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2012
February 29.

Callie Wiser ’02 produces the American Experience special “The Amish”

During a visit to campus last year, Callie Wiser ’02 spoke with a group of Morehead-Cain Scholars about her upcoming PBS project on the Amish. She underlined the unique challenge of trying to document a community famously averse to publicity.

After fifteen months of hard work, her effort has finally paid off. The Amish premiered February 28 on PBS.

“In our 23 years, with almost 300 films completed, this was the most difficult that we’ve ever made,” said Mark Samels, Executive Producer of American Experience.

Watch The Amish on PBS. See more from American Experience.

Visit PBS to learn more about the film.

2012
February 27.

In the New Yorker, Jim Surowiecki ’88 looks at stereotypes, basketball, and politics

On the Financial Page of this week’s New Yorker, Jim Surowiecki ’88 connects the public reaction to basketball star Jeremy Lin and the way we perceive our political candidates.

“N.B.A. general managers and coaches are paid a lot of money to evaluate talent, but none of them had any inkling of the kind of player Lin might be,” Jim writes. “That wasn’t because of the way Lin played: two statistically based evaluation models ranked him as one of the best players coming out of college his senior year. But, as a reedy Asian-American (from Harvard, no less), Lin simply didn’t fit anyone’s image of an N.B.A. point guard.”

This insight has implications for our political process, Jim contends, because we make similar snap judgments based on the way candidates look. The association of looks with performance is deep-rooted.

“Our perceptions are hopelessly swayed by the stereotypes in our heads,” Jim writes. “Good-looking people are smart and productive; C.E.O.s are tall and rugged-looking; point guards are not Asian-American.”

Read the full article from the New Yorker.

2012
February 27.

Amanda Claire Grayson ’13 to be the next student Attorney General

Approximating the truth: Q&A with Amanda Claire Grayson
By Maggie Zellner
The Daily Tar Heel

In the week since her Feb. 19 appointment, incoming student attorney general Amanda Claire Grayson has been ironing out her plans for the honor system.

Grayson will manage a staff of about 50 volunteer counsels who defend and prosecute cases of Honor Court violations.

Tuesday, she sat down with Opinion Editor Maggie Zellner to explain what she thinks the role of the honor system is at UNC and what students and faculty need to know about it.

Daily Tar Heel: The Attorney General’s office is sort of the last stop. What happens before then? How does someone end up with an honor offense?

Amanda Claire Grayson: It’s hard for me to believe that people set out to cheat, or set out to disobey the Honor Code. People don’t say, ‘I’m going to plagiarize this paper.’ They pull an all-nighter and they get freaked out and they take a couple shortcuts when they’re writing notes and think they’re not going to get caught. Even with the most egregious violations, it doesn’t mean the student is a bad person.

DTH: There seem to be a lot of faculty, or at least a vocal minority, who don’t really understand what you do. What would you say to them?

ACG: The most basic thing to understand is that we deal with the Honor Code violations that are reported to us, and we process these cases from beginning to end. We represent students and we represent the University. We try to get to a mutually agreeable outcome, an outcome that we think is the truth about what happened.

DTH: And then what? What do you hope to see happen after you’ve gotten to the truth, or some approximation of it?

ACG: The process has several goals. One of them is correcting the behavior and using this an educational opportunity — for students to learn from their mistakes and take responsibility for their actions. But it’s also to punish the behavior in line with our sense that the University has been wronged, and the offense needs to be punished. Not just to correct the behavior but also to prevent it from happening again.

DTH: Why does it take so long? Is it fair to say you guys are just trying to be as thorough and as fair as possible to both sides?

ACG: Yeah, I think that’s reasonable. There are several steps in the process. Where I think it could be shortened is the amount of time between those steps.

DTH: Does every student who is accused of a violation have to go through this whole process?

ACG: No. We don’t want every single student whose case gets reported — whether there are grounds for it or not — to have to go through our process. It’s a cumbersome and difficult process.

DTH: So that’s where the student attorney general comes in?

ACG: Right. There needs to be a sort of gatekeeper — which is the student attorney general — who decides whether or not there are grounds for charging a case.

DTH: And what happens next?

ACG: At that point, there has to be somebody who explains to the students what the process is. Because they’re usually as clueless as anybody is about the way our system operates and what types of decisions they should make.

DTH: And that’s just the first step?

ACG: Yep. A week can pass between when a case is reported and when it’s charged. And if there are scheduling issues, it can take another week to have that meeting with the managing associate. And then we deliberately wait at least two weeks after that to have a hearing, to make sure students are able to prepare for their case.

DTH: So does anyone get paid for this?

ACG: I’ll get a stipend. It’s about $200 a month. Most of it will probably go toward buying food for meetings and supplies. But the counsels work for free.

DTH: And how many hours a week do you expect to put in? It sounds like a full-time job.

ACG: I can see myself working between 30 and 40 hours a week next year. Counsels may work fewer total hours than that, but every time they have a case, they put everything they have into it.

DTH: And they put everything else on hold.

ACG: Right.

DTH: So, finally, what would you say to students who see the honor system as a police force — who think you’re out to get them? What incentive do they have to support the honor system?

