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

International Coverage

Gun defeat casts doubt on Obama agenda
Agence France-Presse (Wire Service)

…The facts of the gun defeat appear to bode ill for Obama — after he wagered a chunk of his political capital to no avail. "The president has definitely led many to question his ability to create a legislative majority," said Kareem Crayton, professor of political science at the University of North Carolina. "It is not clear in a president's second term whether his turning to public pressure will be enough to convince members of Congress who are on the fence."

Why big IT projects always go wrong
The Guardian (United Kingdom)

…At which point Fred Brooks had his epiphany: he realised that every time he added a programmer to the team the project fell further behind. In the end, however, the job was done. The death march ended, OS/360 was delivered and IBM went on to make a lot of money from it. Brooks, for his part, resigned from the company, became professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and then sat down to write the book that made him famous.

National Coverage

Transitions People in Academe
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Carol L. Folt, a professor of biological sciences who is serving as interim president of Dartmouth College, will become chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in July. She succeeds H. Holden Thorp, who will step down at the end of June to become provost of Washington University in St. Louis…

Seeking Answers in College Sports
Inside Higher Ed

Holden Thorp, the soon-to-be-former University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chancellor who resigned in the wake of an academic scandal widely believed to be centered around athletes, says he realized in summer 2010 that college presidents cannot control intercollegiate athletics. "Presidential control was supposed to produce less corruption, make it easier to make rules, reduce escalation of money in college sports, give academics the ability to change college sports," he said Friday here on the UNC campus. "It's almost hard to keep from laughing when you say those things, because obviously, it hasn't worked."

Nation's athletic directors tired of being shut out of NCAA process (Column)
Sports Illustrated

As outgoing North Carolina chancellor Holden Thorp explained in Chapel Hill on Friday how ill-equipped most collegiate CEOs are to handle the issues surrounding major collegiate athletics, several dozen Division I athletic directors gathered at a beachside hotel probably nodded in agreement. The ADs came to Santa Monica not for the pier, but to discuss the major issues facing college athletics without anyone from the NCAA around. Besides, several athletic directors said, few people at NCAA headquarters seem to care what the ADs think these days.

Gun Votes Carry Big Risks For Dems In Rural States
The Associated Press

…The votes by Pryor, Baucus and Begich stand in contrast to those of two other Senate Democrats facing potentially tough races next year: Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina. Both voted for the expanded background checks on gun buyers. Hagan's and Landrieu's states have important characteristics lacking in their colleagues' states, according to Ferrel Guillory, a Louisiana native and director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Danger In Conflation: Separating Islam From Acts Of Terror
"All Things Considered" National Public Radio

Host Jacki Lyden talks to Omid Safi, professor of religious studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Safi has blogged about the Tsarnaev brothers, the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, and what it means to the American Islamic community that the brothers are Muslim.

Happiness Inc.
The New York Times

… Now, according to Barbara Fredrickson, principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab at the University of North Carolina, “Sonja is the queen of happiness.” “She’s one of the few people that actually does research on happiness per se,” she said of Ms. Lyubomirsky’s ascent. “It’s a supply-and-demand issue.”

America turns left on social issues, but not on government
McClatchy Newspapers

Last year, voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington state became the first to approve gay marriage in voter referenda. In Colorado and Washington, voters backed permitting recreational marijuana use. “There is a move in the direction of cultural pluralism,” said William Leuchtenburg, historian at the University of North Carolina, with people more accepting of different cultures, different lifestyles and different attitudes.

Research: Exercise might blunt alcohol's effects on brain
HealthDay News

…Scientists are intrigued by how both alcohol and exercise affect the workings of the brain. Alcohol “can remodel brain chemistry and brain structure. It can lead to neuron cell death, and alcoholism can lead to dementia,” said Dr. J.C. Garbutt, a psychiatry professor who studies alcohol use at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Exercise has been shown to lead to enhancement of connections in the brain and may help by lowering blood pressure and changing body metabolic factors such as high fats and high blood sugar, which can negatively affect the brain.”

Regional Coverage

Governments can’t ignore global obesity
The Times Dispatch (Richmond, Va.)

…And not just in the United States. The problem is now global and getting worse rapidly. This was the message that Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina and author of “The World Is Fat,” brought to a recent University of Pennsylvania “Feeding Cities” conference at the school’s Institute for Urban Research. Around the globe, Popkin reported, more than 2 billion people are now overweight — the result of 30-plus years of “major shifts in how we eat and drink.”

‘Big Fish’ catches wave of America’s ‘Greatest Generation’
The Sun Times (Chicago, Ill.)

In its own eccentric, undogmatic way, “Big Fish” might just turn out to be the Broadway musical that best encapsulates what many describe as “The Greatest Generation” — that group of men who grew up during the Depression, headed off to war, came back home to start a family and devoted themselves to work. …Based on the bestselling Daniel Wallace novel, this musical version of “Big Fish” — with a book by John August (who also wrote the screenplay for the popular 2003 film), a score by Andrew Lippa, direction and choreography by Susan Stroman, and much ingenious visual design — is wildly whimsical and full of Americana-style fairy tales in its first act. (Daniel Wallace is the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at UNC-Chapel Hill.)

State and Local Coverage

In research and administration, new UNC chancellor accustomed to problems
The News & Observer (Raleigh)

Carol Folt, the scientist, has tackled some of the most tangled ecological problems on Earth. As a graduate student in California, her question was how to improve fisheries in Lake Tahoe. At Dartmouth, Folt spurred one of her students to do a 20-year study on the introduction of salmon in the Connecticut River. In the last 15 years, she has been focused on problems of metal toxicity in water – how mercury makes its way into fish and how rice absorbs arsenic – and the impact on human health. From pollution in fish to climate change, Folt gets a charge from looking at big, complicated issues that aren’t easily solved. She claims to actually like problems.

