class advances in understanding the essential details of how coagulation works and how it can be regulated. “If the genetics revolution had a front line, it would stretch through Stafford’s cramped lab at UNC-Chapel Hill,” noted The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer in 2004. As a consequence of Stafford’s work, doctors can better regulate patients’ treatments, since every patient on blood clotting medications responds differently. •

archaeology of ancient Palestine, including the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, won the Archaeological Institute of America’s Excellence

Jim Haberman

in Undergraduate Teaching Award. Magness, the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism, has led UNC students every summer since 2003 in excavations of a Roman fort dating

Jodi Magness

to ca. 300 A.D. at Yotvata, Israel. Based in the religious studies department, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in early Jewish history, literature, religion and archaeology. Magness’ book, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book for 2003 by Choice magazine and won the 2003 Biblical Archaeology Society’s Award for Best Popular Book in Archaeology. •

Jerry Cashion

Jan Davidson

40 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

William Leuchtenburg

Darrel Stafford

High Achievers H i g h

A c h i e v e r s

Creative writing alum wins national teaching honor Stuart Albright ’01 keeps piling up the teaching honors. The UNC creative writing alum and

Albright, a native of Gastonia, N.C., wrote a book, Blessed Returns, about a summer he spent in 1999 teaching

English teacher at Jordan High School in

inner-city kids in Camden, N.J., after his

Durham, N.C., won a $25,000 national

sophomore year at UNC. He went on to

Milken Family Foundation award. Albright

receive a master’s in education from Harvard

was the state’s only Milken award recipient in

University with a focus on urban education.

2007, and he joined 42 other North Carolina

At Jordan, Albright teaches English and

teachers who have received the honor during

creative writing and coaches junior varsity

the past 12 years. Only 80 awards were given

football. He developed his own publishing

nationally in 2007.

company so he could publish students’ work. In 2006, he was named the Durham Public Schools’ Teacher of the Year. Albright is currently working on a second book, Community of Saints, profiling 10 of the state’s high school football

ABOVE: Stuart Albright ’01 won a national teaching award.

coaches. •

Pukkila recognized for leadership in science education

atricia J. Pukkila, founding director of the nationally recognized Office for Undergraduate Research at UNC, was honored for her innovative leadership in advancing science education by the American Society for Cell Biology. Pukkila, a professor of biology and an expert in fungal genomics, was named the 2007 recipient of the Bruce Alberts Award for Excellence in Science Education. She was chosen for her exceptional contributions to undergraduate science education at the local, state and national levels. Pukkila also was honored for her efforts to make undergraduate research a key part of UNC’s Quality Enhancement Plan for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools reaccreditation. In 2001, Pukkila focused her educational efforts on both students and legislators. She initiated biannual, multicampus undergraduate research symposia for the North Carolina state legislature. The ongoing symposia enable students to convey their excitement and the importance of their original work to elected officials. •

Two Faculty win Fulbrights

nthropologist Arturo Escobar and chemist Malcolm D.E. Forbes were tapped as Fulbright Scholars. The Fulbright Program, America’s flagship international educational exchange program, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Recipients are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. Escobar, a Kenan Distinguished Professor, was awarded a Fulbright to research and lecture at the National University of San Martin in Buenos Aires. He will focus on alternative development in Latin America and assess recent transformations in development there. Escobar joined the UNC faculty in 2003. He has received awards from the Rockefeller Arturo Foundation and the John Escobar Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Forbes will conduct research at the International Tomography Center in Novosibirsk, Russia, and will live and work in Siberia for eight months. While in Russia, Forbes will carry out research on free radical Patricia J. Pukkila interactions involved in the degradation of pharmaceutical compounds in the environment, lecture on reaction mechanisms at Novosibirsk State University and write a textbook with Russian colleagues on the field of “spin chemistry.” Forbes has been at UNC since 1990. •

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 41

2.5”7”1”3.5”8”4”6.25”8 8”4”6.25”5”3”2.5”7”1” 1”3.5”8”4”6.25”8”4”6.2 6.25”5”3”2.5”7”1”3.5”8 2.5”7”1”3.5”8”4”6.25”8 8”4”6.25”5”3”2.5”7”1” 1”3.5”8”4”6.25”8”4”6.2

42 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

B y B ecky O skin

8”4”6.25”5”3” ”3.5”8”4”6.25” 25”5”3”2.5”7” 8”4”6.25”8”4” 8”4”6.25”5”3” ”3.5”8”4”6.25” 25”5”3”2.5”7”

The Heat Is On Exploring the relationship between climate change and drought

ntil 2007, most people in

North Carolina could safely ignore global warming. Dire predictions of a coming catastrophe had little impact on their daily lives. Climate change was something that happened to polar bears. Then it stopped raining. The state’s worst drought on record struck last summer, the driest and hottest since 1895. Suddenly, climate change was here, at home, on the front pages of local newspapers and leading the evening news. Everyone from rural farmers to urban condo dwellers shared the burden of water restrictions. Many wondered: Did global warming cause this drought? Ask a scientist (and they’ve been asked this question a lot this year) and

A tree stump rises from the dry lake bottom of Falls Lake, the main water source for Raleigh, N.C. Jeremy M. Lange/ AtlasPress

the best answer you’ll get is “Maybe.” continued Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 43

the knowledge of the impacts of climate change,” said Robinson, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southeastern Regional Climate Center, based at UNC. But that uncertainty won’t last. College faculty and students are delving into the intricacies of our local climate, from mountains to coast.The research will bring new insight into the most basic weather processes, and help illuminate the intricate feedback loop between short-term weather and long-term climate change. It took 30 years for scientists to reach consensus on global warming. In 30 more, we are likely to know what warming means for Chapel Hill.