ACG: When you live in a community — and UNC is a community — there’s a sort of code, and you are honorable because you expect everyone around you to also be honorable.

We don’t drink and drive, but not necessarily because we’ll get caught every time or we’ll always hit someone.

We don’t drink and drive because we also expect to be able to walk down the street at night without getting hit by a drunk driver. It’s a pretty basic type of contract.

Visit the Daily Tar Heel website for more.

2012
February 26.

In the New York Times, Keith Bradsher ’86 looks at the remarkable rise of Jeremy Lin

In the weekend edition of the New York Times, Hong Kong Bureau Chief Keith Bradsher ’86 takes a break from the usual economics coverage to chronicle the improbable rise of New York Knicks star Jeremy Lin and his family.

“Some 40 years ago, Lin Gie-Ming, a boy from Beidou, and Wu Xinxin, a girl from Kaohsiung, thought of coming to the United States,” Bradsher writes, referring to Lin’s parents. “They dreamed of pursuing an education. They dreamed of perhaps, someday, raising a family.”

The tale of their immigration to the United States is a fascinating story of a family’s sacrifice and eventual triumph.

Visit the New York Times for the full story.

2012
February 22.

Amber Koonce ’12 wins the Luce Scholarship

Congratulations to Amber Koonce ’12, one of two UNC seniors this year to win the prestigious Luce Scholarship

Launched in 1974 to enhance the understanding of Asia among potential leaders in American society, the Luce Scholars Program supports a year of study in Asia. Amber will learn of her placement location in June.

Amber is a public policy and cultural studies double major with a minor in entrepreneurship. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s highest honor society for college students, and serves as president of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

While mentoring incarcerated girls in Ghana during the summer of 2009, Amber noticed that many of them were carrying dolls with blond hair and blue eyes — a contrast to their own features. It was then that she made the connection between that and the discontent with their bodies, so she started BeautyGap, which hopes to promote a standard of beauty unique to women of color by collecting and shipping dolls of color to children of color around the world.

She was recognized by Glamour magazine as “the social entrepreneur” in a list of the top 10 college women of 2011 for founding BeautyGap.

After returning from Ghana, Amber became co-chair of the Campus Y’s criminal justice awareness and action committee, which seeks to raise student awareness of issues in the criminal justice system through volunteer projects and activist efforts. Through this organization, she mentors incarcerated juveniles to ease the transition from detention centers to school systems.

The following summer, Amber analyzed the effectiveness and execution of juvenile rehabilitation programs in the Scotland Prison System while mentoring and leading a group through self-reflection and goal-setting workshops.

When she returned, she used her experiences at home and abroad to create a photography exhibit called “Behind Bars,” which displayed the plight of incarcerated youth through images from detention facilities in Ghana, Scotland and North Carolina.

Amber hopes to earn a juris doctorate and master of public policy dual degree and become an international children’s rights attorney for UNICEF. For now, she plans to continue her research and understanding of children’s rights and social welfare policy as a Luce Scholar.

Learn more about the Luce Scholars Program.

2012
February 16.

Hannah Nemer ’14 will present her research at the United Nations

By Alex Vaugh
The News & Observer

RALEIGH — Several Triangle college students have looked beyond the comforts of their own lives to delve into the hardships facing women in rural areas of North Carolina and the rest of the globe.

Anuja Acharya, a senior at N.C. State University, is one of five women who have received fellowships to present their research at an upcoming United Nations event.

They will offer previews of their presentations at a forum and dinner Thursday at the N.C. State University Club. The News & Observer is a sponsor of the program.

“This is exploring an issue we see right here in our own backyards and how it can be applied on a larger scale,” she said. Acharya studied political participation of rural women for her fellowship.

Hannah Nemer, a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill whose researched was on technology education for girls, said she was struck by the fact that each of the fellows were able to find local issues facing rural women that apply on a global scale.

WomenNC, an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization, has sponsored fellowships for students to present at the Commission on the Status of Women at U.N. Headquarters in New York since 2010.

The theme of the CSW this year is the empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication and development.

Each of the fellows chose an issue based on this theme that affects women in North Carolina and a local organization or program that addresses it. They will share their research at a panel at the CSW March 1.

Mariamawit Tadesse, a senior at Meredith College who researched agriculture and rural female farmers, said seeing women oppressed while growing up in Ethiopia made her passionate about human rights.

Many of the topics the fellows chose were challenging in part because research specific to rural women in North Carolina is not often conducted and statistics were not readily available, said Sue Ellen Rosen, communications chairwoman of WomenNC.

Becca Bishopric, a recent graduate of NCSU, had to gather information from several organizations for her research on human and sex trafficking in rural North Carolina. As homeless people and runaway youth are among those vulnerable to these crimes, gathering data is difficult, she said.

Abby Bouchon, a junior at UNC Chapel Hill, said that being aware of what is happening with public health issues in North Carolina and how they are connected to what is happening nationally and globally helps to create a network that she can explore in future work. She researched rural women and community health systems, focusing on obesity and breast cancer.

North Carolina is the only state that presents organized research of local women’s issues and programs at the CSW, according to WNC.

