Carolina in the News: Monday, April 15, 2013

Folt, interim Dartmouth College president, named Carolina’s chancellor
Carol L. Folt, interim president of Dartmouth College and the Dartmouth Professor of Biological Sciences, has been elected the 11th chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by the Board of Governors of the 17-campus University of North Carolina.

Here is a sampling of links and notes about the new Chancellor-elect:

Carol Folt is well qualified for big challenge of leading Carolina (Editorial)
The Winston-Salem Journal
Carol Folt, who will become the next chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, appears well qualified to rise to the big challenges facing the school. And it’s about time this 224-year-old, progressive university has its first woman chancellor. The UNC Board of Governors made Folt’s hiring official Friday afternoon by electing her. But word had leaked long before dawn Friday that she’d be the choice, and most of the cyberspace reaction was positive – with good reason.

Folt seems eager for UNC challenge (Editorial)
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
On Friday, UNC-Chapel Hill met its first female chancellor in the history of our country’s oldest public university. Carol Folt, interim president at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, on July 1 succeeds Holden Thorp. She’s trading Big Green for Carolina Blue and comes to the job with experience as an environmental scientist, faculty leader and administrator.

Carol Folt’s leadership must be defined by transparency (Editorial)
The Daily Tar Heel
…Come July 1, Carol Folt will become chancellor and take up the task of solving the problems that Thorp’s administration has attempted to fix with varying levels of success. Doubtless, Chancellor-elect Folt will pledge to pursue the same sort of goals that Thorp and those who came before him have extolled: affordable tuition, academic success, faculty retention and so on.

Next UNC-CH chancellor Carol Folt reflects on new role
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Saturday was another whirl of activity for Carol Folt, UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor-elect, who made the rounds at a science expo, an alumni association meeting, dinner with campus leaders and the spring football game. She spent the morning with Chancellor Holden Thorp, who seemed to enjoy the role of tour guide. Leading Folt and her husband, David Peart, into the chancellor’s digs in the historic South Building shortly after 9 a.m., he said, “So, this is your office.” Asked to describe Friday, her first day on campus, on a scale from one to ten, Folt said, “20.”

Carolina Community Hopeful For The Future Led By Carol Folt
WCHL-FM (Chapel Hill)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s future rests in the hands of its first female chancellor and brings a storied career to a storied program. “I couldn’t be more excited,” Faculty Council chair Jan Boxill said. “I think everyone in the community’s been on pins and needles now for the last six or seven months,” Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said.

UNC Chapel Hill Has Selected A New Chancellor
North Carolina News Network
A board has elected Dartmouth College interim president to become the next chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The UNC Board of Governors selected Carol Folt on Friday to become the first female chancellor of North Carolina's flagship university. In accepting the position, Folt said she's learned much about the country's oldest public university.

UNC debuts new Chancellor-elect Carol Folt
The Daily Tar Heel
When Carol Folt talks about her career in higher education, she quotes former New York Yankees baseball Hall-of-Famer Yogi Berra. “I like to kid around about Yogi Berra, but he says, you know, ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it,’” she said in an interview Saturday about applying to become UNC’s next chancellor. “This was that moment for me — and I decided, OK, that sounds amazing.”

UNC students react to Folt (Video)
WTVD-TV (ABC/Raleigh)
The country's oldest public university turned to the Ivy League to select a new leader Friday.

UNC: New Chancellor, New Student Body President
WCHL-FM (Chapel Hill)
On April 2, Christy Lambden took over as UNC's student body president and will welcome the new chancellor, Carol Folt July 1. WCHL's Ran Northam spoke with President Lambden shortly after Folt was announced as UNC's next chancellor.

Faculty Council Chair Excited To Work With UNC's New Chancellor
WCHL-FM (Chapel Hill)
A key part of a successful university is the relationship between its faculty and its administration. Jan Boxill is the chair of the faculty council. She says she's really built a friendship with Chancellor Thorp over the years along with a strong professional relationship and is going to miss him, but she's very happy to see UNC's first female chancellor. And she says President Ross made a great choice from the three the search committee submitted to him.