Dan Sears

“You can never take one weather event and say it’s global climate change,” said Larry Band, the Voit Gilmore Distinguished Professor and chair of geography and an expert on local watersheds.“But we’ve recently seen the largest floods to the largest droughts on record, all within a few years. It may be a good analogy for the type of variability we will see in the future.” As geography professor Peter Robinson explains, it’s relatively easy to predict temperature — on that, forecasters are commonly right. But foretelling storms, droughts and floods on a local or even a regional scale requires complicated, often chaotic computer models and an intimate

ABOVE: UNC geographer Larry Band says the outlook is grim for recovery from the drought by May.

knowledge of the interplay between air, soil, trees, plants, streams, lakes and human activity. Right now, the models simply aren’t good enough for anyone to say with certainty that this drought is due to global warming. Consequently, though global climate models agree that North Carolina is in for some wild and woolly weather in the next 30 years, there’s widespread disagreement on the amount of rainfall we should expect. “It has been clear for a long while that the science, the hard science associated with climate change, has been far in advance of 44 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

•

Rain, rain come again

Even though Band is reluctant to pin this year’s drought on global warming, he can address another pressing question: When will it end? In 2002, during the last severe drought, Duke Energy asked Band to calculate the probability of future droughts. When water supplies are low, as during 2002 and 2007, Duke Energy must cut back its power production for lack of cooling water, usually during peak summer demand.

That initial project blossomed into a sophisticated computer model for predicting drought, one that strives to incorporate every bit of input and output in two North Carolina watersheds, the Flat River, the main source of Durham’s water supply, and the rapidly developing Little Tennessee River near Franklin. While the Little Tennessee is not currently as heavily used as the Flat, it is a good example of a high quality ecosystem threatened by rapid development. “Our hydrologic models include integrated descriptions of ecosystems,” said Band.The model goes far beyond water in (rainfall) and water out (stream flow). Here are just a few of the processes Band and his students must consider: Plant transpiration and evaporation, affecting both humidity and stream flow. Drought causes trees to drop their leaves, thinning out the forest canopy, which reduces the forest’s demand for water. This way, the ecosystem has the capacity to regulate its water use in dry times. In contrast, in our “human ecosystems,” we tend to increase our water use in dry times by increased irrigation of lawns. Even if we do not use water from central water supplies, heavy use of individual wells lowers groundwater levels, impacting streams, lakes and rivers, Band said. The 2007 drought proved an excellent test case for Band’s ability to forecast a parched future. Every day, the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) pulls down data on temperature, rainfall, stream flow, vegetation cover and other meteorological measurements from weather satellites and government agencies such as the National Weather Service. (RENCI’s parallel processors have the power to run Band’s watershed simulations. RENCI is a collaborative venture of UNC, Duke University, N.C. State University and the state of North Carolina.) These daily data streams provide a reality check for the interdisciplinary research team, allowing them to better refine their model. According to Band, the outlook is grim for recovery from the drought by

Containing Carbon M icrobes living in the ocean and sea event known as the Paleocene-Eocene floor muck play a mixed role in global thermal maximum, 55 million years ago,

May.“We need well more than normal precipitation to bring us out of drought,” Band said.“But even a normal year won’t bring us back.” Regional changes in weather patterns could be part of the problem. Band’s colleague Chip Konrad, associate professor of geography and an expert on hurricanes and tropical storms, has also become interested in drought.There were a number of busted precipitation forecasts in the fall, said Konrad.“If we’re really going to get significant rain, we need to import a lot of moisture from the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico,” Konrad explains. But this year, thunderstorms to the south appear to have robbed us of our rain.“We have a hypothesis that the circulation set up to bring moisture in [to North Carolina] gets interrupted and cut off by storms, perpetuating the drought,” he said.

microbe’s a fairly recent discovery, but it’s a kind of capstone in really understanding the microbial carbon cycle,” he said. is the poster child for methane hydrate Brent McKee,Watts Hill dissociation and climate warming,” said Distinguished Professor of Marine Meyers. The microbes that make and consume Sciences, also looks at the processes that methane fascinate Andreas Teske, a microbi- influence whether global warming gases are trapped in sediments. But instead ologist and professor of marine sciences. of analyzing microbes, McKee travels “The sediments stink like a gas to the world’s largest rivers, such as the station,” said Teske of the mud he brings Mississippi and Amazon, tracking carbon. up from the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf “There’s really one major natural of California, a model site for the study way to sequester atmospheric carbon, and of the microbial methane cycle. Research has shown that a consortium of methane- that is burial of sediments,” said McKee. consuming and sulfate-respiring microbes “About 80 to 90 percent of that takes place at major rivers.” keeps the gases trapped in the mud. “The

Dan Sears

warming. Not only do these microscopic critters help remove excess carbon from the atmosphere, potentially slowing global warming, some also produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. By studying both the microbes and the chemical record they leave behind, researchers throughout the College hope to better understand the fundamental processes that control the global carbon cycle. “There are intricate linkages between microbes, the carbon cycle and climate,” said Steve Meyers, assistant professor of geochemistry. Meyers’ research focuses on past and present deep sea deposits.With graduate student Wes Ingram, Meyers is examining methane hydrates in the Gulf of Mexico. Methane hydrates are frozen reservoirs of methane gas, and if they warm enough to melt, the released gas could send global temperatures skyrocketing. “An

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ABOVE: Marine scientist Brent McKee studies carbon trapped in sediments in some of the world’s largest rivers. •

Continuing to conserve

While the current drought will eventually end, the Triangle remains particularly vulnerable because it lacks large rivers, which are more resistant to drought. That’s frustrating news for homeowners facing desiccated lawns and government officials dealing with shrinking water supplies. It’s hard to believe that a region that averages more than three feet of rain a year may run out of water. Indeed, after the 2002 drought, very few cities and individuals continued to

conserve water, a pattern that was already repeating itself by December 2007, according to Triangle utility directors. (Cary, N.C., is an exception — they’ve practiced water conservation for years.) But until North Carolina wises up about its water use, experts say the hazard of drought won’t go away.The region’s rapid growth means more people using more water, even though rain will be in shorter and shorter supply, said Robinson. Robinson refuses to blame the current continued

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 45

BELOW: Geochemistry professor Donna Surge examines clues to climate change in fossilized clam shells found in the Atlantic.

Better predictions •

Improving current climate models and rainfall predictions is the goal of Richard Smith, the Mark L. Reed III Distinguished Professor of Statistics.“We are trying to find better ways for looking at climate

Climate and Clams “T he present is the key to the past” analogs for future global warming. is one of the guiding principles of The shells record the ocean’s geology. But for scientists interested in climate change, the past may hold the key to predicting the future.With techniques that reveal temperature and rainfall patterns 1,500 or 15 million years ago, UNC geologists hope to better understand how our local climate behaves when the Earth’s climate shifts. For assistant geochemistry professor Donna Surge, the clues to climate change lie in fossilized clam shells and archaeological limpets that cling to the Atlantic’s rocky shores. Her research focuses on recent warm and cold periods, including two climate shifts identified by the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as our best

46 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

Energy Department estimates oil will average $85 a barrel in 2008. “We should invest more now in energy and water-saving devices, methods and lifestyles. You don’t have to be sure of the temperature 50 years from now to do that,” said Band.