Anita Sivakumar, President of WNC and 2010 fellow, said their group is now recognized at the U.N. not only by representatives from other states but by those from countries such as Taiwan and India.

Visit the News & Observer website.

2012
February 07.

Save the Date for the 2012 Morehead-Cain Alumni Forum!

The 2012 Morehead-Cain Alumni Forum will kick off in Chapel Hill on Friday, October 19 and wrap up Sunday, October 21.

Alumni and scholars are invited to join us for three days of great conversation, insightful speakers, and fantastic performances.

This year’s lineup will include:

Your emcees and scholar hosts will be the charming and talented Jacob Sharp ’13 and Joseph Terrell ’13, two-thirds of the breakout Americana group Mipso Trio.

Official invitation will be sent soon, but save the date for October. In the meantime, visit the MC Network to see highlights of the 2009 Forum.

Please e-mail Kelly Almond, Director of Communications and Alumni Relations, with any questions.

We look forward to seeing you!

Video highlights from the 2009 Alumni Forum are available on the MC Network.

2012
February 06.

In the News & Observer, Tori Stilwell ’12 looks at the work habits of a new generation

N.C. colleges nurture Generation Z entrepreneurs
By Tori Stilwell ’12
The News & Observer

A Friday night consisting of pizza and beer might not sound very exceptional in the life of the average college student. But for the residents of Duke’s InCube living community, the college staples are fuel for the entrepreneurial spirit.

“It’s kind of a hacker culture just because of a lot of people are doing technology startups,” said Tom Schuhmann, an InCube resident and a Duke senior. The community consists of campus apartments connected by a common room and serves as an incubator for Duke’s undergraduate entrepreneurs, all of whom are working on a startup or are on the hunt for their next project.

“People are up really late in the common room, ordering pizza and working on the startups,” he said. “It’s a little nerdy, but we enjoy it.”

When Schuhmann graduates in May, he won’t be looking for your run-of-the-mill job. Neither will many of his cohorts.

This year’s crop of college graduates will – by some accounts – mark the first entrants of Generation Z into the workplace. And as the generation trades textbooks and all-nighters for cubicles and conference calls, North Carolina’s leaders are trying to figure out how to accommodate this generation’s creative tendencies and keep the state’s most precious natural resource – brainpower – between its borders.

“This is a generation that wants to be able to contribute their ideas to organizations from day one,” said Anita Brown-Graham, director of N.C. State’s Institute for Emerging Issues.

The institute is hosting a forum on Monday and Tuesday to discuss the impact of Generation Z on North Carolina’s economic and workforce development. For its purposes, the institute defines the generation as those born between 1990 and 2002. “The notion of waiting your turn in line is completely foreign to them,” she said. “The workplace will change some of their expectations about what is reasonable, but it’s also true that workplaces are going to have to find ways to accommodate this generation.”

Who is Generation Z?

While opinions vary on who should be included in Generation Z, the institute chose its range based on the youngest of North Carolina’s 2020 workforce, which will be mainly composed of 18-year-olds to 30-year-olds.

“The times are such that we could not ignore the economic impact that this cohort would have or not have depending on whether they are successful,” Brown-Graham said. “If 1.5 million Generation Z-ers in North Carolina don’t have success, North Carolina can’t have success.”

The institute hopes to discuss the unique traits of the generation and what challenges may lie ahead as its members come of age.

“For the first time, we face a scenario where one generation is likely to be less well off than their parents’ generation on a number of criteria including earnings, overall quality of life, health and life expectancy,” Brown-Graham said.

Seeing these economic shifts, however, may be yet another advantage that Generation Z has grown up with, said Andrew Yang, founder of the Venture for America program. The program places graduating seniors in the front lines of a startup for two years with the aim of preparing them to become entrepreneurs.

“The current college student has seen their parents and their peers trust in large institutions and then sometimes be disappointed,” Yang said. “Organizations that people would not have thought were the least bit unstable a number of years ago have proven to be much more volatile.

“This generation is much more interested in equipping themselves with an array of skills that they can trust in than they are in investing a decade or two with the same company.”

Ten percent of this year’s Venture for American class of 50 students is made up of Triangle students – three from UNC-Chapel Hill and two from Duke. Moreover, Yang said the program expects to expand to the Raleigh-Durham area by 2013.

“We’ll be keeping a body of very smart recent college grads in the area to help the regional growth companies continue to expand,” he said. “We met with half a dozen companies and there are a lot of really great companies there that would make for phenomenal experiences.”

‘Citizens of the world’

Local universities are also doing their part to prepare America’s newest crop of entrepreneurs. Duke, N.C. State and UNC all have entrepreneurship programs for students interested in working in startups upon graduation or learning the creative processes necessary to turn an idea into a business.

Buck Goldstein, UNC’s Entrepreneur in Residence and a senior lecturer for the entrepreneurship minor, said the potential he sees in his students often far surpasses the expectations of their elders.

“They’re empowered because they have so many tools readily available to them,” he said. “They have more choices – even in a difficult economy – with what they’re doing with their lives. They view themselves much more as citizens of the world.”

But that doesn’t necessarily mean North Carolina doesn’t have what it takes to harness this generation’s potential, Goldstein said. The key, he says, is creating opportunities within the state that make it hard to leave.

