uncnews.unc.edu

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

National Coverage

Poll: 66 Percent Of Military Members Support Romney
CBS News (Washington D.C.)
A recent military poll finds that active and reserve troops overwhelmingly support Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney over President Barack Obama leading up to next month’s election. ...“There is really an affinity for Republican candidates, even though [troops] say that what counts is character and handling the economy,” Richard Kohn, who teaches military history at the University of North Carolina, told the Military Times.

Justices Face a Test on Race
The Wall Street Journal
...In a friend-of-the-court brief, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said that dropping its holistic approach and adopting a color-blind, top 10% plan in North Carolina would actually increase the minority share of the student body, to 16% from 15%. But "it would simultaneously depress almost every other indicator of academic quality," lowering the average entering SAT score by 55 points, to 1262, the brief says.

State and Local Coverage

Search begins for UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
The hunt for the next UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor began in earnest Monday, with a 21-member committee hiring a search consultant and taking a vow of confidentiality about the process. The committee voted unanimously to hire Bill Funk, a Dallas-based consultant who is considered something of a guru among national higher education search firms.
Related Links:
http://www.wral.com/panel-begins-search-for-new-unc-ch-chancellor/11636249/
http://triangle.news14.com/content/665044/search-committee-
begins-hunt-for-next-chancellor-of-unc
http://wunc.org/programs/news/archive/sjj100812.mp3/view
UNC Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/5620/1/

The challenge in Chapel Hill (Editorial)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
No matter what’s happened at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the last couple of years, and a lot has, the job of chancellor remains one of the most prestigious and historic positions in American higher education. This was the job occupied, under a different title and structure, by the legendary Frank Porter Graham. The university is now ninth in the country among recipients of federal research and development dollars.

Institute director to speak
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Jamie Bartram, director of the Water Institute at UNC Chapel Hill, will give the keynote speech as Carolina celebrates University Day Friday. Classes will be canceled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. for the convocation, which begins at 11 a.m., and celebrates the nation’s first public university on its 219th birthday.
UNC Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/5594/68/

Poverty on the docket
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Photojournalists Steve Liss and Jon Lowenstein will discuss “American Poverty: The Hidden Story” Monday at UNC Chapel Hill. Liss and Lowenstein are among the founders of AmericanPoverty.org, an organization of photojournalists committed to poverty alleviation in the United States.
UNC Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/5569/107/

Researchers gain funding
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Two autism researchers at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine each have been awarded $12.6 million grants in the latest round of funding from the National Institutes of Health’s Autism Centers of Excellence research program.

UNC-CH lands $1.5M grant for 'big data' project
WRAL.com
Researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill are going to tackle "big data" with a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Arcot Rajasekar, a professor in the School of Information and Library Science and chief scientist at the Renaissance Computing Institute is the principal investigator. The three-year project is called: “DataBridge – A Sociometric System for Long-Tail Science Data Collections.”
UNC Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/5615/74/

New report suggests more targeted incentives
News 14 Carolina
State leaders have been struggling for over a decade over whether or not the state should be participating in the practice of giving financial breaks to companies in order to get them to locate in North Carolina. Most political leaders say they do not like the concept of incentives, but believe the state needs them. A new report released by the NC Budget and Tax Center agrees. ...The Mediated Incentives report by Dr. William Lester, Dr. Nicola Lowe, both of UNC and Freyer, said if North Carolina took a more specialized approach to incentives they might not cause so much of a burden.

New York Times columnist to speak at UNC
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
New York Times columnist and author of the books “Bad Religion: How America Became A Nation Of Heretics,” “Grand New Party” and “Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class” will speak at UNC-Chapel Hill Wednesday. Douthat is a former senior editor for The Atlantic and is youngest regular New York Times op-ed writer in the paper’s history.

Recent medical school graduates train for underserved areas
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
...Dr. Christina Drostin, one of the center’s new residents in training, is seven months pregnant but isn’t slowing down on her rounds. Drostin is part of the new program Ashkin and UNC Family Medicine hope may dramatically change the outlook for North Carolina’s rural areas, and possibly for states with similar challenges across the country. Last year, Prospect Hill became the first health center to test what UNC School of Medicine calls “The Underserved Track.”

Transit Fans Hope To Get UNC Students On Board With Half-Cent Sales Tax Plan
WCHL-FM (Chapel Hill)
Supporters of the Orange County Transit Plan hope to rally the campus vote in favor of the half-cent sales tax referendum to fund bus and light rail in the Triangle. At a pro-transit forum on the UNC campus Monday night, Orange County Board Chair Bernadette Pelissier made a pitch for the half-cent sales tax to support the Orange County Bus and Rail plan.

Sister: Slain UNC student helped friend in abusive relationship
WRAL-TV (CBS/Raleigh)
A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student who was found dead in her off-campus apartment on Sept. 7 had been helping a friend deal with an abusive relationship a few months before her death, according to the slain student's sister.
Related Link:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2214576/Faith-Hedgepeth-murder-
No-answers-month-Native-American-UNC-student-dead.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Issues and Trends

Medical examiner gets more space; state gets better lab
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
...Now the state medical examiner will share an address with the North Carolina Laboratory of Public Health, the agency responsible for examining hazardous substances that could be used as bio-weapons, testing for rabies infections and screening blood samples of newborn babies for birth disorders. ... “We outgrew our old facility (in Chapel Hill) 15 years ago,” said Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Deborah Radisch. That office is part of University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill.

UNC students seek to protest statewide planning panel
The Associated Press
A group of college students is protesting the committee planning the future of North Carolina’s public university system. The student activists say they plan to deliver a letter Tuesday with demands for change to chancellors of the state’s 17 University of North Carolina campuses.
Related Link:
http://chapelboro.com/Students-Prepare-To-Deliver-Another-Letter-Speakin/14463556