Award-winning Washington Post columnist and best-selling novelist David Ignatius will deliver the annual Weatherspoon Lecture at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School on Jan. 29.

Ignatius – who has covered the Middle East and the CIA for more than 25 years – will discuss “Foreign Affairs – How to Fix the World.”

Also an associate editor for The Washington Post, Ignatius has had a distinguished and wide-ranging career in the news business. He has served as a reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and columnist. During his journalism career, he has covered almost every Washington beat from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill.

He has written nine novels, including the “The Director,” his most recent book, and the best-seller “Body of Lies,” which director Ridley Scott adapted for a film with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.

Ignatius served as the Post’s assistant managing editor for business news and, as foreign editor, supervised its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He also worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal for a decade and covered the steel industry, the Justice Department, CIA, U.S. Senate and U.S. State Department. He also was the both the Middle East and chief diplomatic correspondent.

Ignatius will speak at 5:30 p.m. in Koury Auditorium at UNC Kenan-Flagler. Please email kfbsrsvp@unc.edu to register for the free talk. Free parking will be available in the Business School parking deck.

The Weatherspoon Lecture was created with a generous gift from longtime UNC Chapel-Hill and UNC Kenan-Flagler supporters Van and Kay Weatherspoon. The series provides lectures by outstanding visiting scholars and world leaders from the fields of politics, education, business and government. The purpose of these lectures is to enrich the professional lives of members of the UNC Kenan-Flagler community and provoke interesting discussion and debate.

Published

Acclaimed researchers in HIV/AIDS and public health and a writer whose works have appeared on the page and stage were honored Jan. 16 with the General Alumni Association’s Faculty Service Award at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The association’s board of directors presented the awards to Dr. Myron “Mike” Cohen, whose groundbreaking research in HIV/AIDS revealed treatment strategies for limiting transmission of the deadly virus; Jo Anne Earp, whose research focuses on increasing access to health care for underserved populations; and Bland Simpson, whose work has found audiences through articles, essays, novels, the musical stage and documentaries. The award was established in 1990 and honors faculty members who have performed outstanding service for the University or the association.

Cohen, of Chapel Hill, grew up in Chicago and joined the Carolina faculty in 1980. He is the Yeargen-Bate Eminent Distinguished Professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology in the UNC School of Medicine, where he chairs the division of infectious disease; a professor of epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health; and the associate vice chancellor for global health.

In 2011, Science magazine credited Cohen and his researchers with the “Breakthrough of the Year” for clinical trials showing that treating HIV-1 with aggressive antiretroviral therapy reduced transmission to uninfected partners to almost zero. The results prompted the World Health Organization to change its treatment guidelines and raised hopes among medical researchers of one day vanquishing the deadly virus altogether.

Over the decades of Cohen’s research, UNC-Chapel Hill’s infectious-disease group has achieved a top-10 ranking among AIDS programs. Cohen has led the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases since its founding in 2007, and his team’s funding has grown to hundreds of millions of dollars to support trials in 10 countries. He has received a lifetime achievement award from the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association, the National Institutes of Health Merit Award, the North Carolina Award for Science and Carolina’s O. Max Gardner Award, presented annually to a faculty member who “has made the greatest contribution to the welfare of the human race” in that academic year.

Earp, of Chapel Hill, who grew up in Great Neck, New York, on Long Island, is a professor and former chair of the department of health behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, having joined the faculty in 1974. She also is on the faculty of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Sheps Health Services Research Center and the Odum Institute for Research in the Social Sciences.

A primary focus of Earp’s research has been to end racial disparities in health care treatment and outcomes, such as in HIV/AIDS and breast cancer. An innovator of the lay health adviser approach now used across the country, Earp founded the N.C. Breast Cancer Screening Program that got screening for more older black women in poor, rural counties in the state, enabling them to begin treatment sooner, like their white counterparts, and reduce their mortality rate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH have lauded her research approach as highly effective.

Earp also is a well-known mentor to hundreds of graduate students, helping launch their own research careers. Among her many awards for teaching, mentoring and research, she has received the National Cancer Institute RTIP designation, Carolina’s McGavran Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Cecil G. Sheps Distinguished Investigator Award, the John E. Larsh Jr. Award for Mentorship and the Women’s Leadership Council Mentoring Award.

Simpson, of Chapel Hill, who grew up in Elizabeth City and Chapel Hill and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a political science degree in 1973, is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of English and creative writing. He joined the creative writing faculty in 1982 and was the program’s director from 2002 to 2008. He served as the faculty representative on the GAA’s Board of Directors for 2011-12.