“If you look at the ecosystem, innovative ecosystems, there are not too many much better than RTP,” Goldstein said. “It’s all here, the intellectual capital is here. “Even in tough times, there’s a lot of resources aimed at innovation, and that’s the kind of environment knowledge workers want.”

Jordan Edwards, an N.C. State business major concentrating in entrepreneurship, said she hopes to stay in the area after she graduates in May. She’s aiming to get a full-time position with her current internship employer – Riley Life Logistics in Durham.

“I like to learn about as much as I can and not be tied down to one specific area,” said Edwards, who is doing marketing work for Riley Life in addition to hands-on training about how the business operates.

She also hopes to one day start her own business and understands the appeal entrepreneurship has for her generation – one that has grown up with MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

“We’re very used to change, and it’s kind of exciting to know that you’re not going to be doing the same thing every day,” she said. “It’s kind of hard to keep our attention. Sitting at a desk for an extended period of time in clothes that are uncomfortable is not that appealing to most of us.”

Work hard, play hard

Reeling Generation Z into the workplace is one thing. Accommodating the way they work is an entirely different story, Brown-Graham said.

“The notion that there are certain times you’re working and certain times off of work is foreign to them,” she said. “This is a generation on a more social level. They’re going to want more flexible work schedules.”

Fitch Carrere, a UNC senior getting a minor in entrepreneurship, spent spring 2011 working for Durham’s Appia, a startup that brings app stores to smartphones. Though the company had 55 employees while he worked there, the environment had many features of a startup, he said.

“I was probably physically there two days a week, but I probably worked four days a week for them, often at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. at night,” said Carrere, who was developing marketing materials for the company. “It’s a great place to work. Most of the walls are glass and (there’s) IdeaPaint so you can write on the walls.”

Other adjustments employers may have to make is the speed at which they operate and the drive that motivates Generation Z to do more.

To adjust to both of these conditions, Goldstein suggests that companies streamline and reduce bureaucracy.

“Information is flowing way too fast to have a lot of hierarchy,” he said. “Our students understand that. They don’t have time for it. Flat organizations can process information and make decisions much faster.”

But the last, perhaps best, piece of advice for learning how to work with Generation Z is given by Gary Alan Miller, an assistant director at UNC’s career services office.

“As I work with students, there’s as much difference as there is commonality,” he said. “Any time we’re trying to generalize, there’s always going to be a challenge.”

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/02/05/1828783/too-smart-to-wait.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

Visit the News & Observer website.

2012
February 06.

In this week’s New Yorker, Jim Surowiecki ’88 on the fate of the BlackBerry

On the Financial Page of this week’s New Yorker, Jim Surowiecki ’88 analyzes the slow downfall of the BlackBerry.

“The BlackBerry’s reputed addictiveness now looks like a myth; a recent study found that only a third of users planned to stick with it the next time they upgraded,” Jim writes. “The Times wondered recently whether the BlackBerry will go the way of technological dodoes like the pager.”

Jim traces the company’s problems to the “consumerization” of the electronics industry. Rather than focus products on corporate customers, companies like Apple and Google have been focusing their smartphones on individual consumers.

“Consumerization has been disastrous for R.I.M., because the company has seemed clueless about what consumers want,” Jim writes. “One way or another, consumers are going to have more and more say over what technologies businesses adopt. It’s a brave new world. It’s just not the one that the BlackBerry was built for.”

Visit the New Yorker website for the full story.

2012
January 30.

In the Daily Tar Heel, Cheney Gardner ’15 reports on homelessness at Occupy Chapel Hill

Homeless individuals remain at Occupy encampment, officials say
By Cheney Gardner ’15
The Daily Tar Heel

Brandy McDonald, the co-owner of East End Oyster and Martini Bar, says finding feces near her business was the last straw.

One of her employees stepped in what she says was human feces in an alley behind East End Tuesday, McDonald wrote in an email to officials Friday.

McDonald said she believes the feces came from someone who has continued to camp out at Peace and Justice Plaza weeks after Occupy Chapel Hill ended its encampment.

Officials and members of the homeless community said several people — two of who declined to comment — are homeless but continue to camp in the plaza as political protesters.

They said those people were given temporary security by the Occupy encampment, but Occupy’s move has left them without services they need.

Town Councilwoman Penny Rich said while occupiers may have had good intentions, they could not satisfy some of the homeless’ basic requirements.

“Some of the homeless people camped out with them are very fragile,” she said. “They need professional services like mental evaluations, medicine and dental care.”

Rich also said that ordinances the town left unenforced during the Occupy encampment — which would prevent those in the plaza from remaining without a permit — need to be enforced.

The town didn’t enforce regulations that require permits for the use of public space and ban camping on public property overnight during the Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro movement.

“The town wanted to make Occupy feel that what they were doing is important, so they got away with camping there without a permit,” Rich said.

“But when they packed up to leave, the unintentional consequence is that the homeless people put their tents up and said they are political protesters.”

McDonald’s email also asked Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue, Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt and Chapel Hill Town Council members to invoke the town’s ordinances.

