Multiple University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill doctoral programs spanning the sciences, arts and humanities, medicine, social sciences and public health are highly rated in a new assessment conducted by the National Research Council.

The rankings were part of the NRC’s long-anticipated release of assessments for research doctorate programs at 212 U.S. colleges and universities, the first conducted since 1995 and only the third ever undertaken. The NRC evaluated more than 5,000 programs in 62 fields. The results were released today (Sept. 28). The NRC represents the national academies, which advise the federal government in all areas of science and technology.

“Overall, the NRC results affirm that Carolina is one of the nation’s great research universities,” said Steve Matson, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School. “The quality of our doctoral programs contributes to the success of our undergraduate program and our overall excellence.”

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Published September 28, 2010.

When Jill Fitzgerald retires from her position as professor of literacy in the School of Education at the end of May, it will be as a new member of the Reading Hall of Fame.

The honor, given at the International Reading Association annual conference earlier this month, recognizes her extraordinary contributions to theory and research in the study of literacy.

“She’s a fearless researcher,” said Dixie Lee Spiegel, one of Fitzgerald’s longtime collaborators and the person who chaired the search committee that brought Fitzgerald to UNC in 1979. “She doesn’t shy away from controversial topics. She doesn’t pump out 60 articles in a year, but the one or two that she does write become instant classics.”

Two particularly influential theories that Fitzgerald advanced dealt with English language literacy for non-native speakers and improving reading comprehension. “When people say, ‘What is it that you study?’ I say, ‘It’s how people think as they read and write. I study young children’s emergent literacy processes,” Fitzgerald said.

For example, in one study she found that teaching fourth-graders the parts of a story helped them better understand what they were reading because it gave them a way to organize the information in their minds. In her research about teaching English as a second language, Fitzgerald debated the accepted wisdom that students needed to learn to speak English well before they could read in English. She reasoned that using reading and writing in English could help them to learn to speak English. Fitzgerald’s theory was that reading could be taught to young Spanish speakers the way native speakers learned it, with “a beautiful big book.” A teacher holding up an oversized book with a few words in large print and a bright picture and reading it aloud to the class is teaching in two ways – reading English and speaking English.

Fitzgerald took an extra step in her research by learning Spanish herself and taking a year away from UNC to teach a class of half Spanish speakers and half English speakers at an elementary school in a neighboring county. “That was a really wonderful thing for her to have done, just on her own,” said Jim Cunningham, another longtime collaborator. That year of first-hand research in a first-grade classroom resulted in several first-rate articles, in peer-reviewed research journals and also in journals read in the average teachers’ lounge.

Her research has influenced education policy nationwide and so has her ability to turn that research into practical articles for teachers and lessons for future educators in the classes she taught at UNC. After retiring from the University, Fitzgerald will continue her literacy research at MetaMetrics, a psychometric research organization in Durham.

“Jill has changed the lives of thousands of children,” Spiegel said. “She is so deserving of this honor.”

An accessibility page linked from Carolina’s home page contains resources for site users and for campus web developers.

The page, which is linked from the bottom of www,unc.edu, also includes updates to UNC online accessibility policies.

Site visitors will find tips for the best experience accessing the University’s homepage and related sites, such as reminders to use a switch that turns off the background image and to use the text-size changer.

A section for developers contains links to many tools such as Vischeck and WAVE and to resource sites about W3C accessibility, designing for screen readers and reader usability.

“October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, so this is the perfect time for web developers at UNC to review their sites and possibly use some of these tools,” said Ann Penn, UNC’s Equal Opportunity/ADA Officer.

As part of UNC’s focus on accessibility, Sina Bahram will speak on campus October 6 at 2 p.m. in the Graduate Student Center. He is an accomplished “universal design” and accessibility evangelist who contributed to the implementation of N.C. State’s web accessibility policy.

His passion for this field originally stems from the fact that he is mostly blind and he uses assistive technologies such as a screen reader to navigate computer systems and devices.

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Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine ranks UNC-Chapel Hill the best value in American public higher education for a “remarkable” 10th time in a row.

Kiplinger’s started ranking the best values in public universities in 1998; Carolina has been number-one every time. The ranking appears in the magazine’s February issue.

Kiplinger’s editors say their top 100 public campuses deliver “a stellar education at an affordable price.”

The universities of Florida, Virginia and the College of William and Mary ranked second, third and fourth, respectively, followed by the University of Maryland (College Park), Binghamton University, the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo, and the universities of Georgia, Wisconsin (Madison), and Washington. Other UNC system schools making the list were N.C. State, 15th; UNC-Wilmington, 27th; Appalachian State University, 35th; UNC School of the Arts, 48th; and UNC-Asheville, 58th.

“We’re so fortunate at Carolina because our students are terrific, and they come from almost every imaginable background,” says Chancellor Holden Thorp. “The top Kiplinger’s ranking resonates for us because it recognizes our passion for providing the highest-quality education possible to these students at an affordable price.”