Simpson interrupted his undergraduate studies to pursue songwriting in New York, and composing for musical theater has been one of his major pursuits. After returning from New York to finish his degree, he co-wrote the musical “Diamond Studs” with fellow alumnus Jim Wann. That musical also led to his writing for and performing with the North Carolina string band it featured, The Red Clay Ramblers. Simpson has been a co-composer and co-writer of four musicals and contributed a song to a fifth, the Tony-nominated “Pump Boys & Dinettes.” He has received the North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.

North Carolina’s coast and other natural resources have been another focus of his career. He has written extensively to champion their appreciation and protection, including books such as “The Great Dismal: A Carolinian’s Swamp Memoir.”

Simpson has received the Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and twice the Chapman Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Other recent recipients of the Faculty Service Award include Valerie Ashby, chair of the department of chemistry; Oliver Smithies, Nobel Prize-winning genetics researcher; Fred Brooks Jr., a professor and founder of UNC-Chapel Hill’s computer science program; Dickson Phillips Jr., former law school dean; Joseph L. Templeton, former chemistry department chair; Joseph S. Ferrell, secretary of the faculty; and Dr. H. Shelton “Shelley” Earp III, director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and a professor of pharmacology and medicine. A complete list of award winners can be found at alumni.unc.edu/awards.

The General Alumni Association is a self-governed, nonprofit association serving alumni and friends of UNC-Chapel Hill since 1843.

Published January 21, 2015.

With the close of the final deadline for first-year admission for Fall 2015, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced on Monday a 10th consecutive record for first-year applications — an increase of 2 percent over last year and 37 percent over five years ago.

As of Jan. 20, the 31,848 first-year applicants came from 99 counties in North Carolina, all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and 113 countries outside the United States.

“We’re grateful that interest in Carolina remains so strong, and it is a joy and an honor to read every single application,” said Stephen Farmer, Vice Provost for Enrollment and Undergraduate Admissions. “Each application represents a human being, a young person with a unique combination of strengths and challenges, hopes and dreams. We do our best to consider all applicants carefully and to treat them with respect. No applicant deserves anything less from us.”

Applications from students from families with low household incomes, as indicated by their qualification for a waiver of our application fee, rose from 3,505 to 3,563, an increase of 2 percent. The fee-waiver guidelines roughly parallel the thresholds for the Carolina Covenant, the University’s ground-breaking program that promises a debt-free education to all eligible admitted students who apply for aid on time. For the past two years, Covenant Scholars comprised thirteen percent of the enrolling class.

Students who applied in October will receive their decisions by the end of January. Students who applied in January will receive their decisions by the end of March.

The University expects to enroll a first-year class of 4,000.

Published January 21, 2015.

Adult sea turtles find their way back to the beaches where they hatched by seeking out unique magnetic signatures along the coast, according to new evidence from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The findings will be reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on Jan. 15.

“Sea turtles migrate across thousands of miles of ocean before returning to nest on the same stretch of coastline where they hatched, but how they do this has mystified scientists for more than fifty years,” said J. Roger Brothers of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Our results provide evidence that turtles imprint on the unique magnetic field of their natal beach as hatchlings and then use this information to return as adults.”

While earlier studies have shown that sea turtles use the Earth’s magnetic field as a guide while out at sea, it has remained unclear whether adult turtles also depend on magnetic features to recognize and return to the nesting sites chosen by their mothers before them, the researchers explain.

Several years ago, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenneth Lohmann, the co-author of the new study, proposed that animals including sea turtles and salmon might imprint on magnetic fields early in life, but that idea has proven difficult to test in the open ocean. In the new study, Brothers and Lohmann took a different approach by studying changes in the behavior of nesting turtles over time.

“We reasoned that if turtles use the magnetic field to find their natal beaches, then naturally occurring changes in the Earth’s field might influence where turtles nest,” Brothers said.

To investigate, the researchers analyzed a 19-year database of loggerhead nesting along the eastern coast of Florida, the largest sea turtle rookery in North America. They found a strong association between the spatial distribution of turtle nests and subtle shifts in the Earth’s magnetic field.

In some times and places, the Earth’s field shifted so that the magnetic signatures of adjacent locations along the beach moved closer together. When that happened, nesting turtles packed themselves in along a shorter stretch of coastline, just as the researchers had predicted. In places where magnetic signatures diverged, sea turtles spread out and laid their eggs in nests that were fewer and farther between.