Rich said the council will address the situation at Peace and Justice Plaza at an upcoming meeting.

In the meantime, the campers in the plaza remain out in the cold.

Jamie Rohe, the program coordinator for the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness, said it has been common for homeless people and travelers to stay in Occupy encampments across the country.

“It becomes a sort of safe place to sleep outdoors,” she said. “I think they probably get some food, some company, someone to talk to, some sympathy.”

Heather Epes, a Carrboro resident and events “bottom liner” for the Occupy Chapel Hill movement, said it was never the intention of Occupy to provide a lasting support system for the homeless, but they did engage with the homeless while camping out.

“It’s more to point out to other folks that you can interact with the homeless, and they can be part of your community,” she said.

Epes said she was aware the Occupy movement couldn’t provide all the services the homeless require, but she questions if Chapel Hill is doing enough to help the homeless.

“If they were getting what they needed, why would they come to us?” she said.

Rich said she advises the homeless still camped out at the plaza to go to the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service homeless shelter.

“There are basic human needs that people have and living on a street in a tent will not get you the services you need,” she said.

In the meantime, McDonald said she will be waiting for the town to take action.

After months of declining business due to the encampment, she said she hopes the council will consider its impact on the area.

“It’s dirty and uncomfortable and nobody wants to go there.”

Visit the Daily Tar Heel website.

2012
January 27.

Josh Ford ’12 reflects on watching the State of the Union from inside the White House

Part in the USA
By Josh Ford ’12
The Daily Tar Heel

Tuesday evening I had the privilege to attend a special viewing party and discussion at the White House for President Barack Obama’s third State of the Union address.

I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly political or partisan person; I was definitely one of the few independents in the room. But, first and foremost, I love this country, and I’m unapologetically proud to be an American.

I got chills when Obama declared, “As long as we are joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, and our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.”

Despite constant partisan bickering from both sides of the aisle, I have never lost faith in America and what makes this nation great.

I have refused to be jaded because I truly believe in a better America — an America that prides itself on working hard to give each generation a better life than the one that came before it.

After watching the speech and speaking with some officials from the Obama administration, I came away with two take-home messages. First, education is important and vital to a better America. Second, we can do so much more together than we can apart. Obvious though these messages may seem, they really can’t be said enough.

Education is essential to the fabric of any great nation. It’s easy to underestimate this because investments in education don’t usually pay immediate dividends. But the long-term effects are impossible to overstate.

We must not allow our instant gratification-oriented culture to forget this. As students at a fantastic institution, we must fight to give others the same and better opportunities than we have had.

After the speech, I had the chance to talk with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for a few minutes. His main point seemed to be that good teachers and principals are vital, but having parents on board is necessary for educators to succeed with their students.

In his speech, Obama stressed working to get more Americans to graduate from high school. Duncan told all of us in the room that “Graduating from high school is just the starting spot. But without graduating high school, most doors are shut.”

Another basic but crucial idea I came away with is that we are Americans first, and Republicans or Democrats second. The best part about the State of the Union is that party allegiances are put aside for few minutes as everyone stands together to applaud our commander in chief.

To conclude his speech, Obama urged unity: “Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those 50 stars and those 13 stripes. No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together.”

I hope that he adheres to his own message, and I hope we at UNC do, too. Whether we’re arguing about the best way to trim the budget or who’s the best candidate for student body president, we must ensure that our major goals aren’t overshadowed by minor differences.

As the future of our country, college students should take this idea to heart, putting our country first, not just in our words, but also in our actions.

Imagine how powerful our country could be if politics and party lines were afterthoughts. Imagine an America focused more on moving forward and less on attaining power.

Imagine a nation that directed all of its skill, hard work and passion to our founding ideals. Not only can I imagine it, but I want it dearly. Throughout my life, I plan on working in any way I can to make it a reality. I hope you’ll join me.

Visit the Daily Tar Heel website.

2012
January 25.

Yvonne Theobald, longtime administrator for the Morehead-Cain British program, has passed away

On behalf of the entire Morehead-Cain family, and especially our scholars and alumni from Britain, we offer heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Yvonne Theobald, who passed away Monday at the age of 84.

Yvonne served as administrator of the Morehead’s British program from its inception in 1969 right up through her retirement in 2006. We are deeply grateful for her decades of devoted service.

All of us who knew and loved Yvonne will miss her sparkling personality, her mischievous sense of humor, and the great love and care she took with the more than 125 British Moreheads whom she shepherded over the years.

Foundation trustee emeritus Robert Cluett recalled that in May 1969, when the trustees and Foundation Director Roy Armstrong travelled to London to launch the British Program, “Yvonne was the first person we met when we walked into the English-Speaking Union. She had an amazing combination of ease, humor, and grace, and I will miss her terribly.”

The Foundation would like to extend special thanks and recognition to James Dean ’89 for the great care and attention he has given Yvonne over the years. As chairman of the British Morehead-Cain Program for 15 years, James continued an already strong friendship with Yvonne that began when he was a Morehead nominee.

Yvonne is survived by her daughter, Alison Theobald Chatfied, son-in-law Jonathan Chatfield, and grandchildren Freddie and Imogen.