Kiplinger’s rankings story, “Best Values in Public Colleges,” focuses on how the global economic downturn has forced sweeping and likely permanent changes in U.S. public higher education because of state budget cuts and reduced federal funding.

“The takeaway for soon-to-be matriculating students: Look for schools that deliver an outstanding, affordable education in good times and bad,” Kiplinger’s story says. “The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ranked Kiplinger’s number-one best value for public colleges and universities for a remarkable 10 times running, is a prime example. Carolina’s admission rate remains among the lowest on our annual list; its students are among the most competitive; and its in-state cost, at $17,000, is not much higher than the average price ($16,140) for all public universities. For students who qualify for need-based aid, the total price for this top-tier university drops to an average of $7,020.”

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The 13th UNC Center for AIDS Research Scientific Symposium in recognition of World AIDS Day will be held on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011 from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.

The topic “Can we cure AIDS?” features keynote speaker Dr. Daria Hazuda, vice president of Worldwide Discovery Franchise and Head of Infectious Diseases at Merck Research Labs.

The symposium will be held in the ground floor auditorium of the Bioinformatics Building, south of UNC Hospitals. Parking is available in the Dogwood visitor parking deck, located on Manning Drive, across from UNC Hospitals.

The mission of the UNC Center for AIDS Research is to provide infrastructure to support investigation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic using clinical research, behavioral research, research into HIV biology and pathogenesis at the molecular level, and educational outreach. The UNC CFAR is a consortium of three complementary institutions: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Research Triangle Institute and Family Health International.

iContact began as an idea for an email and social media marketing company that grew from a conversation among entrepreneurs.

Aaron Houghton and Ryan Allis, both then Carolina undergraduates, co-founded iContact in 2003, spending late nights working from storefront space above a Franklin Street business. Houghton earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Allis was the president of an entrepreneur club on campus and attended the University as an economics major and a Blanchard Scholar.

Today, iContact is an award-winning business known for innovative cloud-based software and outstanding customer service. Based in Raleigh, the company has more than 70,000 customers and 1 million users.

Such success proved attractive to Vocus, a provider of cloud-based marketing and public relations software, that acquired iContact as part of a $169 million deal that closed Feb. 24. The Maryland-based Vocus will add iContact email to its marketing suite. iContact’s operations and staff will remain in the Triangle.

It’s a huge step for a company that has excelled at helping small- to mid-sized businesses create and send high-quality email campaigns using a platform integrated with Facebook and Twitter. That approach has translated into new customers, word-of-mouth buzz and new sales for those businesses. Under the leadership of Houghton and Allis, the company adopted social-minded practices including donating 1 percent each of its payroll equity, product and employee time to local and global communities.

Buck Goldstein, the University’s entrepreneur-in-residence, says what Houghton and Allis have accomplished in less than 10 years is amazing. “You could not make this up.”

Goldstein taught Allis in an independent study course on the fine points of how to grow and scale a business. He informally serves as an adviser to iContact once a week.

The success of iContact helps make a statement about the spirit of entrepreneurship at Carolina, which launched a campus-wide Innovate@Carolina initiative in 2010, Goldstein says.

“We were in a position with the independent study to help them think through this opportunity. We like to think we have a culture that supports innovation.”

Prospective and current UNC students interested in the world of business can find inspiration from the experiences of Houghton and Allis.

Published March 1, 2012.

An extravaganza featuring health information technology will take place throughout the day Friday, March 16 from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science.

Learn more about the exciting field of health information technology by attending the Health IT Fair that will include an opportunity to meet and greet professionals from 17 local businesses and organizations, learn about current research and development and attend special presentations by experts in the health IT field.

The morning presentations will be from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (see topics and presenters below). At 1 to 3 p.m. the fair will take place in the Manning Hall Lobby and in room 208. A panel discussion featuring representatives from Allscripts, EHR 2.0, Family Health Network, Infina Connect, Axial Exchange, Epic and RENCI is scheduled from 3 to 4:30 p.m.

See the full schedule.

If you can attend any or all of the presentations, please send your RSVP to Heather Lewis at: hlewis22@email.unc.edu

Companies represented at the Health IT Fair include:

•Allscripts
•Axial Exchange
•Bioinformatics Core, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
•Carolina Center for Health Informatics, UNC Department of Emergency Medicine
•EHR 2.0
•Epic
•Family Health Network
•Health Care & Bioscience Strategic Advisor, Leslie Alexandre
•NC Health IT, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services
•NC Immunization Registry, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services
•Infina Connect
•Quantal Semantics
•Quintiles
•RENCI
•RTI International
•SAS Institute
•Thomson Reuters

Published March 13, 2012.