PHOTO CREDIT????

water shortage entirely on global warming. “The development of irrigation, both agricultural and in our suburban areas, is probably having a bigger impact than climate change,” he said.“To quote Pogo, the problem is us.” However, without specific rainfall projections, it may be difficult to convince people to change their lifestyle. Yet even though there’s not enough evidence to make specific, local predictions about the effects of global warming, there is widespread agreement among scientists that we should already be preparing for future changes. In classes, Band often uses the example of Southwest Airlines’ aggressive fuel hedging program, which allowed the company to profit as oil prices soared. Southwest locked in lower fuel costs years earlier, and has secured at least 25 percent of its fuel at $35 a barrel through 2009, according to news reports.The U.S.

chemistry, which changes with temperature and salinity (a proxy for local rainfall). Fossils collected by Surge and graduate student Ann Goewert along the shores of Chesapeake Bay indicate that Delaware was a tropical paradise (from a clam’s perspective) during the midMiocene, about 15 million years ago. And during a younger warm period in the Pliocene, about 3 million years ago, the boundary between cold and warm ocean currents shifted northward to Delaware’s coast (today the boundary is at Cape Hatteras). Surge is also interested in what happened in North America during Europe’s historic climate shifts, such as the

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Roman and Medieval Warm Periods and the Little Ice Age.Working with natural history and archaeological museums in Virginia, Florida and Britain, Surge is piecing together the past from trash heaps — shell middens left behind by Florida’s pre-European Native Americans, as well as Viking communities in the Orkney Islands north of Scotland. Surge’s collaborators in Florida include archaeologists studying how preEuropean Native Americans responded to climate shifts. “I’m really interested in how humans respond to climate change,” said Surge. “I try to target near-shore coastal environments because so much of our population lives along coastlines. They are going to be important as climate changes and sea level rises.”

Students Focus on Global Warming extremes,” Smith told an audience at the B y B ecky O skin American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in December. Smith’s interest in extreme value n Jan. 31, faculty at more than 1,000 campuses across the country theory, a statistical method for examining participated in a global “teach-in” called Focus the Nation, a grassroots values above a certain threshold, led him movement organized by college students to raise awareness of global warming. to explore climate change and its effects The students asked professors teaching on that day to discuss global on precipitation and environmental warming during class, whether English, economics or chemistry. Senior Jessilyn pollutants such as sulfur. Kemp, who led the UNC student effort, said the group signed up 80 faculty When applied to 30 years of across campus. precipitation data (from 1970 to 1999), Kemp, a sociology major who grew up in Toast, N.C., has been involved Smith’s method produces a patchy U.S. in campus environmental affairs since her sophomore year. “Once I started map, with more extreme weather events in learning about how complex an issue this is, I couldn’t turn away,” she said. only some states and regions.“This gives Kemp’s honors thesis explores the environmental attitudes, actions and beliefs you more detailed spatial information,” of North Carolina residents. said Smith. He also tested climate Many departments in the College already offer classes dedicated to predictions from the National Center for exploring global warming and climate change. Marc Alperin, an assistant Atmospheric Research’s (NCAR) best professor in marine sciences and faculty advisor for Focus the Nation, teaches a climate model. Smith found that NCAR’s First Year Seminar called “Global Warming: Serious Threat or Hot Air?” model didn’t match “I use climate change science as the observed rainfall a tool for teaching students about how patterns for the past the earth works, but I’m also really three decades, a interested in having them examine caveat that highlights how the media portray the whole the difficulty of issue of climate change,” said Alperin. making regional “I have them looking at whether the rainfall predictions. media are accurately presenting the However, Smith science in a balanced way.” notes that overall, his approach and previously published models agree that there will be a much sharper rise level rise and severe tropical storms will in extreme rainfall also cause more flooding. events in the next Brent McKee, the Mary and century. Watts Hill Jr. Distinguished Professor The projections and chair of marine sciences, recently are another reminder began projects to examine how North that climate change Carolina’s coastal marshes and rivers will be different will respond to sea level rise.“Our across the U.S., even hypothesis is that with rivers, we don’t within states. gradually lose ground to sea level, we In fact, the same make dramatic jumps at tributaries,” said computer models McKee. But the research is complicated that prophesy a by human impacts in the form of dams parched Piedmont and reservoirs, which trap sediment that also foresee more would normally replenish coastal river floods in western deltas.“Man’s influence has changed the North Carolina. system enough that it may not act as Along the coast, the we see in the geologic record, and that’s ABOVE: For an updated map, visit combination of sea part of the learning curve,” he said. • http://www.ncwater.org/Drought_Monitoring/.

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 47

A New Day

Joe Haj is writing a fresh script for PlayMakers

arts, and whether people came to the theatre or not was sort of incidental, he said. “The guiding principle was:‘Our job is to make the art. Your job is to come and enjoy it — or not — and get the hell out of the building so we can go on to our next play,’” Haj said.“The only way to have a theatre that is relevant today, that matters today, is to make clear to a community that the theatre belongs to them and that we will meet them halfway. “The moment we ask them to come in and admire our art and go home, we’re dead.”