If you would like to write a note to Yvonne’s family, the address is below:

Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Chatfield
7 Court Lane,
Dulwich Village SE21 7DH

2012
January 24.

In the New York Times, Keith Bradsher ’86 analyzes the decline of American manufacturing

In a widely praised article on the front page of the New York Times, Hong Kong Bureau Chief Keith Bradsher ’86 offers a fascinating look at the reasons high-tech gadgets like the iPhone aren’t made in the United States.

In looking at the outsourcing decisions of an iconic company like Apple, Bradsher tells a broader story about the economic evolution of the American manufacturing sector.

“While Apple is far from alone, it offers a window into why the success of some prominent companies has not translated into large numbers of domestic jobs,” Bradsher writes. “What’s more, the company’s decisions pose broader questions about what corporate America owes Americans as the global and national economies are increasingly intertwined.”

By tracing the general pattern of upheaval that follows technological innovation, Bradsher paints a worrisome picture of the American middle class. “Midwage jobs started disappearing,” he writes. “Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today’s new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations — at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers — that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.”

The article has already sparked plenty of commentary among economists and policymakers.

Visit the New York Times website for more.

2012
January 23.

Rachel Myrick ’13 oversees UNC’s first TEDx event

Organizers consider TEDxUNC a well-attended success
By Megan Cassella
The Daily Tar Heel

To close the TEDxUNC conference Saturday, John McGowan issued a warning.

If nothing came of the event, a sign would be put up at the FedEx Global Education Center that read, “In this spot in 2012, nothing happened,” the director of UNC’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities said.

But organizers said they were confident something had happened — and will continue to happen in the future.

“There was this really great vibe for students to go back and relay these messages and what they learned to their friends and their classmates,” said Mackenzie Thomas, one of the event’s organizers.

The conference was an adaptation of TED, a national organization that brings together high-profile experts to speak on a wide variety of subjects. The talks are then posted on the Internet.

TEDxUNC, which organizers plan to make an annual event, featured nine speakers ranging from the captain of Afghanistan’s first national women’s soccer team to the online editor for The Wall Street Journal.

Thomas and fellow organizer Rachel Myrick said they had overbooked the auditorium by a few seats expecting some absences. But the venue remained almost completely full, Myrick said.

Hundreds watched the event on the reesenews.org livestream, and more than 1,000 tweets referenced the conference, Thomas said.

“Five or six months back, this excitement wasn’t expected, but by the end of the day, we weren’t surprised by it,” she said.

For next year, organizers said they hope to garner more attention in different ways, including holding a competition that awarded the winning student an invitation to speak at the conference.

“We want a huge blowout ­— even more publicity, some huge names coming in, all sorts of events leading up to it, and more interaction and student discussion,” Myrick said.

“We already have the infrastructure to run this next year for sure and hopefully continually after that.”

Visit the Daily Tar Heel website.

2012
January 23.

Allison Hawkins ’12 calls for greater geographic diversity at UNC

Central NC isn’t the only NC
By Allison Hawkins ’12
The Daily Tar Heel

Tiffany Hensley was valedictorian of the class of 2008 at Mountain Heritage High School in Burnsville. She ran cross-country, volunteered for the Special Olympics, was co-editor of the yearbook and served as secretary of her school’s student government. In her senior year, she was rewarded for her efforts with an acceptance letter from UNC. But you won’t see her on campus today because Tiffany is a senior at East Tennessee State University.

Tiffany’s reasons for choosing ETSU were practical. ETSU offered her a full scholarship. UNC did not. ETSU is only an hour away from her home. UNC is five.

But Tiffany’s case is an illustration of a larger problem. A quick look at some statistical profiles makes it easy to see how insular this campus’ student body is. A 2011 report from the UNC General Alumni Association, which profiled the class of 2014, found that 51 percent of in-state students come from five counties: Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Orange and Forsyth.

Think about it. The majority of in-state students in the current sophomore class come from just five of North Carolina’s 100 counties. It might be tempting to write this off as a fluke or to at least attribute it to population distribution. But a closer examination offers no such explanation.

In fact, it reveals an even greater disparity than the initial figures suggested: These five counties may account for 51 percent of the class of 2014, but they only represent about 30 percent of North Carolina’s population.

This is a problem for North Carolinians, who have all made an investment in the world-class university we have here in Chapel Hill. By failing to draw a sufficient number of rural students, UNC is depriving these areas — who pay taxes just like everyone else — of much-needed homegrown leaders, who can go back and make a difference in their all-too-often overlooked communities.
The disparity is detrimental to other segments of the student body, too. A homogenous student body diminishes campus life and denies us a fundamental college experience: exposure to and education from people with different backgrounds.

Less obvious but equally crucial are the political consequences of this homogeneity. Chapel Hill was especially roughed up in last year’s state legislative budget battles. Could a contributing factor have been that representatives from the state’s less-urban counties felt relatively little responsibility to our campus? If a representative’s constituency isn’t connected to UNC, if only a few students go to Carolina every year, what incentive does that elected official have to fight — truly fight — against spending cuts to our university?