Brothers said that little is known about how turtles detect the geomagnetic field. Most likely, tiny magnetic particles in the turtles’ brains respond to the Earth’s field and provide the basis for the magnetic sense, but no one knows for sure.

Sea turtles likely go to great lengths to find the places where they began life because successful nesting requires a combination of environmental features that are rare: soft sand, the right temperature, few predators and an easily accessible beach.

“The only way a female turtle can be sure that she is nesting in a place favorable for egg development is to nest on the same beach where she hatched,” Brothers said. “The logic of sea turtles seems to be that ‘if it worked for me, it should work for my offspring.’

Published January 15, 2015.

Dear Carolina Community,

Welcome back!

I hope each of you enjoyed a restful winter break. Although campus has been quiet, we’ve been busy in Chapel Hill over the past month, and there’s a lot to share with you as we begin our spring semester.

First, on Monday, we submitted our response to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), Carolina’s accreditation agency, following a request for information the agency sent us in November. As a courtesy to SACSCOC, as well as to allow enough time to redact protected information, we will make that document public next Tuesday on http://carolinacommitment.unc.edu/. I want to emphasize to you, as I have to SACSCOC, that I have the utmost confidence in the integrity of our academic programs at Carolina. I know what all of you do: that a Carolina education is one of the finest in America.

In fact, just before winter break, we learned that Kiplinger’s once again ranked Carolina the best value in American public higher education. UNC-Chapel Hill has topped the list every time since Kiplinger’s began issuing the ranking in 1998, and this year’s ranking is a terrific recognition of our commitment to accessibility, affordability and a world-class education for all Carolina students.

I also am proud to report that our applications for fall admission have been up significantly over last year. If this trend holds, it will be the 10th consecutive year we have seen an increase in applications to Carolina.

In my last campus email, I promised that in the coming months, we would be working to create and support opportunities for respectful dialogue around some of the issues that have recently dominated our news headlines and campus discussions – issues like race, justice and diversity. Since that communication, I’ve heard from many members of our community who have fresh ideas about how we can better demonstrate our commitment to inclusion and respect on campus, and I look forward to sharing more about those ideas in the very near future. In the interim, I hope you’ll continue to have the constructive conversations I’ve been hearing are taking place around these topics.

A great opportunity to do so will come next week, when we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with events on- and off-campus. I encourage everyone to participate – whether that is attending an event, or reflecting privately on what Dr. King meant to this country and what we can do to honor his legacy today.

Best wishes for a successful semester. I look forward to seeing each of you around campus.

Sincerely,

Carol L. Folt

Chancellor

Published January 14, 2015

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has again been named to the 2014 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction in General Community Service. The President’s Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition that colleges and universities can receive for community service, service-learning and civic engagement.

UNC-Chapel Hill has been recognized by the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll annually since it began in 2006. For the reporting year (2012-13), more than 17,000 undergraduate and graduate students provided more 1.7 million hours of service. According to the Independent Sector estimate of value for volunteer time for 2013 ($22.14 an hour), the value of the 1,778,624 service hours performed by Carolina students is more than $39 million.

The Carolina Center for Public Service submitted UNC-Chapel Hill’s nomination on behalf of the University. Three programs were highlighted in the nomination as examples of Carolina’s commitment to community engagement. Healthy Girls Save the World (HGSW), Musical Empowerment and the Buckley Public Service Scholars program (BPSS).

Healthy Girls Save the World

HGSW is a holistic health organization that emphasizes health, allowing girls to establish healthy habits at a young age. The program targets girls ages 8-15 and promotes healthy bodies, healthy minds and healthy relationships. HGSW provides information about exercise and nutrition and integrate lessons on self-esteem, good study habits and the importance of respectful and positive relationships. During free events, participants meet and engage in physical activity with Carolina’s female student athletes, including women from basketball, volleyball, soccer, swim, field hockey and gymnastics teams. Participants also hear from nutritionists and fitness instructors, and interact with UNC-Chapel Hill students from a variety of schools who lead interactive activities to stimulate instruction, dialogue and reflection. HGSW was originally developed through a Bryan Social Innovation Fellowship awarded by the APPLES Service-Learning program at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Musical Empowerment

Musical Empowerment is a nonprofit, student organization at UNC-Chapel Hill created to make a difference in the lives of children in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro community. The program’s founders recognized that music fosters discipline, confidence and common values, yet the cost of music lessons can be a significant barrier to children being able to participate in the arts. In 2002, Musical Empowerment was created by a Carolina undergraduate student in response to this need and to connect with Spanish-speaking families in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro community. The program connects children from primarily low-income families in the community with UNC-Chapel Hill students who volunteer their time to teach free, private, weekly music lessons. In its first year, the program included 12 UNC-Chapel Hill student volunteers teaching piano, guitar, violin and voice lessons. Since then, Musical Empowerment has grown exponentially and now has more than 100 students involved, teaching lessons in many instruments including trumpet, piano, cello, guitar, clarinet, violin, flute, viola and voice.