Steve Exum

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From Gaza to a California prison

Haj is fervent about this idea of “tethering the theatre” to a community. It’s something ince becoming producing just tireless,” she added.“I’ve been here a long he’s been committed to for a long time, well artistic director of PlayMakers Repertory time, but when Joe walks in the building, you before coming back to Chapel Hill to direct Company in July 2006, Joe Haj ’88 has been get a second wind.You’re reminded of why the company he once acted in as a graduate equally passionate about what’s happening you got into this business to begin with.” student in 1985-88. on stage and off stage. In just 10 months on the job — and In 1991, Haj and renowned theatre In his early days on the job, he met Haj gives the community credit for this directors JoAnne Akalaitis,Anne Bogart and with theatre patrons Bonnie and Tony — he was able to retire an accumulated Robert Woodruff conducted workshops with Armor, who shared with him the idea of $500,000 deficit and end the 2006-2007 Palestinian and Israeli actors in the West Bank taking PlayMakers into the community. season with a $145,000 surplus.The William and Gaza. Haj is a first-generation PalestinianArtists were invited to spend time in R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust also gave American, who grew up in Miami. neighborhood homes talking about the PlayMakers $250,000 to support its artistic Bogart, artistic director of SITI mission of the professional theatre, based in and educational programs. Company in NewYork City and a twoUNC’s department of dramatic art. Haj called about 80 lapsed season ticket time Obie Award winner, calls Haj “an acute It was at one of those “house parties” holders and spoke to about 30 of them about listener, a risk-taker, a humanitarian and an that dramatic art chair and designer McKay why they did not renew their subscriptions. artist all rolled into one great package.” Coble realized Haj wasn’t shy about telling “Their one common theme was that In 1997, he won a California Arts the community what the theatre needed going to the theatre felt a little bit like taking Council grant to direct Shakespeare’s “Henry from them — including their ongoing their medicine, that it was relentless, that it V” with maximum-security inmates serving financial support. was too hard all the time,” Haj said.“They 35 years to life in a prison in the Mojave “Joe said, ‘We need your help,’ and he felt like they were getting lectured to.” Desert. It was actually the first full-length play told the whole story,” said Coble (’79 AB To survive today, theatres cannot conhe ever directed. ’81 MFA). “And as a consequence, people tinue to operate from what Haj calls a 1970s “It was an amazing, extraordinary were drawn to that.” paradigm.At that time, there was significant experience,” Haj said.“In 20 years of working “He’s committed to the theatre, and he’s government and corporate support of the on Shakespeare, I learned more about Joe Haj ’88 is passionate about making theatre relevant for today’s busy audiences.

48 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

Shakespeare from those guys.What those inmates did was almost mind-boggling — to go from that first day of rehearsal where all the white guys sat in one corner, all the black men in another and the Latinos in a third — to making a theatre piece where everybody was required to collaborate, to work hard together now for something that paid off later.” One of the inmates, who is now out of prison and working as a production assistant on a major Hollywood television show, searched out Haj and phoned to tell him that the experience of performing “HenryV” saved his life.

‘A cultural watering hole’ Local media personality and theatre supporter D.G. Martin, who has had Haj on his WCHL (Chapel Hill) radio show numerous times, says he is forging real alliances with people in the area. “When Joe says,‘I want to talk to you about a partnership,’ people know it won’t be perfunctory. … Joe is always turning an ear toward the audience.That’s a great gift for this community.” When Haj arrived in Chapel Hill, he felt the theatre was “dark” too many nights of the year. In the 2007-2008 season, PlayMakers’ 32nd season and his first to select as the new director, Haj added a sixth play to the main stage season in the Paul Green Theatre, shortening the run of the plays from four weeks to three. He started a new second stage series called PRC² in the smaller Elizabeth Price Kenan Theatre, where PlayMakers could offer works that wrestle with some of the difficult, challenging issues of our time. He created a new arts conservatory last summer with The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, and offered 43 young people the opportunity to participate in a five-week training program under the guidance of theatre professionals.The program culminated with a production of “Oliver” in three sold-out performances. “The Center for Dramatic Art is a great building,” Haj said.“I wanted it to be busy. I wanted it to feel like a cultural watering

hole. … I feel like we can make the hardest dramatic work as long as people feel that what we are doing is relevant to their lives.” Haj wrote in a letter to theatre-goers in the company’s season brochure:“In our on-demand world of TiVo, NetFlix, Internet home pages and iPods, when we control more narrowly than ever before what part of the world we let in, theatre remains a place for us to see the world from another’s point of view.” Haj took those words to heart with the first play of the new PRC² series last September,“When the Bulbul Stopped Singing.” Haj starred in the one-man show, which tells the true story of Palestinian human rights lawyer and writer Raja Shehadeh, who kept a diary while confined to his home during the Israeli Army’s siege of Ramallah in 2002. When the company announced it was doing the play, there was a barrage of e-mails and phone calls — not all of them positive, some of them berating PlayMakers for choosing such a one-sided play. But Haj took the theatre experience with “Bulbul” beyond that old 1970s paradigm by adding post-show panel discussions after every performance with experts on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian debate. Nightly post-show talks have become a staple of the new series. David Friedlander, a third-year dramatic art graduate student, said he values the bold move Haj took in choosing and starring in “Bulbul.” “He put himself out there in a role that was very demanding. I think some people would view that as a risky move for an artistic director, but it speaks volumes to the kind of person Joe Haj is,” Friedlander said. Haj said he left the “Bulbul” post-show discussions, which were attended by 100 to 150 people each night in the 200-seat theatre, having learned something new each time. “The beauty of theatre is that we can drop into someone else’s worldview, somebody else’s narrative,” he said. “We are in a world where there are

fewer and fewer places where people with really different, opposing points of view can sit in a room and have a respectful conversation with one another, and if we can provide that place a couple of times a year, that strikes me as a very good thing.”

Expanding the audience PlayMakers’ marketing materials are emblazoned with the words “A New Day.” And it feels that way to Coble, the dramatic art department chair and designer. “It feels very right,” she said.“We’re doing more work than we’ve ever done before, but everybody’s behind it. It’s constantly energizing.We work very hard, and it’s so worth it.” Dramatic art alum Mike Wiley ’04 will close the season’s PRC² series April 23-27 with a newly commissioned work,“Witness to an Execution,” based on a series of candid interviews with inmates on Texas’ death row.And Coble, Haj and Ray Dooley, head of the Professional Actor Training Program and a longtime audience favorite, will team together for the fourth time as PlayMakers closes the mainstage series April 2-20 with Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus.” Coble will design the sets, Haj will direct and Dooley will portray court composer Salieri, Mozart’s nemesis. These days, PlayMakers is experiencing a 9 percent upswing in season subscribers, and an 18 percent increase in individual ticket sales. Haj is happy with the numbers, but he believes PlayMakers has to continue to reach out to a younger audience to help them understand the joys of belonging to a theatre. It’s why the summer arts conservatory that produced “Oliver” was so “crazy successful,” he said. “We have to get younger people involved in the theatre earlier so that it becomes part of a life aesthetic,” Haj said. “Opera, symphony, dance — they’re all battling the same question, and they all wait too long. If we don’t inculcate an idea of what the theatre can be to them when they are young, then they are lost to us.” • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 49

FEATURE: PLAYMAKERS

‘ArtisticHome’

Ray Dooley has been calling PlayMakers home for 19 years

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Jon Gardiner

Ray Dooley as Cyrano de Bergerac, one of his most challenging roles.