UNC needs to continue to attract North Carolina’s best and brightest, and the talent will never be equally distributed between the state’s counties. But it is ridiculous to suggest that the current disparity is an accurate reflection of the quality of the students outside of the Triangle Area and the suburbs of Charlotte.

It won’t be easy to change this profile, but we can start by improving our social, economic and educational outreach in these areas, so students like Tiffany will feel like there is a place for them in Chapel Hill. Both our future and North Carolina’s will be better for it.

Visit the Daily Tar Heel website.

2012
January 20.

Audrey Ann Lavallee ’13 reports on Muslim converts for Public Radio Exchange

From Public Radio Exchange

According to the Islamic Information Center, 200,000 individuals convert to Islam each year in America. In this piece, Audrey Ann Lavallee ’13 speaks with Dulce Acosta-Licea and David Sterling, two Muslim converts who tell her about the day they began to embrace Islam.

Their faith filled a gap in their lives and transformed how they interacted with others. In many ways, their association with the Islamic faith is a continuity rather than a break from their pasts.

Visit the PRX website for more.

2012
January 18.

Patrick Gray ’14 and UNC SEDS launch a high-altitude weather balloon from Polk Place

Students to launch weather balloon today in Polk Place
by Emily Overcarsh
The Daily Tar Heel

While letting go of a balloon is a tragedy by any child’s standards, UNC students will be releasing one on purpose today — all in the name of science.

Members of UNC’s chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space will launch their first ever weather balloon in front of Wilson Library during the 11:50 a.m. class change so students passing through the quad can watch.

A camera will be attached to the weather balloon to record its flight, said sophomore Patrick Gray, president and founder of the chapter.

“That’s the main thing of what we want — a view of campus getting smaller and smaller, and then of it crashing back down.”

“We hope to get pictures of the curvature of Earth,” said sophomore Dan Plattenberger, a member of the group.

Gray said there will also be a live GPS feed tracking the balloon on the group’s Facebook page.

The balloon will reach an altitude of about 90,000 feet before bursting, and Gray predicts it will land somewhere in Eastern North Carolina.

“There’s a small chance the winds might be too high to launch it, but we’ll probably do it anyway,” Gray said.

“We might just have to launch it from a high location if the winds are too high.”

Plattenberger said the idea for a weather balloon launch came from YouTube.

“One of our members saw a YouTube clip of it, and the word kind of just spread, and everyone got excited about it,” Plattenberger said.

This project is funded entirely by a $200 grant from the North Carolina Space Grant organization. The physics department will provide the helium.

“It’s about 1,000 birthday balloons worth of helium,” Gray said.

Physics professor Gerald Cecil, a member of the North Carolina Space Grant organization and a supporter of the student group, said the success of the weather balloon project depends on if organizers can actually find the balloon once it pops and subsequently lands.

“It has a GPS that will tell them where it is but it’s not completely accurate. So they’ll have to search a little,” he said. “My theory is it’ll end up hanging in a tree a hundred feet off the ground or fall in somebody’s lake. Hopefully, it will do neither of these, and it’ll land gently in a park somewhere.”

Despite the slim chance of recovery, members said they are excited about the launch and the publicity that will come from it.

“We should have a successful launch,” Plattenberger said. “Maybe not a successful recovery, but a successful launch.”

Regardless, Plattenberger said the weather balloon launch will give students an opportunity to see what the group is all about — through a hands-on interaction with space.

“One hundred thousand feet is classified as the edge of space,” Gray said. “On a budget of less than $1,000, this is the closest you can get to space.”

Visit the Daily Tar Heel website for more.

2012
January 18.

Judge J. Rich Leonard ’71 oversees the restoration of downtown Raleigh’s federal building

1878 glory back in Raleigh
By Brooke Cain
The News & Observer

For nearly four years beginning in early 2005, while federal Judge J. Rich Leonard presided over his usual docket of bankruptcy hearings, he also immersed himself in the world of 19th century architecture and design, obsessing over paint colors, carpet patterns, and period light fixtures.

The result of Leonard’s long obsession – and of the hard work of scores of other devoted architects, contractors, and millworkers – is the beautiful reconstruction and renovation of historic courtrooms and meeting rooms in the Federal Building on Fayetteville Street.

The Federal Building, which houses the downtown Raleigh post office and federal bankruptcy courts, was a marvel when it was completed in 1878, boasting 19 marble fireplaces, rich mahogany trim, and what many believe to be the city’s first indoor toilets.

Over the years, sections of the building fell into disrepair, and the third floor eventually was closed. When the state needed new courtroom space for an additional bankruptcy judge, Leonard looked upstairs.

What he found was a space that had been largely empty since the 1960s, with caved-in roofs from leaky pipes and floors eaten away by termites. He wasn’t scared off.

“I’d always loved this building,” he said. “Even though it had fallen on bad times, I had always been attracted to it.”

Leonard and his staff discovered 79 boxes of construction documents in the National Archives in Washington detailing the day-to-day construction of the building, including linen blueprints Leonard says they had to unroll and stand on chairs to photograph.

They learned that the original courtroom and chambers had been located on the third floor, and that the larger second-floor courtroom had been added when the court doubled in size in 1915. They took care poking through the mess of rotted dropped ceilings and modern paneling, eventually discovering treasures such as the marble fireplaces and the original 1870s plaster crown molding.

