Three years in the making, the North Carolina Research Campus debuted Monday in Kannapolis.

The $1.5 billion project, driven by developer-billionaire David Murdock, has transformed the former Pillowtex mill complex, which closed in 2003 in Kannapolis and threatened that area with a massive economic tailspin.

Murdock, owner of Dole Food, swept in with a big idea: A research campus mixing private industry with not just a single university's research engine - like N.C. State's Centennial Campus or, perhaps, the eventual Carolina North project in Chapel Hill - but an accumulation of brainiacs from universities across the state.

Sixteen private businesses, eight North Carolina universities and the state's community college system jumped on board. Our local universities are well represented, as UNC-CH, Duke, NCCU and N.C. State all have research programs running or in the works on the campus.

This venture is no joke. Murdock is picking up a lot of the tab, but so are you and I. There is about $47 million in public money committed to the project.

The Charlotte Observer has a nice look at the project here.

One snippet on the economic viablility of translating research to the market:

"Biotech is a dicey venture. It can take a decade or longer - and hundreds of millions of dollars - just to get one product to market, with no guarantee of success. An industry that requires risk-takers for investing in new ideas is especially vulnerable to a turbulent market."

Lessie Bass, a social work professor at East Carolina University, has received the UNC system's top award for public service for her work in her community.

Bass has been at ECU since 1993. She helped put a coalition of leaders together in Greenville to create a community center in West Greenville, an economically deprived area struggling with drug and crime problems.

"Today, the Lucille Gorham Intergenerational Center in West Greenville provides critical educational and outreach services that include after-school programs and summer camps, academic tutoring, GED and college-level classes, parenting programs, youth apprenticeship programs, small business workshops, and substance abuse counseling," the press release reads in part.

The award brings with it a $7,500 cash prize.

Bass is the second recipient of this university-system award. The first was George Wilson, an NCCU professor of criminal justice. 

A story in Saturday's paper detailed how and why UNC Chapel Hill is spending more than $900,000 to fix up the home where university chancellors live.

Stories like these tend to touch a nerve. (Check out the comment section of the story) People get pretty fired up over public universities spending piles of money on things that may not seem necessary, particularly during economic times like these.

And it should be pointed out that the news of this house renovation comes fast on the heels of last week's formal installation for Holden Thorp, who took office earlier this year. (He's the one who will be living in the newly-renovated home.) That ceremony cost $162,000.

Both the installation and the home renovations were paid for with non-state funds. Generally, that means a university is dipping into its coveted non-restricted account, money donated by folks who don't dictate precisely what the money is used for.

So what do you think?

It appears that former UNC Chapel Hill administrator Elson Floyd has his hands full out at Washington State with two of his top administrators.

They're fighting. 

At Elizabeth City State University, an e-mail sent from a vice chancellor's account encourages people to vote for Barack Obama. The administrator says she didn't send the message, and the university is looking into it.

Read more here. 

Much has been written in this newspaper about lagging graduation rates, particularly the challenges historically black universities here face keeping students in college and getting them all the way through to graduation day.

At N.C. Central University in Durham, where about 49 percent of students graduate within six years, Chancellor Charlie Nelms is targeting student success as one of his top priorities.

The problem isn't just in Durham, nor just in North Carolina. This article looks at graduation rates at urban universities across the country, and some of the data is eye-opening. The six-year graduation at Chicago State University is 16 percent. At the University of the District of Columbia, it's 19 percent. At Wayne State University in Detroit, 32 percent.

The article reads in part:

"To varying degrees, these problems are mirrored in urban universities nationwide - academically unprepared students, insufficient funding, and the worst of city politics and higher education administration put together in one tangled mass of dysfunction.

There are exceptions, of course, institutions and departments doing great things despite many challenges. But on the whole, the odds are stacked against many city college students and the outcome data reflect the end result."

Peace College will unveil a $30 million capital campaign this morning that will focus largely on raising funds for expansion and renovation to its facilities.

The small women's college was a junior college until just 13 years ago, and a campus official told me this week it is still trying to get its infrastructure in line with the needs of a modern, four-year institution.

A $30 million campaign would top the college’s previous best, a $15 million effort that concluded in 2000. The college has been in a silent fundraising phase for more than four years now and is alreadly two-thirds the way to its goal.

The campaign’s top priority is a $3.7 million renovation and expansion of the Lucy Cooper Finch Library. The library project will add 2,200 square feet and a technology revolution of sorts with the addition of a “learning commons” with computer stations and other workspace.

Peace will also offer, for the first time, a bachelor’s in science degree next year and is updating science laboratories in preparation. In all, more than half the $30 million Peace hopes to raise will be spent on renovation and new construction.

“This campaign is a lot about bricks and mortar and refreshing our campus,” said Michael Magoon, Peace College's vice president for development and alumnae affairs.

Read more about the campaign in today's News & Observer.

UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp's installation this past weekend was a $162,000 bash.

A university official told me today that while the exact cost won't be known until UNC-CH receives all its bills from vendors, the event had a budget of $162,975.

The event was a fancy affair held on Polk Place, the main quadrangle outside South Building, where Thorp and other administrators work.

A breakdown: About $25,000 was for the logistics of setting up chairs, tables, etc and preparing for 3,500 attendees; the university spent $23,000 on printing for invitations and other materials; and overtime costs for security from the public safety office accounted for another $19,000. 

Other expenses included design work, postage and video of the event, as well as a reception on Polk Place after the ceremony.

 In comparison, the installation event held in 2001 for Thorp's predecessor, James Moeser, cost about $142,000.

Both events were paid for with non-state funds, which means no taxpayer money was used.

 
For the record:

In this story and in this blog post, I quoted UNC Chapel Hill professor Lawrence Grossberg as saying that the controversial 1960s radical-turned-college professor Bill Ayers "did break the law, and he was punished and he moved on."

Grossberg checked in with me today not to dispute the comment but to say he misspoke.

"Just for the record, I misspoke in my comments regarding Bill Ayers," Grossberg wrote in an e-mail. "And when I used the word 'punished', I meant to say 'arrested.' "

Ayers, whose Weather Underground radical group was responsible for a series of bombings of U.S. landmarks and other sites back during the Vietnam War era, was charged in 1970 with inciting to riot and conspiracy to bomb public buildings, but the charges were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.

 I wrote in today's paper about a new perfume that alleges to have captured "the essence" of UNC Chapel Hill.

Sorry, the story isn't a scratch-n-sniff, but you can still read it here. 

The idea in creating a collegiate perfume is to capture scents that make folks nostalgic for their alma mater and their college days.

I needed an expert, so I asked Chandler Burr to chime in on this. Burr is the perfume critic for the New York Times.

Yes, really.

I didn't catch up with Chandler before today's story ran, but he was nice enough to call and leave me a message. Essentially, he said colleges, their campuses and their locations, have distinct things about them - colors, themes, characteristics - that all play into a scent.  Perfume makers would consider all of that when trying to come up with a college-centric scent.

He said in part: 

"It isn't, in fact, a stretch to make a scent that makes people nostalgic for their college days. If you went to college in the 80s, it was Drakkar Noir. If you went to Yale, there's an Ivy smell. Of course, if you went to San Diego State, it would be a lot different than if you went to Harvard."