UNC's Holden Thorp: Rough lessons in athletics
The News & Observer (Raleigh)

Before becoming the chancellor at the University of North Carolina, Holden Thorp’s most significant experience in athletics might have come from his time on his middle school football team. “And I started,” he said here on Friday, “but only because we had 22 people on our team.” Later, after a lifetime dedicated to science and research and the world of academia, Thorp became UNC’s most senior leader. He recounted the story during a panel discussion of the role of athletics on college campuses, and Thorp spent most of his time denouncing the idea that university chancellors and presidents – those like him – should be most responsible for the direction of college athletics.
Related Links:
http://www.heraldsun.com/news/x609284610/Thorp-Chancellors-wrong-choice-to-lead-athletics
http://www.bradenton.com/2013/04/19/4490663/uncs-thorp-presidents-running.html
http://www.news-record.com/home/1092638-63/unc-panel-kicks-off-with
http://wunc.org/post/thorp-presidents-should-not-supervise-athletics

Will UNC scandal spark change? (Column)
The News & Record (Greensboro)

The idea, when the NCAA gave college presidents and chancellors authority over athletics programs on a national and conference level, was to help keep athletics from obscuring the academic missions of the universities to which they belonged. That happened in 1997. Sixteen years later, the NCAA seems to be in a constant state of investigation, conferences sign billion-dollar television deals, and the drumbeat continues for options for athletes who head into school never planning on going pro in any field other than their sport.

New Title IX Coordinator Says She's Ready To Tackle UNC Sexual Violence Issues
WCHL-FM (Chapel Hill)

UNC now has a full-time Title IX coordinator. Chancellor Holden Thorp announced last week that Christi Hurt will serve in an interim role until a national search is completed. It’s a part of the university’s on-going effort to reduce and prevent sexual violence. “It is an exciting time at the university. I am personally really excited by the commitment we are making—both in terms of long-term commitment of Title IX issues. We are really setting our best foot forward in moving to address the sexual assault policy and the response system here at the university,” Hurt said.

The 24/7 news cycle should slow when justice is at stake (Column)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)

…Rhonda Gibson, a journalism professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, said some of the news media are “fueled by the 24-hour news cycle and tend to act irresponsibly. … There is no need for the public to have every piece of information the second law enforcement knows it. “Now, I hope I’m not seeming to be a traitor to my news brethren,” said Gibson, a former newspaper reporter who now teaches about journalism ethics.

Van Conover spent a long life pursuing professional, personal dreams
The News & Observer (Raleigh)

…After a 20-plus-year hiatus from the stage, (Constance Van Conover) she returned to her original love of theater and earned a master of fine arts degree from UNC’s professional actor training program, where she also taught undergraduates. She was easily 30 years older than all nine of her classmates, but no less energetic. “We all knew that Connie had met with meaningful success as a young actor, but she wore that former success as a loose garment and stories of her former life had to be pried from her,” recalled Joseph Haj, producing artistic director at PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill and a former classmate.

Exchange program: Russian visitors study autism
The Times-News (Hendersonville)

A slide flashed on a screen in the community room at Blue Ridge Community Health Services. The words had no meaning to most of the people in the room. They were in Russian. …The weeklong trip included tours of Hendersonville Elementary School, Blue Ridge Community Health Services, TEACCH, which is an autism program through UNC Chapel Hill in Asheville, and St. Gerard’s House, a school for special needs children in Hendersonville.

Triangle the hotbed of the sexiest job (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)

What do sports, hurricanes and elections have in common? They all use the power of statistics to help predict the seemingly unpredictable. …The Triangle area is a literal hotbed of statisticians with leading departments of statistics and biostatistics at N.C. State, UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University; government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; and companies like SAS, GlaxoSmithKline and Quintiles. (Dr. Montserrat Fuentes is the head of the Department of Statistics at N.C. State and a well-known researcher in spatial statistics with applications to environmental and climate data.)

Unfortunate policies lead county to a paler shade of Orange (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)

One irrefutable message of our last presidential election is that the complexion of our country is changing. The growth in the nonwhite population across America has dwarfed the increase in Caucasians. We are truly becoming a racially diverse nation. Except in Orange County. (Michael Jacobs is a professor in the MBA program at UNC and a former U.S. Treasury official. He was recently appointed to the N.C. Financial Literacy Council.)

Issues and Trends

USASOC, UNC university system renew partnership
The Fayetteville Observer

The University of North Carolina on Tuesday renewed and updated its four-year-old partnership with Army special operations. Lt. Gen. Charles Cleveland and UNC system President Thomas Ross signed an agreement building on a document their predecessors signed on Nov. 12, 2009. …"Serving all of the residents and all of the citizens of the state is very important," Ross said. "But it is a particular honor for us to be associated with the United States Army, particularly special operations."

Can our schools absorb more budget cuts? (Editorial)
The Fayetteville Observer

…And while the University of North Carolina system has absorbed nearly $400 million in budget cuts in the past two years, it has survived as one of this nation's leading public universities. The question is, how far can those cuts go before they inflict real damage? How many more teachers can we lose before achievement scores fall and dropouts accelerate? How long before our gem of a university system becomes second-rate?

UNC’s Tom Ross might yearn for Davidson (Editorial Column)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)

Forgive Tom Ross if he might long for the days when he was president of Davidson College, with its 1,900 students, and living in the President’s House on that quaint, leafy campus. …Ross, now president of the 220,000-student UNC system, left a simpler life at Davidson in 2010 and stepped into a new era of public education. The UNC system has been the pride of North Carolina. While it didn’t get everything it wanted, the UNC system over the years generally has been well funded.

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