A few of the original fireplaces, covered over during the 1915 renovations, were found inside the walls with nearly 100-year-old coal ash still in them.

“Then I got extraordinarily excited,” Leonard said.

Leonard and his team read everything they could find about the building’s architect, Alfred B. Mullett. They visited other buildings he designed and went through boxes of construction documents to learn about Mullet’s favored finishings, furnishings, styles and colors.

“It’s not a complete historical renovation,” Leonard said, “because there are some things we just don’t know about and had to guess what to do.”

But there were many things they did know. They knew Mullet used Tennessee white marble for all his mantels, so they had replica mantels made based on those found in a Mullett building in Knoxville. They knew Mullett used six-globe chandeliers, so they ordered those from a replica chandelier maker. They found an 1876 order form for mahogany blinds, so they used mahogany blinds throughout. And they implemented one of Mullett’s most famous architectural details: two-tone wood paneling with mahogany inset into walnut.

Because the 1915 expansion deconstructed the building’s third floor so severely, contractors were unable to put the third floor courtroom back in the same spot Mullett had it. Instead, they mimicked it on the other end of the building in an area that previously held office cubicles, and the grand entrance to the courtroom was rebuilt as it was originally drawn.

Still, there were some areas where they weren’t quite sure how to proceed.

“It was frustrating,” Leonard said, “because we’d read these newspaper files, and some of my female law clerks would say, ‘If there had just been one woman reporter who would write about the drapes and the carpets!’ “

The description of the courtroom, from an 1878 newspaper article on the day it opened, described the courtroom only as “elegant and commodious.”

The historic feel of the courtroom is impressive, particularly for a technologically advanced court that hasn’t used a paper file in 10 years.

“It’s been nice to try to implant all that technology into a place that feels like a 19th-century courtroom,” Leonard said. “It’s brand new, but we did everything we could to mimic an old feel. We’ve done as much as we knew how to do.”

The larger second-floor courtroom got a sprucing at the same time. Bad fluorescent lighting was replaced with period-appropriate chandeliers, and the room got new benches and fresh paint. It retains its distinctive red leather porthole doors, original to the 1915 construction.

Leonard, who said he climbed scaffolding every afternoon to mark X’s in spots where paint or plaster needed work, and often went to bed with books about Victorian office furniture, loves the results and feels the attention to detail paid off.

“I was pretty obsessed,” he said. “I want it to be right for the city. This is a wonderful old building, and it’s got such a history.”

Not long after construction was completed in 2009, court staff came up with the idea to give free public tours to share the work with the taxpayers who footed the bill.

“It ought not to be just for the benefit of those of us who get to work here and those unfortunate enough to have to come to court here,” Leonard says. “It ought to be for everybody.”

So each Friday at 2 p.m., a staff member guides folks through the renovated areas of the second and third floors, recounting the history of the building and the role of the court during the time of the building’s construction. The Federal Building hosts Boy Scouts, school groups, and various social clubs.

But these tours are not the first given in the historic building. Two weeks before the Federal Building opened, the city conducted what it called “Ladies Tours” because, according to Leonard, “they thought ladies probably would not be coming to the courtroom on a regular basis.”

Visit the News & Observer website for more.

2012
January 13.

Morehead Scholars take the lead in debating campus tuition proposals

As the UNC-system Board of Governors meets to consider proposed tuition hikes for next year, a number of Morehead-Cain Scholars have taken the lead in crafting student counterproposals.

Greg Randolph ’12, quotes in today’s News & Observer, said that board members need to remain focused on the need for robust state funding of higher education. “This needs to be a statewide campaign to protect public education,” he said. “I don’t think we’re seeing that campaign, and I don’t think we really, as a state, are grappling with the gravity of the situation.”

Elizabeth McCain ’12, Joseph Terrell ’13, and Ellen Currin ’15 were also featured in front-page photographs in the N&O and the Daily Tar Heel as they led groups of student protestors to the board meeting.

A number of UNC campuses, including UNC-Chapel Hill, have proposed substantial tuition hikes to offset declining state funding. Board members are considering whether to push for lower increases—possibly below 10 percent—for the coming academic year.

Read the News & Observer article.

Read the Daily Tar Heel article.

2012
January 13.

Jacob Sharp ’12 and Joseph Terrell ’13 jamming out on NPR

With one album under their belts, the gentlemen of Mipso Trio—including scholars Joseph Terrell ’13 and Jacob Sharp ’12—spent an afternoon in the studios of WUNC talking with State of Things host Frank Stasio.

Joseph and Jacob talk about meeting at their Morehead-Cain Finals Weekend in Chapel Hill. “We were staying overnight, so of course we brought our instruments along with us, and we ended up standing around in the courtyard of the hotel and playing some tunes,” Terrell recalled.

As they look toward their next album, the group told Stasio that they’re planning to collaborate more closely in songwriting. “After having been together for almost a year, it seems like we finally have an idea of what we can do,” Jacob said.

They also played some of their new material for Stasio, including a fantastic song called “Lonely Town.”

Listen to the full show.