One reason PlayMakers producing artistic director Joe Haj ’88 wanted to direct “Amadeus” is because he had the perfect actor in mind to play court composer Salieri — longtime company member Ray Dooley. But Haj takes that compliment one step further. “If I were starting a theatre company anywhere in this country, Ray would be the first actor I’d call to join the company,” Haj said. PlayMakers audiences have come to know and love Dooley in his 19 years with the company.There’s a reason why The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer once featured him in a story called “Man of a Thousand Faces.” He has appeared in more than 40 productions, in memorable roles such as Cyrano in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” Sassoon in “Not About Heroes,”Astrov in “Uncle Vanya,”Arnolphe in “The School for Wives” and the Fool in “King Lear.” Dooley played Salieri once before, in the spring of 1985 at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. He looks forward to revisiting the role with a fresh eye on April 2-20 at PlayMakers. “It’s a challenging role, and one of the challenges is its length,” said Dooley, who in December began diving into the script and learning his lines.“As I’m entering my 30th year as a professional, I really seek to be challenged as much as possible. Like an 50 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

old prize fighter, I want to climb back in the ring one more time and really use everything I know.” Dooley started out as an actor with the company, then later became a professor of dramatic art. He chaired the department from 1999 to 2005 and today heads the Professional Actor Training Program for graduate students. One of the great surprises over the years, he said, was how much he has come to love both teaching and administrative work. And then there’s that other thing — the joy of getting to sleep in his own bed at night. “For the first 12 years of my career, I was usually traveling to some city other than New York, where I was based. I would be away from home probably eight months of the year,” he said.“Today, my wife and I and our big dog have a little house, and that, for a professional actor, is a rare and precious gift.” “I like to joke that I have the best job in the country in my field.And I’m hoping nobody notices and tells me that I have to stop doing it.” Dooley has taken time off from PlayMakers a number of times over the years. In 1994, he took an unpaid year off to travel through six cities to find work. “I wanted to be sure I could still earn my living in the field as a professional. My wife and I put our stuff in storage, got in the truck, and if I didn’t get work, we didn’t have

a place to live,” he said. Then in 2006, he took a 10week leave to portray Father Flynn in the European premiere of the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play “Doubt” at the English Theatre in Vienna,Austria. But for the most part, Dooley has been very content to call Chapel Hill his “artistic home.” “Really one of the great joys of living here is when somebody comes up to you on the street, in the supermarket or dry cleaner’s and has a comment about the show. It’s like people can point out and say, ‘Oh, there’s my car mechanic,’ ‘There’s my son’s teacher,’ ‘There’s my actor.’” •

ooley’s Scrapbook: Memorable PlayMakers Moments • Most challenging roles: Ganesha in “A Perfect Ganesh,” Cyrano in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” the Fool in “King Lear” • Best example of “the show must go on”: “The day I caught on fire as Ganesha. I was carrying candles and I knelt down, and my wig caught on fire. I managed to get off into the wings, put out the fire and go back on.” • One-sentence advice for graduate students: “The same I got the first day of my graduate acting class in 1975:‘If you can be happy doing anything else, go do it.’ Because the challenges are extraordinary.” • Most outlandish costume: The Fool in “King Lear.”“It included two gas masks worn sideways on my head so that when I turned my head the rubber hoses with metal flanges on the ends would hit me in the nose or teeth, and I was also wearing a straitjacket with holes cut at the elbows.Then there were the woolen leggings that got soaked with water every night.” • Most physically demanding roles: “Cyrano because of the physical stamina of the sword fighting, and the Fool in ‘King Lear’ because I dragged a large metal wagon behind me for the entire show, and the set was very difficult to navigate.”

Highlights H i g h l i g h t s

A New Use for Old Bridges and Dams

housands of obsolete dams, bridges and abandoned roadways in America’s aging and crumbling infrastructure could still be valuable — to the environment, according to a policy forum paper in a January 2008 issue of Science by UNC geographer Martin Doyle and colleagues. Doyle and researchers from other universities and nonprofit organizations propose that some of this aging infrastructure could be viewed as assets rather than liabilities. “There are ways to combine the decommissioning of some of our infrastructure with ecosystem restoration that would result in multiple benefits,” said Doyle, the director of the Center for Landscape Change and Health at UNC’s Institute for the Environment. For example, more than 1,200 dams in North Carolina alone are “functionally obsolete,” Doyle said. Many of them pose significant safety hazards and require constant inspections and repairs even if they no longer produce benefits. In addition to dam removal, Doyle and his colleagues also reviewed the environmental benefits of decommissioning offshore oil platforms, military installations, forest roads and levees. While in its infancy, infrastructure decommissioning holds great promise Martin Doyle for large-scale environmental restoration, Doyle said. •

Entwisle to direct National Children’s Study center

s one of 22 institutions chosen by the National Institutes of Health as a National Children’s Study Center, UNC will participate in the largest ever measure of the effects of environmental, social, biological and behavioral factors on child health. Barbara Entwisle, Kenan Professor of Sociology and director of UNC’s Carolina Population Center, will direct the project, for which the University will receive $15.4 million over the next five years. The study will involve more than 26,000 children around the country. “This project is great news for North Carolina,” said Entwisle. “The study will provide a direct benefit to the children of our state.” UNC will focus its work on Rockingham County. The study will begin enrolling pregnant women in the summer of 2009. The goal is to follow children through age 21. Obesity, heart disease, asthma and autism are some of the diseases and disorders the researchers hope to learn more about. They will collect information from families about their health, their activities and their neighborhoods. They will also measure air and water quality at home and in schools, and collect various biological samples. •

