UNCG today is announcing the UNCG Guarantee, a need-based financial aid program that will guarantee eligible students a college education with little or no debt.

The program will begin this fall and was created thanks to a $6 million gift from an anonymous donor - one of several such mysterious gifts that arrived on the doorsteps of various universities last year.

"The UNCG Guarantee gives us an enormous opportunity to enhance student success at UNCG, and especially for our students who need the most help financially," said Chancellor Linda Brady in a Tuesday press release.

The program, similar in concept to the Carolina Covenant program unveiled several years ago at UNC-Chapel Hill, will at first provide financial support to 30 to 40 first-year students. It is expected to fund 130 to 140 students over four years. But that's just about 12 percent of all the UNCG students who would qualify, and the university hopes to raise funds to expand the program in the future.

The application deadline is April 1. Students chosen for UNCG Guarantee will receive a financial aid package that includes funds from the program’s newly created Lula Martin McIver Scholarship Endowment and other private gifts, along with federal and state grants.

The aid package will include tuition and fees; on-campus room and board; and books, supplies and other educational expenses. Currently, $14,500 per year covers these costs for in-state students.

The death of noted author/legendary recluse J.D. Salinger last week brought with it a cavalcade of retrospectives as writers and journalists attempted to explain the appeal of a man who hadn't been a public figure in half a century.

Of course, it's difficult to write with any authority about a person who was as determined as Salinger was to maintain his privacy.

And that, argues Leonard Cassuto, was unfortunate and a colossal missed opportunity.

Cassuto is an English professor at Fordham University. He writes in Inside Higher Ed about what might have been, had Salinger not been so determined to keep his work hidden from the masses.

He writes in part:

Salinger was of course entitled to his personal privacy, and he was likewise entitled to write for himself and not for publication. But it’s more than a pity that he expended so much effort to keep people from reading the work that he so eagerly turned into the world at a time when he was feeling more generous toward it. Salinger refused requests to republish his work in different formats, and when people tried to write about it — and about him — he made it as difficult as possible.

 I'm as much a fan of Salinger as anyone; Catcher in the Rye is my favorite book and I find something new in it at each reading. But I see what Cassuto is saying here. 

As he put it in closing his essay: "Salinger betrayed a great talent. Metabolically speaking, he died last week. BUt his passing really began decades ago."

But on the other hand, does Salinger - or any great artist, really - have any sort of obligation to the masses?

Here's Cassuto's essay.

UNC Greensboro is unveiling its own version of the Carolina Covenant.

UNCG today is announcing the UNCG Guarantee, a need-based financial aid program that will guarantee eligible students a college education with little or no debt.

The program will begin this fall and was created thanks to a $6 million gift from an anonymous donor - one of several such mysterious gifts that arrived on the doorsteps of various universities last year.

"The UNCG Guarantee gives us an enormous opportunity to enhance student success at UNCG, and especially for our students who need the most help financially," said Chancellor Linda Brady in a Tuesday press release.

The program, similar in concept to the Carolina Covenant program unveiled several years ago at UNC-Chapel Hill, will at first provide financial support to 30 to 40 first-year students. It is expected to fund 130 to 140 students over four years. But that's just about 12 percent of all the UNCG students who would qualify, and the university hopes to raise funds to expand the program in the future.

The application deadline is April 1. Students chosen for UNCG Guarantee will receive a financial aid package that includes funds from the program’s newly created Lula Martin McIver Scholarship Endowment and other private gifts, along with federal and state grants.

The aid package will include tuition and fees; on-campus room and board; and books, supplies and other educational expenses. Currently, $14,500 per year covers these costs for in-state students.

Meredith College President Maureen A. Hartford announced today that she will retire next year.

Hartford is the first woman president of Meredith, which is a women's four-year college, that also offers post-graduate degrees. She began her tenure there as president in 1999.

Hartford said in a news release that her decision to announce her retirement 18 months in advance gives her time to finish her goals and plan for a presidential transition.

"In the next year and a half, we will have developed Meredith's next strategic plan, strengthened the college's financial position and completed our reaffirmation of accreditation work," she said in the release.

Mount Olive College has figured out a way to save its students $22,000; get them through school in three years.

 Mount Olive, a small, private school in Wayne County, is the first in the state to latch onto a burgeoning national trend towards the three-year bachelor's degree.

Here's the story.

Eduardo Catalano, an Argentina-born architect who taught at N.C. State University during its modernist heyday in the early 1950s, died last week in Massachusetts.

He was 92.

The N&O's Richard Stradling has the story here.

L. Gregory Jones was an untested administrator when he took over as dean of the Divinity School at Duke 13 years ago.

Now, he's an administrative star.

By all accounts, Jones will leave the divinity school in great shape when he leaves that post to become Duke's senior advisor for international strategy.

Writes Yonat Shimron in today's News & Observer:

"During his tenure as dean of the divinity school, Jones raised millions of dollars, built a new addition, recruited star faculty and started a half dozen new programs. His work habits are said to be compulsive, his energy endless and his abilities seemingly limitless."

Here's the story.

A top NASA climatologist huddled under a tent Tuesday to talk about coal and global warming.

With UNC-Chapel Hill's massive coal-burning cogeneration plant as a backdrop, outspoken NASA scientist James Hansen pushed the university - and others - to take the lead in weaning off of coal as an energy source.

Hansen, who gave a speech and spoke in some classes as well this week, gamely donned a gaudy, yellow "Beyond Coal" T-shirt - the same as those worn by about 15 sign-toting activists - to speak Tuesday as a guest of the local Sierra Club.

That's the organization whose lobbying helped prompt UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp to recently form a new energy task force to examine the university's use of coal and other issues.

Hansen, an internationally recognized expert on global climate change, spoke as rain dropped and slushy ice crunched underfoot. The crux of his argument: The United States needs to wean itself entirely off of coal use, and sooner rather than later. Universities, he said, must take the lead in this venture.

N.C. Central University has cancelled night classes tonight due to the weather.

And the university will operate on a two-hour delay Tuesday, with no classes starting before 10 a.m.

A Connecticut couple has donated $1 million to Elon University to support its college access program for Alamance County high school students.

The gift from Douglas G. and Edna Truitt Noiles, of New Canaan, Conn., will support the Elon Academy.

_{photo credit: Elon University}

This is the couple's fourth major gift to the Elon Academy and the largest yet to support the academic enrichment program established in 2007 in conjunction with the Alamance-Burlington school system.

Edna Truitt Noiles is a 1944 Elon graduate.

The Elon Academy is a three-year intensive program that serves academically promising students with significant financial need and/or no family history of attending college.  
The Noiles' are among Elon's most generous donors. In 2003, they gave $1 million to endow the Vera Richardson Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life on campus.

The Elon Academy combines intensive four-week summer residential experiences at Elon with a variety of academic and enrichment activities throughout the school year. The first class of 22 students is scheduled to graduate this spring.