Folt deeply humbled to be newest UNC chancellor
WNCN-TV (NBC/Raleigh)
The University of North Carolina reached out to the Ivy League on Friday for its next chancellor, tapping Carol Folt of Dartmouth College to replace Holden Thorp at a university with a storied past and tarnished present. Folt becomes the first female chancellor in the history of the school.

Here is a sampling of links and notes about other Carolina people and programs cited recently in the media:

National Coverage

Justices Consider Whether Patents on Genes Are Valid
The New York Times
The Supreme Court is poised to take up the highly charged question of whether human genes can be patented. But another question could trump it: Has the field of genetics moved so far so fast that whatever the court decides, it has come too late to the issue? …“Events on the ground have overtaken the law,” said Dr. James P. Evans, a professor of genetics and medicine at the University of North Carolina. He said the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision “will be much more ideological than it will be practical.”

Conduct at Issue as Military Officers Face a New Review
The New York Times
…Richard H. Kohn, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who specializes in military culture, said he thought the 360-degree evaluation would have a positive effect on the leadership styles of many officers. “It will reduce what the military calls ‘toxic leadership,’ elevating those who are highly competent but also fair and less brusque and peremptory,” Dr. Kohn said. As for the new training programs, Dr. Kohn said that while it may be impossible to prevent willful infractions, “most officers need to be reminded of the rules and regulations on a routine basis.”

Rebooting the Game: Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer Reconstruct Jeux for 'The Rite at 100'
The Huffington Post
Imagine trying to reconstruct Beethoven's Ninth Symphony from a handful of reviews of the original performance. Or reimagine what Citizen Kane might have looked like, with a few snapshots but no actual footage of the original film. …The result today, recently performed by the Joffrey Ballet as part of the University of North Carolina and Carolina Performing Arts' "Rite of Spring at 100" festival, is titled "after Nijinsky": as precise an imagining of what took place on the stage in 1913 as is possible a century later.

State and Local Coverage

University of North Carolina Chancellor Holden Thorp will leave in June
for Washington University in St. Louis.
The Fayetteville Observer
For the past two years, University of North Carolina Chancellor Holden Thorp has seen his beloved university marred by athletic, academic and administrative scandals. Had he known he would have to deal with those problems when he became chancellor five years ago, Thorp said in an interview Wednesday, he would have taken the job anyway. "I felt like it was important for someone who loves North Carolina and loves this place as much as I do to be here and work through all of these challenging things," said Thorp, a Fayetteville native. "I believe Carolina is much stronger and much more prepared for the challenges in the future thanks to all the hard work we have done. It's an honor for me to be the one to do it."

UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp Not Done Yet, But Happy For Folt And His University
WCHL-FM (Chapel Hill)
UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp has two and a half months remaining in Chapel Hill until he heads to St. Louis to take over as Provost, but he says there's still work to be done. WCHL's Ran Northam spoke with Chancellor Thorp immediately following the election and announcement of the University's 11th chancellor, Carol Folt.

UNC Habitat Club raises money, pounds nails
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
… “Usually the club does one house in a year at a cost of $50,000,” said Burgess Robinson, co-chair of the UNC Habitat for Humanity Club. “This year we had the opportunity to co-sponsor this house.” The house is special. The club is building it in honor of UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp and his wife, Patti, who will be leaving Chapel Hill for Thorp’s new post as provost at Washington University in St. Louis. “The Thorps, especially Patti Thorp, have really been proponents of Habitat for Humanity in Chapel Hill,” Robinson said. “They’ve done a lot, not only for the club but for Habitat in Orange County, and since they’re on their way out, we wanted to thank them for their time and effort.”