Buckley Public Service Scholars program

The Buckley Public Service Scholars program provides a framework for Carolina undergraduate students committed to making a positive impact through community engagement. BPSS challenges participants to expand their understanding of service, connect academic and community-based experiences and build their capacity to help effect change. While completing the program, participants build portfolios reflecting their learning and unique service experiences throughout North Carolina, the nation and the world. BPSS incorporates a substantial commitment to public service and several forms of structured training and reflection on that engagement. Currently approximately 10 percent of Carolina undergraduates are enrolled as participants. After completing the program, Buckley Public Service Scholars are recognized at a special graduation ceremony, receive a public service cord and notation on their academic transcript.

The President’s Honor Roll recognizes higher education institutions whose community service efforts support exemplary community service programs and raise the visibility of effective practices in campus community partnerships. This recognition is part of a strategic commitment to engage millions of college students in service and highlight the critical role of higher education in strengthening communities.

Since 2006, UNC-Chapel Hill has repeatedly been named to the honor roll with distinction. In 2009, UNC-Chapel Hill received the President’s Higher Education Community Service Award for General Community Service at a ceremony in New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Published January 14, 2015

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. with a week of celebration that began on Sunday, January 18.

Carolina’s week-long observance, sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs and the Carolina Union Activities Board, will feature a series of events hosted by various campus organizations. The theme for this year’s celebration is “Transcending the Legacy.”

The celebration began at the Friday Center on January 18 with the 30th annual MLK Celebration Banquet featuring keynote speaker James H. Johnson Jr., the William R. Kenan Distinguished Professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Kenan-Flagler Business School and director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center in the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.

Author Angela Davis served as the keynote speaker at the celebration January 19 at the 34^th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture at 7:30 p.m. at Memorial Hall, and MLK Day at Carolina also featured a “Move for the Dream” 5K and 1-mile fun run that raised money for the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, N.C., and food for the Carolina Cupboard; and the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Rally, March and Worship Service sponsored by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Carolina chapters of the NAACP.

Carolina’s observance will continue throughout the week with a variety of events, including discussions and panels, a photography exhibit, and film screening.

More information, and a complete list of Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration events, can be found here.

Published January 13, 2015

Updated January 20, 2015

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has selected the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as one of 240 U.S. colleges and universities to receive its 2015 Community Engagement Classification. The classification recognizes collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities

This is a re-classification for UNC-Chapel Hill; the original classification was received in 2006.

As the first public university to open its doors, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has built a long tradition of service to the state of North Carolina that has evolved into an even deeper engagement that involves mutually beneficial partnerships between the University and communities in North Carolina and far beyond.

The Carolina Center for Public Service (CCPS) is the pan-university entity for service and engagement. In addition, Carolina has a wide array of programs at the school and unit level, as well as 15 focused centers and institutes formally classified as public service entities and more than 600 officially-recognized student organizations, many focusing entirely on service. In a 2013 campus-wide survey regarding engagement and economic development, campus units reported more than 1,700 community partnerships involving more than 4,000 partners.

“Community engagement is not only part of our history here at Carolina, it is an essential part of our future,” said Chancellor Carol L. Folt. “Its connections to our teaching and research endeavors help distinguish who we are as an institution. The impact of Carolina’s commitment is as broad and deep as the thousands of activities throughout the state and around the world. But perhaps the biggest impact is the number of students who, because of their experiences while at Carolina, leave Chapel Hill well prepared for and dedicated to lives of service.”

Colleges and universities with an institutional focus on community engagement were invited to apply for the classification. Community engagement describes collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities for the mutual beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources.

The Community Engagement Classification was first offered in 2006. Since then, it has been given to 361 schools, 18 of which are in North Carolina. The next opportunity for institutions to apply for classification will be during the 2020 cycle.

Published January 9, 2015.

