Higher Ed

The UNC System is preparing for possible budget cuts of up to 50% at its 17 campuses, according to an email obtained by Policy Watch this week. The email, from UNC Board of Governors Chairman Randy Ramsey to the system’s chancellors, cites the potential impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the possibility that campuses may again close after reopening next month.

Last semester, as the COVID-19 pandemic closed all UNC System campuses, Samantha Pilot welcomed her son home early from his freshman year at UNC-Chapel Hill. At the time, she felt like the university was on her side. It was expensive and complicated to close the campuses and shift to online-only education for the balance of the spring semester. The fact that the UNC System did it anyway made her feel proud to be part of a Carolina family.

As COVID-19 cases continue to reach new record highs in North Carolina, students at UNC system schools are about a month away from returning to their dorms and classrooms to resume on-campus instruction.

Firebrand conservative academic opts for early retirement in light of latest controversies and provocations Combative, confrontational and litigious, UNC-Wilmington professor Mike Adams has long aggressively courted controversy, seeming to revel in contradictions.

Art Pope — Raleigh millionaire, ex-state budget director, former House member and financial underwriter of controversial arch-conservative and libertarian causes — has been appointed to a seat on the UNC Board of Governors.

The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted Wednesday to lift its self-imposed moratorium on the renaming of buildings and historic places on campus, setting the stage to remove the names of Confederate and white supremacist historic figures from places of honor there. The vote comes after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, which sparked weeks of international protest against police violence against Black people and systemic racism in America.

As the 17 schools in the UNC System prepare to bring students back to campuses this fall, each is making its own plans on how to do so as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Much of the focus, however, is on UNC-Chapel Hill, the system’s flagship campus, which last month launched launched the “Carolina Together” website to share details from its “Roadmap for Fall 2020.”

Classes start in just over two months, and Eric Muller, a professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Law, should be consumed with textbook choices, syllabi and lesson plans. Instead, he’s thinking about his wife, who cares for her 90-year-old mother. To just how much risk will be exposing his family each day when he comes home from work?

At the end of an hour-long question-and-answer session with UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz Wednesday, English professor Florence Dore gave voice to what many faculty were thinking about a planned return to campus August 10. “All the data suggest people are going to get sick,” Dore said. “I guess I just don’t understand why we’re not staying online until things improve.”

Controversial conservative cites family duties, but evidence indicates other board members forced his hand Tom Fetzer, one of the UNC Board of Governors’ most combative and controversial members, abruptly resigned Wednesday morning. Fetzer announced his decision at the end of the board's regular meeting, saying the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear that he and his wife need to prioritize homeschooling their five children in Wilmington.

Behind the routine elections at the UNC Board of Governors this week there was drama. At the heart of the controversy: questions about Chairman Randy Ramsey’s official Board of Governors biography, which until recently said he earned a degree that he does not hold.

Tom Fetzer had a problem — again. It involved East Carolina University — again. Fetzer, a member of the UNC Board of Governors, inserted himself into yet another hiring decision about the school. This time it was the question of Van Isley’s appointment to the ECU Board of Trustees.

A disciplined collegiate rower, Lindsay York is used to a structured, yet social life. Last fall, the High Point native moved 1,100 miles away to attend Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where she settled in well. “I have a rowing scholarship and that kept me busy from when I first got there,” York said. “I’m used to waking up at five in the morning, getting a workout done, going to classes, then getting another workout. I had a very tight schedule. But I also developed my own little Des Moines family, my friends and my team atmosphere.”

As temperatures fell last week, a few inches of snowfall led to school closures and hot chocolate in Raleigh and Chapel Hill. A few hours west, in Cullowhee, the atmosphere was a bit more anxious. Students, staff and faculty at Western Carolina University were trying not to think about the outdated and failing steam plant that provides heat and hot water on campus. It’s one bad winter – perhaps one bad cold snap – from the kind of complete failure that would shut down the campus.

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) is seeking the open chancellor’s position at East Carolina University, two members of the ECU Board of Trustees confirmed to Policy Watch this week. “He is interested, he is pursuing it and there’s a lot of conversation about it,” one of the board members said in an interview with Policy Watch.