Barbara Entwisle

Roberto Quercia

Working families don’t miss payday lending

orth Carolinians have not missed those high-interest “payday lending” services since they shut down last year, according to a UNC study released in November 2007 by the N.C. Office of the Commissioner of Banks. UNC’s Center for Community Capital conducted the study, which examined how low- and moderate-income households have managed financial hardships since payday lending ended in the state, and their attitudes toward the available options to manage those hardships. The Center is directed by Roberto G. Quercia, a professor of city and regional planning. Three-quarters of low- and middle-income people were unaffected by the ban on payday lending, according to the survey. Of those who were affected, more than twice as many reported that the absence of payday lenders had a positive impact on their lives, according to the study. The study found that most households used three or more options to get through a financial emergency, including paying bills late, using savings, borrowing from family and friends and getting advances on a credit card. In 2001, North Carolina became the first state to close down the payday lending industry when the General Assembly allowed the expiration of 1997 legislation authorizing the practice. Center researchers concluded that the absence of payday lending has had no significant negative impact on credit availability for North Carolina consumers. • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 51

Highlights H i g h l i g h t s

Four scholars from the College were among UNC professors selected for the first class of Faculty Engaged Scholars. Scholars will learn how to connect their faculty work with the needs of a community and apply their skills to make a difference. For example, Gary Bishop, professor of computer science, will use software and technology to enhance education and Gary Bishop

computer access

Understanding addiction People with clinical addictions

know firsthand the ravages the disease can take on almost every aspect of their lives. So why do they continue addictive behaviors, even after a period of peaceable abstinence? Some answers appear rooted in regions of the brain active during ABOVE: Charlotte Boettiger studies addictive behaviors. decision making. “It’s perhaps not just that people are slaves to pleasure, but that they have trouble thinking through a decision,” said Charlotte Boettiger, an assistant professor of psychology and lead author of a study in the December 2007 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience that took a novel tack in addiction imaging research. “Our data suggest there may be a cognitive difference in people with addictions,” Boettiger said. “Their brains may not fully process the long-term consequences of their choices.” The study also found that a variant of the gene that controls the level of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the cortex was associated with a tendency to make impulsive decisions and with high activity in certain brain areas during decision making. “We have a lot to learn,” Boettiger said. But the data take a significant step toward being able to identify subtypes of alcoholics, which could help tailor treatments, and may help people who are at risk for developing addictions and provide earlier intervention. • Dan Sears

for people with disabilities. Dorothy Holland, professor of anthropology, will assess health and economic development benefits of rebuilding local food systems in northeastern, southeastern and Appalachian North Carolina. Mai Nguyen, assistant professor of city and regional planning, will help revitalize a predominantly low-income African-American neighborhood in Durham, N.C. And Michael Waltman, associate professor of communication studies, will help promote tolerance and respect for social differences via a Web site focusing on education and communication. • 52 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

Bye-bye Venable (1925-2008)

Demolition ofVenable Hall, which housed the departments of chemistry and marine sciences during

its 83-year-history, began in January.The building was named for Francis Preston Venable, professor of chemistry and University president from 1900 to 1914.Two new buildings, scheduled to be completed around 2010 as part of the Carolina Physical Science Complex, will replace Venable.

Dan Sears

College faculty named ‘engaged scholars’

Highlights H i g h l i g h t s

High-tech football helmets reveal info about head injuries Is there a limit to the amount

Dan Sears

of impact a football player’s head can handle before the player suffers a concussion? High-tech helmets worn by some UNC football players over the 2004-2006 seasons yielded new information that challenges conventional theories about mild traumatic brain injuries. The UNC study shows that hits, and heads, are as individual as the players themselves, and researchers advise against establishing a one-sizefits-all rule for evaluating concussions. “People see massive hits and think, ‘That’s the one!’ and ignore more trivial blows,” said Kevin Guskiewicz, senior author on the papers and chair of the department of exercise and sport science in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Now we

ABOVE: Kevin Guskiewicz displays high-tech football helmets used in study.

know that these trivial hits may be just as serious as the harder ones.” This new data could lead to better guidelines for evaluating head injuries and deciding a player’s playing status, Guskiewicz said. It might also lead to a better understanding of brain injuries from

other trauma, or perhaps of diseases such as mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s, which have been linked to recurrent concussions in professional players. Using special accelerometers embedded in helmets, researchers were able to measure in real time the amount of g-force players’ heads experienced at impact, where on the head the players were hit and the directional force of the hits — linear (straight) or rotational (twisted). The UNC studies showed that some players suffered concussions at little more than 60g, while others sustained hits creating more than 90g and showed no signs of concussions; less than .35 percent (only one-third of one percent) of impacts greater than 80g resulted in concussions. •

Marine scientists teach under water

Physical Science Complex. The Morehead City class took place at UNC’s Institute of Marine wo UNC marine scientists working Sciences. and living undersea continuously for nine Students watching the days in the Florida Keys broadcast live broadcasts observed their lessons about coral reef life and climate professors swimming outside change to their N.C. classrooms in Chapel in the open sea, where they Hill and Morehead City in September. explored fish, corals, urchins and Christopher S. Martens and Niels other natural life on the reef. Lindquist were among six aquanauts Martens and Lindquist discussed working out of the National Oceanographic their findings and answered and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) questions that students typed in Aquarius Underwater Habitat, the world’s via the Internet. only undersea scientific laboratory. Martens, the William B. They explored the open sea and along Aycock Distinguished Professor the reef while living inside the facility, of Marine Sciences, researches submerged 60 feet below the ocean on a how organisms change the chemical sand patch in the Florida Keys National composition of seawater and sediments Marine Sanctuary. through biological processes such as The Chapel Hill classes took place respiration. Lindquist, a professor at the during Martens’ First Year Seminar in Institute of Marine Sciences, is an organic Chapman Hall, part of the new Carolina chemist interested in how marine life affects

ABOVE: Marine scientist Chris Martens exploring a coral reef during the Aquarius mission.

chemical compounds in the water. UNC marine scientist John Bruno and doctoral student Patrick Gibson were in Florida providing “topside” support to the research team. • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 53