Carolina faculty brought in $792.7 million in research contracts and grants in fiscal 2014, up $14.9 million from a total of $777.8 million in fiscal 2013. As Chancellor Carol L. Folt told the Board of Trustees in November, Carolina’s researchers create technologies and innovations that are catalysts for new industries, accelerate progress toward cures for diseases such as AIDS and help target U.S. spending on global health threats.

Leading those efforts since March 2011 has been Vice Chancellor for Research Barbara Entwisle, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology, and a leading Carolina researcher for nearly 30 years.

Entwisle, a social demographer who studies population, health and environment, joined Carolina’s Department of Sociology in 1985 and later assumed additional faculty appointments in the Department of Geography, Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology, Curriculum in International and Area Studies, and Department of Asian Studies. From 2002 until 2010, she directed the Carolina Population Center, one of the University’s largest research centers and institutes.

Recently, Entwisle spoke to about Carolina’s research enterprise, including its past successes, the things that worry her and some of the things she is doing to make that enterprise even stronger in the years ahead.

What do the final statistics for fiscal year 2014 reveal about Carolina’s research enterprise?

Last year was our second-best year ever. Our best year was in 2010 – a happy anomaly due to ARRA Recovery Act funding that bumped up our numbers for one year. Since then, the numbers show that we are continuing to grow our research portfolio at a time when federal funding for research has not been increasing. We should feel good about this because some of our peer institutions around the country did not have the same experience. At the same time, it would be foolish to think that past success guarantees the future.

Where is all that money going?

There are many ways to look at this. One way is to look at where the faculty members who win these grants are based. Faculty in the School of Medicine account for about half of our research portfolio. The two other major players are the Gillings School of Global Public Health and the College of Arts and Sciences. Together, these three account for about 85 percent of our total research portfolio.

Another way to look at it is where the research work is being done. It turns out that the top five units that received the most research funding last year were all centers and institutes. The Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center brought in $83.8 million last year, followed by the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, which brought in a total $43 million. The Carolina Population Center brought in $40 million. Both the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center and the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institutes – better known as TraCS – brought in $30 million.

In the past few years, centers and institutes have been under review by General Administration. They have endured the most severe cuts in state support, but they are essential because they are often the units in the University best positioned to pull together the diverse interdisciplinary research teams often needed to secure major grant awards.

What makes Carolina successful in attracting research dollars?

I would identify collaboration as one of the essential ingredients in that success. In 2014 we looked at ways to actually quantify that. We found, for instance, that nearly $500 million of our grants were awarded for projects with two or more investigators. We also calculated that about $300 million of our grants were for interdisciplinary research that spanned two or more academic departments.

Similarly, a little more than $200 million involved investigators in two or more of our schools, such as the School of Medicine and the College of Arts and Sciences. We are an amazingly collaborative campus and it is why, I think, we have done so well for so long growing our research enterprise year after year.

I think it is especially important, any time the University is considering structural or policy changes, to ask the question, ‘Will this change make it easier or harder for researchers to collaborate?’ The answer to that has a direct bearing on the success of our $800 million research enterprise.

Given the size of the national debt and the budgetary implications tied to it, are you worried that Carolina’s research enterprise is too dependent on federal government support?

The federal government directly accounted for 72 percent of research funding in fiscal year 2014. So, yes, we are vulnerable should there be deep cuts to federal research support. We are also mindful that 75 percent of our federal research sources are from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We are proud of the support we get from NIH – indeed, we rank 7th nationally in that support – but at the same time we need to always be conscious that we have an awful lot of eggs in that particular basket.

In what other baskets should Carolina be putting more of those prized eggs?

We need to be looking for other kinds of research partners as part of a broader strategy for not only growing our portfolio, but diversifying and protecting it as well. In the past few years, we have been focused on expanding our support from business and industry, and the result of those efforts is beginning to show. Money generated from industry-supported clinical trials increased from $14 million in fiscal year 2011 to $18.1 million in fiscal year 2014.

Other research support from industry during that same four-year span rose from $13.6 million to $17.5 million. Those numbers may seem small in comparison to our total portfolio, but their significance is not. Industry is right here in our backyard and we need to do a better job connecting with it. I think we have been moving that forward in a way that we all can be proud of.

These sorts of new partnerships, as Chancellor Folt has said, are part of a new era at Carolina that will help define us as a leading 21st-century public research university. At the heart of that vision is the ability to apply our research to real-world problems in order to make a difference in people’s lives. In the end, that is what all this work is about and why we are here.

By Gary Moss, University Gazette

Published and updated January 6, 2014