Dear Carolina Community:
Greetings. I hope you are all having an exciting and productive start to the new academic year. I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few important accomplishments of our students, faculty and staff.
U.S. News and World Report recently recognized Carolina as one of the country’s top 5 public universities for the 14th consecutive time. Our outstanding Kenan-Flagler Business School is ranked 11th for graduate programs for MBA Programs and 12th for undergraduate programs, up from 16th last year, according to Princeton Review. The London-based Times Higher Education World University Rankings placed Carolina 12th among U.S. public universities when compared to the world’s top 400 research universities, and 46th overall, up one notch from last year. We also are proud that a column in the New York Times cited us as the 3rd most economically diverse university, which reflects our bedrock principles of accessibility and affordability.
Our commitment to diversity is also part of our core values as an institution. Through October 15, we will celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. Please see http://clc.unc.edu/hhm-2014for a full list of activities. We will continue to highlight the months devoted to celebrating the communities that comprise Carolina. I urge you to take part in these events throughout the year: http://bit.ly/Zrp1bC.
At last week’s Board of Trustees meeting, faculty, staff and students shared how they are innovating to make a difference in the classroom and beyond. I encourage you to watch a short video to learn more about how “flipped” classrooms are narrowing the achievement gap in an extraordinary way at STEM classes at Carolina, how Kenan-Flagler Business School’s MBA@UNC online program has become a national model and how Dr. Billy Fischer is helping to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. You may view the highlights here: http://youtu.be/TZ3uO7Q8W_E.
I am pleased that we just launched the Finance, Human Resources and Payroll applications of ConnectCarolina, our comprehensive software solution that consolidates financial information, student administrative programs and personnel applications in one system. I would like to offer my personal thanks to the hundreds of employees who have worked tirelessly to implement and learn this new software that will enable us to improve coordination and efficiency across campus.
Finally, I invite all of you to join us at 2 p.m., Sunday, October 12, in Memorial Hall as we celebrate University Day, Carolina’s 221st birthday. University Day is a time not only to commemorate our past and the laying of the cornerstone of Old East, but more importantly, to look to our future. I hope to see you on this special day when we remember our founding commitment to serving the state and its people. More information is available at http://www.unc.edu/universityday.
Sincerely,
Carol L. Folt
Chancellor