Highlights H i g h l i g h t s

ome great inventions are birthed at a bar, their futures scribbled on cocktail napkins. Multi-pixel X-ray technology, the first substantial technological advance in Xrays in more than a century, was born over a greasy Philly cheesesteak sandwich. It was 2000. Otto Zhou was the principal investigator on a $6 million grant from the Office of Naval Research to find applications for carbon nanotubes, tiny sheets of carbon rolled into a seamless tube about 3,000 times smaller than the diameter of human hair. Zhou and Jianping Lu, both physics professors at UNC, often brainstormed ideas over lunch. Other scientists across the country were applying the material to flatpanel displays. “We were at Miami Subs when

headquarters in we thought,‘what Research Triangle about X-ray?’” said Park, to further Zhou, the Lyle develop the Jones Distinguished technology. Professor of Physics and Carbon Materials Sciences. nanotubes require Zhou, Lu and much less energy to other collaborators produce electrons, grew their napkin which means they can diagram and the be turned on and off grant-funded research very quickly at low into Xintek, a small energy. And, unlike nanotechnology startup conventional filaments, company that licensed they’re microscopic. technology from UNC ABOVE: Physicist Otto Zhou In today’s digital and Duke University. imaging technology, Two years ago the only the detector, the medium, is digital. company established formal collaborations Multi-pixel X-rays digitize the source. with Siemens Medical Solutions in “This,” say Zhou and Lu,“is truly digital.” Germany. Zhou expects the technology to have Siemens and Xintek announced applications for airport security and medical in September 2007 a new joint venture diagnostics. • company, XinRay Systems, with Steve Exum

Nanotech spin-off forms new venture with Siemens

Ted Turner Talks

Steve Exum

Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor in the College. (See profile on donor David Frey on page 11.) Throughout his career,Turner has received international recognition for his ABOVE: Media mogul Ted Turner was interviewed by former entrepreneurial PBS President Pat Mitchell about his work, philanthropy and life. acumen, sharp business skills, ed Turner — the pioneering leadership qualities and philanthropy. founder of CNN — visited UNC in During the entrepreneurship class, November for a public “fireside chat,” Julia Sprunt-Grumbles ’75, former where he was interviewed by former PBS corporate vice president for Turner President Pat Mitchell in Memorial Hall. Broadcasting, prompted Turner with He also spoke with undergraduates in an questions about his pioneering media introduction to entrepreneurship class, ventures, including CNN, the Cartoon offered as part of the academic minor in Network and Turner Classic Movies, entrepreneurship in the College of Arts as well as his latest venture — the Ted’s and Sciences. Montana Grill restaurant chain. Turner came to campus as the Turner advised students that they stand

54 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

a better chance of succeeding big if they come up with a unique idea, such as when he decided to use satellites to distribute the programming of the independent Atlanta TV station he bought in 1970, creating the first national “superstation.” “I did a lot of reading about the television business, and I decided to use an exciting technology in a creative way,” Turner said.“Breaking the mold is the fastest way in.” An avid sailor who skippered the yacht that won the America’s Cup in 1977, Turner said he applies that time-shaving attitude of racing to business. He’s been known to sleep on a couch or pullout bed at work, and today he lives above his office, which avoids wasting time commuting. He said he has worn loafers for years to save the seconds it takes to tie shoes. “The difference between winning and losing is such a small margin that you have to figure out how to utilize absolutely everything,”Turner said. •

Bookshelf C o ll e g e

B o o k s h e lf

An Excerpt Senator Sam’s Other Showdown By Karl E. Campbell ’95

Editor’s Note: Many recall alumnus Sam Ervin ’17 as the colorful chair of the Senate Watergate Committee, whose heroic defense against presidential abuse of power led to Richard Nixon’s resignation. For most of Ervin’s two decades in the Senate, he also defended Jim Crow laws and fought against civil rights, a stance that placed him in another historic showdown, this time with alumnus Terry Sanford BA ’39 JD ’46. In a new biography, Senator Sam Ervin, Last of the Founding Fathers (UNC Press), alumnus Karl Campbell, PhD history ’95, illuminates the many facets of the legendary man from Morganton, N.C. This excerpt is printed with permission from the University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress.unc.edu.

n the fall of 1967, Terry Sanford launched an unofficial campaign to defeat Sam Ervin in the Democratic [U.S. Senate] primary. The senator and the popular former N.C. governor represented two different political organizations within North Carolina’s Democratic Party. Ervin came from the more traditional wing that resisted any alteration in Southern racial, economic, or social relations. His faction enjoyed the support of established North Carolina industries such as textiles, furniture and agriculture. Sanford was allied with the modernizers in the Democratic Party who favored moderate reform of the state’s social and economic relations in order to advance the growth of new business opportunities in technology, finance and manufacturing. One newspaper summed up the difference between the two camps by suggesting that the philosophy of the Ervin group “tends to be one of resistance to change,” while the approach of the Sanford organization “is one of innovation,” especially in such matters as “race relations, fighting poverty and educational advances.” Both groups, however, remained within the moderately conservative middle of the South’s rightward-leaning culture. The two factions had been feuding for several years, and so had their nominal leaders. The dispute had grown to such proportions by 1966 that Senator B. Everett Jordan of North Carolina felt compelled to warn the Johnson White House about the rift, including that “Governor Sanford said some awful mean things about Ervin in times past.” That same year Ervin supported an administration effort to award Sanford a foreign ambassadorship. The senator told a presidential aide that given Sanford’s threats to run against him, “it would get Sanford out of the State and get him far away.” The

ambassadorship did not materialize, but Sanford’s run to unseat Ervin very nearly did. The first direct shot in the long-awaited duel came in October 1967, when Sanford conducted a poll asking voters whom they would choose in a head-to-head primary contest between himself and Ervin. The results were not encouraging … [Sanford] spent the next few months discussing the pros and cons of a primary challenge on television shows and in newspaper interviews, and he sent out over 200,000 letters to targeted constituents. Ervin’s staff countered with a letter-writing campaign of their own that put Democratic leaders throughout the state on the spot by asking for early pledges of active support. For several months talk of the impending showdown filled North Carolina’s newspapers and airwaves. Political pundits speculated that the contest would pit Sanford’s “organizational ability and flair for political innovation” against Ervin’s powerful “anti-civil rights record” and aptitude for exploiting the “popular issues of law and order.” But almost every discussion of a possible Ervin-Sanford contest suggested that “the bugaboo of race” would transform the primary into a mean-spirited campaign. “If [Sanford] does decide to run,” one editorial predicted, “you can look forward to the most gripping Senate race in North Carolina since Frank Graham and Willis Smith rattled the timbers fifteen years ago.” Memories of that primary context, often described as “the dirtiest statewide political campaign in recent history,” terrified many of the Democratic faithful. Sanford, too, worried about the probability of what he called a “drastically divisive” campaign…. In spite of new poll results in February 1968 showing the potential candidates running neck and neck, Sanford decided not to enter the primary. • — Karl E. Campbell is associate professor of history at Appalachian State University. Ervin served in the U.S. Senate from 1954 to 1974; he died in 1985. Sanford finally served in the U.S. Senate from 1986 to 1993; he died in 1998.

Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2008 • 55

Bookshelf C o ll e g e

B o o k s h e lf

• American Transcendentalism (Hill & Wang) by Philip F. Gura.The William S. Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture paints a fresh comprehensive history of the Transcendentalists, those often misunderstood reformers.The book was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle award. It sheds new light on Emerson,Thoreau and lesser-known players Orestes Brownson, Margaret Fuller, Caroline Healey Dall and Theodore Parker.

• God’s Problem (HarperOne) by Bart D. Ehrman.The renowned New Testament scholar and former Baptist minister discusses his anguish over the Bible’s contradictory explanations for suffering and injustice in this NewYork Times bestseller. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, invites readers of faith, or no faith, to confront their deepest questions about how God engages the world, or not.

• Boone (Algonquin) by Robert Morgan ’65. Best-selling author, N.C. native and UNC alumnus, Morgan offers a wholly new perspective on Daniel Boone, the iconic American frontiersman.Turns out his real life is even more fascinating than the legend.

• The Reserve (HarperCollins) by Russell Banks ’67. Part love story, part murder mystery, this noted UNC graduate’s new novel raises questions about class, politics, art, love and madness. Banks explores what happens when two powerful individuals trapped at opposite ends of a social divide decide to break the rules.

• The Concrete Dragon (Princeton Architectural Press) by Thomas J. Campanella. Believe it or not, the world’s largest malls, airport, gated community, bowling alley and skateboard park are all located in China. UNC urban planning expert Campanella reveals in vivid terms the breathtaking scale of this building boom and its impact.

• Defying Dixie (W.W. Norton) by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore PhD ’92. This UNCeducated historian reveals the raucous history of fierce Southern radicals — labor activists, newspaper editors and black workers of the 1920s to 1940s — who set the stage for the broader civil rights movement. Gilmore is the Woodward Professor of History at Yale University.

56 • Spring 2008 • Carolina Arts & Sciences

• Spill (Tupelo Press) by Michael Chitwood. The eighth poetry collection by this prolific UNC creative writing instructor explores spiritual and life mysteries found in the “thin” places in our world where views of the other side might be glimpsed fleetingly. • Gram-o-rama (iUniverse Inc.) by Daphne Athas, edited and foreword by Marianne Gingher. Who knew syntax could be sinful? Word lovers, English teachers and even grammar-phobes will enjoy these hilarious lessons-as-performance art with wordplay, poetry, music and nonsense, compiled by a beloved UNC creative writing instructor. You’ll never be able to say “diphthong” with a straight face again. • Southern Cultures, 15th Anniversary Reader (UNC Press), edited by Harry L.Watson and Larry J. Griffin.This volume includes 27 essays from the journal founded in 1993 to present all sides of the American South “from sorority sisters to Pocahontas, from kudzu to the blues.” Historian Watson is director of the Center for the Study of the American South; Griffin is John Shelton Reed Distinguished Professor of Sociology and History. •

Final Point F i n al Poin t

Caro l in a

Arts & Sciences Director of Communications • Dee Reid Editor • Kim Weaver Spurr ’88 Assistant Director of Communications Graphic Designer • Linda Noble Contributing Writers • Pamela Babcock • Jess Clarke • Tina CoyneSmith • Del Helton • Catherine House • Caroline Hutcheson ’08 • Jim Magaw ’89 • Lindsay Naylor ’08 • Nancy E. Oates • Becky Oskin • JB Shelton • Angela Spivey ’90 • Lisa H. Towle • Catherine Williams ’08

National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress

Contributing Photographers • Michael Buck • Tina CoyneSmith • Steve Exum ’92 • Jon Gardiner • Jim Haberman • Jeremy M. Lange • Blake Michael • Lars Sahl • Isaac Sandlin ’06 • Dan Sears ’74, UNC News Services Photographer • Joey Seawell • Vin Steponaitis • Paul Welby

Mill Life

In 2007, UNC historian Robert Allen stumbled upon photographs at the Library of Congress of child workers at the Loray (cotton) Mill in Gastonia, N.C. The photographs were taken in 1908 by Lewis W. Hine, who was investigating child labor conditions in the U.S. Hines wrote about the boys and girls (pictured above in two photographs): “Smallest boy on the right hand end, John Moore. 13 years old. Been in the mill 6 years as sweeper, doffer and spinner” and “Oldest girl, Minnie Carpenter. Spinner. Makes fifty cents a day for 10 hours. Younger girl works irregularly.” Allen, the James Logan Godfrey Professor in American studies, history and communication studies, is a native of Gastonia. His grandmother worked in the cotton mill as a child, and his grandfather lived on the same street as several of Hine’s subjects in 1908. He uses the photographs in his First Year Seminar on the history of the family. He has tracked down descendants of a number of the children in Hines’ Gastonia photographs, including the great-nephew of Minnie Carpenter. In November, Allen will participate in a centennial commemoration and exhibition of the photographs in partnership with the Gaston Public Library and the Gaston County Museum of Art and History. To search for more photos in the collection, visit http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/nclcquery.html and type in “Gastonia.” Contact Allen if you know more about the subjects in the photos at (919) 962-5165, robert_allen@unc.edu.

Carolina Arts & Sciences is published semiannually by the College of Arts & Sciences at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and made possible with the support of private funds. Copyright 2008. If you wish to receive Carolina Arts & Sciences News, our periodic e-mail bulletin, please send your name, mailing address and e-mail address to us at: • E-mail: artsandsciences@unc.edu • Online news: college.unc.edu The College of Arts & Sciences The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Campus Box 3100 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3100 (919) 962-1165

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