North Carolina’s black culture gets a boost in wiki-dom
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
…So on Sunday, a squad of volunteers sat down at UNC-Chapel Hill to beef up North Carolina’s wiki presence, adding and altering entries about the state’s distinctive black culture. Bluesman Trice will meet a generation of Web searchers thanks to Jessica Wood, a UNC library science student who helped pluck him from obscurity. …Sunday’s edit-a-thon came about through the North Carolina Collection at UNC’s Wilson Library, which aimed to get its resources in front of more eyes. Roughly 30 people from around the state signed up to tackle a list of suggested entries. “There are a lot of glaring holes,” said Emily Jack, a librarian with the North Carolina Collection. “We put together a pretty long list of people who only have a few sentences.”

N.C. Science Festival events continue in Charlotte
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
The North Carolina Science Festival, which began April 5, continues for another week with hundreds of events from one end of the state to the other. Here’s a sampling of events that are planned in the Triangle area through April 21: • At 1 p.m. April 15, the “Celebration of Undergraduate Research Symposium” features poster sessions and platform talks that point up the wide variety of undergraduate research at UNC-Chapel Hill. The free event is at Frank Porter Graham Student Union.

UNC's screenwriting minor celebrates its 10th year
News 14 Carolina
Colin Hodges, a senior advertising major at UNC-Chapel Hill, enrolled in the "writing for the screen and stage" minor during his sophomore year. “I think it’s great. I’ve loved every single class that I’ve taken in it. The people you meet in there, it’s just a room full of creative people and that’s just awesome,” said Hodges. This fall, the program is celebrating its tenth year.

Answer Man: Recall possible for Moffitt, et al?
The Citizen-Times (Asheville)
…Some North Carolina municipalities have recall provisions in place to remove city council members or other local officials, powers that are granted through a city charter or a local act of the General Assembly. That covers less than 20 municipalities, according to Michael Crowell, professor of public law and government at the School of Government at UNC Chapel Hill. But recall does not apply to state representatives or senators. “We do not have recall for most elected officials in North Carolina,” Crowell said.

Political hardball: Small-town mayor’s opponents videotape his wife smoking
pot; he claims vendetta
The Winston-Salem Journal
Political opponents of the mayor of Ronda wired his 18-year-old houseguest with a camera and secretly videotaped the mayor’s wife smoking marijuana in their home while the mayor was there. … (Victor) Varela said information he received from the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Government indicated that their exit counted as votes in support of Soots, so the mayor’s tie-breaking vote was not necessary.

A little bit country, a little bit rap, a lot to talk over (Column)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
It is a touchy subject few want to touch. Those who do touch upon race provoke either the Wrath of Yawn — oh no, not that again — or get blasted from both sides. …As Jocelyn Neal, an associate professor of music at UNC-Chapel Hill noted, anyone who thinks Paisley’s a racist need only look at some of his earlier work, most notably “Welcome to the Future.” He’s not lamenting or dreading a multicultural world, he’s – yep – welcoming it.

NC Children's Hospital brings prom to its patients
News 14 Carolina
With the help of members of the UNC Dance Marathon organization and hospital staff, the play atrium at the N.C. Children's Hospital was transformed into a dance floor for a kids' “prom” on Thursday night. …"We do have some fun makeup and boas and things for them to wear," said Dr. Mary Beth Grimley, N.C. Children's Hospital pediatric psychologist. "A lot of people get sad when they're here, but I think it will make a lot of people happy and just let them have fun," said Shores.

UNC's Building Tomorrow hopes to fund its second school in Uganda
News 14 Carolina
UNC’s chapter of Building Tomorrow, an organization that builds schools in Uganda, has funded one primary school. Construction just finished. But those involved with the organization are already looking ahead to fundraising for a second school. “If every single student gave $2.31 then we could raise enough money to build a primary school,” said student Annie Holmes.

PlayMakers dramaturg keeps past present
Chapel Hill News
As a theater scholar and resident dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Theatre since 1988, Adam Versenyi has – in his words – a dream job. He writes extensively on the history of theater and also teaches at UNC in the Department of Dramatic Art. PlayMakers’ latest production – the Tony Award winning musical “Cabaret” – is playing through April 21 at the Paul Green Theatre on campus.