Join UNC-Chapel Hill’s Communiversity Youth Program in celebrating its 20th year of helping local school children on April 20.

Communiversity is the cornerstone youth program of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at UNC. Since 1992 the program has provided after-school academic and cultural enrichment activities for children from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system. Participants take part in activities that reinforce the importance of community and help develop their interpersonal skills.

The program was developed to honor the commitment, dedication and spirit of the late Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone — a former UNC professor.

The Communiversity 20th Anniversary Celebration is set for 6:30 p.m. on April 20 at the Stone Center with a reception immediately after the program. The event is free and open to the public.The celebration will include musical performances, recognition of past and current Communiversity participants and remarks from State Superintendent June Atkinson.

In honor of Communiversity’s 20th anniversary, former UNC basketball player Brendan Haywood contributed $10,000 to the Stone Center program via the Brendan Haywood Single Parent’s Family Fund. This is Haywood’s first gift to UNC.

“We’ve hit a huge milestone and it’s exciting to see that 20 years later, we are still committed to serving children in a meaningful way,” said Chelsea Mosley, Communiversity director. “This celebration acknowledges the impact we’ve had and will continue to have on our student volunteers and student participants far beyond the time that we spend with them here at UNC.”

Read more about the Communiversity celebration and other Stone Center programs.

Published April 10, 2012.

A Triangle-based UNC spinoff company at the forefront of efforts to use nanotechnology to tackle diseases has received a $10 million investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Liquidia Technologies, which was founded on the discoveries of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientist Joseph M. DeSimone, will use the foundation’s equity investment to support the development and commercialization of safer and more effective vaccines and therapeutics.

Liquidia uses PRINT (Particle Replication in Non-wetting Templates) technology — a technique invented in DeSimone’s UNC lab — to manufacture precisely engineered nano- and microparticles with control over size, shape and chemistry. It could advance the development of vaccines to prevent diseases, such as malaria, that mainly affect people in the developing world.

“This technology has the potential to help countless people, maybe save millions of lives,” DeSimone said. “To have the Gates Foundation back our work is a heartening vindication of UNC’s effort to become a world leader in launching university-born ideas for the good of society.

“I met with Bill Gates last May and outlined how UNC researchers and Liquidia scientists essentially managed to co-opt manufacturing technologies from the computer industry to create new vaccines, medicines and methods of treating disease; the approach seemed to really grab his attention,” he said.

Neal Fowler, Liquidia’s chief executive officer, said the company was delighted the foundation had decided to join an outstanding group of investors that shared its confidence in the potential of PRINT technology to improve vaccine delivery and effectiveness. “As the field of vaccines continues to grow, success will be defined by our ability to produce and deliver highly efficacious therapies in quantities and costs that will support the global demand,” Fowler said.

The foundation made the equity investment in Liquidia as part of an initiative that commits $400 million in program-related investments to deepen the impact of its work.

“Funding innovation is a key to addressing the unmet health needs of the world’s poorest people,” said Doug Holtzman, deputy director for the foundation’s infectious diseases team. “This unique investment partnership will help us advance vaccine development as part of our commitment to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries.”

Liquidia also recently began a first clinical trial of its lead seasonal flu candidate and reached a collaborative agreement with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

DeSimone’s appointments include Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at N.C. State University and a member of UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

DeSimone’s work is an example of the type of research that supports the Innovate@Carolina Roadmap, a strategic plan that will fuel how important ideas created at UNC are applied for a better world. To learn more about the roadmap, visit innovate.unc.edu.

A series of scientific papers published this week put North Carolina at the center of a scientific resource that could help fast-track important discoveries about genetics and disease, resulting in new tests and treatments that benefit human health.

Researchers have long been frustrated by promising lab results that hit obstacles on the road to human application. Sometimes this is because research findings in other living organisms cannot be extrapolated to the human population as a whole.

To overcome this obstacle, scientists have begun to create libraries of genetic material. The UNC-based Collaborative Cross is one such resource. It contains 10-times the genetic diversity of a typical laboratory mouse population — a level equivalent to the natural genetic variation in humans – and provides better data for geneticists.

The project is led by Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena, Ph.D., in the UNC genetics department and a member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, David Threadgill, Ph.D., a geneticist at North Carolina State University and UNC Lineberger member, and Gary Churchill, Ph.D., at The Jackson Laboratory.

Pardo-Manuel de Villena is the lead author on a new paper featured on the cover of the journal Genetics. The study provides the first comprehensive description of the mouse genome library, which is being shared with scientists across the country through an online genome browser. His paper is one of 15 studies related to the Collaborative Cross appearing this week in the journals of the Genetics Society of America.

Pardo-Manuel de Villena noted that the project would not be possible without the efforts of the collaborative cross consortium, a global group of scientists that includes National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., (a graduate of the UNC School of Medicine) and National Human Genome Research Institute scientist Samir Kelada, Ph.D.